El Fuerte

There is one great constant in video games that I will never get tired of. It transcends console specs, controllers, and all other genres of games that dear to my heart. That is fighting games in general, and Street Fighter in particular. No other series have I sunk more time, energy, and money into than this series. I have at least one game from that series on the SEGA Genesis, SNES, Playstation 1, 2, and 3, and Dreamcast; some 2 or more games. I have grown up with the game in many respects, playing each new iteration with a devout passion. Many of the friendships I now have are thanks to a shared in this series. And online gaming has only expanded the desire to keep playing this game. I’m at an age where you don’t hang out at your friends’ houses much now, playing video games all night and on weekends so online matches are the ultimate reason to stay vested.

With the advent of the current generation of system, it’s really easy to see how much time you spend playing games. While the PS2 had a memory card interface that could show you how much time you spent playing, it wasn’t as full of metadata as you can see these days.  Here’s some stats for my copy of Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition 2012 (this will include all time since SSFIV was released in 2010):

• Total Time Played: 633:30 (hours, or 26.375 days straight)
• Number of Online Fights: 7226
• Wins: 4614 (63.85% win rate)
• Perfects: 346

Compare this to RPGs where I usually log in around 150 hours total, but those games generally have a ceiling of what you can acquire or achieve, and maxing out your character levels to 99 can get redundant very fast.  I don’t even know how much time I spent playing Street Fighter IV (2009), and I cannot fathom the collective time spent playing Street Fighter II, Champion Edition and Turbo; Super Street Fighter II and Turbo; Alpha 1 through 3, including Alpha 2 Gold; Street Fighter 3 and its 3 iterations; and Capcom vs SNK 1 and 2 (these are crossover games, but I still consider them part of the overall series). If we could tally all the time played in these games it would dwarf the 633 hours I have for this game, guaranteed. I’d wager to say I have spent a calendar year playing all these fighting games since we got hooked at Family Billiards in 1991.

This does not include my time spent playing other fighting games: Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat, Fatal Fury/KoF, X-men vs Street Fighter, etc. The hours just keeps climbing.

To have acquired devoted over one calendar month to playing a fighting game for little more than vapid and fleeting props and adrenaline rushes seems pointless, and in some ways it is. But that misses the point, really. Most things we do for hobbies or escapism are, in the grander sense, worthless. This game is more than a hobby but not a profession (though some people are actuallymaking a living off fighting game tournaments). It’s a very big part of who I am and what appeals to me. I’ll play the game as long as I can see the television and move my fingers. In fact, when I pass on, bury me with a joystick because that’s how much I give a damn about this game.