The title doesn't refer to an actual rusted switch. It refers to how rusty I feel switching over to play Tekken 5 for the first time in five months, after playing SC3 almost incessantly. I felt like I had started completely over with the game. Because of SC3's 8-way run, I felt like I couldn't sidestep in Tekken. Because of using a block button for 5 months, I keep forgetting to press back to block in Tekken. Because of the smooth movement and ultra-fast response time in SC3, I feel so slow and clunky and choppy in Tekken 5.

I also tried VF4: Evolution, and I had the same rusty feeling.

Man. I think I like SC3 way better than Tekken 5. In theory, I like the idea of an open-hand fighter better than a weapons fighter, but SC3 is just so smooth. I wonder if the 8-way run would work in an open-hand fighter. I know that limbs don't have the reach of weapons, and it would be tricky to have horizontal techniques to stop the 8-way run, but... I just like the freedom of movement in SC3.

Last entry, I was going on about the details in SC2 that I like better than SC3. In SC3, I unlocked all the artwork from Valeria's shop, and I noticed that the SC3 characters' costumes looked a lot better in the drawings that they do in the actual game. I don't know what it is that gets lost in the conversion, but it seems to make a difference.

I started playing Tekken 5 once again with the idea of buying all the items for all the characters, but abandoned the idea within minutes for two reasons:

1) It takes so long get gold in Tekken 5, after beating the game each character and beating the Devil Within, that it just isn't worth the time investment.

2) The items and color changes in T5 just don't seem to add anything to the characters. I don't like the way the items look. The create a character in SC3 has tons more choices. Even the edit feature in VF4:E is much better done. Does VF5 have an edit feature, I wonder? I saw on the Japanese VF5 website, that each character has 4 costumes. Does this replace the edit feature?

So, I've opened my fighting game universe from just SC3, back to SC3, T5, and VF4:E. We'll see how quickly I start itching for a new game. I have Fable: The Lost Chapters on my PC, and I haven't started it yet. We'll see.