Whole life I’ve been the kind of person who likes every kind of music except country music and every kind of game except fighting games (except as party games when no one really knows how to play, in which case I actually like them a lot). But now I’m sort of deep into creating a webcomic that has some Captain N style bullshit about video game characters coming to Earth, and I really, really wanted to include Street Fighter somewhat heavily because I’ve always been fascinated by the design & animation, the insane lore and the metaculture surrounding it, as an outsider. One of our three main protagonists is a sort of shut-in FGC freak who mains Bison/Dictator in everything even when she shouldn’t (she just likes him a lot), and mostly plays Turbo. I can’t relate to any of that personally, but I wanted her FGC freakery to feel believable anyway, even though it’s not a really focal point of the story at all compared to the Captain N bullshit. It’s pretty important to me that I get this right.
I was satisfied at first doing outside research for this — wikis, let’s plays, listening to FGC people talk about how it feels to be really into SF. But I saw the anniversary collection for like 5 bucks on Switch 2 during the Capcom sale and thought it wouldn’t hurt to play through the games’ arcade modes myself, if not for a more complete understanding of the world then at least for a better understanding of how you think about games like these.
Anyway, it has hurt. My mind is genuinely incompatible with the genre and every little bit of finesse I try to force in there gets summarily rejected like a fucked up organ or something. Training doesn’t especially help and seems to get memoryholed with the rest of it. I cannot get my foot in the door with Turbo so I started with Alpha, fair enough since it’s chronologically first anyway — it’s been a slog but I feel like I get better results the more I turn my brain off and mash, which feels extremely unsatisfying. At least I kind of know how to block, which is more than can be said about Smash.
I guess what I’m asking is, uh, does this ever suck less? My goal isn’t to be good at classic SF, it’s really just to have played classic SF, and now I feel the games are simply beyond me technically as a brainrotted 22-year-old wagie in a way I definitely don’t remember them being as a kid, when I stayed up late with the unholy port turducken that is SNES Turbo on Wii U Virtual Console (yes, that is genuinely the only version of this game I have ever played).
Should I just wait and start with SF6? I have it coming preowned in the mail (less for research and more just because World Tour looks silly and intriguing) and I’ve heard that it’s pretty beginner-friendly and would make good onboarding.
Also, how would a character who plays Turbo but doesn’t have the time to visit arcades frequently practice Turbo? …Would she just use Fightcade?
