é claro que depois de cinquenta anos de treino hoje a gente considera videogame algo "intuitivo", mas não é uma prática psico ou fisiologicamente natural. minha mãe sofria muito quando tinha que apertar pra frente e o botão de pulo ao mesmo quando eu tentava fazer ela jogar donkey kong country 3, e isso não quer dizer que ela era incapaz ou que o jogo "não ensinava direito", mas sim que ela não havia praticado tanto quanto eu. a graça de unlimited saga é que ele é impraticável, inacostumável, mesmo se você gostar de videogame, gostar de rpg, gostar de jogo por turno, gostar de jogo de tabuleiro ou gostar de outros saga.

não dá pra dizer que ele foi feito pra alguém. intuitivamente ninguém vai orbitá-lo. nem mesmo os criadores! foi um esforço tornar ele tão obtuso quanto é, uma filosofia de atrito, documentada. não acho nem que é um jogo que o kawazu fez pra si mesmo. entretanto, também não é um exercício de hostilidade: o jogo é super agradável esteticamente. ele te chama e te acaricia, te dá a tal da dopamina em todos os momentos de aposta, se revela, mas sua profundidade é tamanha que sempre vai faltar algo para você conseguir entender completamente. ele te manipula em seus mistérios, no que deixa de revelar, nos seus resultados imprevisíveis, nas maldadezinhas ocasionais e nos presentes inesperados.

é legal também que a única cena super animada e elaborada seja no mesmo lugar para todos os personagens — eu sempre ficava ansioso pra chegar em regina leone pra ver como iam mostrar o festival dessa vez. serve como o núcleo de familiaridade entre todas as histórias, visto que o contexto sinestésico delas também varia muito. você aprende bastante cada vez que completa uma, mas nunca o suficiente pra próxima ser fácil ou só uma lapidação de conceitos.

todos os momentos de unlimited saga são como jogar videogame pela primeira vez. eu nem lembro como foi essa sensação de verdade porque na minha cabeça eu já nasci usando uma meia do Sonic, mas agora consigo sentir esse ataque meio esquizo aos sentidos que é apertar um botão e sentir que tenho que lutar com minha própria mente com o qual já tinha me acostumado como se fosse novo. sensação de projeção astral em outro mundo onde não existe nenhuma convenção artística e tudo é cognitivamente violento. não gostaria de morar lá, mas visitar é sempre uma diversão.

Te Amo Japa.
Te Amo Teixeira.
Te Amo Consultor.
Te Amo Habib.
Te Amo Bezoura.
Te Amo Will.
Te Amo Bila.

And a special Te Amo to Josef Fares, who made me feel emotional playing a game in which a horny magical mexican book tells a soon-to-be divorced couple that they should have unprotected sex in an elevator in order to be able to talk to their low poly daughter once again.

Steet Fighter 4 will live forever, at least for me. It was a game that occupied my thoughts when I woke up for school, and when I went to bed that same night, and even now, 5 years after those sleepless nights, it crosses my mind regularly. Whether it be the gameplay, the iconic matches, the constant weekend lobby battles with my friend that I talk to, to this every day. Street Fighter 4 is one of those games that may feel impossible to put into words, but I might as well try.

Before I was even born, I was diagnosed with Attention deficit hyper disorder (ADHD), I would hyper-fixate on things, jump from one interest to the other, and never stick with an interest for very long, but something about fighting games just stuck, and it all started with Street Fighter 4.

In June of 2014 the Xbox Live Gold membership promised 2 free games, an edgy beat-em-up with middling reviews known as Charlie Murder, and Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition. I would always keep up with this “games with gold” program. I would know everything about the upcoming free games weeks before they dropped and would tend to hype myself up on a lot of them to a decent degree, and this was no different this month. I remember being so enthralled by the game’s simple yet effective character design, and I ended up watching many lore videos on character backstories and the series’ overarching plot before I even knew what a combo was, or had heard the name Daigo Umehara, and it was around that time that I got the game.

To put it simply, I had no idea what I was doing, I almost exclusively played Dudley because Rocky was my favorite movie at the time, and he was a cool suave boxer. Despite loving the character, I had no idea the kind of combo and mix-up potential he had. The name Smug (Street Fighter 4’s most famous Dudley) existed only in passing references when I googled the character, I threw out his big normal moves, and face rolled my controller until he did his special moves and Ultra attacks. Despite my lack of knowledge, I was beginning to fall in love with the genre of fighting games. [1 these bracketed numbers reference little extra anecdotes at the bottom of the review] That simplicity of 2 characters sharing screen, doing everything within their ability to prove that they are the better competitor, well, it spoke to me, and I began playing just about everything I could find for a reasonable price, or on the right console. It was around this time that I met Andy.

Andy is still my friend to this day, and a lot of that started when he saw me playing the terrible port of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the iPad. That’s right, my longest lasting friendship can be attributed to Capcom’s half assed attempt to get their beloved arcade classic on to the app store. Of course, without any comprehensive knowledge of what a quality feeling fighting game even was, I was none the wiser to this port’s faults, and did my best to unlock and play as every character in that game. [2]. We began sharing our love and experiences with fighting games, and he ended up joining me and my Xbox 360 friends from middle school in endless weekend lobbies of Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, and that was around the time that I learned a new version of this game I had become obsessed with, came out, and it was called Ultra Street Fighter 4.

Ultra Street Fighter 4 was a patch, it was a new version, it was a rerelease, it was a lot of things, but it was also deeply influential as to how I went on to view fighting games. Throughout the summer of 2014 I dove headfirst into the genre, I picked up both Street Fighter 2 and 3’s HD editions on my 360, began watching actual people play the game casually (RIP Super Best Friends and Excellent Adventures) and even began seeing what Street Fighter played at the highest level looked like. My previous love for Dudley led me to becoming a massive PIE Smug fan [3] and I saw him do things that blew my mind with that character. The very first legitimate combo I learned was Dudley’s standing Heavy Kick, cancelled into his EX Machine-Gun Blow, linked into his ducking uppercut. It’s incredibly simple for even intermediate fighting game players, but when it came to that cancel, my hands have never had to move that quickly for a video game in my life (I was playing on pad at the time [4]), but I eventually nailed it consistently and felt my eyes open to what fighting games were and could be.

Goofy weekend lobbies, filled with mashing buttons and wake up ultras. ended up becoming avenues to try new combos, test out new characters, and find out if there was a true main for me.[5]. I ended up entering tournaments, both local weekly affairs and annual regional events, and as the high school years flew by, Ultra Street Fighter 4 remained the only constant. 2014 and 2015 were both unbelievably fun years to track the tournaments for that game, due to the Capcom pro tour, wherein Capcom would grant points to people who placed highly in major and supermajor Ultra tournaments, with the highest scoring players being slotted into the Capcom Cup at the very end of the year. It was an amazing journey, that encompassed everything I loved about Ultra’s competitive scene, and then Street Fighter 5 ended up coming out.

I tried so hard to love Street Fighter 5, and for an entire calendar year I convinced myself that I did. I knew the game was a fresh start, and I was on a relatively clean slate when it came to tournaments, so I tried to take that fresh start, and do what I never could in Street Fighter 4: Not go 0-2 in a tournament. At this point however, cracks began to form. I had temperament/anger issues, even during my Street Fighter 4 days, but something about 5 just had me angrier and angrier every day, and I think a big reason for that is that I was mostly alone in that game. Whereas I had a large group of friends to play with and learn from in 4, most of those same friends ended up buying an Xbox One instead of a PS4, and even though Andy bought the game, it was on PC, so it became more difficult to even play with him. The relaxation and debauchery I could fall back on was gone before I realized it, so for every online loss I took, ended with me sitting alone, stewing in my anger, trying to convince myself that I still liked this game.

I may not have referenced it earlier, but Street Fighter 4 came into my life at a very dark time for me, I was beginning to give up on myself, and doing anything to gain attention and validation from a group of friends that never seemed to have the time for me. But Street Fighter 4 started a shift. I had more things to talk about, with people who seemed enthusiastic about talking about them. Life was starting to become worth living again for a reason outside of anything I tried to fabricate. The passion was real, and new interests started growing outside of fighting games. I’m not going to say that Street Fighter 4 saved my life, but it certainly made me care more about it, and I think that’s why 5 ended up disappointing me so badly. I can get into plenty of gameplay reasoning, but at the end of the day, Street Fighter 5 just wasn’t fun for me, and that’s what should matter the most.
Ultra Street Fighter 4 was a game that I ended up taking very seriously, but despite that seriousness, fun never left the equation, and I could talk for ages about the crazy stories I have playing, watching, and reading about Capcom’s masterpiece. It is an incredibly important game that I still play to this very day, because, at least for me, Street Fighter 4 will live forever.



Extra bits: 1: [Around the summer of 2014, I went to a catholic summer camp, that I frequently went to for years, at that point, and I vividly remember nonstop talking about street fighter 4 lore, specifically Dudley. I also remember making up a ton of information too, because my ADHD brain loved to fill in blanks when it came to lore, this bit wasn’t interesting enough for a whole paragraph, but yea, I was mega obsessed with this game, even when I knew little to nothing about it]

2. [The reason for my investment with Marvel vs Capcom began when I found out that Phoenix Wright was playable in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, and Ace Attorney had been my hyperfixation throughout the chunk of 2014 before I downloaded Street Fighter 4, so by extension, I loved the MVC series, and I downloaded the only edition of this newfound series on the only mobile platform I had.
Upon further research, my timeline may be a little mixed up, it may have gone Ace Attorney -> UMVC3 -> MVC2 -> Andy -> Street Fighter 4, but I think it’s small enough to not really matter since it all happened in less than 4-5 months]

3: [If any of you have the time and appreciation of naturally formed cringe content, you can see a whole lot of my very old tweets from 2014 where I ask countless questions to people in the upper echelons of the FGC, including Smug, James Chen, and UltraDavid. I even ended up becoming decently friendly with eventual EVO winner KaneBlueRiver after wishing him good luck at EVO. I had no shame at that point, and just wanted to talk directly to these faces of the community that I was growing to respect, despite it being a bit annoying and cringe inducting]

4: [I ended up playing on what’s known as a fightpad, it’s a standard grip controller with 6 face buttons, made for fighting games. I did buy a fightstick eventually, but I never was as acclimated to it as I was with the pad https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/411y3LrFV3L.jpg]

5: [I ended up playing Rose, and she’s still the only true dedicated main I have to this day]