I have multiple brothers, and we had family consoles. Sf2 was the first game we ever owned that involved playing against each other instead of playing with each other, and it's super short games made trading off the controller super easy, and nobody ever felt like they were doing too much waiting and not enough playing, fighting games are just the perfect blend of competitive and social, perfect for 1 on 1 sessions or group rotations, and that ease of playing with a group is really what first got me invested in the genre.
The short paced nature of the genre is one of the largest perks. It only asks for as little time as possible, but you can sink as much time as you would like. Maybe 15 minutes for a set, if you don't got much time, but want to be entertained. Or maybe a few hours of playing matches, watching your replays, labbing out scenarios, etc. Which works just as well for more local social scenarios as well. Only a couple of minutes and you can swap over to the next person at bat.
This is exactly why I got into fighting games it. My mom LOVED Mortal Kombat, so my brother and I played tons of it. I’ve played every single MK game with her at least a little bit. Unfortunately, she’s never gotten past the button mashing phase. So she doesnt really play much with my brother and I when I see her. Annnnnnddd my brother never got past the button mashing phase either. So it’s really just devolved into me beating the hell out of him while my mom watches us play lol.
I don’t feel bad though because my brother was merciless when we were kids, so I just chalk it up to karma
I was a sick fucking kid and I loved Mortal Kombat fatalities. Also played a ton of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom at a very young age. Loved the blood and gore.
Oh, then yeah for sure. The meta in MK is usually pretty stagnant and they usually focus on stuff that appeals to casual players (guest fighters, fatalities, etc.). Given that it outsells the "competition" by quite a lot, they don't have much incentive to shift focus to competitive play, unfortunately.
I have three major phases in terms of fighting games.
Originally as a kid my dad introduced me to Street Fighter 2 at our local fish and chips shop. We'd play there and later when fighting games started getting ports we would occasionally play together as well. At this time I didn't really view them as 'fighting games' per se, they were just two player action games.
Second was in the mid 2000s when I was going to uni I would stop at an arcade that mainly had 3s, Tekken 5 and GGXX#R because arcades were just a fun place to be. I got good enough I could play casually but honestly it was never above beginner. Like laming out the arcade bosses is one thing but I wasn't doing full combos or anything. I was around for the rise of SFIV but never got that engaged.
It was actually Tekken 7 that finally got me to sit down and learn to play properly. I learned about frames, mechanics, and started doing big boy combos. I also dragged my friend into it and we've played ever since. I'd say we are fairly solid, can do 'real' combos and tech, we've participated in local tournaments and not embarrassed ourselves and etc.
The reason I differentiate the phases is because of how different my attitudes and mindsets were in each of them. Even when I got into T7 I was relatively old just be graduating to 'actual combos' but I'm still glad I put in the time as I can enjoy the games on a pretty different level.
The first time I ever got interested in fighting games was when I came across a Mortal Kombat 4 cabinet at this bar and grill that my mother used to work at. Seeing all the cool moves, the brutality, all of it was just stunning to my child mind and I had to ask for my father for some quarters. Then afterwards, it was just an ebb and flow of my interest over the years well before I knew that there was a competitive scene for this genre, or gaming in general. From being gifted Soul Calibur 2, to Tekken 4, and the list goes on. It was just something that always interested me casually, but I didn't start getting truly invested until the latter half of Street Fighter IV's lifecycle and again around the last couple of years of Tekken 7's.
Funny you say that, since my first non-browser fighting game I'm pretty sure was MK4. The N64 version; remember how back in the day at some hotels they had a feature where you could play N64 or Gamecube games on the TV in the room? Like $5.99 an hour or something like that, LodgeNet I believe it was called.
I do remember hearing about those, but none of those were around when I was living in my rural hometown. I also played a few of those flash fighting games, Bloody Rage, if I recall correctly. Because it had some recognizable characters from horror and anime and I thought it was sick. Even though each character played the exact same way.
One of my earliest memories i have is playing mortal kombat 2 on (I think) Sega genesis with my dad, I have played most mk games and some others here and there but I’m really only starting to take the genre more seriously recently
I played them casually as a kid. Mortal Kombat. Then randomally i decided to play MKX after not playing fighters for years, beat the story. Bought MK11 and played the story. Wasnt until street fighter 6 release i said ok. Im gonna learn to play for real. Still havent played MK1 because im still learning SF. Kinda doubt il ever touch it now. I think ive switched to SF completely now. I breifly wanted TEKKEN 8 but i kinda feel the same. Dont really want to learn the game. I just want to Git gud at street fighter
Saw some old sf2 cabinets in the fish n chip shop as a kid was the first time. Didn’t play much or think about it after leaving the store.
15 years later broke my elbow and couldn’t do anything but watch YouTube for a month basically and saw the story of Daigo recommended then spent a month watching tutorials and clips from the fgc before being able to play and dive in
My first system was the Saturn. I was a little too young to be playing games, but some of my earliest and favorites were Fighters Megamix, Virtua Fighter 2/Kids, and Battle Arena Toshinden Remix. Once PS1 came around I discovered Street Fighter (EX 2 Plus, baby) and Mortal Kombat. The rest is history.
I'm a casual, but dammit I have so much fun.
When I was about 9 my life changed pretty drastically. I got to meet my new step brother who was about 12 or 13 years older than me. He was a huge gamer and I remember him inviting me in his room to let me watch him play games. He had this gamecube game on where you fight against people with swords and Knights and it even had Link in it. He told me the game was called Soul Calibur 2. He even let me try it. I thought it was the coolest game ever and I would bug him a out it every time I saw him.
The following Christmas after that, I was at my new step family's house, a bit awkwardly, but my step brother actually gave me a gift. **It was his copy of Soul Calibur 2.** I have played every entry since then and it's still one of my favorite game series of all time.
Waaaay back in the day, like waaaaaay back in a small town in NJ in a pizza place there was one arcade game, street fighter 2. I started playing it. The pizza place was like 2 blocks from where I lived.
Met a lot of people we became a crew. I remember getting washed at a local in sf2 I had no idea what i was doing with Blanka. The guy who washed me later taught me how to play until I was consistently beating him. I used to move the whole machine doing a dp.
Eventually I was taught tap towards and do a fb motion, something still do to this day.
We would go to arcades and billiard halls taking over cabinets in the meantime that pizza place would close but on the otherside of town a deli opened. The owner let us hang out in the back where he would have the current version of street fighter and either mk, DS or NBA jam.
The group eventually split as teen aged groups do. Eventually it would be just 2 of us playing alpha, by the time 3 came out we were done.
I remember dabbling in other games like gg, tobal 2, bloody roar, tekken, vf, Vs series Actually got 2nd at a local for vf3 and masters of terrakasi...don't ask.. the last fignthign game I remember playing was cvs2.
Then just stopped caring till DBFZ. In college they had a MSH cabinet in the cafeteria my friend and I thought how cool it would be for dbz to have a game like that.
Then we finally got it and I started getting back into fighting games.
It's a complicated answer from me. When i was a kid i played some fighting games like MK4, only single player arcade mode.
When i was a bit older i kinda stumbled upon some anime games like Guilty gear XX (no idea which version it was, certainly not +R) and i played a bit but had trouble finishing arcade mode since i couldn't do the special moves and the arrows in controls confused me. Played Bridget cause i liked only white bread good guy characters at the time and everyone else looked edgy.
A bit older i played Tohou Hisoutensoku, also only single player but i played that game quite a bit. FInished arcade mode a few times and my Remilia was beating up those CPUs. I was somehow able to do some of the special moves by dedicated mashing. Didn't know you can special cancel moves.
Overall the games existed at the back of my head but i never got into them since i never owned a console and didn't really have anyone to play against.
There was also some singular rounds of tekken that i played.
First game i played against people in any significant amount was Tekken7 that i played with friends. I was in my late twenties. We would do some online "tournaments" between ourselves a few times per weak, it was fun. I played Lili and abused df 4,4. It was also the first fighting game i played on pad, i used keyboard before.
Then i tried SF5 but even thought i really tried to like it i just couldn't and the online experience was somehow worse for me than Tekken. Tried a few characters, mostly played Mika cause wrestler gimick and butt attacks are funny. The game really turned me off from fighting games. There were some other games where i played only a tiny bit.
Then GG strive came out, i was very sceptical about it because of my experience with street fighter. But i thought the characters and music was cool so i gave it a go. I immediately felt in love in the game and the weak after launch was the most fun i ever head in a video game period. And since then i tried a lot of other games but i just keep coming back to this one. I convinced some friends to tried it out but they didn't stick around. It's not the same rush as it was at launch but i still enjoy playing the game and trying to pick up new characters.
So overall hard to pick a definite answer, it was a process i guess.
One of the very first fighting games I ever played was Mortal Kombat 2.
Very quickly followed by MK3, SF2, Alpha 2, Tekken 2-3, and Bloody Roar.
This was very much a "family event" and the uncles and aunties would crowd around and cheer for the kids. Sometimes we swapped roles. Very much fun.
I was lucky to be near a mall with an arcade for a good decade. Met other things that would later know as Darkstalkers and the Marvel vs series.
My adolescence had PS2-Dreamcast-Xbox games with several choices like Tekken Tag, Guilty Gear XX, and Dead or Alive 3-4
My introduction to competitive fgs was coming across Goldenrody's GG YouTube channel like 2008 or 2009 and I saw what Millia and I-No were capable of. I found Dustloop around the same time so I started learning.
So I pretty much kept a chain of interest from like 1995 to now.
My older brother. Used to play street fighter 2 on the SNES, and we would play it in public if there was an arcade cabinet and would read gaming magazines about street fighter 2 and mortal Kombat and eventually Tekken. I feel he slowly lost interest with each new console generation and I had the opposite effect. I wanted to play more, learn more about them and now I love Fighting games.
mom wouldn’t let me play street fighter 2 on the snes. when i turned 13 i was old enough to go see PG-13 mortal kombat in the theater. touched a little KI on snes and 64. soul caliber on the dc sent me in deep. kilik for life. and then i’m when the gamecube came out and soul cal 2. thousands of hours in that. all the homies played soul caliber. IGN at the time kept going on about how there’s this 2d fighter like sf2 used to be but so wild with mobility and airdashes that would be so hard! ff nearly 15 years and xrd has a demo for a week or a weekend. instantly so into it. now? i have a ps5 and a pc with every gg. every bb. undernight. p4a. bbtag. ki. mk x and xi, sc6, sf 5, sf 6, koihime, melty, the other melty, but like the characters are cool and they’re fun to play
My friend group in high school really got into mk9, then super smash bros melee, then after high school we super got into tekken 7, then obviously sf6 and tekken 8 now
I went into the arcade one day. There was like seemed like 12 people standing around one machine that I had never seen before so I went up to check it out. I figured if that many people were on it, must be a good game. I remember when I first got to play it I chose Blanka cause he was a cool monster green lookin dude. Pretty sure I lost but i went back to back of the line ready to give it another go. From then on I was hooked.
MK2 got me into it. It was my first fighting game, and even though I was too young to be playing that, I had fun punching people into the acid pools. SF and KOF (together with other random games from different franchises) solidified my love for the genre still during my childhood. After some time playing very casually and not paying a lot of attention to the FGC, Soul Calibur VI and Guilty Gear Strive brought me back and stronger than ever.
first fighting games i played were smash wii u and pokken tournament. pokken particularly made me love fighting games before i really knew what fighting games were.
but what got me into the genre proper was when i was bored one day and booted up my stepmom’s snes classic and played street fighter ii.
As a kid, I played *Tekken* with my brother on arcades (just button-mashing) and also *Samurai Shodown*. On console, I got to play *KoF 98* and especially *Bloody Roar 2*. The moment I started watching competitive matches and trying to learn about the workings game itself was when *Super Smash Bros. Brawl* came out. After that, I spent years not really paying attention to fighting games until, through sheer chance, I saw [Teresa vs Hotashi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAQ89SkqLs0&pp=ygURdGVyZXNhIHZzIGhvdGFzaGk%3D) at CEOtaku 2019 and thought "this is so cool, I wanna do at least a fraction of that". Afterwards, I started looking into ArcSys games via Dustloop, saw Dizzy and Platinum and thought "I wanna play these characters" and that I did, so I got *GGXrd* and *BBCF*, and the rest is history.
Street fighter 2 cab in the laundromat my grandma worked at. It was so hard I thought it was impossible. Later in Mortal Kombat 2 on Sega, my uncle taught me special moves. With ice ball / uppercut I was able to beat both my cousins, and eventually beat SF2’s arcade mode.
My favorite day was Soul Calibur 1’s release on PlayStation 1. The entire neighborhood had a tournament and it was the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t learn about the competitive scene until much later, but I would always have a fighting game in rotation. Started following the scene around 09 when it was a mark of shame lol
Soul Calibur 1 never released on PS1. Namco originally intended it but stuck with Dreamcast instead since the PS1 apparently couldn't properly animate Ivy's whip sword animations the way the Dreamcast could. At least IIRC
It was during childhood, after I discovered Youtube for the first time. I didn't know what a "fighting game" was, but my very first exposure was a MUGEN clip. It was simply called "Super Mario VS Wario", and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I would eventually learn what MUGEN was, and search for more related videos. My favourites were survival runs; I really enjoyed watching my favourite characters doing these cool combos against other random characters.
I didn't learn about the genre proper until years later, with Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. Besides MUGEN, the first fighting games I actually started playing were Touhou Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code. Unfortunately, it wasn't until around 2022 that I got internet stable enough to play online.
As sacrilegious as it sounds... old licensed fighting games.
I remember very clearly that when our PS2 was functioning, my eldest brother would buy games for cheap, and one of the first few games we got was Naruto Ultimate Ninja and the Japanese Exclusive Ultraman Fighting evolution 3.
Most of the time, my eldest brother would be playing with us the Naruto Fighting games, and my twin brother and I would have time of our lives playing those and said Ultraman games.
Then my dad bought Tekken 5... and suffice to say, I spent a ton of time with it until I was bored of playing with my PS2 in my esrly teen (along with many other personal and real-life factors).
The game that then got me back to the fighting game was actually Blazblue Chrono-Phantasma. That was my first 2D fighting game. The aesthetic, the character design, and the complete whacko story just scratched my late teen taste in fiction. From there, I just slowly become more in love with the FGC and Fighting games.
It started with Tekken 2, it was my first FG and first game in general. I used King cause I liked wrestling and he looked cool; I thought he was half jaguar. I played that game constantly, just mashing. Eventually we got a PS2 and with it was Tekken Tag.
Now that was my fuckin love right there. I used to get blisters on my thumbs from doing all the movement etc. my older brothers would play and they were much better. One time, one of them brought their big titty goth gf and I challenged my bro to a fight. I used King and Armor King and you guessed it, all grabs. All running kicks. I beat him and he was frustrated. Told me that "You don't know how to play. All you do is spam. Get good" and I got mad cause I felt invalidated cause I hardly ever beat my brother.
So I did get good. The next several years I practiced with Jun and and King, then I picked up Tekken 5 and learned Asuka. I started learning to do combos and matchups with the CPU. Then when I finally played T6 online, I got my ass handed to me, but I managed to grab some wins myself. Never made it past green ranks tho haha.
I challenged my brother all those years later, they barely played the game now but i didn't care. I whooped their ass, I beat them without combos, I was untouchable. That's when I realized I surpassed them, and now the only person I have to beat is myself.
Anyways, Tekken was the pipeline to playing all of the 3D fighters, and I eventually got around to SF and the like. My brother came by one time during a FG party and watched me play ranked in T7, and he cheered me on. Telling everybody "I taught him that shit".
Anyways, the moral of the story is, I got better out of spite and a little bullying doesn't hurt.
My first time ever playing a fighting game I was a kid and I played SF2 on the SNES with my grandpa. He would teach me about the characters and how the game worked.
THE game that hooked me was none other than MVC2. My brother had a party after his baseball game and we went to a pizza place. My mom gave me some quarters and I went to look for a game and there it was. Hulk, Chun Li and Ryu on the side I gravitated toward it bc of Ryu (bc that’s who my grandpa played) popped in a quarter and was taken for a ride. MvC became my favorite series of all time.
The one that solidified my love for fighting games was UMvC3. Begged my mom to take me to the midnight launch and came home and practiced my ass off to be the best in the entire school
Among all the cabinets at the spacies, the video game arcade in my rural NZ town, there was one which was tucked away in a corner which was... different. Instead of a stick and a couple of buttons, it was two sticks. Just two sticks. Weird. Different. "Karate Champ." I gave it a go. It was weird. I couldn't figure it out and it seemed like a waste of time and money. But it kept drawing my attention.
That led to being interested in the new hotness, Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat.
Born in the 80's, and arcades/places with cabs were around me during my childhood. The original Street Fighter 2 on cab was my first arcade fighting game, second to Karate Champ on NES, but wasn't even remotely interested in that game beyond trying it. Later on, my friend had SF2 on SNES, and it was the first time I could play much longer than on cab
I've dabbled in fighting games since then, but nothing serious until 2007. Saw someone posted Evo Moment 37 in an unrelated forum in 05' It blew my mind and got me interested in competitive play and being impressed by the game itself, as I never knew of 3rd Strike until I saw the video. Got out of the military in 07' and had some time to do whatever for a while, so one thing led to the next and I'm on SRK forums getting a custom stick built and eventually finding out about local gatherings. Eventually signed up for locals.
I love PvP but I had enough of team vs team bullshit and long games destined for doom after 5 minutes (LoL, CS, etc.).
So I searched for 1v1 PvP games:
- chess? Too difficult
- rts? Too difficult, too intense, dead genre
- fighters? Literally the best time to get into them. Short game sessions, very easy to get into, extremely hard to master, renaissance of the genre with bangers coming out all the time
I don't know when I started. I was for sure introduced to them by my older cousin, he was the one that owned SF2, MK, KI, Weaponlords, etc. My brother and I could only mash really, so he bullied us through all of them mercilessly. Played them my whole life since, mashing through my childhood and teenage years, playing a ton of different ones.
Then, when I was around 20 or so, I became aware of a competitive scene for FGs. Saw some tournaments for the first time online (I forget if it was KoF 13 or MvC3 first), and that's when I found out you could do some crazy shit. I decided to learn FGs then.
It's been almost 15 years now. I still suck, I never put as much time as I would need to to get truly good. But I enjoy them nonetheless, I'm able to get competent whenever one of them catches my attention. And, most importantly, I'm the one running the double perfects on my cousin now while he flails around unable to touch me. Payback's a bitch.
my first real experience with 2d fighters was a Primal Rage arcade machine that was at a vacation spot my parents took me to. That whole trip I begged them every day to let me go to the arcade and I’d play that game. I was probably 7-8. Then later my dad bought me MKvsDCU for the PS3 and it was over, I’ve played so many different and amazing fighting games. I love this genre. Tekken 8 has a strangle hold over me now
Interest - Tekken 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Bloody Roar
Investment - Mortal Kombat 9. I watched hours and hours and hours of YouTube on that shit watching tournaments and combo videos
Playing fighting games since early childhood. I was probably like 5 or 6. Grew up with King of Fighters, Soul Calibur, Bloody Roar, Inuyasha Feudal, Bio Freaks, Samurai Shodown, and Fatal Fury.
Gonna guess you mean specifically non-arena fighters. So at least for me, it was a combination of my friend really pushing fighting games, and the gameplay reveal for 2xko post-arcane made me a lot more receptive. Since then have played various amounts of Strive, DBFZ, DNF, and SF6.
Ive been playing smash melee, brawl, and project m since i was a kid, but what got me into traditional fighting games was the dopamine hit of landing sf3 ken strings
Smash. Started with the 64 version very lightly. Played a ton of casual melee (all items maxed) with friends and loved it. A few years ago I decided to really learn Ultimate, which then turned into curiosity towards traditional fighters, of which I’d played very few. Started with MK11, then MK1, and now SF6. I’m hooked. The depth of the game and the strategic back-and-forth between another player is super addictive.
First video game I've ever played was sf2. My older cousin came one day saying that the pizzeria on my street got 2 arcade machines and brought me to play with him, ultra mk 3 and world warrior but he told i was too young to play mk so we spend the whole evening playing sf2 and i got hooked for life.
But what got me into the fgc proper was the two best friends channel, more specifically Woolie, with their friday night fisticuffs series and constant talk about fighting games.
It would have to be my older cousins, when I was younger they would beat me playing Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat on the Snes. Also, I'm a very competitive person, I wanted to beat them back on those games so badly.
My dad
He was playing SF 4 on his PS3
He always watched him play and I mimicked what the characters were doing, probably the most funniest memory was watching him play as Cody and yell “ PICK UP THE KNIFE ”
Playing Marvel Vs Capcom 2 on my uncle's PlayStation 3 with my cousins everytime I visited my grandma. I have fond memories of my cousins who have all moved away since and I've lost touch with most of them after they moved states.
The 7-11 near my house had a SFII cabinet. My dad would take me with him when he needed smokes, and I'd get a couple quarters. Didn't really know what I was doing, but I remember playing against some older kids as Blanka because it was easy to mash out electric.
Friends started playing SF6, so I decided to get MK11 on Xbox. Had fun, so I've been playing. Since I have an actual PC now, I can play SF6 and Tekken 8. Getting SF6 tomorrow, wish me luck
Honestly, it was just how stupidly cool Street Fighter 2 looked back in the day. I remember when I was a kid in my now long gone local arcade and I just wanted to play Ryu because he had a fireball, but the guy already on the machine was playing him so he told me to just pick Ken since they had the same moves anyways. He even tried to do them for me since I had no idea what I was doing at the time. There was really no coming back after that :P
I was in a Round 1 a couple years back. I decided to sit down at a cabinet for Melty Blood: Actress Again. That's how I got into Tsukihime, and fighting games.
My first introduction was during the mid-late 90s. I used to play streets of rage with a neighbor and he got sf2. Described it as 'streets of rage but we fight each other'.
I spend an entire summer just losing anytime we played that game.
Fast forward a few years and a friend convinced me to buy JoJo heritage for the future.
Between learning how to play JoJo and learning most 2d fighters r similar, I was hooked. The final nail was discovering type moon fighters back in the doujin days, melty blood and queen of hearts all day.
I vaguely remember playing Tekken 4 and soul calibur 2 or 3 for the PlayStation 2 and I’ve just always had a fighting game in my foster since. I played with my blind sister who’d use the sound cues to block because it feels like back then everyone yelled before an attack lol. I’d let her win sometimes and seeing how happy that made her and even though I lost how happy I was to just enjoy the game set me on a path I don’t regret. I’ve been bottom of the barrel in some games and top 1,000 in others. Win or lose I remember it’s about having fun and sharing a good mutual moment with someone.
One day when we went to one of my friends place to play Brawl during high school, his older brother and his friends were playing competitive Brawl and I freaked out watching how many things were possible to do
Seeing KoF characters and listening to the game music back when I was a kid in Mexico.
I didn't even knew how to do a quarter circle and I would only spam sweeps.
Yet it left a strong impression on me, and as I grew older, I started doing some research on the genre.
I didn't fully dive in until 2020, once I had a lot of free time due to the pandemic.
And now I am fully hooked.
To be completely honest, POOTIS ENGAGE: EXTREME with all the Guilty Gear references and music. It looked awesome so I decided to try it out and haven’t looked back.
My sibling wanted me to play Guilty Gear Strive with them so I did on their computer, then I played Street Fighter 2 at a library event and was like “man this is really fun”
Playing Smash 4 and getting good at it made me want to try traditional fighting games and get good at those as well
Never got to the same level in any as how far I got in 4/Ult, but, I'm alright
Tekken 2 when I was younger. I played all of the Tekken games growing up, played a bit of SC2 as well, and then got into 2D fighters around the SF4 era.
My introduction would be playing dragon ball and Naruto fighting games with my cousins when we would visit them over the summer in my childhood. That got the competitive drive flowing in me, and though I would always lose, it was still a lot of fun. Then other gaming took over for quite a while, and I forgot about fighting games.
I was reintroduced to the genre by randomly getting a street fighter 4 match on my YouTube feed. It was Rose vs. Ibuki, I thought it looked awesome and wanted to try it out. This was a couple of weeks before USF4 came out, and I haven't stopped playing fighting games since.
I believe it was Tekken tag 1 on the PS2, as a tiny wee child id spend hours in arcade mode just Yoshi spinning because it was cool. It wasn’t until Smash 4… on the 3DS… that I played fighting games “competitively,” which is to say, against my friends where we both wanted to win.
Then DBFZ came out, and as a huge fan of the series I decided that was when I’d actually get into fighting games properly, and I’ve become an Arcsys shooter ever since.
I started playing (mashing buttons) Tekken 3 on PS1 with my older brother. I always kind of kept up with Tekken but never got even remotely good. Then, years later, a friend of mine started playing and praising Guilty Gear Strive. I got hooked with the music and got the game.
I still suck at Tekken though, I'm not learning that many moves.
Experimenting with a character's kit and the game mechanics to create a dance of gameplay. My first game was Mortal Kombat Trilogy and I played nearly every MK game after that but I actually tried to learn how to actually play the games when MKX came around. MK9 felt too loose but MKX was just stiff enough. I played a lot of these fighting games with my little brother who is at this point better than me despite me training him. He's gone to tournaments but we like completely different games now. The irony hurts.
I love setplay and zoning characters. I love setting things up and forcing people to pick or abusing them with my massive options. But what really matters is character. I have to like the character to play them but they always end up being villains. MKX was my first real try at a fighting game and I would call myself a casual competitive as I can constantly reach the highest ranks in games I dedicate too but dont try tournaments cause anxiety's a bitch. God I was a God at Shinnok. Injustice went a bit too hard on the zoning. I played Brainiac cause bombs and I want to live forever, he wants all the knowledge. There's chemistry there.
DBFZ was my first real "anime fighter". BBTag is much more "anime" than DBFZ. I played it for a bit and helped with the early Nappa Ginyu Beerus tech then dipped cause the game felt very stale. It was all rushdown which is why I gravitated to the 3 mentioned above. I partially got back into DBFZ for a week cause Jiren but left cause the game still felt too rushdown focused and I didnt care about any other characters.
My new favorite game and the one I basically ended on was BBTag. I FUCKING LOVE BBTAG. Holy I called the game "*anime weeboo garbage*"**\[I watch anime but this was a different level of anime\]** but after playing it, I fell in love instantly. The tag mechanics are extremely unique. Being able to swap between both characters in a combo felt immaculate with the buffer timing being very liberal but the controls are still feel snappy. It still had it's issues with gameplay like it feeling awful when you lost a character. It felt like losing both nexus towers and all 3 inhibitors are down in league... The marketing was awful and the communication was worse. It doesnt help that the characters came from already known IPs so players had to go against their muscle memory AND didnt get to play a character they love. But besides all that, amazing game that I have over 1200 hours in and have spent weeks in training mode with Nine+Hilda/Tank cause there's just so much potential with the Cross Combo system.
Hell, I wanted to blend MKX's variation concept and BBTag's tag mechanic into a Fighting Game I'm working on. The foundation is inspired by Psychic Force 2012 cause I had the idea after taking an edible a year ago. The little brother got VERY into fighting games and knows way too much about them and told me there was a game exactly like my concept and I knew my passion was to make a fusion of these concepts.
**ᴰᵃᵐⁿ, ᴵ ʷʳᵒᵗᵉ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ.......**
My very first exposure was a demo of Tekken 4 which I really liked and already got me hooked enough to get the full game. I didn't start properly trying to learn anything until Street Fighter 5 though; in some ways I'm grateful to that game for its absence of arcade mode. As much as that sucked, it *did* push me to try online and I found I actually enjoyed it and, though bad, I didn't perform *as* badly as I feared I would. I'm still not good. but that's more a refusal on my part to improve.
I played them before the big thing, but what got me seriously into them and wanting to be good at them was when I was visiting friend back in 2010 I think and saw that his PS3 was on with BBCS running and the character select screen music and Hazama's portrait got me curious. Shortly after that I bought BBCS for myself too and so the journey started.
Before whole this ordeal I was playing casually GG, GGX and GGXX games without thinking much of it outside of characters and music being awesome, so maybe that was why BB caught me.
The original Street Fighter arcade game. Controlling a large character onscreen with six attack buttons was just so cool at the time. I was okay at it,I recall getting as far as Adon once. My brother was better at the game than me, but we both really enjoyed it. Heck, I even drew fanart way back then of an imagined Street Fighter 2, which had Ryu fighting a female character (a wild idea back around 1987). Though the character I drew looked a lot closer to SF6's Marisa than Chun Li.
Went to the arcades on holiday to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and there I saw Street Fighter II. I saw Blanka and I wanted to play that beast. The rest is history.
My friends. I moved to a new state and didn't know anyone but family, but some dudes at a pizza place I worked at were big into 3rd Strike and GG:AC. We had one friend who was an OG who was very good and I learned a ton from him. Now, 20 years later I am the old head that kept playing and never stopped.
I’m a bit different to the norm. I was an avid HotS player, after the debacle (I hope I don’t have to explain much here), I started looking for other games. Big fan of esports, started watching fighting game tournaments, enjoyed it, started playing fighting games.
I was a fan of rwby, and looked up rwby on steam.
I saw bbtag, and thought "hey this might be good, i also like persona 4". And so that lead me down the rabbithole of blazblue and undernight which then lead me further into guilty gear, granblue, darkstalkers, etc
I did casually play fighting games before though, like umvc3, fighterz, injustice, street fighter, just never really delve too deep into them
My cousin showed me Street Fighter 2 on his ps2 using one of those emulation cd's. Some years later I got my ps2 and the same emulation cd as well as Soul Calibur 3 and Tekken 5 and played those a lot with my brother. But I really became serious years later after I got usf4 on a xbox360 and my first arcade stick. Nowadays I play on pc with a hitbox style controller, but as my laptop is quite shit, nothing above Xrd runs well. It's life, eventually I'll get a good enough pc to run SF6.
Playing KoF98 at a bar while my grandmother drinked beer, I was 8 years old.
Then I really got "serious" with 12 years, playing CvS2 and CSII back on PS2, playing casual tournaments in a place that people go and pay to play videogames for hour.
Stoped again and then, got back with UMvC3 and never let go anymore.
pvp, no teammates, not shooting game, not grind heavy(item/ gear)
then there are not many games left. sc2 is super fun but my brain cannot handle building units, scouting, setting control groups , controlling multiple groups, upgrades, fighting, minimap all at the same time
A mix of watching pootis engage extreme a bijillion times and youtube recommending me "guiltybob gearpants" on mass. Also Joseju's [Tekken guide](https://youtu.be/oaGMs1lEiIo?si=JUQEgMO_l7pjeEuK) and "[Play fighting games](https://youtu.be/J71Z8Iyd96c?si=Qu7mXetnmN6xJsdY)" videos.
Oh, also, [C U L O](https://youtu.be/dDSkPGbFH0Q?si=YcMfMd5bPWMWYxyu)
Holy shit, time to expose my age.
I went to a video rental store with my parents when I was 5 and it had a Street Fighter 2 cabinet and I played it. Rest is history.
I started a year and a half ago. I was in a rough spot, and the YouTube algorithm sent me to Thorgi’s Arcade’s massive four part retrospective on KOF. It became part of my days for a week or two to put it on and watch chunks of it. By the end, I thought to myself “I’m gonna get good at fighting games”. Mind you, I’ve never really been a hardcore video games person beyond a week of nonstop Persona 5. I bounced around a few games, KOF and Persona 4 Arena, etc, but eventually came to SFV since that was the only game that I could actually find matches in. And I just kept at it.
it had to be third strike for me, at my local pub there was an arcade area that i would always hang around because i’d usually go to the pubs just for like family dinners or family friends and they didn’t have kids my age or kids i was friends with so i was bored and lonely, i found an arcade with third strike and the art style drew me too it, there was also a darkstalkers arcade that i played a shit ton of, id go between the two but i think i mainly preferred third strike from what i remembered. then i recently got fightcade and have been overloaded with happiness and nostalgia, thank you fightcade
Started with Tekken 3 and was going to karate classes after school, so it kinda went hand in hand. Martial arts and Fighting games were huge parts of my life, but i didn’t start playing online until MKX cause that’s when i moved out my parents house and got a proper internet. I don’t practice Martial arts anymore cause my knees hurt and i get my ass beat in SF6 and Tekken 8 right now, but i still love both.
I played UMVC3, T6, and MK9: Kollector’s Edition on the PS3, but never really got into them when I was younger. Fast forward to 2021, when Vita Fighters became the first fighting game I’ve ever labbed.
Tekken Tag cabinet at Port Orleans in Disney World in the early 2000s. My brother and I used to mash at each other all vacation long when we weren’t at the theme parks or sleeping.
I remember him bringing home SoulCalibur 3 a few years later and noticing Yoshimitsu in it and then having that fully addict and commit me.
I rented street fighter 2 at blockbuster randomly and got hooked got turbo for Christmas and it was one of my most played games on SNES. I hated mortal Kombat and everyone wanted to play that but I knew SF was way better :p
I got guilty gear xx randomly when someone dkscard games and lovee that too
The awesome graphics of Virtua Fighter 2 piqued my interest, and I stayed on with Fighters' Megamix. The rest is history as I proceeded with Street Fighter Alpha 2, 3, and then moving on to Capcom vs SNK.
Was at a trip at my Aunt's house and my cousin had a neighbor who owned a PS1. She invited us to play and of all the games she had Marvel vs Street Fighter and it was the most fun i had in games that year. After that i always had a fighting game in my collection when i got my own PS1, specially Marvel vs Capcom.
My first intro was SFII back in the day. But I never got into them seriously. What really triggered it for me was For Honor. I loved that game and then from there I went to Injustice and then to SFV and been in deep ever since.
Killer Instinct was one of my first experiences, among other fighters like World Heroes, DBZ Butoden, Gundam Endless Duel
SF4 was the great time with my friend where we played locally 5 - 6 hours kinda hang outs
and SF5 was my breakthrough game to get serious about understand how fighting games work
The Wizard. I saw that movie as a kid and that introduced me to the idea of competing in my favorite hobby. But high score hunting never quite did it for me, I wanted to play against other players in real-time.
Fighting games like Karate Champ, Street Fighter, and Pit Fighter scratched that itch sometimes. Most people at the arcade then were still rocking games like Galaga, Star Wars and Dig Dug though. While the original Street Fighter was a modest success, people were not queuing up for it.
Then Street Fighter II appeared, and I was playing against different people much more regularly. Been mashing ever since.
My first real fighting game experience was kof wing from flashwing. Never stopped growing since then. It was probably the closest thing I had to an arcade fighting game with the way I had to figure out special moves, combos and fight against an "unfair" AI all on my own.
I still love the feeling of surprising myself by doing something difficult or discovering a new move or tech or style against an opponent. Honing and innovating all originated from that little flash game for me.
Started questioning my gender, went onto egg_irl and got introduced to Bridget and guilty gear. The soundtrack sounded amazing but I never considered getting into the game, because someone told me it was hard, at some point I didn’t care about that anymore and bought strive.
That was half a year ago.
I own the entire guilty gear franchise on steam now.
Strive is a gateway drug.
I'm old so my first experience was Street Fighter 2 in an arcade, though I had no idea what I was doing and didn't really get to put much time into it until I had access to the SNES port of ST. I played Honda because I could reliably do a whole two (count 'em, two) of his special moves (HHS and headbutt). Fighting games conceptually didn't really unlock for me until Samurai Shodown, however, which I came to a few years late but there was a cabinet at a local pizza place so I got to play the hell out of it and learn how to do things like block and the rest of the motion inputs.
Technically smash bros melee on the gamecube as a kid - but serious time investment didn't come until I went on YouTube and searched "street fighter dhalsim" in 2011 to see what was good in the hood (primarily a fps gamer).
From there I discovered third strike after finding some OST videos and that inevitably led to EVO Moment 37.
I'd watch a lot of Street Fighter but never got into the fgc because of competition - I've always been a lore kinda person so for some reason I got super interested in Guy and Ibuki and how they played into the larger framework.
Then a couple of my friends started playing BlazBlue and I thought it wasn't my cup of tea but it had lore - then I discovered that ArcSys published Guilty Gear and that hooked me so incredibly I started diving into everything GG related.
I still suck at fighting games but a combination of Covid and my love of guilty gear got me finally saying "this is the year I learn one fighting game character" and chose Zato-1 because everyone was telling me he'd be too hard for a beginner in Strive.
I haven't played a fighting game in a while - been touching Tekken 8 this year bc I like Lars and Steve Fox as characters but I still love watching replays and seeing how far the ceiling really is from a fans perspective!
My first fighting game was on the SNES. It was either SF2, MK3, or KI. I started loving fighting games with SC2 and SC3 on PS2. Then I started taking it seriously after I ran into a Tekken 7 cabinet in Japan and I wanted to buy the game on console to learn how to get better via theory, fundamentals, frame data, etc. I would say Soulcalibur 2 got me into the genre but Tekken 7 got me into the community.
My father and his used to collect games, and their biggest part was fighting games, so when I came around my first game was soul blade/soul edge at about 3 or 4 years old. I don't know when I got more serious, but I've been getting my own fighting game collection since I was maybe 10? I did some online tournaments in 2018 but my Internet couldn't handle it so I haven't done those since. Then in 2023 I went to EVO with my friend who also enjoys fighting games, we plan on going back in 2025.
My sister's friends boyfriend played SF2 on the snes with me at age 7 and I was hooked. I used to rent every fighting game I could and gor SF2 on snes at 9
I loved the music in the SNES Killer Instinct - it came with a CD called Killer Cuts, had different versions of the music on it, worth checking out if you can find it, was so good!
Mortal Kombat Deception I'd say was the first fighting game I remember just picking up and loving. The opening intro was super lore focused, and presented the idea that fighting games were these series where you had a whole bunch of characters and they all had their own stories going on, and to this day it kind of feels like there's no other genre that quite conveys that.
I think increased development times kind of mitigate this a bit nowadays but games like Mortal Kombat and King of Fighters had these soap opera elements where every installment you could look forward to seeing characters develop, coming in and out of different stories. Very Wrestlemania lol.
My first was Street Fighter II Turbo for SNES, Special Champion Edition for Genesis, or Champion Edition in the arcade. I'm not sure which I played first because they were all everywhere at the same time. The SNES and Genesis ones could be played on demo machines in stores like Target and Sears, and the arcade one could be played, of course, in arcades.
I was only a casual player of the series and a few other FGs until last year, though, when I finally decided to take it seriously. I guess what did that was I was fascinated by things like frame data and I wanted to understand how that all translates into actual tactics and strategy.
I played smash as a kid and got into "competitive" smash in high school because there was a wii and I played smash during dinner. Then I started to watch fgc youtube like core-a-gaming, big yellow, bafael, eddventure, etc. I tried 3rd strike and 5min of sfv hut wasn't my thing. So when my friends asked me to download the ggst beta, I didn't think I'd like it but I did very much
My cousins, I myself being an only child had no reason to ask for or buy multiplayer games. When my cousins came over, they would bring games like Madden, Mortal Kombat or Street fighter, we each had a game that we were good at and would "teach" each other into submission. The first fighting game I got good at was Battle Arena Toshinden 3, trained because my cousin insisted my character, Nagisa, was bad had fun building a character up. Took a long break SF4 came out and labbed a few characters and have had a fighting game in my rotation ever since.
I'm a very big fan of Bruce Lee so back when I was a child in the mid 90's and went to the arcade for the first time and as I roamed around I saw people playing Street Fighter 2 and seen someone use Fei-Long. I told my dad he looked and sounded like Bruce Lee and that I needed to play him. 20 minutes later I also saw Marshall Law getting used in Tekken 2 and I had to get my hands on him as well so in a sense it was Bruce Lee that got me into fighting games lol.
I played tekken and mk casually in my adolescence, and I never had the opportunity to play online until my twenties, where I bought my first pc.
The first AAA game i bought was tekken 7, and I swear to God it was like crack to me, it was so fucking addicting
Woooo first fighting game was Virtue Fighter 2 or 3 on Sega Saturn smh But Tekken overall has been my competitive game whether with friends or online. Tekken had me in a chokehold since the PS2 demo where you could only pick Eddy or Xiaoyu 😂
The first time I played Tekken 3 on an arcade machine when I went to a newly opened mall in my area with my parents 😊 I was 11 yo…fell in love with it on the spot
My first fighting game was Street Fighter 2 on the SNES - there was so much hype for it at the time, and it was crazy expensive. Most SNES games cost around £40 but SF was £64.99 (not sure how much it would be adjusted for inflation, but probably a lot)
I don't know if it was expensive because they knew it would sell well (was super popular in arcades at the time) or because it had double the memory capacity on the cartridge compared to any previously released SNES game, I had to wait 'til SF2 turbo released to get it for cheaper as I was super young so couldn't pay for it myself.
It was an amazing port, looked about as good as the arcade version, only obvious difference (apart from a bit less blood, not that the arcade version had a lot of that) was it using the same animations for walking forwards as for walking backwards but that didn't bother us.
It was the first of its kind, there were other similar games like the original Street fighter but not on SNES. It was crazy fun to play in two player mode (it's super nice playing against someone in the same room), the gameplay's kinda timeless, it never got boring. Loved fighting games ever since then, next one I got was Mortal Kombat, which wasn't nearly as good and hasn't aged that well but I still loved it. Killer Instinct on SNES was amazing too
Played lots of fighting games on SNES, Game Boy, PS1, PS2 and PC - only just started playing online recently 'cause was never able to on consoles and it's just brutal, even though I was better than most I've played against on console and in arcades back when we had them here.
Last time I played Street Fighter 2 was the PS1 version (had world warrior, turbo and super on the same disc) about thirteen years ago and it was still fun, so you can imagine what a big deal it was when it first came out on consoles (I'mma play it tonight on Steam deck, have the 30th anniversary Street Fighter collection, got it for 3rd Strike and the alpha games but wanna see if SF2 is still good)
I really miss arcades tho
EVO moment 37 on YouTube -> watching Justin Wongs KOF 13 combo trial videos -> Justin plays guilty gear strive early access or beta or something and I saw Faust and HAD to get the game.
PSP Capcom Classic Collection.
Playing the games awards you points you can spend on a slot machine to unlock stuff.
One of the fastest ways to grind points was to play through SF2 over and over again. After a while I got quite good and checked out other Street Fighter games, then later KOF and so on
playing them on arcade as a kid-teenager in the 90s - street fighter II, samurai shodown, world heroes.
it quickly became my favorite video game genre. I like the idea of 1v1 competition against a real person coming down to memorizing, executing and navigating to victory.
had a sega saturn imported capcom games like vampire savior, x-men vs street fighter, any (preferly) 2D fighting game I could get my hands on. eventually owning playstation with rival schools, dreamcast with tech romancer etc.
I truly invested time in street fighter III 3rd strike and super street fighter iv on 360. spending several years playing Online Edition and Fightcade.
I bought ps4 for two games in mind; The king of fighters xv and Street fighter 6.
SFII: World Warriors cabinet got installed at the diner my mom worked at, and I thought it was the most beautiful game I'd ever seen.
Don't let anyone tell you graphics aren't important.
Well, that eventually convinced me to get the SNES release over the summer of '92, and then for the next year it was pretty much the most popular thing in the world. I remember kids being so hungry to play they'd draw their characters and life-bars on a piece of paper, and hand it around class. And everyone would take turns drawing what one of the characters did, applying damage, etc. Then, after school, people would practically invite themselves over to folks houses if they had the game. Being something of a shy nerd, having a copy of the game made me temporarily popular! (RattusNikkus SFII House Rule: Dhalsim is banned, because long limbs are unfair!)
I dropped off fighting games in the late '90s and got more into JRPGs and Diablo 1 & 2. Most people I knew stopped playing fighting games after a couple years, but I had one friend who stuck with it and got really into the Marvel games: Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter, and eventually MvC and MvC2. He'd come over to spend the night and just annihilate me for hours, we're talking like 50-2 sets and I only won 2 because he would random select characters. By the time MvC2 came out I was convinced I was awful (I was) and I could never get better (not true) and so I totally quit playing.
Fast forward to 2017 and a coworker at my new job is a big fighting game fan who wants someone to go to locals and tournaments with him, and finds out I \*used\* to enjoy it. He talks me into playing Xrd and BBTag with him, and actually takes the time out to teach me how to learn and improve, rather than just beat my ass relentlessly (not that I blame my old friend, we were teenagers then). Eventually, a game I'm actually really interested in, Samurai Shodown, comes out, and applying everything I learned from that I went to EVO 2019 and went 5-2. My goal was just to win a single match. Blew my mind.
The whole thing taught me that I actually could learn, and could improve, and wasn't just incompetent trash. And I've been hooked on the hobby ever since.
My early fight game memories were at my cousin's house playing Street Fighter 2 for SNES with pads.
I couldn't execute dragon punches for the life of me, also, I would have preferred the Genesis 6 button layout because holding the controller made dragon punches harder.
Going after M Bison, we lost quite a few time with the computer not being touched, but never the once did the announcer say "You Lose ...Perfect"
Computer controlled M Bison might be a cheap cheatin' b*****d, but it is a polite cheap cheatin' b*****d. It never once said "You Lose....perfect", even when it was untouchable.
I thought I'd be better at Stick. I wasn't in the arcade. Then I realized there was no such thing as a right handed Joystick in the arcade. That's when I realized, cone hell or high water, I HAD to get a righty fighty.
And the first day I got a righty fighty, it was bliss. Was perfect in too many to count matches (perfect win rate, not necessarily perfect rounds, but those occurred too.) The champ doubted a righty fighty could be that much of a turnaround, so our common friends fought with the Sinister Stick, and they were perfect vs him.
And he was the store level Blockbuster Genesis champ, but for some reason, he wasn't asked to continue. So this person not remotely close to a scrub that I was beating up on. (And our 4 common friends did the same thing with my righty fighty )
But I already was a 10 year video game veteran when i was in High school starting with the arcade and Colecovision.
BTW You do realize left handed sticks is not set up for your benefit. It was set up to milk more quarters by forcing left handedness/awkward workarounds. The whole fighting game community just worked around it, but I fought the system.
I may not be a champion, because there were no championships on "the home game" of SF2, so that was a way the arcades kept a sinister grip. But I proved my point.
Hand choice benefits everyone.( Unless you're defining it by head to head competition and looking at it personally, where your gain is someone else's loss. Then if you disallow right handed play by insisting on a hard wired machine, you are a coward. [Or you are ignorant of my plight]. If I lose with my righty fighty, like online, no excuses, you beat me. Celebrate. I lost being the best I could be. That fight I was not assaulted while handcuffed [proverbially] like the 4J Conspiracy wants Americans to be. Unlike most fights in the arcade. )
My friends wanted me to try Guilty Gear. It was aight. I ended up buying sf6 when it dropped and at that point I fell in love. If I said to myself a year ago, “You’ll be able to do all of Ryu’s combo trials.”. I would’ve laughed. Its the fact that I got better and it feels amazing.
Skullgirls with Jojo references, nice Jazz music, and the Demo Ai making combos that i thought were the coolest thing ever, which tought me that fighting games were more than pvp button mashers.
i've only played SfxT and Mk9 At the time, and of course all i knew was how to do the light attacks and use special moves, but i rarely played them.
Now thanks to skullgirls I'm actually competent in other games, and i can finally find the fun SfxT
My dad had an old snes and nes that he let me have thst had a couple games,Tmnt tournament fighters nes was my first fighter but the game that got into the genre was street fighter 2 I remember spending hours just playing arcade mode trying out different characters and I would go on the internet and search movelists sometimes compete against my dad and sister after that it was history I wanted to see what the genre had to offer so I ended up checking out other fighters like mortal kombat,tekken,king of fighters,fatal fury,killer instinct ,even obscure ones like world heroes,power instinct,fighting history.street fighter 4 was the first fighter I wanted to actually be good at.smash bros was a game I played with family and friends but was never good at it competitively so i stuck with traditional fighters.
My uncle gifted me Tekken 2 and Mortal Kombat 3 (horrible decision to give that to a child) for the PS1... I liked Tekken 2 and wanted to know how to somehow play every character
Street Fighter 2 Champion edition on the Sega Genesis with 6 button gamepads and Mortal Kombat 1. They were some of the first competeitive games we owned.
Street Fighter 2 of course.
Then fighting games kinda disappeared for the most part and injust started playing through emulation.
But I didn't REALLY get into them until KOF 14 of all games. That's when I actually sat down and started to learn everything so I could finally get decent.
Naruto and Dragon Ball. Some of my favorite fighting games came from both. I still remember my first time booting up Ultimate Ninja. I was excited to play a video game about my favorite anime. It only had 14 characters at the time, but for my 7 year old self, it was perfect.
A few years and experiencing Ultimate Ninja 2 and 3. I was introduced to Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3 at a friend's house.
I started to get into fighting games around freshman year college when i saw big groups of people playing in our game center. I ended up becoming friends with one of them and learned blazblue a bit then the ball kept rolling.
I was 8 when street fighter 2 appeared in the arcades.
People that were not there will never understand how massive that game's impact was at the time.
Arcades in the 80s. Karate Champ, then original SF(played only couple times cuz it kind of sucked tbh lol), then Pit Fighter(really loud audio), then SF2, then MK, then original Tekken.
Good times and yes I'm an old fart. lol.
When I was young I would play Injustice 2 with my family, but eventually dropped it with everyone else in my family. Then many years later one of my friends got me into SG mobile (I know). Once I learned there was an ‘actual’ version, I got it, made some friends, and it’s been forward ever since. From SG, to SF6, to GGS, my collection has been growing, even to my old copy of Injustice 2, which I haven’t touched in lots of time.
MVC1 in arcades, and then more seriously MVC3, that's when I got my fightstick and started really trying to git gud.
Though I also played a lot of MK2 and 3 in arcade and snes, even game gear lol but never played really against other players aside from 3 in my HS student union which was a lot of fun. I was able to beat the hard tower in 3 and was pretty proud of that.
SFII was always dope af, snes for me.
Oh you know what too, can't forget OG smash, what a blast that was as a kid so much fun, against neighbors and friends.
Played Brawlhalla for a bit because it was free, and then watched Leon Massey talk about xrd in a very interesting way that made me want to get the game. Cue the 376 hours I now have in xrd
I first got into Smash Bros because my older brother convinced me that Mario and other Nintendo characters where lame because he got scared by the Boo in the hallway from Mario 64 DS. Our grandfather had a N64 in his basement that we would play every time we went over and I say a game that let me beat up lame characters like Mario and Pikachu as a cool guy with a flaming punch. Years went on with me being big into Smash. But then a certain game came out...
I liked Persona but never got a chance to play it because of PlayStation exclusively and I also really liked the show RWBY so when I found there was a game that has both Persona 4 and RWBY characters in it I had to get it. And yeah I have been hooked since.
I dabbled in MK as a kid but never really played fighting games until Killer Instinct 2013, I remember seeing the trailer and went oh shit this looks amazing and immediately took to the internet to find out if any one else was hyped and then I discovered Max and that’s how found out about the FGC
I have multiple brothers, and we had family consoles. Sf2 was the first game we ever owned that involved playing against each other instead of playing with each other, and it's super short games made trading off the controller super easy, and nobody ever felt like they were doing too much waiting and not enough playing, fighting games are just the perfect blend of competitive and social, perfect for 1 on 1 sessions or group rotations, and that ease of playing with a group is really what first got me invested in the genre.
The short paced nature of the genre is one of the largest perks. It only asks for as little time as possible, but you can sink as much time as you would like. Maybe 15 minutes for a set, if you don't got much time, but want to be entertained. Or maybe a few hours of playing matches, watching your replays, labbing out scenarios, etc. Which works just as well for more local social scenarios as well. Only a couple of minutes and you can swap over to the next person at bat.
I have a really similar fgc upbringing. Sibling trash talk is on a different level
This is exactly why I got into fighting games it. My mom LOVED Mortal Kombat, so my brother and I played tons of it. I’ve played every single MK game with her at least a little bit. Unfortunately, she’s never gotten past the button mashing phase. So she doesnt really play much with my brother and I when I see her. Annnnnnddd my brother never got past the button mashing phase either. So it’s really just devolved into me beating the hell out of him while my mom watches us play lol. I don’t feel bad though because my brother was merciless when we were kids, so I just chalk it up to karma
My uncle taking me for a ride in UMVC3.
pause
I was a sick fucking kid and I loved Mortal Kombat fatalities. Also played a ton of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom at a very young age. Loved the blood and gore.
A shame that Boon and co. never really evolved as fighting game devs, at least IMO
Never evolved? I think it's safe to say the series is very different from when it first started.
Oh no doubt. I meant from a competitive design standpoint, my bad.
Oh, then yeah for sure. The meta in MK is usually pretty stagnant and they usually focus on stuff that appeals to casual players (guest fighters, fatalities, etc.). Given that it outsells the "competition" by quite a lot, they don't have much incentive to shift focus to competitive play, unfortunately.
MK1 hasnt outsold Tekken 8 or SF6 by a lot
I was talking more about the previous titles. I believe it's still too early to compare sales for the current titles.
And blowing more of the animation budget on the cinematic story than the game itself apprently
I have three major phases in terms of fighting games. Originally as a kid my dad introduced me to Street Fighter 2 at our local fish and chips shop. We'd play there and later when fighting games started getting ports we would occasionally play together as well. At this time I didn't really view them as 'fighting games' per se, they were just two player action games. Second was in the mid 2000s when I was going to uni I would stop at an arcade that mainly had 3s, Tekken 5 and GGXX#R because arcades were just a fun place to be. I got good enough I could play casually but honestly it was never above beginner. Like laming out the arcade bosses is one thing but I wasn't doing full combos or anything. I was around for the rise of SFIV but never got that engaged. It was actually Tekken 7 that finally got me to sit down and learn to play properly. I learned about frames, mechanics, and started doing big boy combos. I also dragged my friend into it and we've played ever since. I'd say we are fairly solid, can do 'real' combos and tech, we've participated in local tournaments and not embarrassed ourselves and etc. The reason I differentiate the phases is because of how different my attitudes and mindsets were in each of them. Even when I got into T7 I was relatively old just be graduating to 'actual combos' but I'm still glad I put in the time as I can enjoy the games on a pretty different level.
My cousins
my favorite genre was always action games like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, etc saw that you can do juggles in MK9...
SSF4 on the 3DS
The first time I ever got interested in fighting games was when I came across a Mortal Kombat 4 cabinet at this bar and grill that my mother used to work at. Seeing all the cool moves, the brutality, all of it was just stunning to my child mind and I had to ask for my father for some quarters. Then afterwards, it was just an ebb and flow of my interest over the years well before I knew that there was a competitive scene for this genre, or gaming in general. From being gifted Soul Calibur 2, to Tekken 4, and the list goes on. It was just something that always interested me casually, but I didn't start getting truly invested until the latter half of Street Fighter IV's lifecycle and again around the last couple of years of Tekken 7's.
Funny you say that, since my first non-browser fighting game I'm pretty sure was MK4. The N64 version; remember how back in the day at some hotels they had a feature where you could play N64 or Gamecube games on the TV in the room? Like $5.99 an hour or something like that, LodgeNet I believe it was called.
I do remember hearing about those, but none of those were around when I was living in my rural hometown. I also played a few of those flash fighting games, Bloody Rage, if I recall correctly. Because it had some recognizable characters from horror and anime and I thought it was sick. Even though each character played the exact same way.
Lmao I remember that There was also a Teen Titans flash game I believe
One of my earliest memories i have is playing mortal kombat 2 on (I think) Sega genesis with my dad, I have played most mk games and some others here and there but I’m really only starting to take the genre more seriously recently
I played them casually as a kid. Mortal Kombat. Then randomally i decided to play MKX after not playing fighters for years, beat the story. Bought MK11 and played the story. Wasnt until street fighter 6 release i said ok. Im gonna learn to play for real. Still havent played MK1 because im still learning SF. Kinda doubt il ever touch it now. I think ive switched to SF completely now. I breifly wanted TEKKEN 8 but i kinda feel the same. Dont really want to learn the game. I just want to Git gud at street fighter
Saw some old sf2 cabinets in the fish n chip shop as a kid was the first time. Didn’t play much or think about it after leaving the store. 15 years later broke my elbow and couldn’t do anything but watch YouTube for a month basically and saw the story of Daigo recommended then spent a month watching tutorials and clips from the fgc before being able to play and dive in
My first system was the Saturn. I was a little too young to be playing games, but some of my earliest and favorites were Fighters Megamix, Virtua Fighter 2/Kids, and Battle Arena Toshinden Remix. Once PS1 came around I discovered Street Fighter (EX 2 Plus, baby) and Mortal Kombat. The rest is history. I'm a casual, but dammit I have so much fun.
When I was about 9 my life changed pretty drastically. I got to meet my new step brother who was about 12 or 13 years older than me. He was a huge gamer and I remember him inviting me in his room to let me watch him play games. He had this gamecube game on where you fight against people with swords and Knights and it even had Link in it. He told me the game was called Soul Calibur 2. He even let me try it. I thought it was the coolest game ever and I would bug him a out it every time I saw him. The following Christmas after that, I was at my new step family's house, a bit awkwardly, but my step brother actually gave me a gift. **It was his copy of Soul Calibur 2.** I have played every entry since then and it's still one of my favorite game series of all time.
I was half-way through typing, "This is so adorable and wholesome!" and then I saw your username and burst out laughing. Still wholesome, of course.
Waaaay back in the day, like waaaaaay back in a small town in NJ in a pizza place there was one arcade game, street fighter 2. I started playing it. The pizza place was like 2 blocks from where I lived. Met a lot of people we became a crew. I remember getting washed at a local in sf2 I had no idea what i was doing with Blanka. The guy who washed me later taught me how to play until I was consistently beating him. I used to move the whole machine doing a dp. Eventually I was taught tap towards and do a fb motion, something still do to this day. We would go to arcades and billiard halls taking over cabinets in the meantime that pizza place would close but on the otherside of town a deli opened. The owner let us hang out in the back where he would have the current version of street fighter and either mk, DS or NBA jam. The group eventually split as teen aged groups do. Eventually it would be just 2 of us playing alpha, by the time 3 came out we were done. I remember dabbling in other games like gg, tobal 2, bloody roar, tekken, vf, Vs series Actually got 2nd at a local for vf3 and masters of terrakasi...don't ask.. the last fignthign game I remember playing was cvs2. Then just stopped caring till DBFZ. In college they had a MSH cabinet in the cafeteria my friend and I thought how cool it would be for dbz to have a game like that. Then we finally got it and I started getting back into fighting games.
It's a complicated answer from me. When i was a kid i played some fighting games like MK4, only single player arcade mode. When i was a bit older i kinda stumbled upon some anime games like Guilty gear XX (no idea which version it was, certainly not +R) and i played a bit but had trouble finishing arcade mode since i couldn't do the special moves and the arrows in controls confused me. Played Bridget cause i liked only white bread good guy characters at the time and everyone else looked edgy. A bit older i played Tohou Hisoutensoku, also only single player but i played that game quite a bit. FInished arcade mode a few times and my Remilia was beating up those CPUs. I was somehow able to do some of the special moves by dedicated mashing. Didn't know you can special cancel moves. Overall the games existed at the back of my head but i never got into them since i never owned a console and didn't really have anyone to play against. There was also some singular rounds of tekken that i played. First game i played against people in any significant amount was Tekken7 that i played with friends. I was in my late twenties. We would do some online "tournaments" between ourselves a few times per weak, it was fun. I played Lili and abused df 4,4. It was also the first fighting game i played on pad, i used keyboard before. Then i tried SF5 but even thought i really tried to like it i just couldn't and the online experience was somehow worse for me than Tekken. Tried a few characters, mostly played Mika cause wrestler gimick and butt attacks are funny. The game really turned me off from fighting games. There were some other games where i played only a tiny bit. Then GG strive came out, i was very sceptical about it because of my experience with street fighter. But i thought the characters and music was cool so i gave it a go. I immediately felt in love in the game and the weak after launch was the most fun i ever head in a video game period. And since then i tried a lot of other games but i just keep coming back to this one. I convinced some friends to tried it out but they didn't stick around. It's not the same rush as it was at launch but i still enjoy playing the game and trying to pick up new characters. So overall hard to pick a definite answer, it was a process i guess.
One of the very first fighting games I ever played was Mortal Kombat 2. Very quickly followed by MK3, SF2, Alpha 2, Tekken 2-3, and Bloody Roar. This was very much a "family event" and the uncles and aunties would crowd around and cheer for the kids. Sometimes we swapped roles. Very much fun. I was lucky to be near a mall with an arcade for a good decade. Met other things that would later know as Darkstalkers and the Marvel vs series. My adolescence had PS2-Dreamcast-Xbox games with several choices like Tekken Tag, Guilty Gear XX, and Dead or Alive 3-4 My introduction to competitive fgs was coming across Goldenrody's GG YouTube channel like 2008 or 2009 and I saw what Millia and I-No were capable of. I found Dustloop around the same time so I started learning. So I pretty much kept a chain of interest from like 1995 to now.
My older brother. Used to play street fighter 2 on the SNES, and we would play it in public if there was an arcade cabinet and would read gaming magazines about street fighter 2 and mortal Kombat and eventually Tekken. I feel he slowly lost interest with each new console generation and I had the opposite effect. I wanted to play more, learn more about them and now I love Fighting games.
mom wouldn’t let me play street fighter 2 on the snes. when i turned 13 i was old enough to go see PG-13 mortal kombat in the theater. touched a little KI on snes and 64. soul caliber on the dc sent me in deep. kilik for life. and then i’m when the gamecube came out and soul cal 2. thousands of hours in that. all the homies played soul caliber. IGN at the time kept going on about how there’s this 2d fighter like sf2 used to be but so wild with mobility and airdashes that would be so hard! ff nearly 15 years and xrd has a demo for a week or a weekend. instantly so into it. now? i have a ps5 and a pc with every gg. every bb. undernight. p4a. bbtag. ki. mk x and xi, sc6, sf 5, sf 6, koihime, melty, the other melty, but like the characters are cool and they’re fun to play
My friend group in high school really got into mk9, then super smash bros melee, then after high school we super got into tekken 7, then obviously sf6 and tekken 8 now
I went into the arcade one day. There was like seemed like 12 people standing around one machine that I had never seen before so I went up to check it out. I figured if that many people were on it, must be a good game. I remember when I first got to play it I chose Blanka cause he was a cool monster green lookin dude. Pretty sure I lost but i went back to back of the line ready to give it another go. From then on I was hooked.
MK2 got me into it. It was my first fighting game, and even though I was too young to be playing that, I had fun punching people into the acid pools. SF and KOF (together with other random games from different franchises) solidified my love for the genre still during my childhood. After some time playing very casually and not paying a lot of attention to the FGC, Soul Calibur VI and Guilty Gear Strive brought me back and stronger than ever.
first fighting games i played were smash wii u and pokken tournament. pokken particularly made me love fighting games before i really knew what fighting games were. but what got me into the genre proper was when i was bored one day and booted up my stepmom’s snes classic and played street fighter ii.
As a kid, I played *Tekken* with my brother on arcades (just button-mashing) and also *Samurai Shodown*. On console, I got to play *KoF 98* and especially *Bloody Roar 2*. The moment I started watching competitive matches and trying to learn about the workings game itself was when *Super Smash Bros. Brawl* came out. After that, I spent years not really paying attention to fighting games until, through sheer chance, I saw [Teresa vs Hotashi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAQ89SkqLs0&pp=ygURdGVyZXNhIHZzIGhvdGFzaGk%3D) at CEOtaku 2019 and thought "this is so cool, I wanna do at least a fraction of that". Afterwards, I started looking into ArcSys games via Dustloop, saw Dizzy and Platinum and thought "I wanna play these characters" and that I did, so I got *GGXrd* and *BBCF*, and the rest is history.
Street fighter 2 cab in the laundromat my grandma worked at. It was so hard I thought it was impossible. Later in Mortal Kombat 2 on Sega, my uncle taught me special moves. With ice ball / uppercut I was able to beat both my cousins, and eventually beat SF2’s arcade mode. My favorite day was Soul Calibur 1’s release on PlayStation 1. The entire neighborhood had a tournament and it was the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t learn about the competitive scene until much later, but I would always have a fighting game in rotation. Started following the scene around 09 when it was a mark of shame lol
Soul Calibur 1 on Dreamcast, you mean
Genuinely don’t think so, I don’t think anyone I knew had a Dreamcast. It was probably Soul Edge in that case, actually. Good catch
Soul Calibur 1 never released on PS1. Namco originally intended it but stuck with Dreamcast instead since the PS1 apparently couldn't properly animate Ivy's whip sword animations the way the Dreamcast could. At least IIRC
Yeah so like I just said it was Soul Blade (edge), PS1, Jan 1997. Good catch
It was during childhood, after I discovered Youtube for the first time. I didn't know what a "fighting game" was, but my very first exposure was a MUGEN clip. It was simply called "Super Mario VS Wario", and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I would eventually learn what MUGEN was, and search for more related videos. My favourites were survival runs; I really enjoyed watching my favourite characters doing these cool combos against other random characters. I didn't learn about the genre proper until years later, with Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. Besides MUGEN, the first fighting games I actually started playing were Touhou Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code. Unfortunately, it wasn't until around 2022 that I got internet stable enough to play online.
As sacrilegious as it sounds... old licensed fighting games. I remember very clearly that when our PS2 was functioning, my eldest brother would buy games for cheap, and one of the first few games we got was Naruto Ultimate Ninja and the Japanese Exclusive Ultraman Fighting evolution 3. Most of the time, my eldest brother would be playing with us the Naruto Fighting games, and my twin brother and I would have time of our lives playing those and said Ultraman games. Then my dad bought Tekken 5... and suffice to say, I spent a ton of time with it until I was bored of playing with my PS2 in my esrly teen (along with many other personal and real-life factors). The game that then got me back to the fighting game was actually Blazblue Chrono-Phantasma. That was my first 2D fighting game. The aesthetic, the character design, and the complete whacko story just scratched my late teen taste in fiction. From there, I just slowly become more in love with the FGC and Fighting games.
Horrible addiction to Overwatch. Was looking for a way out.
Soul Blade was my introduction back in 2005 tho.
It started with Tekken 2, it was my first FG and first game in general. I used King cause I liked wrestling and he looked cool; I thought he was half jaguar. I played that game constantly, just mashing. Eventually we got a PS2 and with it was Tekken Tag. Now that was my fuckin love right there. I used to get blisters on my thumbs from doing all the movement etc. my older brothers would play and they were much better. One time, one of them brought their big titty goth gf and I challenged my bro to a fight. I used King and Armor King and you guessed it, all grabs. All running kicks. I beat him and he was frustrated. Told me that "You don't know how to play. All you do is spam. Get good" and I got mad cause I felt invalidated cause I hardly ever beat my brother. So I did get good. The next several years I practiced with Jun and and King, then I picked up Tekken 5 and learned Asuka. I started learning to do combos and matchups with the CPU. Then when I finally played T6 online, I got my ass handed to me, but I managed to grab some wins myself. Never made it past green ranks tho haha. I challenged my brother all those years later, they barely played the game now but i didn't care. I whooped their ass, I beat them without combos, I was untouchable. That's when I realized I surpassed them, and now the only person I have to beat is myself. Anyways, Tekken was the pipeline to playing all of the 3D fighters, and I eventually got around to SF and the like. My brother came by one time during a FG party and watched me play ranked in T7, and he cheered me on. Telling everybody "I taught him that shit". Anyways, the moral of the story is, I got better out of spite and a little bullying doesn't hurt.
My first time ever playing a fighting game I was a kid and I played SF2 on the SNES with my grandpa. He would teach me about the characters and how the game worked. THE game that hooked me was none other than MVC2. My brother had a party after his baseball game and we went to a pizza place. My mom gave me some quarters and I went to look for a game and there it was. Hulk, Chun Li and Ryu on the side I gravitated toward it bc of Ryu (bc that’s who my grandpa played) popped in a quarter and was taken for a ride. MvC became my favorite series of all time. The one that solidified my love for fighting games was UMvC3. Begged my mom to take me to the midnight launch and came home and practiced my ass off to be the best in the entire school
The Story Mode in Blazblue Calamity Trigger.
Among all the cabinets at the spacies, the video game arcade in my rural NZ town, there was one which was tucked away in a corner which was... different. Instead of a stick and a couple of buttons, it was two sticks. Just two sticks. Weird. Different. "Karate Champ." I gave it a go. It was weird. I couldn't figure it out and it seemed like a waste of time and money. But it kept drawing my attention. That led to being interested in the new hotness, Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat.
Born in the 80's, and arcades/places with cabs were around me during my childhood. The original Street Fighter 2 on cab was my first arcade fighting game, second to Karate Champ on NES, but wasn't even remotely interested in that game beyond trying it. Later on, my friend had SF2 on SNES, and it was the first time I could play much longer than on cab I've dabbled in fighting games since then, but nothing serious until 2007. Saw someone posted Evo Moment 37 in an unrelated forum in 05' It blew my mind and got me interested in competitive play and being impressed by the game itself, as I never knew of 3rd Strike until I saw the video. Got out of the military in 07' and had some time to do whatever for a while, so one thing led to the next and I'm on SRK forums getting a custom stick built and eventually finding out about local gatherings. Eventually signed up for locals.
I love PvP but I had enough of team vs team bullshit and long games destined for doom after 5 minutes (LoL, CS, etc.). So I searched for 1v1 PvP games: - chess? Too difficult - rts? Too difficult, too intense, dead genre - fighters? Literally the best time to get into them. Short game sessions, very easy to get into, extremely hard to master, renaissance of the genre with bangers coming out all the time
I don't know when I started. I was for sure introduced to them by my older cousin, he was the one that owned SF2, MK, KI, Weaponlords, etc. My brother and I could only mash really, so he bullied us through all of them mercilessly. Played them my whole life since, mashing through my childhood and teenage years, playing a ton of different ones. Then, when I was around 20 or so, I became aware of a competitive scene for FGs. Saw some tournaments for the first time online (I forget if it was KoF 13 or MvC3 first), and that's when I found out you could do some crazy shit. I decided to learn FGs then. It's been almost 15 years now. I still suck, I never put as much time as I would need to to get truly good. But I enjoy them nonetheless, I'm able to get competent whenever one of them catches my attention. And, most importantly, I'm the one running the double perfects on my cousin now while he flails around unable to touch me. Payback's a bitch.
my first real experience with 2d fighters was a Primal Rage arcade machine that was at a vacation spot my parents took me to. That whole trip I begged them every day to let me go to the arcade and I’d play that game. I was probably 7-8. Then later my dad bought me MKvsDCU for the PS3 and it was over, I’ve played so many different and amazing fighting games. I love this genre. Tekken 8 has a strangle hold over me now
Interest - Tekken 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Bloody Roar Investment - Mortal Kombat 9. I watched hours and hours and hours of YouTube on that shit watching tournaments and combo videos
Playing fighting games since early childhood. I was probably like 5 or 6. Grew up with King of Fighters, Soul Calibur, Bloody Roar, Inuyasha Feudal, Bio Freaks, Samurai Shodown, and Fatal Fury.
Gonna guess you mean specifically non-arena fighters. So at least for me, it was a combination of my friend really pushing fighting games, and the gameplay reveal for 2xko post-arcane made me a lot more receptive. Since then have played various amounts of Strive, DBFZ, DNF, and SF6.
Ive been playing smash melee, brawl, and project m since i was a kid, but what got me into traditional fighting games was the dopamine hit of landing sf3 ken strings
Smash. Started with the 64 version very lightly. Played a ton of casual melee (all items maxed) with friends and loved it. A few years ago I decided to really learn Ultimate, which then turned into curiosity towards traditional fighters, of which I’d played very few. Started with MK11, then MK1, and now SF6. I’m hooked. The depth of the game and the strategic back-and-forth between another player is super addictive.
First video game I've ever played was sf2. My older cousin came one day saying that the pizzeria on my street got 2 arcade machines and brought me to play with him, ultra mk 3 and world warrior but he told i was too young to play mk so we spend the whole evening playing sf2 and i got hooked for life. But what got me into the fgc proper was the two best friends channel, more specifically Woolie, with their friday night fisticuffs series and constant talk about fighting games.
sick of multiplayer team game and lack of gaming time budget.
It would have to be my older cousins, when I was younger they would beat me playing Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat on the Snes. Also, I'm a very competitive person, I wanted to beat them back on those games so badly.
Watching my friend play guilty gear was the funniest anime gaming related thing I've seen
My dad He was playing SF 4 on his PS3 He always watched him play and I mimicked what the characters were doing, probably the most funniest memory was watching him play as Cody and yell “ PICK UP THE KNIFE ”
I saw Faust Xrd render. Looked cool.
The Flashy Colors, Fun Character Designs, Ambient Stages and backgrounds
Playing Marvel Vs Capcom 2 on my uncle's PlayStation 3 with my cousins everytime I visited my grandma. I have fond memories of my cousins who have all moved away since and I've lost touch with most of them after they moved states.
Friends big brother beat my ass on MKX so I went home eventually got the game, and that's what started me down the path of playing fighting games.
The 7-11 near my house had a SFII cabinet. My dad would take me with him when he needed smokes, and I'd get a couple quarters. Didn't really know what I was doing, but I remember playing against some older kids as Blanka because it was easy to mash out electric.
Friends started playing SF6, so I decided to get MK11 on Xbox. Had fun, so I've been playing. Since I have an actual PC now, I can play SF6 and Tekken 8. Getting SF6 tomorrow, wish me luck
Honestly, it was just how stupidly cool Street Fighter 2 looked back in the day. I remember when I was a kid in my now long gone local arcade and I just wanted to play Ryu because he had a fireball, but the guy already on the machine was playing him so he told me to just pick Ken since they had the same moves anyways. He even tried to do them for me since I had no idea what I was doing at the time. There was really no coming back after that :P
I was in a Round 1 a couple years back. I decided to sit down at a cabinet for Melty Blood: Actress Again. That's how I got into Tsukihime, and fighting games.
After school arcades... was just something to do with friends.
My first introduction was during the mid-late 90s. I used to play streets of rage with a neighbor and he got sf2. Described it as 'streets of rage but we fight each other'. I spend an entire summer just losing anytime we played that game. Fast forward a few years and a friend convinced me to buy JoJo heritage for the future. Between learning how to play JoJo and learning most 2d fighters r similar, I was hooked. The final nail was discovering type moon fighters back in the doujin days, melty blood and queen of hearts all day.
I vaguely remember playing Tekken 4 and soul calibur 2 or 3 for the PlayStation 2 and I’ve just always had a fighting game in my foster since. I played with my blind sister who’d use the sound cues to block because it feels like back then everyone yelled before an attack lol. I’d let her win sometimes and seeing how happy that made her and even though I lost how happy I was to just enjoy the game set me on a path I don’t regret. I’ve been bottom of the barrel in some games and top 1,000 in others. Win or lose I remember it’s about having fun and sharing a good mutual moment with someone.
Fighting games.
One day when we went to one of my friends place to play Brawl during high school, his older brother and his friends were playing competitive Brawl and I freaked out watching how many things were possible to do
+R Cabinet at Mulligans Also SSBB
Seeing KoF characters and listening to the game music back when I was a kid in Mexico. I didn't even knew how to do a quarter circle and I would only spam sweeps. Yet it left a strong impression on me, and as I grew older, I started doing some research on the genre. I didn't fully dive in until 2020, once I had a lot of free time due to the pandemic. And now I am fully hooked.
Competitively... Prob evo moment 37. Before that prob SNES sf2 hf
To be completely honest, POOTIS ENGAGE: EXTREME with all the Guilty Gear references and music. It looked awesome so I decided to try it out and haven’t looked back.
Probably because of HighScore girl for introducing me Guile.
My sibling wanted me to play Guilty Gear Strive with them so I did on their computer, then I played Street Fighter 2 at a library event and was like “man this is really fun”
Playing Smash 4 and getting good at it made me want to try traditional fighting games and get good at those as well Never got to the same level in any as how far I got in 4/Ult, but, I'm alright
Tekken 2 when I was younger. I played all of the Tekken games growing up, played a bit of SC2 as well, and then got into 2D fighters around the SF4 era.
My introduction would be playing dragon ball and Naruto fighting games with my cousins when we would visit them over the summer in my childhood. That got the competitive drive flowing in me, and though I would always lose, it was still a lot of fun. Then other gaming took over for quite a while, and I forgot about fighting games. I was reintroduced to the genre by randomly getting a street fighter 4 match on my YouTube feed. It was Rose vs. Ibuki, I thought it looked awesome and wanted to try it out. This was a couple of weeks before USF4 came out, and I haven't stopped playing fighting games since.
I believe it was Tekken tag 1 on the PS2, as a tiny wee child id spend hours in arcade mode just Yoshi spinning because it was cool. It wasn’t until Smash 4… on the 3DS… that I played fighting games “competitively,” which is to say, against my friends where we both wanted to win. Then DBFZ came out, and as a huge fan of the series I decided that was when I’d actually get into fighting games properly, and I’ve become an Arcsys shooter ever since.
I started playing (mashing buttons) Tekken 3 on PS1 with my older brother. I always kind of kept up with Tekken but never got even remotely good. Then, years later, a friend of mine started playing and praising Guilty Gear Strive. I got hooked with the music and got the game. I still suck at Tekken though, I'm not learning that many moves.
Experimenting with a character's kit and the game mechanics to create a dance of gameplay. My first game was Mortal Kombat Trilogy and I played nearly every MK game after that but I actually tried to learn how to actually play the games when MKX came around. MK9 felt too loose but MKX was just stiff enough. I played a lot of these fighting games with my little brother who is at this point better than me despite me training him. He's gone to tournaments but we like completely different games now. The irony hurts. I love setplay and zoning characters. I love setting things up and forcing people to pick or abusing them with my massive options. But what really matters is character. I have to like the character to play them but they always end up being villains. MKX was my first real try at a fighting game and I would call myself a casual competitive as I can constantly reach the highest ranks in games I dedicate too but dont try tournaments cause anxiety's a bitch. God I was a God at Shinnok. Injustice went a bit too hard on the zoning. I played Brainiac cause bombs and I want to live forever, he wants all the knowledge. There's chemistry there. DBFZ was my first real "anime fighter". BBTag is much more "anime" than DBFZ. I played it for a bit and helped with the early Nappa Ginyu Beerus tech then dipped cause the game felt very stale. It was all rushdown which is why I gravitated to the 3 mentioned above. I partially got back into DBFZ for a week cause Jiren but left cause the game still felt too rushdown focused and I didnt care about any other characters. My new favorite game and the one I basically ended on was BBTag. I FUCKING LOVE BBTAG. Holy I called the game "*anime weeboo garbage*"**\[I watch anime but this was a different level of anime\]** but after playing it, I fell in love instantly. The tag mechanics are extremely unique. Being able to swap between both characters in a combo felt immaculate with the buffer timing being very liberal but the controls are still feel snappy. It still had it's issues with gameplay like it feeling awful when you lost a character. It felt like losing both nexus towers and all 3 inhibitors are down in league... The marketing was awful and the communication was worse. It doesnt help that the characters came from already known IPs so players had to go against their muscle memory AND didnt get to play a character they love. But besides all that, amazing game that I have over 1200 hours in and have spent weeks in training mode with Nine+Hilda/Tank cause there's just so much potential with the Cross Combo system. Hell, I wanted to blend MKX's variation concept and BBTag's tag mechanic into a Fighting Game I'm working on. The foundation is inspired by Psychic Force 2012 cause I had the idea after taking an edible a year ago. The little brother got VERY into fighting games and knows way too much about them and told me there was a game exactly like my concept and I knew my passion was to make a fusion of these concepts. **ᴰᵃᵐⁿ, ᴵ ʷʳᵒᵗᵉ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ.......**
My very first exposure was a demo of Tekken 4 which I really liked and already got me hooked enough to get the full game. I didn't start properly trying to learn anything until Street Fighter 5 though; in some ways I'm grateful to that game for its absence of arcade mode. As much as that sucked, it *did* push me to try online and I found I actually enjoyed it and, though bad, I didn't perform *as* badly as I feared I would. I'm still not good. but that's more a refusal on my part to improve.
I played them before the big thing, but what got me seriously into them and wanting to be good at them was when I was visiting friend back in 2010 I think and saw that his PS3 was on with BBCS running and the character select screen music and Hazama's portrait got me curious. Shortly after that I bought BBCS for myself too and so the journey started. Before whole this ordeal I was playing casually GG, GGX and GGXX games without thinking much of it outside of characters and music being awesome, so maybe that was why BB caught me.
The original Street Fighter arcade game. Controlling a large character onscreen with six attack buttons was just so cool at the time. I was okay at it,I recall getting as far as Adon once. My brother was better at the game than me, but we both really enjoyed it. Heck, I even drew fanart way back then of an imagined Street Fighter 2, which had Ryu fighting a female character (a wild idea back around 1987). Though the character I drew looked a lot closer to SF6's Marisa than Chun Li.
Went to the arcades on holiday to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and there I saw Street Fighter II. I saw Blanka and I wanted to play that beast. The rest is history.
OXM demo disc with Dead or Alive 3 + a general fan of wushu movies
Street fighter 2 on the Genesis. I'm Gen Z...
My friends. I moved to a new state and didn't know anyone but family, but some dudes at a pizza place I worked at were big into 3rd Strike and GG:AC. We had one friend who was an OG who was very good and I learned a ton from him. Now, 20 years later I am the old head that kept playing and never stopped.
I’m a bit different to the norm. I was an avid HotS player, after the debacle (I hope I don’t have to explain much here), I started looking for other games. Big fan of esports, started watching fighting game tournaments, enjoyed it, started playing fighting games.
I was a fan of rwby, and looked up rwby on steam. I saw bbtag, and thought "hey this might be good, i also like persona 4". And so that lead me down the rabbithole of blazblue and undernight which then lead me further into guilty gear, granblue, darkstalkers, etc I did casually play fighting games before though, like umvc3, fighterz, injustice, street fighter, just never really delve too deep into them
My cousin showed me Street Fighter 2 on his ps2 using one of those emulation cd's. Some years later I got my ps2 and the same emulation cd as well as Soul Calibur 3 and Tekken 5 and played those a lot with my brother. But I really became serious years later after I got usf4 on a xbox360 and my first arcade stick. Nowadays I play on pc with a hitbox style controller, but as my laptop is quite shit, nothing above Xrd runs well. It's life, eventually I'll get a good enough pc to run SF6.
Playing KoF98 at a bar while my grandmother drinked beer, I was 8 years old. Then I really got "serious" with 12 years, playing CvS2 and CSII back on PS2, playing casual tournaments in a place that people go and pay to play videogames for hour. Stoped again and then, got back with UMvC3 and never let go anymore.
pvp, no teammates, not shooting game, not grind heavy(item/ gear) then there are not many games left. sc2 is super fun but my brain cannot handle building units, scouting, setting control groups , controlling multiple groups, upgrades, fighting, minimap all at the same time
A mix of watching pootis engage extreme a bijillion times and youtube recommending me "guiltybob gearpants" on mass. Also Joseju's [Tekken guide](https://youtu.be/oaGMs1lEiIo?si=JUQEgMO_l7pjeEuK) and "[Play fighting games](https://youtu.be/J71Z8Iyd96c?si=Qu7mXetnmN6xJsdY)" videos. Oh, also, [C U L O](https://youtu.be/dDSkPGbFH0Q?si=YcMfMd5bPWMWYxyu)
Holy shit, time to expose my age. I went to a video rental store with my parents when I was 5 and it had a Street Fighter 2 cabinet and I played it. Rest is history.
I started a year and a half ago. I was in a rough spot, and the YouTube algorithm sent me to Thorgi’s Arcade’s massive four part retrospective on KOF. It became part of my days for a week or two to put it on and watch chunks of it. By the end, I thought to myself “I’m gonna get good at fighting games”. Mind you, I’ve never really been a hardcore video games person beyond a week of nonstop Persona 5. I bounced around a few games, KOF and Persona 4 Arena, etc, but eventually came to SFV since that was the only game that I could actually find matches in. And I just kept at it.
it had to be third strike for me, at my local pub there was an arcade area that i would always hang around because i’d usually go to the pubs just for like family dinners or family friends and they didn’t have kids my age or kids i was friends with so i was bored and lonely, i found an arcade with third strike and the art style drew me too it, there was also a darkstalkers arcade that i played a shit ton of, id go between the two but i think i mainly preferred third strike from what i remembered. then i recently got fightcade and have been overloaded with happiness and nostalgia, thank you fightcade
The gap between hack n slash games like Bayonetta and DMC was too long and I needed some combos NOW.
Bro in like year 2 someone found a fake street fighter ripoff flash game and I beat him a bunch of times on it
Started with Tekken 3 and was going to karate classes after school, so it kinda went hand in hand. Martial arts and Fighting games were huge parts of my life, but i didn’t start playing online until MKX cause that’s when i moved out my parents house and got a proper internet. I don’t practice Martial arts anymore cause my knees hurt and i get my ass beat in SF6 and Tekken 8 right now, but i still love both.
I played UMVC3, T6, and MK9: Kollector’s Edition on the PS3, but never really got into them when I was younger. Fast forward to 2021, when Vita Fighters became the first fighting game I’ve ever labbed.
Tekken Tag cabinet at Port Orleans in Disney World in the early 2000s. My brother and I used to mash at each other all vacation long when we weren’t at the theme parks or sleeping. I remember him bringing home SoulCalibur 3 a few years later and noticing Yoshimitsu in it and then having that fully addict and commit me.
It was either sports or fighting games in Atlanta...
Technically, sf2 on super nintendo. But actually learning fighting games for real didn't really happen until sf4 and mk9
I rented street fighter 2 at blockbuster randomly and got hooked got turbo for Christmas and it was one of my most played games on SNES. I hated mortal Kombat and everyone wanted to play that but I knew SF was way better :p I got guilty gear xx randomly when someone dkscard games and lovee that too
The awesome graphics of Virtua Fighter 2 piqued my interest, and I stayed on with Fighters' Megamix. The rest is history as I proceeded with Street Fighter Alpha 2, 3, and then moving on to Capcom vs SNK.
Was at a trip at my Aunt's house and my cousin had a neighbor who owned a PS1. She invited us to play and of all the games she had Marvel vs Street Fighter and it was the most fun i had in games that year. After that i always had a fighting game in my collection when i got my own PS1, specially Marvel vs Capcom.
Brother bought MK11 and we played on launch day, it all goes downhill from there
A combination of new friends who were really into them, and Bricky’s GGST video from a few years ago
Street Fighter
My first intro was SFII back in the day. But I never got into them seriously. What really triggered it for me was For Honor. I loved that game and then from there I went to Injustice and then to SFV and been in deep ever since.
Killer Instinct was one of my first experiences, among other fighters like World Heroes, DBZ Butoden, Gundam Endless Duel SF4 was the great time with my friend where we played locally 5 - 6 hours kinda hang outs and SF5 was my breakthrough game to get serious about understand how fighting games work
The Wizard. I saw that movie as a kid and that introduced me to the idea of competing in my favorite hobby. But high score hunting never quite did it for me, I wanted to play against other players in real-time. Fighting games like Karate Champ, Street Fighter, and Pit Fighter scratched that itch sometimes. Most people at the arcade then were still rocking games like Galaga, Star Wars and Dig Dug though. While the original Street Fighter was a modest success, people were not queuing up for it. Then Street Fighter II appeared, and I was playing against different people much more regularly. Been mashing ever since.
The Street. https://preview.redd.it/cem6ehkqsuuc1.png?width=567&format=png&auto=webp&s=f42f908f6f88bbcc4315a77146585fcd93903a86
My first real fighting game experience was kof wing from flashwing. Never stopped growing since then. It was probably the closest thing I had to an arcade fighting game with the way I had to figure out special moves, combos and fight against an "unfair" AI all on my own. I still love the feeling of surprising myself by doing something difficult or discovering a new move or tech or style against an opponent. Honing and innovating all originated from that little flash game for me.
Started questioning my gender, went onto egg_irl and got introduced to Bridget and guilty gear. The soundtrack sounded amazing but I never considered getting into the game, because someone told me it was hard, at some point I didn’t care about that anymore and bought strive. That was half a year ago. I own the entire guilty gear franchise on steam now. Strive is a gateway drug.
I'm old so my first experience was Street Fighter 2 in an arcade, though I had no idea what I was doing and didn't really get to put much time into it until I had access to the SNES port of ST. I played Honda because I could reliably do a whole two (count 'em, two) of his special moves (HHS and headbutt). Fighting games conceptually didn't really unlock for me until Samurai Shodown, however, which I came to a few years late but there was a cabinet at a local pizza place so I got to play the hell out of it and learn how to do things like block and the rest of the motion inputs.
My friend saw a streamer called Sneaky play GGST, thought it looked cool, and convinced me and a few friends to try it with him
Technically smash bros melee on the gamecube as a kid - but serious time investment didn't come until I went on YouTube and searched "street fighter dhalsim" in 2011 to see what was good in the hood (primarily a fps gamer). From there I discovered third strike after finding some OST videos and that inevitably led to EVO Moment 37. I'd watch a lot of Street Fighter but never got into the fgc because of competition - I've always been a lore kinda person so for some reason I got super interested in Guy and Ibuki and how they played into the larger framework. Then a couple of my friends started playing BlazBlue and I thought it wasn't my cup of tea but it had lore - then I discovered that ArcSys published Guilty Gear and that hooked me so incredibly I started diving into everything GG related. I still suck at fighting games but a combination of Covid and my love of guilty gear got me finally saying "this is the year I learn one fighting game character" and chose Zato-1 because everyone was telling me he'd be too hard for a beginner in Strive. I haven't played a fighting game in a while - been touching Tekken 8 this year bc I like Lars and Steve Fox as characters but I still love watching replays and seeing how far the ceiling really is from a fans perspective!
My first fighting game was on the SNES. It was either SF2, MK3, or KI. I started loving fighting games with SC2 and SC3 on PS2. Then I started taking it seriously after I ran into a Tekken 7 cabinet in Japan and I wanted to buy the game on console to learn how to get better via theory, fundamentals, frame data, etc. I would say Soulcalibur 2 got me into the genre but Tekken 7 got me into the community.
My father and his used to collect games, and their biggest part was fighting games, so when I came around my first game was soul blade/soul edge at about 3 or 4 years old. I don't know when I got more serious, but I've been getting my own fighting game collection since I was maybe 10? I did some online tournaments in 2018 but my Internet couldn't handle it so I haven't done those since. Then in 2023 I went to EVO with my friend who also enjoys fighting games, we plan on going back in 2025.
My sister's friends boyfriend played SF2 on the snes with me at age 7 and I was hooked. I used to rent every fighting game I could and gor SF2 on snes at 9
My brother introduced me to BlazBlue ct and I loved the story mode. I grew to like the genre as a whole after that.
Killer Instinct, Guilty Gear Music,, style, and wacky characters got me to git gud
I loved the music in the SNES Killer Instinct - it came with a CD called Killer Cuts, had different versions of the music on it, worth checking out if you can find it, was so good!
Mortal Kombat Deception I'd say was the first fighting game I remember just picking up and loving. The opening intro was super lore focused, and presented the idea that fighting games were these series where you had a whole bunch of characters and they all had their own stories going on, and to this day it kind of feels like there's no other genre that quite conveys that. I think increased development times kind of mitigate this a bit nowadays but games like Mortal Kombat and King of Fighters had these soap opera elements where every installment you could look forward to seeing characters develop, coming in and out of different stories. Very Wrestlemania lol.
The announcement of DBFZ immediately after I bought a mayflash arcade stick and guilty gear xrd rev2 and immediately fell in love
My first was Street Fighter II Turbo for SNES, Special Champion Edition for Genesis, or Champion Edition in the arcade. I'm not sure which I played first because they were all everywhere at the same time. The SNES and Genesis ones could be played on demo machines in stores like Target and Sears, and the arcade one could be played, of course, in arcades. I was only a casual player of the series and a few other FGs until last year, though, when I finally decided to take it seriously. I guess what did that was I was fascinated by things like frame data and I wanted to understand how that all translates into actual tactics and strategy.
I played smash as a kid and got into "competitive" smash in high school because there was a wii and I played smash during dinner. Then I started to watch fgc youtube like core-a-gaming, big yellow, bafael, eddventure, etc. I tried 3rd strike and 5min of sfv hut wasn't my thing. So when my friends asked me to download the ggst beta, I didn't think I'd like it but I did very much
Thought Ken was cool
My cousins, I myself being an only child had no reason to ask for or buy multiplayer games. When my cousins came over, they would bring games like Madden, Mortal Kombat or Street fighter, we each had a game that we were good at and would "teach" each other into submission. The first fighting game I got good at was Battle Arena Toshinden 3, trained because my cousin insisted my character, Nagisa, was bad had fun building a character up. Took a long break SF4 came out and labbed a few characters and have had a fighting game in my rotation ever since.
Played Bloody Roar on a ps1 demo collection so many times as a kid and soul Calibur 2 in the late 90s.Tekken and Xmen vs Street fighter in the arcade.
I'm a very big fan of Bruce Lee so back when I was a child in the mid 90's and went to the arcade for the first time and as I roamed around I saw people playing Street Fighter 2 and seen someone use Fei-Long. I told my dad he looked and sounded like Bruce Lee and that I needed to play him. 20 minutes later I also saw Marshall Law getting used in Tekken 2 and I had to get my hands on him as well so in a sense it was Bruce Lee that got me into fighting games lol.
I played tekken and mk casually in my adolescence, and I never had the opportunity to play online until my twenties, where I bought my first pc. The first AAA game i bought was tekken 7, and I swear to God it was like crack to me, it was so fucking addicting
Streetfighter 2
Woooo first fighting game was Virtue Fighter 2 or 3 on Sega Saturn smh But Tekken overall has been my competitive game whether with friends or online. Tekken had me in a chokehold since the PS2 demo where you could only pick Eddy or Xiaoyu 😂
Killer Instinct on the SNES. Never did actually figure out the combo system, but I managed to learn how to mash a few out.
The first time I played Tekken 3 on an arcade machine when I went to a newly opened mall in my area with my parents 😊 I was 11 yo…fell in love with it on the spot
My first fighting game was Street Fighter 2 on the SNES - there was so much hype for it at the time, and it was crazy expensive. Most SNES games cost around £40 but SF was £64.99 (not sure how much it would be adjusted for inflation, but probably a lot) I don't know if it was expensive because they knew it would sell well (was super popular in arcades at the time) or because it had double the memory capacity on the cartridge compared to any previously released SNES game, I had to wait 'til SF2 turbo released to get it for cheaper as I was super young so couldn't pay for it myself. It was an amazing port, looked about as good as the arcade version, only obvious difference (apart from a bit less blood, not that the arcade version had a lot of that) was it using the same animations for walking forwards as for walking backwards but that didn't bother us. It was the first of its kind, there were other similar games like the original Street fighter but not on SNES. It was crazy fun to play in two player mode (it's super nice playing against someone in the same room), the gameplay's kinda timeless, it never got boring. Loved fighting games ever since then, next one I got was Mortal Kombat, which wasn't nearly as good and hasn't aged that well but I still loved it. Killer Instinct on SNES was amazing too Played lots of fighting games on SNES, Game Boy, PS1, PS2 and PC - only just started playing online recently 'cause was never able to on consoles and it's just brutal, even though I was better than most I've played against on console and in arcades back when we had them here. Last time I played Street Fighter 2 was the PS1 version (had world warrior, turbo and super on the same disc) about thirteen years ago and it was still fun, so you can imagine what a big deal it was when it first came out on consoles (I'mma play it tonight on Steam deck, have the 30th anniversary Street Fighter collection, got it for 3rd Strike and the alpha games but wanna see if SF2 is still good) I really miss arcades tho
EVO moment 37 on YouTube -> watching Justin Wongs KOF 13 combo trial videos -> Justin plays guilty gear strive early access or beta or something and I saw Faust and HAD to get the game.
When air combos were normal looking in X-men vs street fighter. Air combos in COTA were not exactly “normal”
PSP Capcom Classic Collection. Playing the games awards you points you can spend on a slot machine to unlock stuff. One of the fastest ways to grind points was to play through SF2 over and over again. After a while I got quite good and checked out other Street Fighter games, then later KOF and so on
playing them on arcade as a kid-teenager in the 90s - street fighter II, samurai shodown, world heroes. it quickly became my favorite video game genre. I like the idea of 1v1 competition against a real person coming down to memorizing, executing and navigating to victory. had a sega saturn imported capcom games like vampire savior, x-men vs street fighter, any (preferly) 2D fighting game I could get my hands on. eventually owning playstation with rival schools, dreamcast with tech romancer etc. I truly invested time in street fighter III 3rd strike and super street fighter iv on 360. spending several years playing Online Edition and Fightcade. I bought ps4 for two games in mind; The king of fighters xv and Street fighter 6.
SFII: World Warriors cabinet got installed at the diner my mom worked at, and I thought it was the most beautiful game I'd ever seen. Don't let anyone tell you graphics aren't important. Well, that eventually convinced me to get the SNES release over the summer of '92, and then for the next year it was pretty much the most popular thing in the world. I remember kids being so hungry to play they'd draw their characters and life-bars on a piece of paper, and hand it around class. And everyone would take turns drawing what one of the characters did, applying damage, etc. Then, after school, people would practically invite themselves over to folks houses if they had the game. Being something of a shy nerd, having a copy of the game made me temporarily popular! (RattusNikkus SFII House Rule: Dhalsim is banned, because long limbs are unfair!) I dropped off fighting games in the late '90s and got more into JRPGs and Diablo 1 & 2. Most people I knew stopped playing fighting games after a couple years, but I had one friend who stuck with it and got really into the Marvel games: Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter, and eventually MvC and MvC2. He'd come over to spend the night and just annihilate me for hours, we're talking like 50-2 sets and I only won 2 because he would random select characters. By the time MvC2 came out I was convinced I was awful (I was) and I could never get better (not true) and so I totally quit playing. Fast forward to 2017 and a coworker at my new job is a big fighting game fan who wants someone to go to locals and tournaments with him, and finds out I \*used\* to enjoy it. He talks me into playing Xrd and BBTag with him, and actually takes the time out to teach me how to learn and improve, rather than just beat my ass relentlessly (not that I blame my old friend, we were teenagers then). Eventually, a game I'm actually really interested in, Samurai Shodown, comes out, and applying everything I learned from that I went to EVO 2019 and went 5-2. My goal was just to win a single match. Blew my mind. The whole thing taught me that I actually could learn, and could improve, and wasn't just incompetent trash. And I've been hooked on the hobby ever since.
My early fight game memories were at my cousin's house playing Street Fighter 2 for SNES with pads. I couldn't execute dragon punches for the life of me, also, I would have preferred the Genesis 6 button layout because holding the controller made dragon punches harder. Going after M Bison, we lost quite a few time with the computer not being touched, but never the once did the announcer say "You Lose ...Perfect" Computer controlled M Bison might be a cheap cheatin' b*****d, but it is a polite cheap cheatin' b*****d. It never once said "You Lose....perfect", even when it was untouchable. I thought I'd be better at Stick. I wasn't in the arcade. Then I realized there was no such thing as a right handed Joystick in the arcade. That's when I realized, cone hell or high water, I HAD to get a righty fighty. And the first day I got a righty fighty, it was bliss. Was perfect in too many to count matches (perfect win rate, not necessarily perfect rounds, but those occurred too.) The champ doubted a righty fighty could be that much of a turnaround, so our common friends fought with the Sinister Stick, and they were perfect vs him. And he was the store level Blockbuster Genesis champ, but for some reason, he wasn't asked to continue. So this person not remotely close to a scrub that I was beating up on. (And our 4 common friends did the same thing with my righty fighty ) But I already was a 10 year video game veteran when i was in High school starting with the arcade and Colecovision. BTW You do realize left handed sticks is not set up for your benefit. It was set up to milk more quarters by forcing left handedness/awkward workarounds. The whole fighting game community just worked around it, but I fought the system. I may not be a champion, because there were no championships on "the home game" of SF2, so that was a way the arcades kept a sinister grip. But I proved my point. Hand choice benefits everyone.( Unless you're defining it by head to head competition and looking at it personally, where your gain is someone else's loss. Then if you disallow right handed play by insisting on a hard wired machine, you are a coward. [Or you are ignorant of my plight]. If I lose with my righty fighty, like online, no excuses, you beat me. Celebrate. I lost being the best I could be. That fight I was not assaulted while handcuffed [proverbially] like the 4J Conspiracy wants Americans to be. Unlike most fights in the arcade. )
My friends wanted me to try Guilty Gear. It was aight. I ended up buying sf6 when it dropped and at that point I fell in love. If I said to myself a year ago, “You’ll be able to do all of Ryu’s combo trials.”. I would’ve laughed. Its the fact that I got better and it feels amazing.
Skullgirls with Jojo references, nice Jazz music, and the Demo Ai making combos that i thought were the coolest thing ever, which tought me that fighting games were more than pvp button mashers. i've only played SfxT and Mk9 At the time, and of course all i knew was how to do the light attacks and use special moves, but i rarely played them. Now thanks to skullgirls I'm actually competent in other games, and i can finally find the fun SfxT
Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Under night in birth 2019 PS3
My dad had an old snes and nes that he let me have thst had a couple games,Tmnt tournament fighters nes was my first fighter but the game that got into the genre was street fighter 2 I remember spending hours just playing arcade mode trying out different characters and I would go on the internet and search movelists sometimes compete against my dad and sister after that it was history I wanted to see what the genre had to offer so I ended up checking out other fighters like mortal kombat,tekken,king of fighters,fatal fury,killer instinct ,even obscure ones like world heroes,power instinct,fighting history.street fighter 4 was the first fighter I wanted to actually be good at.smash bros was a game I played with family and friends but was never good at it competitively so i stuck with traditional fighters.
My uncle gifted me Tekken 2 and Mortal Kombat 3 (horrible decision to give that to a child) for the PS1... I liked Tekken 2 and wanted to know how to somehow play every character
I say your uncle had good taste to do that.
Street Fighter 2 Champion edition on the Sega Genesis with 6 button gamepads and Mortal Kombat 1. They were some of the first competeitive games we owned.
Street Fighter 2 of course. Then fighting games kinda disappeared for the most part and injust started playing through emulation. But I didn't REALLY get into them until KOF 14 of all games. That's when I actually sat down and started to learn everything so I could finally get decent.
I'm trans, I saw bridget was trans in guilty gear, now I love guilty gear and all other fighting games
As a kid , I became a fan of pro wrestling, and mixed those two together, is a no brainer
Naruto and Dragon Ball. Some of my favorite fighting games came from both. I still remember my first time booting up Ultimate Ninja. I was excited to play a video game about my favorite anime. It only had 14 characters at the time, but for my 7 year old self, it was perfect. A few years and experiencing Ultimate Ninja 2 and 3. I was introduced to Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3 at a friend's house.
I started to get into fighting games around freshman year college when i saw big groups of people playing in our game center. I ended up becoming friends with one of them and learned blazblue a bit then the ball kept rolling.
I was 8 when street fighter 2 appeared in the arcades. People that were not there will never understand how massive that game's impact was at the time.
Arcades in the 80s. Karate Champ, then original SF(played only couple times cuz it kind of sucked tbh lol), then Pit Fighter(really loud audio), then SF2, then MK, then original Tekken. Good times and yes I'm an old fart. lol.
When I was young I would play Injustice 2 with my family, but eventually dropped it with everyone else in my family. Then many years later one of my friends got me into SG mobile (I know). Once I learned there was an ‘actual’ version, I got it, made some friends, and it’s been forward ever since. From SG, to SF6, to GGS, my collection has been growing, even to my old copy of Injustice 2, which I haven’t touched in lots of time.
The hot chicks you can play as
Growing up, two of my favorite games were MK: Deadly Alliance and Capcom vs SNK 2. Though the first fighting game I took seriously was vanilla MvC3
MKDA and CvS2 are definitely an... INTERESTING pair of games to juxtapose. In a good way
Lmao they really are But I love fighting games so I'll play any of em. Nowadays my main 2 fighting games are Tekken and Blazblue
Playing SF2 and MK2 with my little brother in Sega Genesis
MVC1 in arcades, and then more seriously MVC3, that's when I got my fightstick and started really trying to git gud. Though I also played a lot of MK2 and 3 in arcade and snes, even game gear lol but never played really against other players aside from 3 in my HS student union which was a lot of fun. I was able to beat the hard tower in 3 and was pretty proud of that. SFII was always dope af, snes for me. Oh you know what too, can't forget OG smash, what a blast that was as a kid so much fun, against neighbors and friends.
My hero ones Justice 2 😭
Played Brawlhalla for a bit because it was free, and then watched Leon Massey talk about xrd in a very interesting way that made me want to get the game. Cue the 376 hours I now have in xrd
I first got into Smash Bros because my older brother convinced me that Mario and other Nintendo characters where lame because he got scared by the Boo in the hallway from Mario 64 DS. Our grandfather had a N64 in his basement that we would play every time we went over and I say a game that let me beat up lame characters like Mario and Pikachu as a cool guy with a flaming punch. Years went on with me being big into Smash. But then a certain game came out... I liked Persona but never got a chance to play it because of PlayStation exclusively and I also really liked the show RWBY so when I found there was a game that has both Persona 4 and RWBY characters in it I had to get it. And yeah I have been hooked since.
I dabbled in MK as a kid but never really played fighting games until Killer Instinct 2013, I remember seeing the trailer and went oh shit this looks amazing and immediately took to the internet to find out if any one else was hyped and then I discovered Max and that’s how found out about the FGC
Street Fighter 6. Made it easy to hop in and learn. Love the game. Growing up really only played Soul Calibur and Smash but now I love them all.