'Street Fighter II' Wasn’t Just a Game, It Was a Portal
I remember when Street Fighter I was a new arcade game.  The demonstration mode would show Ryu fighting Retsu, and occasionally he would throw a fireball.  The game didn&#x27;t say how to do it.  It would always be this random thing that happened while playing.  If you play fighting games, you know the motion is pretty simple, but on SF1 it&#x27;s actually pretty difficult to do on command.  The input scanning just wasn&#x27;t very good and you had to do the motion with just the right joystick speed and button on&#x2F;off timing.<p>I figured out how to throw a fireball on command and became the wizard of the arcade.  Shortly after I figured out the dragon punch too. I never figured out the hurricane kick.  The game never showed it during demonstration so I didn&#x27;t know it even existed.  It would happen sometimes randomly while playing but for some reason I thought it was a glitch and not a real move.  One day another player showed up from another arcade, and he was doing all three moves.  He didn&#x27;t have them quite figured out though as his technique was to mash the joystick motion spastically while hitting the buttons, but it was enough to figure out the hurricane kick too.<p>When SF2 came out, I was excited because I already knew the special moves, but then there were all these new characters I didn&#x27;t know how to play.  And that&#x27;s when it happened: people started playing each other.  That&#x27;s what changed everything.  The arcades were all dying, but with SF2 the crowds started gathering around.  It was no longer about playing the games and getting the high score.  It was about being the best competitor.<p>It&#x27;s crazy to see it all start and to have gone to and competed in a lot of the first video game competitions.  It has come a long way from arcade employees setting up home grown tournaments and giving away ticket prizes.  Now we have EVO.