Not long ago, a friend and co-worker of mine asked me how I am able to still like Street Fighter after all these years.  He didn't ask why I wasn't bored of it, or why I hadn't expanded to different fighting games (he has no problem admitting that he likes the Dead or Alive series the most solely because of the graphics), or anything like that.  Oh no.  He wanted to know how I could stand to play it with its dated look.

He sat there on top of the bench with his feet on the seat smoking a cigarette, and I looked at him for what must have been a solid sixty seconds.  I opened my mouth to respond, but only a weak scratch came out.  A few more seconds passed, mostly silent except for the sporadic squeaking, as I tried to make myself accept that he was actually serious about that question.  I mean, he doesn't have the hardest core, but he does play games.  That classifies him as at least some kind of a gamer.  Suddenly, I was aware of my tilting head, squinting eyes, and sagging jaw.  "Oh my g…" I thought.  "He's serious.  Wait… what?"

So I tried to level with him.  After all, he asked a legitimate, if bewildering, question, so I tried to give him a legitimate answer in return.  I started by explaining that it wasn't Street Fighter II that I was playing, but Street Fighter III.  But he knew that already because, as he reminded me, he'd actually played it with me once before.  By my thinking, that should have cleared everything up.  Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is not the same as Street Fighter II after all.  However, even having experienced it, he couldn't see it.  So I tried to explain.  It's a lot deeper.  It's way more balanced, for one thing.  And it introduced parrying, which begat all-new strategies, adding yet another layer to…  But that's all he needed to hear.  His next statement made me understand exactly what kind of a battle I had let myself get into, and it showed me that there could be no winning him over that day.  He cut me off in the middle of my very strong argument to point out the one major "flaw" that I was overlooking – Street Fighter III still looks the same as Street Fighter II.  If that was enough to make my head hurt, what followed was enough for it to burst into flames.  [more]