I used to be pretty big into fighting games. As was the case with most people my age, it all started with Street Fighter II. Unlike my friends who hung out in the arcades, I was pretty broke so I cut my teeth on the franchise with a borrowed copy of the Super Nintendo version. I was never an expert with Ryu, Chun-Li, and the rest of the crew, but they did get me interested in the genre. Once Mortal Kombat hit the SNES (I didn't yet own a Genesis and didn't care much about the whole blood/sweat issue) I was all about hand-to-hand video game brawling. Mortal Kombat II came out a year later and it was a significant factor in my less-than-stellar grades that semester. There was even a girl in my dorm that asked me to tape fatalities so that she could use them in a presentation about video games and violence. Hopefully I didn't set the cause too far back with that deed. Sorry.

Oh, hello there. Have you perchance noticed that you're on fire...and exploding?

After MKII, I moved on to the SNES (and later the Nintendo 64) version of Killer Instinct. My go-to-guy in KI was Jago. Together, he and I were darn near unstoppable. I could pull off monster, king, killer, ultra, and ultimate combos with ease. You'd better hope you landed a lucky punch against me or else I'd bust out a humiliation and have you dancing like a fool in seconds. My roommates were no match for my powers and eventually quit playing with me. My buddy Sean, whose only character was Sabrewulf, couldn't even perform certain basic moves because...well, because he sucked. I desperately needed Sean to play so I could whoop him without mercy. To lure him back into the fray I agreed to train him. I would design combos for him on our dry/erase board, making sure not to include any moves that his uncoordinated little fingers couldn't handle. I looked like an even crazier version of Bob Knight drawing these moves in multicolored ink and then yelling at him when he screwed up. Is it any wonder dates were scarce my junior year?

I'll admit that drawing up combos instead of doing homework was pretty pitiful, but I did it because when it comes to fighting games, nothing compares to pummeling a friend. The CPU doesn't care that you turned it into a baby, knocked it off of a building, made it dance, or set it on fire. It doesn't throw the controller and storm off whining about your "cheese" tactics after you rack up another perfect victory. No, you have to upset a real person to get the most out of a fighting game. And that's why I don't really play fighting games anymore. Most of my friends are married, have kids, and live 2,500 miles away. There's nobody left to pummel.

At least I thought there there was nobody left to pummel. I was back at my dad's house last week, and while I was there I played some Xbox 360. Both my brother and my old friend Sean (my Killer Instinct pupil who now lives in Washington DC) had Soulcalibur IV so we decided to give it ago. I couldn't believe how much fun it was playing over Xbox Live! After many years of waiting, I think I think it's safe to say that fighting games are just as much fun to play online as racing games and first-person shooters. I'm not talking "kind of playable" like DOA 4, but really and truly functional online to the point where it's not much different than fighting someone in person. I'm sure some of the hardcore fighting crowd might disagree and say that even the minimal amount of lag found in recent games can affect their play, but for the average player there's almost no noticeable difference between playing online and offline.

Yep, I just checked with my sword: Your soul still burns.

What does this mean for me? It means that one of the first things I did when I got back to San Francisco was to pick up a used copy of Soulcalibur IV. I now own my first fighting game since SoulCalibur on the Dreamcast. I got off to a rusty 3-2 start against Sean last night, but my skills are rapidly improving. I can't wait to start laying the smack down on my little brother and Sean until they can't take it anymore. It'll be just like old times. Now if only I can my friends to use a webcam so I can watch them storm off after a ring out...