‘Your favorite Mario Kart is your childhood one.’ I’m not always sure that’s true. My favorite one is 8 and I’m [redacted] and school is but a memory. Or nightmare. Still get those late to class dreams. Sometimes I also hear that people’s favorite Street Fighter is the first one they got good at. Personally not true either, since my fav is Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike and I really only started caring with Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition. I can't parry for shit. I like the sprites and the music in 3s. What I want to look at is something related to a more general, button pushing preference. Maybe you’ve heard of the spirit of marvel. I wanna call what I’m talking about the curse of buttons.
Curse of Buttons
‘Curse of Buttons’ I wanted to call it that because it could also sound like you’re cursed by somebody’s sweet cat named Buttons. I want to extend that complex feeling of betrayal toward something precious that must not be acted upon in anger or revenge to fighting games. Or any other game with some sort of unique input to be mastered. The simplest form of this curse is where one expects confirm and cancel to be on controllers. Four cardinal direction controllers. Have you played or are still playing a lot of games on Nintendo consoles? Early Playstation games or in Japan up until the PS5? (Do you feel Playstation has forsaken you, Japan?) Then you have muscle memory for the west most button (A/Circle) being confirm. Switching to or even between games takes some getting used to, huh? Or you settled on owning a switch and a PC. What buttons do you hit during a QTE? Uhh umm uhh. If you’re like me you had to look down, or messed up in a very demanding game.
A little further is the kart racer. Mario Kart always sells big. Real big. All of them basically control a little differently. If you go back to Wii after spending a lot of time in 7 and 8, it will feel really weird. Speed is all off. The handling of karts and the then new bikes got polished quite a bit in later games. Double dash basically pivots some karts and took some real specific muscle memory to get good at it. 64 handles like nothing else. And all of these feel different from Chocobo Racing, Diddy Kong, and Crash. All the Wipeout games are surprisingly different, and require different skills. Already now, there are some of these games I feel way more comfortable in and others that I can pickup and play but don’t even feel good playing half heartedly.
In fighting games, this can take on a full curse. Perhaps competitively, from small group to tournament scene, one could adapt quickly. However, this feels like something etched upon one’s soul. What if you booted up and started playing a new fighter with characters you thought looked cool. Characters you loved. Characters you, a small group of people, and two people on Pixiv who draw most of the fanart of love. Or maybe this time your second favorite is here, you await DLC. You push the attack buttons. Something feels off. Change characters. Okay, the specials feel better. You really like the anti air. Ah, but connecting the moves together feels bad. Is it input lag? Maybe. That used to be a nah but who knows anymore. Your controller was made in the last 7 years, it’s not that. You’re starting to feel like a Goldilocks stuck in a universe without just right. They’re all too hot or too cold. You find no comfort.
This is how Street Fighter V, Soul Calibur 6, and Xrd felt to me. After years of playing against friends for fun, occasionally playing others online or on the side at tournaments, these games felt extra wrong. I already didn’t get with faster games like Marvel 3 and post-speedup Skullgirls. But at least those kinda made sense to how my muscle memory and taste developed playing casual Melty, 3rd Strike, USFIV (and earlier versions), Blazblue and whatever I felt like playing with friends at the time. Sonic the Fighters came out on PS3! Darkstalkers is cool even when you don’t know what you’re doing. But when I played SFV, or even tried to go back to USFIV in some cases, the curse would pop up. Agh, why does it feel like I need to get into kissing distance to even just punch someone. USFIV is a little better, but when you’re outta practice and didn’t play competitive sometimes picking up a character is a reminder of what bullshit some of the tight timings are. My friend is going to get carpal tunnel if he has to practice difficult C.Viper combos. They should really bring her back, tho. She’s cool. Xrd is really cool but playing the not-DBZ modern Arcsys games just feels clumsy sometimes. Granblue Fantasy VS sometimes feels like the characters control like mechs. Woulda been nice to actually figure that game out with rollback netplay. I had trouble getting a match with someone 30min away. Every time I play, it’s like my hands remind me “Wasn’t it more fun in UNIEL hitting buttons and hitting the opponent from wild distances Compared to this?” or if I do a short combo that is move, move, special move, something (super, mixup or something defensive,etc) “Didn’t this feel better in an old arcade game?”
A few newer games don’t make me feel this curse, but it sometimes crops up if I play a Rock Paper Scissors mechanic. That could just be latent disappointment from SC6 and Pokken, but those were particular cases. Soul Calibur 6 just goes into RPS mode too easily so pacing feels weird, Pokken stopped feeling like a fighting game abstraction of pokemon and more a skin of a rock paper scissors game. I need more time with Type Lumina but it hasn’t been too bad yet. Probably helped by not being a focus and not being a slowdown.
