The Cult Classic

I’ve been playing fighting games for over 30 years. Street Fighter II came out when I was six years old, and I’ve been hooked ever since. My childhood summers were spent beating the heat in the air-conditioned bliss of arcades or neighborhood basements dueling with my friends. Recesses were spent sharing tips and the secrets on how to perform special moves, sleepovers broke out into Kumite-esque tournaments to crown the school champion, and every trip to the video store was an opportunity to check out what new fighting games just came out. My high school and college years were filled with long nights of matches interrupted only by the strangely philosophical conversations you have at those ages and late-night runs to Taco Bell or Swenson’s (if you know, you know) followed by a “just one more” run-back that would turn into more matches that stretched into the wee hours of the morning. I’ve forged lifelong friendships with others over deep-seated Super Smash Brothers rivalries, met and made new friends while getting beatdown by Dee-Jay in Street Fighter 2, and now, in the online era, have made friends across the world playing online.

Fighting games are, and always have been, in my blood.

Unfortunately, that also leads to a very significant problem. Because I’ve been playing fighting games for over three decades, it has always been incredibly hard for me to introduce others to the genre. There is nothing less fun for a new player than to pick up the controller for the first time and run head-first into the brick wall that is a 30-year veteran of fighting games. While fighting games hit the pleasure centers of my brain in a way few kinds of games do, they are also unfortunately incredibly difficult and challenging to master. Pro fighting game players spend thousands of hours learning a single character. Even an amateur like me has three decades of experience pulling off dragon punches and fireballs in the midst of battle. The sad truth of fighting games is that by playing these games so much, by diving into the depths of their mechanics and studying and learning how to play them, you also largely kill your ability to play them casually with others. The more you learn and the more you grow, the harder it is for you to find people at that same skill level to play with.

And that kinda sucks. While the fighting game community is large enough where you will always be able to find competition and people to play with online, sometimes you just want to sit back on your couch with some friends or family and throw fists. And if you’re going to steamroll everyone in 10 seconds flat, you’re going to run out of friends and family who want to sit down and fight real fast.

But what if a game tried something different? What if there was a game that tried to simplify some of the biggest barriers new players encounter when they first get started? Well, Street Fighter 6 does just that. I’ve already talked about the modern controls setup in my last “Games That I Played” article for July. Modern controls have been a boon as I’ve had multiple friends with limited prior fighting game experience try them out to ease into Street Fighter’s more complicated six button control setup. They’ve dabbled with modern controls, learned some basic fundamentals and then, once comfortable, have switched over to classic controls a far better player as a result of their time with modern controls. It’s been awesome to watch friends who I previously would go 20-1 against get more comfortable, confident, and eventually be able to play me fairly evenly.

But what about totally new players? What about someone who has never once played a fighting game in their life? Enter: my wife, Ellen.

Ellen plays a lot of games herself, but she very much has a type when it comes to games. She prefers games that are heavier on the role-playing/story-telling aspect and lighter on the action. The closest she gets to an action-heavy game is old-school platformers like Super Mario Brothers 3 or the Kirby series, which is to say not very close at all. Fighting games absolutely did not seem like her jam (astute readers will notice the usage of past tense here – more on that very soon). She had never really played one before the past week. That said, my effusive enthusiasm for Street Fighter 6 was enough to where she decided to give it a try using the game’s third control scheme, dynamic controls. Unlike modern controls, which simplify the game down to four buttons but still have the player be in full control of everything occurring in-game, dynamic controls are entirely determined by the game’s AI interpreting a player’s button presses and doing something it thinks contextually would make sense at that point. Think of it as kind of like a human player controlling the game’s AI bots you’d play against in single player modes and you’ll have a rough idea of how dynamic controls work.

So what did she think? Well, take it directly from her:

I didn’t think I was going to like Street Fighter 6. Aside from some Nintendo platformers – like Super Mario Bros. 3 (the most perfect game ever created), all the games I like are story-driven and/or very atmospheric. I am not competitive and don’t like any fighting games, including things like Super Smash Brothers. that you’d probably think I’d like based on my other interests. I’ve gotten weirdly into SF6 (do people call it that?), though. I can’t see myself ever being good at it, because that seems to require a level of dexterity I don’t have and I just have other things I’d rather do than practice that much, but I’m enjoying playing with dynamic controls and would like to eventually see where I can get with modern controls. (Probably not far, but that’s okay!)

I think the main thing I like about this game is the graphics/character design. I’m not normally focused on that element of a game (almost everything I play is old, janky, or both) but I appreciate how all the SF6 characters are kinda weird-looking and how their movements match their strange physiologies and whatever their deals are. Like it’s cool how the DJ guy is always bobbing around to some internal music and how E. Honda seems so solid and heavy despite being made of pixels. Even the women, who largely have interchangeable bodies (aside from bi icon Marisa), seem to have their own ways of walking and moving, like how the lady who makes the terrible sound with her lollipop is spidery and creepy in her movements and how Cammy moves like she’s a missile or something. I haven’t played another game where characters’ appearances and backgrounds were this relevant to how they physically move and control through the world; it’s an interesting, new dynamic for me.

I also like how cool the attacks look. It’s fun when you do a special attack or whatever and sometimes there’s a crazy cut scene or lots of colors on the screen. I feel like my primary motivation for attacking in SF6 is seeing how the attacks look. It’s really satisfying when they string together and your character seems to be moving inexorably, as though you’ve tapped into some part of the game’s code. It almost feels like when you gain P-speed in SMB3 and jump on so many enemies in a row you start getting one-ups, which is a god-tier gaming experience.

All the locations (except the dojo-slash-padded room-looking one) are also really cool-looking and have interesting stuff going on in the background. Like, it’s funny how the horses in the British location will start going nuts when someone wins a fight. Why do they even care?

I’m sure some people are weird about the existence of dynamic controls for this game, in the same way some people have to be elitist and annoying about easy mode in games, but they’re the only factor that have allowed me to realistically play the game. I appreciate their inclusion because they’re allowing me to get a handle on simple elements of the game that don’t exist in most other games I play (or that I ignore, tbh), like blocking, without having a shitty, un-fun time getting wrecked over and over. Shoutout to playing a game however you want and not having to endlessly grind in order to learn and have fun.

Quick Editors Notes: The lady who makes the horrible lollipop noise my wife refers to is Juri and I agree, her win screen causes me to shudder which is quite appropriate given her whole vibe. Also, the boring dojo stage she’s referring to is Training Room and I’m glad it’s banned in competitive play because it’s boring as hell to watch. Ellen has also mentioned the following as some of her favorite games of all time for full context on where she’s coming from:

• Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (my favorite game, which I am going to write an article about eventually)
• Fallouts 3, New Vegas, and, to a lesser extent, 4
• Phasmophobia
• In Silence
• The Forest (which you may be disturbed to learn I find relaxing??)

This is awesome. When I first sat down with Ellen, I was expecting her to humor me for like a half-hour and that would be it. Except it wasn’t. The next night she asked to play again, and we did. Later that weekend, she joined me on the couch while I was drinking my coffee and watching EVO pools and got sucked into watching competitive matches. (Quick aside, if you’ve ever wanted to get into watching competitive fighting game matches, this year’s EVO top six for Street Fighter 6 is absolutely incredible.)

I think Street Fighter 6 might be turning my wife into a fighting game degen.

What I love most about reading this commentary is seeing that my wife is attracted to all the same things that initially attracted me to fighting games as a kid. You’re controlling these big, cartoonish, weird, emotive, and expressive characters that are a blast to just watch. They’re fighting in these cool locales all over the globe. The music gets into your head and gets your heart pumping. You initially start hitting buttons and watch some cool shit happen, but then you hit some other buttons and watch as even cooler shit happens. Then you learn how to purposefully make that cool shit happen and you can do it on demand. You play against someone who makes cool shit happen to you and then you learn how to do that cool shit. There’s no end to the amount of cool shit in these games. They are endlessly rewarding.

But those rewards are hidden behind inputs that require dexterity that some people just don’t have, be it because they lack experience or maybe because of a physical ailment or impairment (as someone who battles with on-and-off tendonitis, I definitely relate to that). Fighting game mechanics are deep and complex and require actual study and practice. Deeply learning a fighting game character is almost like learning a musical instrument in some ways. Getting good at a fighting game and learning it deeply requires practice and practice feels like work. New players get frustrated and discouraged when they have to memorize command lists and learn terminology when all they want to do is push buttons and see cool shit happen. They get their face caved in by someone and learn nothing because they’re so new they don’t even know what they should be learning. They see the path ahead of them and get turned off by the work required to venture down it and they quit.

As my wife rightfully assumed, there are gatekeepers in the community that like this. They like that they can do the cool shit and others can’t. They think that because they’ve learned motion inputs that they are entitled to “be better” than others and that this affords them, and only them, the right to do the cool shit. They refer to modern controls as “woke controls” (and in this case, out themselves as a dumb bigot) and go on long scrub-monologues about how modern controls are ruining competitive play because a 16-year-old that’s learned basic footsies can reliably hit them with a dragon punch when they jump in for the fourth time in a round because they’re a scrub who has never learned how to safely approach an opponent with a basic understanding of the game.

They’re wrong, of course. They’re mad because they’re scrubs and now newer players that have better fundamentals can expose them for what they’ve always been, scrubs. And while it’s fun to make fun of them because they’re scrubs, this problem is limiting to everyone. Because of their historical inaccessibility, fighting games remain niche. New games fail to attract audiences and they die all the time. This has been a sad fact about fighting games since the beginning. And this has always been my biggest problem with them. The more you love them and the more work you put into them, the harder it becomes to share them and your love for them with your friends and family who haven’t gone down that journey with you.

But thanks to dynamic controls, I’m regularly getting matches in with the person most important to me. I’m watching her fall in love with something I fell in love with as a kid, and it feels awesome. She’ll tell me how excited she is to try out E. Honda and later that night I’m trying to Drive Impact her Sumo Headbutts while my wife is white-knuckling a controller and we’re both having a blast. We’re watching EVO matches together and talking about why she likes Street Fighter on our nightly walks. Hell, I’ve even identified the slippery slope that’s going to drive her even deeper into this game. And I quote:

“I’m enjoying playing with dynamic controls and would like to eventually see where I can get with modern controls. (Probably not far, but that’s okay!)”

That’s how it starts. You learn one thing and then you want to push just a little bit deeper and learn the next. And there’s always a next thing. And then, before you know it, you’re writing 2,900+ word essays during your free time all about how much you love the fact that Street Fighter 6 has accessibility options.

Street Fighter 6 has fixed a problem I’ve had with fighting games for over 30 years. It’s allowed me to finally share my love of fighting games with the people close to me that have never been able to enjoy experiencing them. And that is (one of the many) reasons why I absolutely love it.

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Post-Script

You might be thinking to yourself, “but Angelo, you can’t finish the essay and not talk about how the games felt on your end!” And you’re right, I can’t. So let me just give you some quick thoughts on how these games felt from my perspective. And if you weren’t thinking that, feel free to skip all this.

In the past, playing with brand new players has always felt something more like being a DM of a tabletop RPG. I’m not really playing a game so much as I’m trying to give the other players a good experience and make sure they have a good time playing. Fun has been a zero-sum game when playing with new players in the past. Either they’re enjoying themselves at my expense, or I’m enjoying myself at their expense. I’m sure it’s obvious from the rest of what I wrote, but I’ve really been enjoying these matches.

While there is still an obvious and palpable imbalance when you have a new player just kinda mashing buttons and a player with three decades of experience fighting each other, the AI assistance went a long way towards evening things up. These matches have not been like times in the past where I’ve had to basically not play to ensure the other players enjoyed themselves. There were times where I honestly had to work to block a crazy combo string the AI threw at me, or some explosive offense would catch me by surprise and then suddenly the round was on the line. For the sake of full disclosure, on the first night we played, my wife took a best of three set from me while I was durdling around trying to learn Dhalsim on the fly. That second night? She took a best of three set from me while I was trying out some new stuff with my main, Ken (I know, I know, cue the Ken player jokes). I was honestly really impressed.

As long as I didn’t really push a lot of pressure on wake-up, our matches were pretty fun. Because AI controls can’t really do anything to make sure a player doesn’t hit buttons when they shouldn’t hit buttons, I quickly identified the wake-up scenario as one area where I did have to adjust my game to make sure things stayed fair. But honestly, that’s okay because it’s not a huge adjustment that drastically saps the fun from my side.

While I can’t guarantee that our experience would hold true if you’re deep into Platinum or Diamond rank (and it absolutely won’t if you’re Master ranked, but you probably already know that and have burned through all your friends/family years ago at this point), but for us, it works. And it has worked really well.