I spent my entire life playing fighting games wrong

I've loved fighting games ever since I laid eyes on a Street Fighter II cabinet.

For someone with such a terrible memory, I remember it surprisingly clearly. It was at a video rental store around the corner from where we lived in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It was 1991, and I would have been 9 or 10 years old.

Minutes before, tired of my boredom cries and hoping for peace and quiet, my mother put a £5 note in my hand and sent me to rent a game for my NES. As I stood, trying to decide on something to occupy my tiny mind, I became aware of cheering from the back of the store.

Curious, I investigated. Through a door at the back usually closed, I found a group of local kids crowded around arcade cabinets. There were kids I knew, kids I didn't, and kids I was positively terrified of.

As I peered in with interest, the group invited me in and made way so I could see what they were playing. That was the first time I saw Street Fighter II, and it blew me away.

I can't explain how, but I just knew in that moment that it was big. It wasn't just the game, it was also that… well… putting these kids together in a small room just shouldn't work.

Bradford has always been a rough place to live (and is still to this day), and many there were notorious bullies and troublemakers whose petty grudges would spill into actual fights around the neighbourhood. Yet, here they were, fighting digitally, all tolerance and smiles. I couldn't help but marvel at how this game triggered cheers, high-fives, back-slaps, and handshakes, rather than the usual animosity.

I didn't feel brave enough to play that night but asked a lot of questions. Drawn to the quiet poster boy who could shoot fireballs from his hands, I'd already decided who I was going to play when I stopped by next.

When I realised how long I'd been gone, I ran home without a rented game, my mind ablaze. If peace and quiet were what my mother hoped I'd find at the video store, she was very much mistaken. I spent the entire night raving about what I'd seen.

Mispent youth

In the days, months, and years that followed, I basically lived in that video rental store or, as soon as allowed, Bradford's arcades.

I didn't realise it until writing this, but our city centre was a goldmine for Street Fighter II players. It was in the cafe where we'd get pre-arcade food and drinks. It was in the bowling alley at the top end of town. It was in the famous Odeon cinema (now derelict, awaiting refurbishment as a music venue). There were at least 3 dedicated arcades, and we'd spend our entire weekends touring the lot.

My favourite battleground was an underground arcade on Bridge Street. It wasn't the largest, but it had the best selection of games and, what was massively impressive to me at the time, a sit-down Street Fighter setup that showed the action for everyone else on a wall of CRT screens.

I didn't really want to spend too long on nostalgia here, but explaining our local haunts and the sheer amount of time I spent in them is important. The downfall of arcades is also the story of my downfall.

My point is that at all these places, I played Street Fighter a lot and won more often than not. Winning a lot meant I never needed to improve. Before I needed to, the big arcade drop-off happened, and I was complicit.

A little under two years later, when Street Fighter II came to Super Nintendo, I stopped going to arcades as much as I did. I became content to play against the same few school friends at home. Street Fighter II was also was no longer the only game my friend group played. Everyone preferred a different fighting series, so we'd head over to whoever's house to play whatever we fancied playing on the day (more on that another time, maybe).

Because of that, I missed the emergence of the fighting game community as we know it today. I mean, I grew up in its early days without realising what it was. I played against friends and strangers, but I didn't compete.

As I was already better than my friends at the game that mattered to me the most, I never had to learn how to get better. It meant I never realised how far behind I really was.

And then the genre had its little time out of the mainstream spotlight.

All future fighters came to consoles as arcades went into rapid decline. My friends, for various reasons, stopped playing fighting games altogether. By the time Tekken rolled around for the original PlayStation, fighting games were largely a single-player endeavour because I had no other choice.

Until, that is, February 2009, when Street Fighter IV launched for Xbox 360 and PS3 with a passable online mode.

Mispent adulthood

Errr, so permit me to be a little real here. Around 2009, when it launched, I was 27 and depressed as hell. I'd only just been diagnosed and started medication, but I'm pretty sure I'd been suffering since my early-teens without understanding what I was experiencing.

Being an introvert and loner didn't really help things and, naturally, games became a crutch. There were plenty of games that made mentally tough phases a little more bearable, but Street Fighter IV hit when I was at my absolute lowest. I credit it as one of the reasons I'm still here.

The depression, however, meant I couldn't mentally deal with the Ranked queue. I stuck primarily in casual matches, forever 'one and done-ing', never chasing community, again never bothering to learn or even realising I needed to.

In my little bubble, where I was simply happy being able to hit buttons against other humans again, I didn't know there were resources like shoryuken.com or similar forums that could help me learn. I didn't know the competitive scene was a thing, though I probably wasn't mentally equipped to deal with that or locals at the time anyway.

A few years later, some life changes meant I could ween myself off the anti-depressants. I'd moved to Australia for marriage. I finally managed to move properly into my preferred career.

And when Street Fighter IV's final 'Ultra' update hit, I discovered we had a local scene purely by chance on Facebook. I reached out, made sure I'd be welcome, and decided to try it out. I was nervous but massively excited.

That was the moment I realised just how far behind I was thanks to past circumstances.

"You're not a warrior. You're a beginner."

I don't know how to properly convey the disappointment in having spent a long part of your life believing you knew something only to discover that you knew, in fact, jack shit.

I mean, special move execution was never a problem, I could do basic combos, but it was my strategy and understanding of other game mechanics that caused me problems.

Seemingly unbreakable, lifelong bad habits were continually punished. I couldn't stop making predictable jumps. I didn't understand safe and unsafe moves, and muscle memory kept drawing me to that fucking crouching heavy sweep despite knowing, without doubt, it was nearly always a bad idea.

It turns out I'd only ever played Street Fighter on feel, never knowledge, and being so far behind felt so incredibly shitty.

This bore out in my experiences with the group. Occasionally, I was cast aside from everyone else and told to practice cross-up defence or other skills I should already know, so I wasn't wasting the time of more serious players.

I overheard jokes at the idea of fledgling tournaments, which put me off taking things more seriously. Despite spending a lot of my life playing Street Fighter, the reality was that I was a fledgling too and, let me tell you, that idea fucking sucked.

My natural introversion also prevented me from really connecting with anyone. After a month or two, the whole thing became very isolating, and I quit.

I tried again very briefly when Street Fighter V launched, but it was short-lived and the result even worse - I quit fighting games altogether.

“Get up! It’s too early for you to be defeated!”

A couple of things brought me back eventually. Though I stopped playing, I continued to watch EVO every year. Each time I watched, I'd get the itch, yet I resisted.

Inspired by Umisho's incredible run in Guilty Gear -Strive- in 2022 and being in awe of the game's visual style, I grabbed Strive on a Steam sale the same day.

It was a series I was completely unfamiliar with, meaning I had zero expectations about my performance. I was no longer carrying the baggage of a life spent mostly focused on Street Fighter. It freed me from the stress of losses. It meant I played for the thrill of battle again.

The biggest impact was that it brought my attention to the many online resources we have to help us improve. A quick Google was eye-opening, with sites and YouTube channels dedicated to helping people learn and improve. And help they did.

It was then I realised I was always the problem.

I didn't understand how to learn fighting games because I'd never needed to. And when I did, it felt too hard and overwhelming to try. I knew merely how to do special moves and supers, but not how to form a gameplan or strategy. I didn't understand the matchups, nor how to ask for help.

With this fresh perspective, I was ready to get hurt again for Street Fighter 6.

This time, with a healthier, more pragmatic approach to fighting games, I've found my passion for them revitalised. I'm (mostly) more focused on the learning journey than I am winning. I understand the genre's nuances a lot better now, and though not exactly good - I'm at the great plateau of competency, not mastery - I'm enjoying the process more than I ever have.

I've been confident enough to rejoin our local scene, which, to be fair, has a very different vibe from my last attempts at joining. There's more people and diversity, it's friendlier, more open, and there are a wider range of skill-levels and game selections. Everyone's welcome so long as they don't act like a dickhead. Locals have been good for me in ways I'll talk about in another post.

Yet, it does feel like lost time.

"A defeat learned from is more important than an empty victory."

I first laid eyes on Street Fighter when I was 9-years-old. I'm now 42 and only just learning how to play fighting games properly.

I hate that, for the genre I credit with teaching me how to dust myself off and try again, I gave up on it multiple times. Those last two Street Fighter entries now feel like time wasted.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with enjoying fighting games in other ways. It's okay to play solo and enjoy hitting buttons. It's okay to only want to play through the story and ignore the competitive side. It's okay to love the art, the characters, the lore. It's okay to not take online super seriously.

There are countless ways to engage with this wonderful genre, more so than people - even those in the scene - often realise.

That said, I definitely lament the years spent not fully appreciating or understanding one of the things I loved doing the most. Now I'm there, I've never been more determined to make up for it.