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i play tons of fighting games. granted, i only seriously lab a select few. i started out getting into the genre when i was around 9. my dad showed me an old alpha 2 cabinet at a hotel arcade, and when i saw sagat, the rest was history. although, looking back, alpha 2 sagat being the character to get me into fighting games was definitely something, but i'll get into that later.
these are all the fighting games i play somewhat regularly, and some insight into my head for why i play the game and why i main the characters i main. |
| capcom vs. snk 2 |
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my main fighting game, at least it was. cfc2's netcode being trash has made me take a break from it, but it is still my all time favorite fighting game. it has everything i could ask for and more. it is footsies based, which is something that appeals to me as a defensive player, and as well it has a great roster, and i love playing c-groove and a-groove.
who do i main? well, its a mix between 2 teams. c-groove rugal/eagle/sagat and a-groove eagle/bison/blanka. if you look closely at the background, you can see that's sagat's crouch fierce. i love sagat to death, he's my king. my pookie. my sunshine. and instead of being a fireball zoner he's a pure buttons/footsies character, which feels like it was specifically made for me. then there's eagle. eagle is so damn cool, its a shame he never got brought back to a proper sf title. he's also a pure footsies character. the only thing i wish he had compared to sagat was a true reversal, but design wise giving a long ranged buttons based character no reversal is a good philosophy to have, so i have no problem with it. i consider eagle my identity character, if you see him on screen with the light kick color in c-groove, then there's no doubt that is me. rugal was a character i added later than eagle and sagat, who were locks to my team when i started out. i used to have ryu at the point position, because well it's ryu. but then i stumbled across a certain japanese cvs2 player by the name of p-rugal. as the name suggests he played p-groove rugal, and he played him incredibly. it was captivating to see him operate what is normally a mid tier character so efficiently against bad top tier matchups. he inspired me to pick up the character, and now i use rugal on my main team. p-rugal and i are now good friends, so it was really all worth it in the end. i don't really have any special connections with bison or blanka, in fact i hate blanka. but think of that as my tierwhore team, with eagle as my identity character. tons of japanese teams do this, so why not. but i will say bison is incredibly fun in a-groove, of course there's paint the fence but his movement and his general tools are very fun to use if you enjoy playing defensively. my youtube channel is chock full of cvs2 content, so if you wanna learn more about that, definitely check those videos out. |
| street fighter alpha 2 |
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my first ever experience to the genre.
of course, i main sagat. alpha 2 sagat got me into fighting games. although since i was 9 at the time, it definitely wasnt because i thought his gameplay was cool, i was too stupid to look for stuff like that. he just looked cool. big, tall, muscular guy with no pupils and an eyepatch and some cool attacks? sign me up. sigh, perhaps i should stop asking for footsies characters and adopt this line of thinking again. regardless, alpha 2 is awesome, and firmly in my #2 spot for my all time favorite fighting games. what i was alluding to earlier about alpha 2 sagat bringing me to this genre being "definitely something," was just his gameplay. without custom combos spicing things up, sagat would have been an incredibly boring character. hell, he is in alpha 1, which is basically alpha 2 but replacing customs with chains. obviously 9 year old me didn't know ccs even existed, i was just mashing buttons and seeing sagat's high button damage go to town on the poor ai. but nowadays, i take appreciation in how ccs basically flesh out sagat's once stale gameplay of fireball/dp. he can now leverage cc with fireball spam and either punish bad approaches with aa cc or punish walk forward with cc sweep. it really defines him in this game, and his cc damage is bonkers, especially on lvl.1 if you can time the uppercut to hit post-cc. he also has that weird feeling of never really carrying you. some characters feel like they do some of the work on their own, but sagat, you gotta earn that. this isn't me just downplaying, because i can tell you right now cvs2 sagat backpacks me like 2006 kobe. but alpha 2 sagat gives you the tools, but you need to execute perfectly, especially against monsters like rose, chun, rolento or ken. |
| jojo heritage for the future |
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this game is ass. but its really fun ass sometimes. i picked it up initially way back in 2020 because i was having a really big jojo phase at the time, i just finished watching parts 1-4. when i saw that there was a jojo fighting game i had to play it, and this was how tons of other fg players got their start too. for most hftf players i know, this was their first rodeo.
famously (or maybe infamously?), i mained khan. the bottom 3 hunchback barber dude. was i trying to be a low tier hero? no, i actually gravitate towards higher tiers in fighting games, but in this one instance, i happened to vibe with a garbage character, and that's okay. i just really liked his very movement and neutral heavy playstyle, and i got pretty damn good at it i would say. for a long stretch of time i would say i was the best khan in the world, although thats about the same as saying im the best fighting game player in my household. playing khan got boring though, i mean how could you really expect to play a character like him for long. part of why i did was because i wasnt good enough to play the active stand characters, but around last year i started playing jotaro, and earlier this year i started playing vanilla ice. now i have a 3 main rotation, with jotaro probably being my heaviest hitter. i find their neutral intuitive and doing instand airdashes into 80 hit tandem combos is very fun with vice. i can even tod now, but i think now that im playing the top 2, i can really experience firsthand just how god awful the balance and mechanical structure of hftf is. but hey, for the people i know who grind this game, hftf being designed like dog dookie doesn't affect them at all, and i guess given how long i've played it doesn't affect me either. |
| hokuto no ken |
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objectively a poorly designed game. i dont think anyone can deny that, i sure as hell dont. but come on man, its fucking hnk. of course its gonna rock. the power levels in hnk are just ridiculous, but that can sometimes lead to very fun games.
i main the big lumbering raoh. i love raoh as a character, how he was hellbent on growing even more powerful than the heavens. but even more than that, he's a combo monster. normally, i tend to steer clear of characters who just fish for that one hit that leads to you winning the round, especially if they are volatile in their gameplan and matchups, but for some reason i just have to play raoh, despite sharing those traits and then some. i cant touch of death with him yet, but im pretty damn close. i think he just about represents everything wrong with hnk, but at the same time, you still think its sick. |