‘Cause nothing warms you up quicker than rage right?
Ok, just hear me out…
Fighting Games are a great parallel to the New Years Resolutions that an awful lot of people will be claiming to take into the new year.
If you was take a swab of the average video game player who’s played a fighting game, their skill level will likely be the casual button basher type. Someone with a varied level of familiarity to how these games work and just sort of mash directions and buttons in hopes of pulling off something flashy.
Whilst that might awkwardly get the job done against people who do the same thing. In reality it’s as if you entered a Pianist competition and in between some beautifully played music by others you simply came in and started whacking keys and hoping for the best.
Fighting games are actually really deep. In fact it’s a common comparison for a match between 2 top level competitors in a fighting game to be referred to like a game of chess. You not only need to be planning what you’re going to do, but you need to anticipating what you think your opponent may do, even at times trying to manipulate their actions through baiting them into false security or setting traps so to speak.
Not only do you need to know your characters you’re using inside and out, you need to have a grasp of every character in that game and how your chosen characters fairs up against any opponent. It’s an eye brow raising moment to have put hundreds of hours into a game and then realise a certain move works great in a certain specific scenario, or even to learn some great ways to shut down the offensive of a certain character that you tend to always have a hard time against.
So back to the point I made at the start of the post. Fighting Games when taken seriously are about learning and self improvement, which we all should wish for ourselves.
2009-2011 I was addicted to fighting games. I used to enjoy competitively playing Street Fighter IV and pick up as many other games as I could. Constantly watch streams of America and Japan’s best players, and strive to surprise my friends and regular opponents with new techniques or at the least new characters I’d be practicing with behind closed doors in order to shake things up.
Then I kind of cold turkey quit when it dawned on me that I had so many video games yet I was only actually playing fighting games and neglecting everything else. Seems a bit of an extreme measure I took when I look back now.
In 2014 I had a small comeback into the fighting game world with Smash Bros WiiU. Constantly having friends over or going to their houses to practice and then taking any skill I’d developed to face other good local players in various tournaments and try to further sharpen up. Then once again, I stepped back and took a break to focus on some other things and sort of fell out of the loop.
Due to having made so many friends through competitive fighting games and tournament play I’m never out of the loop with the FGC (fighting game community). Due to which I got excited for Street Fighter V earlier in 2016. Got the game at release, and within about 2 weeks I’d been distracted elsewhere and have barely touched it since.
So. One of my 2017 GAMING RESOLUTIONS…
…is to invest some serious time into Street Fighter V, or at least enough time to re-inspire my fighting game spirit and potentially lure me to pick up whatever else my old fighting game friends are playing right now.
I just today treated myself to the limited time Street Fighter V Holiday DLC (see video above) as an incentive. 
To end with the usual wintry references for the sake of it, here’s one of my favourite Snow set stages from my own fighting game history.
Barentsburg. The stage starts off simple, with some cute Polar Bear family staying out of any drama and merely observing from a distance as you fight it out, then before long a ship pulls off the fastest docking in history and gives you some flashy backdrops whilst you’re presumably getting to a tense finish in your match up.
Originally this post was going to be a “best snow stages in fighting games” post, but that changed as December 31st was perfect for a “New Years Resolution” themed post. Whilst researching Snow stages though I want to hand it to this BlazBlue: ChronoPhantasma stage for being both new to me, and a definite contender for a position on that original article.
Oh and whilst we’re talking Fighting Games + Winter…
Let’s end with a classic for the ages…
Bad Mr Frosty vs Sumo Santa, something a rare copy of either of the Clayfighter games on N64 would enable you (would you believe both those characters are voiced by Jim Cummings who also has done Winnie the Pooh for as long as I’ve currently been alive).
Till next year, thanks for following Winter in Gaming