I used to be quite good at Street Fighter Alpha 3. Not nearly as good as the world-class players in the (inter)national tourneys showcased at sites like shoryuken mind you, but good enough that I'm confident that at my prime, I wouldn't get
completely trashed by them.
In any case, "my" machine was the one in the game room at the local university I attended at the time. I routinely pumped a quarter into the machine to pass the 30-45 minutes I had between two early afternoon classes. There were other regulars there who I came to know, and we'd teach other how to play and get better at our game of choice (there were 4 machines there, Alpha 3, Third Strike, Marvel vs. Capcom (1), and Tekken Tag).
One day, I walked in, ready to just pick some random character in V-ism (I was working on getting better with my V-isms at the time) and see if I could get through the game with him/her without continuing. I closed my eyes, let the stick fly, hit start, and ended up choosing Dan. Two matches in, some blowhard walks in with his girlfriend. As I'm playing, I and most everyone else, can hear him talking smack about how he's so good at all of the things people happen to playing at the time (Pool, darts, a ping pong game over in a nearby nook). This isn't entirely uncommon, so everyone largely ignores him.
At some point, his girlfriend actually speaks, and asks him about the arcade cabs to the right of them, as I was still busy playing Alpha 3, and one of the other regulars was not five feet away playing Third Strike. He says,
loudly, that "Oh those things don't take any skill. It's just hitting buttons as
fast as you can."
At this point, neither myself, or the guy at the third strike machine (to my knowledge) had even turned away from our monitors to look at him, but right then, we turned and looked at each other. I'm sure he saw the same ire in my eyes that I saw in his.
His girlfriend tells him that it "looks more complicated than that" (
very perceptive girl btw
), and he says "I'll show you". He, of course, picks to play against me (otherwise I wouldn't be telling this story, now would I?
)
I was forced to use V-ism Dan as I had been playing with him when he interrupted my game.He chose Ryu. I played normally against him the first round, was not aggressive, but I beat him handily without really showing off at all. For god sakes, I specifically remember not even taunting
once throughout the round.
He, of course, had the gall to say I was "lucky".
That is when I decided to showboat.
The second round, I started off aggresively by immediately pounding him into a corner, not letting up until about half his life bar was gone, capping it off with a sweep into a rolling taunt.
For clarity's sake, I'm right-handed.
As soon, as the taunt finished and his Ryu was popping back up, I took my left hand off the machine and started jumping away from the corner with the joystick in the crook of my right hand (with the stick in between my thumb and index finger, against my palm). For the remaining time in the round, I played one-handed, using only the weak punch and kicks (as I could only reach those buttons, without straining, while holding the stick in that fashion).
While I'm doing this, the other guy who had finished his game on the Third Strike machine, looks over and non-chalantly starts having a conversation with me as I'm playing. We start talking, I look away from the screen now and then, as if it didn't really matter (which with this joker it didn't). Finally with about 10-15 seconds left, I finish him off with Dan's weak fireball to the face, as he's getting up. At this, my "opponent" audibly growls in frustration, grabs his girl by the crook of her arm, yells "stupid game" at the machine, and storms out.
I'd never showboated against a complete newb like that, and I never have since, but damn if that didn't feel good.
Take this with a grain of salt: After much laughing and discussion about the event with the other guy who had been playing Third Strike next to me, he swore to me up and down that when I started playing one-handed the guy's girlfriend had this big stupid grin on her face as if she was trying not to laugh. Knowing the guy like I do, he's a damned good Third Strike player (could parry like a bitch, and was great with Dudley), but he liked to embellish things a bit. Even so, I like to believe that little bit was true.
