It's becoming abundantly clear that any further usage of the social media barf feeds will result in me constantly having to face my own mortality, questioning how I spend my rapidly decaying time left on this rock floating in space, thanks to these constant posts announcing the anniversaries of things from every form of media ever produced.
The most recent grim reminder of my dwindling life-spark came to me via a post stating that the original, Sony Playstation console version of the video game "Street Fighter Alpha 3," perhaps the greatest fighting game, nay, the greatest video game of all time, was released twenty seven years ago, all the way in the wayback of the last millennium, nineteen hundred and ninety nine.
Ah yes, nineteen hundred and ninety nine. The first Matrix movie had dazzled the world with it's innovative special effects, '90s pleather fashion accessories, and dollar store philosophy, paving the way for future, rightwing grifters to usurp the film's "red pill" analogy to spread their backwards ideas before realizing the movie was actually the filmmaker's transgender awakening.
Y2K was holding the country in fear of failing computers sending us back to the stone age at the stroke of midnight that New Year's Eve.
I started my senior year of high school, and spent the majority of it in a filth encrusted basement playing video games.
Do you ever sit back and wonder "what the fuck was I thinking?" If that thought could be manifested into a physical space, it would be that grimy-ass basement. Said basement was provided by my friend at the time, John. His mother worked as an emergency room nurse and thusly, was never home, leaving her house, and basement, the ideal gathering for our roustabout, teenaged, punk rocking soirees. Due to her hectic work schedule, maintenance of the house was left in the hands of her two teenaged sons, and their friends. Subsequently the house was a literal pig sty, containing mountains of garbage, dirty dishes, unwashed clothes, and an odor that permeated your very being. Such conditions were tolerated in order to freely smoke cigarettes, and imbibe certain substances without concern of adults harshing our good times.
Our main interest in the house was the unfinished, concrete rectangle basement. With its one, recessed, storm window supplying minimal lighting, it was an ideal location for our youthful antics, and prime real estate for band practice. Yes, we'd formed our very own punk rock band, a commingling of various friends that came, and left, as band members. My position was one of two guitarists, the second being one of the rotating positions. We were utter trash, but it gave us a reason to hang out, make as much noise as possible, and gave us a creative outlet. Occasionally, part of me regrets not "sticking with it," as they say, but perhaps the band saga, and my subsequent regrets for abandoning music are a tale left for another time.
This picture doesn’t do real justice to the fully sullied state of this basement, but that’s me, playing guitar surrounded by abject filth.
We'd spend everyday, after school, and on weekends, pounding away on our shoddy, cheap instruments, working our way through covers of the simplest Ramones, Misfits, and Exploited songs as those were within grasp of our limited musical prowess, all the while smoking cigarettes, spitting on the floor, imbibing gallons of sugary, carbonated beverages, and embarrassingly, urinating in the corner of the concrete, punk rock bunker. Not my finest moment, admittedly. Believe them when they tell you teenage boys are gross monster people barely capable of using their brains to stand up straight.
So it went, sweating through hours of poorly performed punk chestnuts, enveloped in an oppressive fog of cigarette smoke, as the basement grew grimier by the minute.
It wasn't punk rocking all the time. Occasionally we'd break for our second favorite activity: video games. Somehow we'd managed to procure a table, and a couch, plopping them right into our fetid hole. The couch soon became a cigarette burned, slime encrusted memory of furniture. Sure, it had a shape, and allowed for sitting, but it was a tortured object, beaten and misshapen by constant assaults from dropped cigarettes, spilled alcohol, and on a few occasions, vomit. This is where we sat to play our favorite video games: Super Smash Bros, the multiplayer, Nintendo focused brawler, on the then current Nintendo 64 console, which allowed four of us to play at once, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, on the recently released Playstation, the epic skateboarding quest game that was accompanied by a banger of a punk rock soundtrack, quickly making it a constant in the murky basement, and Capcom fighting games like Street Fighter.
By this time I was a fighting game aficionado, they being my preferred genre of video games, and was pretty good at them. Well, better than my friends, something that irked fellow band mate, and long time friend Ray, who fancied himself a fighting game expert, but who was in fact, not.
Often times we'd play Capcom's Marvel Superheroes late into the night, taking turns, the loser switching out for the next player. My go to character was Psylocke, the ninja mutant X-Man, with her incredible speed, and agility. While we always had fun during these marathon sessions, Ray would resort to butt hurt status with each loss. The matches between us were probably something like 5 million to 10 in my favor, but he was bound, and determined, to turn the odds in his favor.
One day, the door to the basement was flung open, exposing the dankness to the outside light, into which bounded Ray, clutching in his eager hands a new Playstation game: Street Fighter Alpha 3, the third installment of the now legendary "Alpha" series that was released after the domination of Street Fighter II had run it's course. The Alpha games upped the Street Fighting ante by increasing the speed, adding new game mechanics, over saturating the colors of the now anime styled art, and adding new characters into the mix. I was intimately acquainted with the previous two installments having spent copious amounts of time in various arcades, unbeknownst to Ray. The Playstation version of Alpha 3 was Ray's ticket to finally delivering the Street Fighter ass-whooping he so desperately thought I had coming to me.
He plopped down on the crusted couch and dropped the game into the Playstation. Handing me a controller, he looked me dead in the eyes, an all to serious look on his face, and said "okay, let's fucking do this," as he pushed the power button.
The game screamed to life. After selecting "VS" mode I immediately chose the character Guy, the Bushin-Ryu Ninjitsu practicing brawler who was ported over into the Alpha games from Capcom's beat em' up series "Final Fight." His speed, and high flying kicks, made him an easy favorite of mine, not to mention his stylish footwear, a staple of all the Bushin-Ryu characters, sporting the best fits in the series. My quick selection gave Ray pause as he moseyed about the character select screen, unsure who to challenge me with, eventually settling on his typical Chun-Li.
With the characters chosen, our match started. While I had not played Alpha 3 yet, its mechanics were very similar to the previous installment's, so I had very little trouble pulling off Guy's series of flying kicks, running slide attacks, and elbow drops, right onto Ray's Chun-Li, who was now floundering after it became apparent I was capable of playing this game as well. He lost the match, handedly, and the proceeding umpteen rematches, before throwing the controller in a fit of rage, his plans of shanghaiing me into defeat by a new game having failed spectacularly. He stormed up the stairs, back to the comparatively cleaner upstairs, while I started to get acquainted with what would become my favorite video game of all time.
The muck and filth surrounding me faded away as I became engrossed in the latest Street Fighter installment. Playing through the roster, all my favorite characters were there: Blanka, my green skinned, Brazilian monster boy, Sakura the plucky, Ryu-worshipping, school girl, Rose, the wild-haired magician, the hulking, uppercutting master Sagat, and Akuma, the oppressive demon. All presented in dazzling colors, high-flying, anime inspired art, and those beautiful, Capcom rendered pixels. It was, and is, a work of art.
Time lost all meaning as I kicked, and punched, my way through the game, over, and over, learning its new tricks, discovering its secrets, when suddenly, I was jarred back to reality by Ray flinging the basement door open once again, and marching back downstairs. Still in a huff he slammed the power button down, abruptly ending my game, and ejected the disc out of the Playstation, spun on his heels as he growled "we'll just see about this," and disappeared back upstairs, leaving me alone, holding a useless controller, surrounded by refuse. Sore loser, I supposed.
A week later, gathering yet again in the basement/garbage bin for band practice, Ray suddenly materialized out of thin air, as if he'd found some sort of temporal time loop allowing him to travel between piles of trash, with a big, dumb, shit-eating green stretched out across his giant head.
"Fancy a game?" he asked, menacingly, as he held up his copy of Street Fighter Alpha 3. I did. Of course I did. It seemed Ray had something to prove.
Turns out, one of the features in the game is a "World Tour" mode, wherein you select any of the game's characters, and run them through a series of battles against the computer, at various locations all over the Street Fighter world, gaining new abilities, and improving your characters stats. Once you finished leveling up, you could then save your newly, high-powered character, and add them to the roster to use against your friends in VS mode. Ray knew this, and knew that I did not. He had spent the better part of the week leveling up Chun-Li in order to get the jump on me.
He fired up the game, and just to fuck with him, I picked Blanka, instead of Guy. He tried to keep his poker face as he selected his Chun-Li plant. Licking his lips, tightening his grip on the controller, he was ready for his moment to shine, which would have happened if I didn't soundly beat his stupid, tricky ass into the ground without any trouble.
Furiously he sprang from the derelict couch, fuming about his secret plans, and how I mush have cheated, or was "mashing buttons," the last refuge of the tilted, angry, losing fighting game player.
"Fine," I said. "Best two out of three," to which he agreed. No more fucking around, I switched back to Guy, just to rub it in, and enjoyed my victory as Ray squirmed, squealed, and cringed with every hit I landed. I could do this all night. Ray could not. In one final rage explosion, he stormed out of the basement screaming "fuck it, it's your game now!" which pleased me greatly, not just that I had so easily acquired the best fighting game ever, but that fucking with Ray was always so fruitful.
Ray never played me again in any fighting game while we were still friends, the utter humiliation of his defeat leaving an open wound in his pride that would never heal, something that wasn't affected by pissing in the corner of somebodies basement, but was so easily damaged by a video game.
Now, lying in my clean bed, with modern conveniences like my handheld, video game console, the Steam Deck, playing Street Fighter Alpha 3, it hasn't lost any of its charm, or wonder, for me. Occasionally when I pull off a particularly juicy combo with Guy I'm reminded of Ray's squeals, as the color in his face drained, his plans of subterfuge, dashed, and laid to waste with the piss-stained corners, and garbage piles in that dingy basement, and I chuckle to myself. Then suddenly get the urge to wash my fucking hands.