How Fighting Games Changed My Life

Or: how Street Fighter 2 taught me to learn, made me more confident, and helped me get a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Twitter: @joelsnape

Music:
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

[KillaCheeto]

The amount of awesome memories I've created with fighting games is astronomical. Making a 20-something year old rage quit a match in Tekken 5 when I was 12 in an arcade, playing an intense set of MVC2 in another arcade that ended up drawing a small crowd, all of the countless nights of running sets in multiple games with my friends, recently getting a coworker and some of his friends into Guilty Gear Strive and getting some new rivals out of that and finally, attending Evo for the first time in my life. This genre is something special, and seeing enter into a new golden age is the best.

[YioriBH]

they change my life too! "learning to learn" is why i agree with you

[dragonballjiujitsu]

Man, this brought me back. I grew up on street fighter, soulcalibur, Tekken and mortal combat. Me and my friend would spend whole weekends doing hundreds of battles until our thumbs would bleed.

[justinstuart]

My brother will tell you I tricked him back in 1994 when I brought Street "Fighter 2 Turbo" home. It cost me £55.00! As kids we dreamt of playing as the end bosses. There had been rumours of a turbo version which included the bosses in the Nintendo magazine which we bought and read avidly every month, along with Mayfair and Penthouse 😂. One day I came home slipped in the game and asked him for a match. I'll never forget his face when the game booted up and the character selection showed all 12 characters 😂, he nearly had a heart attack and made so much commotion my Dad came running in thinking I'd belted him ! Suffice to say we had great fun playing it for years. Down, R, UP, L, Y, B ! Always played on 10 stars the speed was never enough! Going back to original speed after was like playing on valium afterwards. By then I already had my brown belt in Karate so really identified with Ryu and Ken.

[rwz]

The 4:50 clip misses the part where he blocks all kicks without taking damage, it's amazing, I love how the room explodes.

[noone-_-]

Even tho im only 15 i miss the times when i was 7-8 and doing turnaments with my friends on street fighter and mortal kombat 3 😢

[Sin-lsid]

Man, you have a great posture. How you manage to keep your back straight all the time? Thanks for the videos you doing.

[wildfp]

Had a Super Nintendo and street fighter 2. Great to play in 90s. My family member did it to get perfect every match so he could get a different ending and he did! Most of time though, i went out to play football straight from school. Played Mortal on arcade then it came out on snes. Then they place aged limit on games. I felt over aged alot of games especially when i was watching quite scary Buffy, vampire slayer on bbc 2 at 6pm...

[RamonChiNangWong]

Fighting games are the only games where you need to grind to get better.
You can't throw lots of in-game currencies to get around that.
Skills and experience trump over all.

[spazda_mx]

Thanks for the vid, I loved SF2 back in the 90's, never had enough 10p's to get good at it though ☺I now have an actual arcade machine that runs it and I still get beaten by my 8yo nephew 🤦‍♀