Give Old-Timey Fighting Games a Shot
Getting into retro fighting games gave the whole genre a second lease on life for me, so I wanted to try to convince other people to give them a shot. In one way or another, a lot of my videos are (not so secretly) just me trying to get people to like the stuff I like and play the stuff I play (don’t tell anybody!). If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend watching the video before proceeding:
All of my videos come with caveats, but I’m fortunate that you all give me some grace and assume good intentions on my part (even if you disagree with certain things, which is absolutely fine!) That being said, this video comes with even more caveats than usual, so I wanted to talk through some of the pushback I think it’s likely to get.
For every single chapter in the video, I think there are some folks who will strongly believe the exact opposite thing I say. My imagined conversation goes something like this:
Me: Having no patches is great! Everything I learn will be in the game forever, and I don’t have to keep up with constant updates.
Reasonable Person Who Disagrees: Having no patches sucks. Good characters stay good, and bad characters stay bad. The game is just less balanced in general.
Me: A small cast is great! I can really dive in and learn about each character and have a solid understanding of every match-up.
Reasonable Person Who Disagrees: Having a lot of characters is fun. I like variety and I like having a lot of characters to choose from in a bunch of different archetypes.
Me: Old games that have survived for 20 years aren’t going anywhere, and that’s great! I can keep playing the game as long as I want.
Reasonable Person Who Disagrees: I don’t need something that will last for the rest of my life. I want to play for a few months or a few years or whatever, and I can be 100% happy with that. For now at least, thousands or tens of thousands of people are playing this game, and it’s fun playing something new and being part of something so big.
Me: Old-timey fighting game communities are great! People are super nice and welcoming!
Reasonable Person Who Disagrees: Sure, but new games have nice communities too. I go to my local and play Street Fighter 6 with people I genuinely enjoy hanging out with.
I 100% understand every one of those counterpoints—they’re reasonable! In the video, I’m not trying to say that they aren’t valid points of view. Instead, I’m trying to point out that I think those counterpoints are held as the conventional wisdom—universal truths that people accept, and this scares people off from even thinking about trying old-timey games. I’m just trying to say it’s mostly a perspective thing. Anyway, if you want to play some Vampire Savior, hit me up!
Other Random Thoughts That Didn’t Fit Anywhere Else
The “No Patches” chapter kind of touches on why you don’t see too many efforts to rebalance old games, and why rebalanced versions rarely stick around or find much of an audience. People have invested literal decades into learning some of these games, and they’re understandably reluctant to throw that away.
I was originally going to have a whole chapter just about why Fightcade is dope, but I decided against it (though I do mention Fightcade a bit in the “Community” chapter). I thought it’d simply make the video too long and it was mostly unnecessary—anybody looking to play VSav or 3S is going to end up on Fightcade whether I direct them there or not. That being said, I really do think Fightcade is amazing and makes the retro fighting game experience something even more special.