I remember the first time an arcade game held me in awe. My family and I were on vacation down south. I was too young to chill by the pool flexing my muscles for the passing ladies, but too old to splash around in the shallow end with my plastic boat toys. (Even if I desperately wanted to.) So I hung out by the arcade near our hotel. And it was there I saw two gigantic sprites jumping at one another, pounding the other with their fists, until finally one shot out…. was that a…. a fireball??
Street Fighter II, from that point on, was a mainstay of my youth. Eventually I graduated from watching others play to learning the now iconic quarter-circle motion myself. But I grew up. For a long time, Capcom's famous franchise did not. I moved on to Mortal Kombat, then Killer Instinct, then Soul Caliber. Then fighting games lost their sense of wonder. Maybe it was the lack of competition from strangers, the thrill of setting my quarter down and smacking around a kid 5 years my elder. When I became that older player, and the kid destroying my on-screen avatar could have been my son, it just didn't feel the same anymore. That, and the complete abandoning of arcades, signalled the end of my Fighting Game era.
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