I'm a Professional Gamer

Or at least, I want to be.

As I write this, a fightstick sits before me, Super Street Fighter IV idling in the foreground waiting for me to select Juri's 17th trial in Challenge Mode. (She's one of the new fighters introduced in the latest "Super" installment of the series.) There are 24 trials in total and I am committed to completing all of them or die trying. This is part of my practice regimen that I've created for Super Street Fighter IV and it involves literally hours of time attempting to perform a set of "chains", "links", and "combos" at such a challenging pace that it would make most gamers go back to Call of Duty.

But I'm not most gamers.

To be completely candid, Street Fighter and I have had one of those on-again, off-again relationships over the years, the kind that read "it's complicated" on Facebook. Street Fighter IV officially brought me back into the world of fighting games with its release a year ago, but even that wasn't enough to make everything zen- we stopped seeing each other a few months later when time, employment status, and other factors drove a wedge between us. (I told you it was complicated.) Now with the recent release of Super Street Fighter IV, we're on the mend. I've remembered how much enjoyment this series has brought me through it's mix of addictive gameplay, elements of nostalgia, and it's always-gorgeous artwork. Street Fighter's rabid tournament scene is what really has me determined to become a better player, though. A subculture of the gaming world in which legends are made at the drop of an Ultra Combo, tournaments are those magical events where players and fans from across the world get together to discuss strategies, compete, and clamor to see the likes of top-tier players such as Daigo, Alex Valle, or Justin Wong battle it out in hotly contested bouts of skill. Oh and did I mention there is money to be won?  

Growing up, I remember weekend trips to the arcade (yeah we used to have those) with groups of friends. We all had one thing in mind while walking or being driven to that arcade: beating the snot out of each other in Street Fighter II. It was a sense of anxiousness and excitement that I'll never forget. At that time, what we knew about Street Fighter was very little. There was no internet in those days so character moves lists weren't exactly easy to come by. For someone new to the game, you either had to experiment to discover special moves or know someone who could teach you. We didn't have any mentors so our only method was to drop some quarters and hope for the best. I still have fond memories of swapping strategies with each other and discussing our favorite characters. I gravitated toward using Blanka because he had an ability I could wrap my head around: rapidly tapping a punch button to surround Blanka in a harmful-to-the-touch wave of electricity. Back then, my "strategy" involved jumping in near an opponent and pounding that punch button until magical things happened. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly winning any tournaments.  

The day we found out Street Fighter II was being released for the Super Nintendo, my friends and I were gathered around during a marching band practice chatting about whatever junior high students chat about when they're not being asked to blow air through some brass. Another friend approached us waving a copy of what I have to guess was a copy of Electronic Gaming Monthly (shout-out!) featuring a cover spread and in depth information on SFII's impending release. The mood amongst the group was that of elation. We were finally going to get to learn all the moves, actually SEE them on paper in a manual, and then use those moves to beat the snot out of each other! I don't remember how long after that day the game was actually released but I think it's safe to assume that no matter how long it was, the wait felt like an eternity.

Once we finally had the game in hand and the character moves were made known to us, the only thing holding us back was our ability to perform those moves. This proved more difficult than we had anticipated. Pulling off some of these moves in the arcade was relatively easier than executing them on the SNES controller due to the nature of the joystick and big-button setup (a setup that, to this day, is still the preferred method of playing this and most other fighting games). Imagine our chagrin when we learned that wrapping up Zangief's victims into a vicious piledriver, a move involving only two commands: a twirl of the stick in a 360 degree rotation and one punch button, couldn't be achieved easily with the SNES' tiny d-pad. Once again I found myself drifting towards characters with easy-to-perform special moves. "Charge" characters like Guile and M. Bison became mainstays because "hold back for 2 seconds then press forward and an attack button" was a much easier concept for us than "press down, diagonal down-forward, forward, and a punch button". (we did eventually learn how to execute Hadokens with some regularity)

When my mom finally broke down and bought my brother and I a copy of Super Street Fighter II, we were in our fighting game glory. We spent days, weeks, and months (especially over the summer when we should have been out doing other things) practicing our moves using new characters like Cammy, Fei Long, and Dee Jay. I daydreamed about being good enough to pull off any special attack at will, to know each character's strengths and weaknesses, and to be able to string together both normal and special attacks into a punishing barrage of destruction. But it wouldn't last.

For whatever reason, Super Street Fighter II was the last version of Street Fighter I owned before its most recent incarnations in (Super) Street Fighter IV. I dabbled in other fighting games- Marvel vs. Capcom, Guilty Gear, Project Justice, and lots of Soul Calibur but oddly never came back to Street Fighter. This means I missed out entirely on the Street Fighter Alpha series and the still-popular Street Fighter III series.

With Super Street Fighter IV I feel like a kid again. It brings me back to those days of my youth spent trying to get better with my character of choice. Older me knows his way around a fighting game a lot better than younger me, but there's still plenty to learn and master. My goals are much more defined now: I want to be good enough to enter and compete in a national tournament like, say, Evo 2k. (http://evo2k.com) Will it happen? Time will tell. For now, all I can do is practice practice practice because --well-- I'm not a professional gamer.

But I want to be.

-Tony Recchia

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