Also double leg sweeps and Flash Kicks, with a healthy mix of swinging back fists and upside down kicks.
I love Street Fighter. There is probably no game I have poured more hours into than Super Street Fighter Two for the Super Nintendo. This is also a game that I spent a lot of time playing with others, primarily my big brother who was always just that much better than me, but I was only one who was good enough to really give me a real challenge out of everybody else when we were kids, so we would play over a hundred matches routinely, like three to four times a week there for a few years. I would often get frustrated with how good my brother was and how difficult it was for me to beat him, but the game kept a score and I usually managed to win approximate twenty five percent of the time, which in retrospect is reasonably competitive.
One of the things that make my brother and me particularly good at Street Fighter is our encyclopedia like knowledge of every character’s move set and the priority of which moves have over others. One of the reasons we are probably not the best Street Fighter players in the world, though my brother is probably pretty close, is that we never got accustomed to, or happy with, the inclusion of super-super moves. Whenever we compete against other people who are really good we typical beat them in the strong majority of exchanges but we struggle to overcome the damage they can dish out with some overly convoluted super-super move. I guess we are just too old school.
My favorite character is Guile. I liked the whole military strong man thing. His very unique hair gave him extra personality. His story line of wanting to avenge the death of his best friend Charlie was cool, and it gave him personal reason to hate M. Bison, which in turn gave the player extra motivation to defeat the end boss. I also really like his skill set. I do my best with characters with powerful counter attacks and the nature of having to hold backwards or down for two seconds is a game mechanic that is best used for counter attacks like Sonic Boom and Flash Kick, so I am pretty good with Guile. Even though the Sonic Boom is a projectile and should be used as such it is also a very effective counter attack at close range. I am also very good with M. Bison, Balrog, E. Honda, and Blanka. Ironically if I had to pick a Street Fighter team of two that I would perform with best with it would probably be Guile and M. Bison.
One of my favorite tactics is to block a melee attack and counter with a Sonic Boom, since I am already holding back, and then immediately follow up with fierce punch or upside down kick, aggressive players have a tendency to walk into these sorts of attacks, and defensive players turtle up and Guile has a lot of quick lunging forward attacks that are perfect for just picking at someone. I also really like using Guile’s double leg sweep to bait people into using a jumping attack on me which I of course counter with a flash kick because I am already holding down, this works exceptional well when you mix in the low medium kick which is a single attack and you can throw a Sonic Boom at them if they do not jump at you. In Street Fighter Four they gave Guile this downward hooking punch when you are pressing forward and use the medium punch which can hit opponents who are blocking low, which I have gotten really good with getting into people’s heads and mixing up low leg kicks and that punch. God just thinking about reminds me how awesome Guile is.
Anyway you can understand that I have an almost intimate understanding and knowledge of the Street Fighter characters and their moves, most notably Guile and M. Bison, so sometimes when I dream and I find myself in a confrontation my mind naturally slips back to Street Fighter and I start throwing out Sonic Booms and plenty of double leg sweep/Flash Kick combos. This happens a lot, like almost once a week, and it has been happening for years. The craziest thing is I have not played Street Fighter Four in at least six months. The game just stuck with me forever.
It is almost comedic the sort of connection I have with the Street Fighter Two roster. I do not play much of any video games anymore at all, but when Street Fighter Four did come out while I really liked it because we saw the return of the majority of my favorite characters I struggled to appreciate characters like C. Viper, Abel, and Juri, they are weird, especially Juri, but mostly I have no idea what their moves are and the disparity of my knowledge of characters like Ryu, Chun Li, and Sagat, when compared to my ignorance of these new characters almost feels like are from a different game. I imagine they are good characters that I just never got used to them since I barely play any video games anymore. I was uncomfortable with many of the characters from Street Fighter Three at first but grew to really like Alex, Dudley, Hugo and all three of the new girls. That may be the funniest thing, I am very detatched from the entire genre of video games but Street Fight and Guile remain at least somewhat on the forefront of my mind and imagination.
I worry one day I am going to get in a drunken fight where I am very drunk and I think it is natural to go for a double leg sweep/Flash Kick combo, or worse believe I can actual throw a Sonic Boom.
I dream of Sonic Booms.
- King of Braves
