Fighting in the Street Part IV: The King of Fighters?

While all the hype behind MKII and SSFII was overwhelming US gamers (The two games were basically all that my friends and I would talk about at summer camp that year, outside of the X-Men), SNK released a game that would be more important to the evolution of fighting games than anybody realized. The King of Fighters '94 offered a unique gameplay experience, where players chose 3-on-3 teams, mostly made up of characters from other SNK fighting games; Ryo, Robert, and Takuma from Art of Fighting comprised one team, while Terry, Andy, and Joe from Fatal Fury were another. 

This meant that the SNK games were all part of a shared world, something not really ever explored in video gaming up until this point. Sure, Mario appeared in the original Donkey Kong game, Pin Ball and the Super Mario Bros. games, but that wasn't necessarily a shared universe; it was Nintendo re-using a character design for multiple games. King of Fighters was the first time we saw game characters in a shared world, like in comic books!

And not only were these characters in the same game, characters from different games were on the same teams; Yuri and King from AOF teamed with Fatal Fury 2's Mai Shiranui, and Kim Kaphwan from Fatal Fury 2 teamed with original characters Choi Bounge and Chang Koehan. 

In addition to characters from Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, KOF '94 

featured the lead characters from the Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier games; So it wasn't just the SNK fighting games that were a part of this shared world. It was potentially SNK's entire game library!

Unfortunately, the hype behind Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II was so huge, The King of Fighters '94 got left in the dust. All of us serious fighting gamers knew it was there, but it wasn't making the US gaming magazine headlines.

And, really, why should it? Art of Fighting was a piece of trash game. It had some great characters and cool ideas, but the actual gameplay was crap, and we all knew it. Fatal Fury was pretty okay, but nobody could find it in any arcades. Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier were both games whose days had come and gone - The inclusion of those characters was more of a fun bonus than anything else. And despite having 24 playable characters (the most in any fighting game up to that point), there were only 8 teams, and you were stuck with all 3 team members.

The King of Fighters was a fantastic idea that got held back because of its legacy and limitations. At least that year.

But by the end of 1994, Capcom's Street Fighter would be the first to do something that neither Midway nor SNK was really prepared for - Release a feature-length film!

Street Fighter starred martial arts movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, in his quest to defeat M. Bison (played by Raul Julia), once and for all. The film was considered a financial flop, mostly because it sucked. Why was Chun-Li a news reporter? Why were Dee Jay and Zangief working for M. Bison? And why wasn't Balrog? Where was Ryu's trademark red headband? AND WHY WASN'T ANYBODY FIGHTING?! For a movie called "Street Fighter," there was WAY too much talking. 

I remember my dad taking my brother and I to see the film, and FALLING ASLEEP in the middle. I have to say, I wasn't much more impressed with the movie, myself. And for a 12-year-old kid to be disappointed in a movie based on a franchise he loved, that's saying something. I mean, there were parts of it that I liked, but it seemed as if the producers hadn't even TRIED to make a good movie.

I have a much fonder appreciation for the movie, now, as the tongue-in-cheek, campy ride that it was probably intended to be. My friends and I will often make daft references to it while playing games over XBox Live (the "Each Bison Dollar will be worth FIVE British Pounds!" line, and basically anything Dee Jay said being amongst our favorites to quote). I own it on DVD, but I only paid five bucks for it, because I refused to pay any more. It did, however, introduce me to Kylie Minogue, who has become one of my favorite pop singers.

But with the two-hit combo of the film and the release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which introduced even more moves and a new secret boss character into the SF world, Street Fighter was undisputedly the true "King of Fighters." At least for the next several months...

Fighting in the Street Part III: Super Kombat

MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAT!

By the time September of 1993 rolled around, EVERYBODY had played Street Fighter. And those of us who stuck with it had all learned how to throw Hadokens with our eyes closed. We were Hundred-Hand Slapping the controllers fast enough to create Sonic Booms, and there were enough Tigers to shake a forest of sticks at.

So when Mortal Kombat came out on Mortal Monday, we were ready for a change. And what a change we had! Not only did a gallon of blood fly out of your enemy's head with every hit, at the end of a match, you could literally KILL your opponent! 

MK definitely inspired a faster style of gameplay - There were only two punch and two kick attacks, and a block button. But, unlike in Street Fighter, when you blocked in MK, you still took a bit of damage. But there was something lacking. MK had seven playable characters, five fewer than SFII Turbo, but everybody was completely different... Or did they?

See, the thing about Mortal Kombat was that, while everybody LOOKED completely different from each other (outside of Scorpion and Sub-Zero, who were yellow and blue versions of the same ninja outfit), everybody played basically identically. So it wasn't like you could get really good with Liu Kang and then have to re-learn how to play to master Rayden. You really just had to be good at Mortal Kombat, and learn which moves did the most damage and had the most priority.

And Sub-Zero was so incredibly overpowered in that game with his Freeze Ball and a slide attack that could hit opponents on the ground, that any high-level MK matches just came down to who hit the first Freeze Ball.

But by the time anybody really figured that out, Mortal Kombat had made its money, and a sequel was announced. Mortal Kombat II would feature twelve characters - Five returning, and seven brand-new fighters. Each character would now have TWO Fatality moves, and the entire game had been given a facelift; Not a single graphic from MK1 was re-used. The game was faster, bloodier, and more violent than ever. And gamers ate it up.

So, for fear of losing ground in the fighting game community that they started, what did Capcom do? Announce a new version of Street Fighter, of course! Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers introduced four new characters: Dee Jay, a dancing Jamaican kickboxer; T. Hawk, a native American powerhouse; Cammy White, a teenage British intelligence officer; and Fei Long, who looked, sounded, and fought just like Bruce Lee. In addition, the background stages and character portraits had all been completely re-drawn and looked better than ever, every character got at least one new move, and the four boss characters all had their non-special attacks completely re-animated.

It's hard to say which game was the "winner" in 1994, but one thing's for sure - Whatever was coming next from either company had some huge shoes to fill, or there was going to be trouble.

But was there enough room for a third entrant in this battle for fighting supremacy? Around the corner loomed a game that claimed to be the KING of fighters...

Fighting in the Street Part II: The Art of Fatal Kombat.

It took me just over a year, but I'd finally played and beaten Street Fighter II.  And there were already TWO new versions in the arcade; Street Fighter II: Champion Edition which included a couple of new moves, varied the speed and range of some of the previous moves, and allowed a character to face him or herself in a new color. It also re-colored all of the backgrounds, to allow for easy visual distinction. Champion Edition also allowed players to use the four boss characters; Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison. Finally, all 12 characters would be playable!

But by the end of 1992, we also had Turbo Street Fighter II: Champion Edition - Hyper Fighting, which replaced everybody's original color with a new 3rd color, and made the original colors the 2nd player color. It also increased the speed of the game by 15%, as well as introduced even more new moves, such as Chun-Li's fireball and Dhalsim's teleport.

In late 1992, Capcom announced that Champion Edition would be coming to the Sega Genesis (known as the Mega Drive in every non-US country ever), making the Genesis seem like the ideal console for SFII playing. Except that its controller only had three buttons, and SFII required at least six. And then in the late spring of '93, Capcom announced  Street Fighter II Turbo (a shortened title for the 3rd installment of SFII) for the SNES. In the summer of that year, SFII Turbo came to the Super Nintendo as announced, and SFII: SPECIAL Champion Edition came to the Genesis. What made this edition so special? It had all the same features as SFII Turbo on the SNES. So Capcom basically marketed the same game with two different titles.

Also, to make up for the lack of necessary buttons, Sega designed a six-button controller, and several third-party companies began designing 6-button arcade sticks, specifically to cash in on the popularity of Street Fighter II. Otherwise, players could press the Start button to swap the A, B, and C buttons between punches and kicks - Not ideal, but probably the best solution Capcom could've come up with that didn't destroy the integrity of SFII's control scheme.

I remember the first time we rented SFII Turbo on the Super NES, I was up until 3:26 am trying to beat the game as Vega. Even before I grew my hair out, I was intrigued by long-haired dudes. I think my early days of watching wrestling may have had something to do with that, as mullets were super-popular in the WWF during the early 90s. Plus, Vega had a claw similar to Wolverine from the X-Men comics, and had a cool sash. Besides, he was always the hardest character for me to beat in the original SFII, so he must be the best, right?

Anyways. I defeated all 12 characters that night, and didn't do anything besides play that game, outside of go to school and homework for the rest of the rental period. Oh, summer vacations...

In October of 1993, my brother got Turbo on the SNES for his birthday, the first copy of SF owned by somebody in my house! It was super-exciting. But by that time, Street Fighter's reign of excellence seemed to be coming to a close.

Midway, the company responsible for games like Smash T.V. and Arch Rivals, had released a competitor to Street Fighter II. Japanese company SNK had tried, but all of their games were only available on the Neo-Geo console.

Now, the Neo-Geo was a wonderful piece of machinery; It had all the power of an arcade cabinet, and hooked up to your home television. The controllers it came with were two arcade-quality joysticks, and the cartridges were the size of video cassettes. The games found in these cartridges were arcade-perfect realizations of SNK's games. The problem? The Neo-Geo cost $500. That's what consoles are released for today, but back in the early '90s, the SNES debuted at $250. Not to mention, due to the high quality of the Neo-Geo cartridges, the games were all priced at around twice what SNES, Genesis, and NES games cost. Sure, I could have my arcade-perfect port of SF-competitors Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, but not at a price anybody that *I* knew could afford.

But Midway did something else. Rather than try and beat Street Fighter at its own game, they used the cutting-edge technology available to them. Rather than create a fighting game with anime-inspired, hand-drawn graphics, as SNK's Neo-Geo games were doing, Midway used real people, and digitized the footage of these characters into game sprites. The lead designers for Midway's project, Ed Boon and John Tobias, also decided that SF wasn't violent enough for their tastes; They couldn't understand why, when Blanka dizzied an opponent, he didn't just eat their head. So ultra-violence was the theme of their game. Arcades had been abuzz of this smash hit for a few months, but in September of 1993, console gamers were told to prepare themselves...

Fighting in the Street: Part I

It began in February, 1992.

My mom had only recently moved into her first apartment after she and my dad separated. My brother and I spent the weekends at her place, and most weekends we'd go to the Blockbuster Video that was about a mile from her house. My bro and I would each pick out a video game to rent and then we'd get a couple of movies. But something different happened this particular Saturday. Blockbuster had a single magazine up by the checkout, called GamePro, and it featured what was the biggest craze in the world at the time - The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I begged with my mom to please get the magazine for me. I wanted-- No, NEEDED-- to know about this new Ninja Turtles video game coming out! She conceded, and I was happy as a pig in shit.

The magazine was awesome. Not only did it have a two-page story about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project on the NES, it also had reviews on a bunch of other games. I remember one for Megaman II on the Gameboy, and one for an arcade game that I'd never heard of before: Street Fighter II.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this game, but it had a very unique premise: You could select one of eight brightly-colored characters, each with their own look, fighting style, and attacks. And this game had SIX attack buttons! SIX!!! As an NES owner, I was used to two buttons. My cousins had gotten a Sega Genesis for Christmas, and they kept bragging that those controllers had THREE buttons. But six?! This was unheard of!

The next month, not only was Street Fighter II featured, it was the COVER ARTICLE. I enjoyed the previous month's GamePro, I had to get this next issue, too. Thankfully, mom obliged me yet again, and I went home with this magazine dedicated to SFII.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Street Fighter II preview in that initial issue didn't really do very much for me. I have only the vaguest recollections of looking at the article, reading it, and moving on to something far more interesting. And even when the March issue came out, it still wasn't a huge deal, but I figured the game had to be important if it got to be on the cover. After all, the month before, the NINJA TURTLES were on the cover! So SFII had to be at least almost as big a deal as a new TMNT game.

The subsequent months had articles and special insert pages telling the coolest moves and combos for each of the characters. Oh man, this game looked SO COOL! I couldn't wait to play it!

But wait was exactly what I would have to do. 

See, the Super NES had JUST come out, so there was no way I was going to get my parents to buy me one so quickly. Plus, I had managed to talk my dad into buying me TMNTIII on a rainy Monday evening in the spring, and an entire Sega Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog the very next day. Not only that, I had somehow managed to rack up something like 7 or 8 NES games at Christmas - Codename: Viper, Clash at Demonhead, NARC, and a new copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 to replace my broken one were just the tip of the iceberg. I had enough new games, so my dreams of a Super NES and the forthcoming Street Fighter II home release would have to wait.

I think it was October of the following school year, one of my new friends in 4th grade (whom I never saw again after that year) had gotten a Super NES for his birthday, and invited a bunch of us over to play  games with him. If I remember correctly (you have to understand, 1992 was 18 years ago for me), his parents were going to be at work late that night, and his older brother was okay with people coming over to play video games. He was telling us that he'd gotten Super Mario World, Final Fight, Contra III, and Street Fighter II.

Humminabwah!? Street Fighter II?! The game that I had been reading about in GamePro for A YEAR?! Yeah, I was gonna be there for that, I don't care what kind of trouble I might get in (turns out it was none).

I totally sucked at the game and lost every match, but holy crap, did I have fun! People were impressed that I knew all the special moves, even though I'd never played the game. I remember being pretty good with the manbeast, Blanka, although the fact that he turned around to do his crouching Roundhouse kick kind of threw me off.

That Christmas, Santa was kind enough to get me and my brother a Super Nintendo (along with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time...But more on that game in a future entry!), so the FIRST CHANCE I GOT, I rented Street Fighter II. AND HOLY CRAP WAS THIS GAME AMAZING!!! By this time, I had even memorized the code to play character vs. same character (Down, R, Up, L, Y, B at the "Capcom" logo screen), and I just could not stop playing.

As a ten-year-old kid, this game had been building up in my brain for a year. That was 1/10th of my entire life -- There was NO possible way that this game was going to be bad. None, period.

My first favorite character was Guile, because I could do the Sonic Boom and Flash Kick. I liked that he was an All-American "army guy," and his funny hair intrigued me. Plus, he had that weird upside-down jumpkick attack, and nobody else could do that.

It took me forever to finally beat the game, even on the lowest difficulty setting. But I was so proud when I finally did. I felt like I could do anything in that game, now that I'd toppled the evil M. Bison, and crushed his crime syndicate.

After a year of build-up, I had finally played and conquered Street Fighter II. But that wasn't the end of the journey, my fellow Geeks. No, it was only the beginning...

You don't like that I like wrestling?

First off, thank you to Blogger for finally allowing us to upload our own background images. I'll have something slightly more exciting in the near future, but getting to use the background from my personal site is far better than anything that they offered as a default image.

Secondly, I noticed that a few people who read yesterday's entry about my journey into pro wrestling decided to misinterpret some of the end of my entry, and think that I said TNA Wrestling was some sort of flawless entity. Not so; In fact, far from it. There's a lot of things TNA has done in the past that are inexcusably bad. But over the last several months, I think they've regained their focus, and I honestly feel that TNA is doing a much better job than either of the WWE's programs of keeping their World Championship as the most important thing in the company.

I don't care what wrestling company it is - WWE, TNA, ROH, indies, whatever! - If the between-match shenanigans aren't building towards a particular match either later that night or by the next PPV, then I'm not enjoying that segment, and it is a waste of my viewing time. For example, the entirety of Kevin Nash's recent storyline, about what happened in WCW over ten years ago? I don't care for these segments. I was watching WCW at the time, and rather enjoying the product (but, then, I've always been less cynical and far more forgiving than most wrestling fans on the Internet seem to be). And the biggest drawback to Nash's current storyline is that it's all based on backstage BS that never made it on to TV.

How is this relevant to any of today's fans? Bischoff and Hogan and Jarrett are calling Nash out on, what... the fact that he likes to get paid, in a capitalist society? And, really? Hulk Hogan is giving somebody shit about making money?

I think Ric Flair's "Fortune" stable vs "EV2.0" is being played backwards; Fortune should be presented as the young guys who have been with TNA for a long time, making their own name. Meanwhile, EV2.0 should be presented as the assholes who are coming in and taking up the young blood's valuable television time, despite having already had their chance in the spotlight.

What good is it to TNA's fanbase to have them booing the guys who will be with the company at the conclusion of this storyline, and cheering the guys who will all be gone by the end of 2011? This makes about as much sense as WCW's New Blood vs Millionaire's Club angle, which was basically the exact same thing... and when THAT version of this story was over, the New Blood was all that was left. But audiences had just spent the last year hating all the young guys, and had no reason to stop... probably driving a lot of the viewership to the WWF's product. And if the Fortune vs EV2.0 story isn't handled carefully, it COULD outright kill TNA.

However.

TNA is still doing a far better job of keeping the TNA Championship as the central focus of the company. Everybody is there with the intention of either winning that title, or helping to build its legacy. EV2.0 stuck around to hang out with TNA Champion Rob Van Dam. Fortune are a bunch of guys who think that EV2.0 don't deserve to be anywhere near the belt. Hogan, Bischoff, and Jarrett vs Nash & Sting is all about letting the young guys have their day in the sun, and not hogging the Championship on top of a glass ceiling. Meanwhile, Jeff Hardy, Kurt Angle, Ken Anderson, and D'Angelo Dinero have been setting up for the finals of the championship tournament at TNA's biggest PPV of the year, Bound For Glory.

The entire Knockouts division has been focused around Madison Rayne and her Knockouts Championship, for the last several months.

The Motor City Machine Guns and Beer Money, Inc. just had an incredible series of matches for the TNA Tag Team Championship.

Doug Williams has brought some attention back to the X-Division Championship with some unique championship defenses.

And AJ Styles winning the Legends Global Television Championship from Rob Terry and RE-re-naming it brings a LOT of attention to that title belt.

Again; In TNA, the focus is on the championships. On Raw, the focus is on mystery GMs and celebrity guests who do nothing to contribute to the actual matches, and just distract from the fact that half of the roster couldn't put together anything more than a basic match to save their careers, and a handful of rookies who can barely even put together a basic match. Smackdown, meanwhile, has never had a central focus since it began in 1999. It's always been the "B-show" that creates stars to feature on Raw.

One of my friends once described the WWE's product as "all sizzle and no steak." And I find it hard to disagree with that.

Which isn't to say that TNA is all steak. They've got plenty of sizzle, themselves. But of the two companies, I very much prefer what TNA is putting on television.

Or, at least, I did. I'm three weeks and a PPV behind. I could completely change my mind based on what's happened between The Whole F'N Show and No Surrender. Plus last night's episode.

Also, because I don't want this to become just another wrestling blog, this is the last thing I'm going to be writing about wrestling for a LOOOOONG while. For everybody else, back to your regularly-scheduled geekiness on Monday.

Finally, next time you have a comment about something I write, please at least have the decency to say it directly to me in my own comments section, rather than hiding behind somebody else's Facebook page. Let's all be adults, here, hm?

You don't like wrestling. part 2.

Alright, so yesterday I pretty much just bitched about what I didn't like about UFC, which is exactly what I complained about them doing with pro wrestling. So today, I'll instead not talk about what I don't like, and try to focus more on what I do like about wrestling.

First things first. I'm a child of the 80s in basically every sense. I was born in 1982, so I'm young enough to still be in my 20s, but old enough to actually remember the world in the 80s. And what I remember was violence.

Not in the sense of wars; the Vietnam War had been over for almost two decades by the time I had ever heard about it. Not in the sense of gangs; I turned 8 in 1990, and lived in rural or suburban New England for a lot of my childhood. The violence I remember was on television.

I'll often describe The Transformers as "my first favorite thing after Sesame Street and/or Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Transformers was a show about good robots who turned into vehicles battling evil robots who turned into vehicles. Before Transformers, I have vague recollections of watching He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, where an evil warlord is trying to overthrow the kingdom of Eternia, and battles with its defenders, the Masters of the Universe. I recall Voltron, where an evil sorceress and a twisted prince would send robot beasts to destroy worlds they wanted to rule, and they would be fought off by a quintet of robotic, Lion-shaped vehicle gestalt.  G.I. Joe combated Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. The Thundercats defended Third Earth from an evil, ancient Egyptian wizard. The Silverhawks confronted an intergalactic mob. The Real Ghostbusters would battle evil apparitions. The Super Mario Brothers were always trying to stop King Koopa from kidnapping Princess Toadstool. Link was in conflict with Ganon over the Triforces in the Legend of Zelda. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fought evil ninja.

My childhood was filled with violent entertainment. As far as I was aware, that's pretty much all there was for kids to watch - Action cartoons with heroes in brightly-colored outfits fighting against villains in secondary colors.

I was aware of professional wrestling, thanks to a few neighborhood kids having the video games, or my cousins inviting me to watch WWF Superstars of Wrestling with them when I'd visit on the weekends. But it wasn't until the morning of Monday, April 5th, 1993 that I would give it much of a second thought.

I was ten years old, and had only been living in this particular city for about a year. I'd made friends with some of the kids in my neighborhood, and we'd all walk to school together, a lot of mornings. We'd usually talk about any of the aforementioned action cartoons, or what video games we were playing (Street Fighter II on the SNES being the most popular bit of our gaming conversations). But not on that morning.

The night before was the World Wrestling Federations ninth annual Wrestlemania program. And, as my friends explained to me, in the main event, Bret "Hit Man" Hart was defending the WWF Championship against Yokozuna, the winner of January's Royal Rumble match, the first time the winner of the Rumble faced the champion at Wrestlemania.

At the conclusion of the match, Yokozuna's manager, Mr. Fuji, threw salt in the eyes of Bret Hart, blinding the "Hit Man," allowing Yoko to take advantage and take not only the win, but also the WWF Championship title. The omni-present Hulk Hogan came out to help Bret from the ring, but before he could guide the now-former champ to the backstage area, Mr. Fuji got on the microphone. Fuji claimed that Yokozuna could beat anybody, anytime, anywhere, and Fuji challenged Hulk Hogan to a match for Yokozuna's newly-won WWF Championship. Hogan reluctantly agreed, having had already competed in a tag team match, himself, earlier in the night.

As the second WWF Championship match of the night commenced, Mr. Fuji tried to throw salt in the Hulkster's eyes, as he'd done to Bret Hart, just moments before. But the Immortal One saw what was coming and ducked. The salt hit Yokozuna in the eyes, and the Leader of Hulkamania quickly scored a win (in under one minute), becoming the first-ever five-time WWF Champion.

Now, put yourself in my shoes. I knew Hulk Hogan was the ultimate hero in the land of the World Wrestling Federation, and I had just heard a tale of him overcoming what sounded like the ultimate in evils to re-take the title of the greatest warrior in the land.

To put it bluntly, that sounded awesome.

It was the exact kind of story I would expect in one of my action cartoons, except these were REAL PEOPLE. And I was ten years old, so I was a double-digiter. It was time for me to phase out those silly kid's cartoons and start watching something with real people; After all, that's how I understood the world to work, at the time. Cartoons were for children, live-action shows were for adults.

And WWF television sounded like the perfect transition.

I'm pretty sure it was that night (although, honestly, it could have been the following week) that I tuned in to my first episode of Monday Night Raw, back when it was still being broadcast from the Grand Ballroom in the Manhattan Center.

The first match I saw was a six-foot-eight, three-hundred-pound man in orange-and-purple spandex with the RADDEST blond mullet I'd ever witnessed in my entire life (also, remember, it was 1993, and mullets were just beginning to become popular. And, yes, in 10 years, everybody will laugh at you for combing your hair in front of your face the way people laugh at mullets, today). This wrestler was named "Crush," and that's exactly what he did; He CRUSHED his opponent, with seeming ease.

Crush quickly became my favorite of all the WWF's Superstars (They weren't just wrestlers. They weren't just stars. They were SUPER-STARS!), but over the next several weeks, I became intrigued by the egotism of "Mr. Perfect," the all-business attitude of Bret Hart, the youthful courage of the "1-2-3 Kid," and the cockiness of the Intercontinental Champion, Shawn Michaels (the Intercontinental Championship was the 2nd-tier title in the WWF).

I was also just getting into comic books at this time, and the parallels between the Marvel Universe and the World Wrestling Federation were rather astonishing. Both featured overmuscled men in bright, colorful tights covered in intricate designs, fighting for what they felt was right.

Every week, I would try to stay up to watch Monday Night Raw, and then I'd watch WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestling Challenge on Saturday afternoons at 1 and 2pm, respectively. WIthin a couple of months, I was even watching All-American Wrestling on Sunday mornings at noon, as well as WWF Mania on Saturday mornings at 10am. The WWF was the absolute coolest thing I had ever seen, and somehow I had never been privy to this world of excitement. And the best part was, it seemed like all of my friends already knew a lot about wrestling, so they could explain to me who guys were and what other wrestlers they'd had matches with before, and who'd they'd beaten.

Over the next several years, I began watching as much wrestling as I could, exploring into the WWF's rival promotion, World Championship Wrestling. WCW had a very different product, but a lot of their roster was made up with wrestlers who were leaving the WWF when I started watching the "sport," so it was cool to get to witness them all again.

Somehow, I recall knowing that wrestling was "fake," right from the beginning. I don't at all remember how I knew this, but I know that I knew things weren't entirely legitimate. After all, if everything in the WWF was on the up-and-up, then Crush would surely at least be Intercontinental Champion, right? He was the best guy in the entire company!

And, really, I think that's what I like best about professional wrestling - It appeals to the ten-year-old boy in me who is fascinated by people striving to be the best there is at what they do (even if what they do isn't very nice).

Somewhere along the way, the WWF/WWE's writers lost sight of the fact that everything in the company is supposed to be about becoming the best of the best, and everybody should be striving for the championships. And as a result, I have progressively lost more and more interest in their product.

However, leading up to their pay-per-view event in October of 2009, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (with the unfortunate acronym of "TNA") really started to focus on making the TNA Championship the most important thing in their company. And when that happened, I was immediately attracted to their world in the same way I became obsessed with the WWF, 17-and-a-half years prior.

And that leads me up to today. The TNA Championship is still the most important thing in TNA, and, behind-the-scenes, the promoters and writers are still dedicated to putting on a new, exciting show every Thursday night, with fresh matches and exciting action.

Meanwhile, the WWE has this unspoken caste system amongst their "Superstars," resulting in endless tirades of rematches, and everybody builds their matches in basically the exact same way, using a lot of the same basic maneuvers and defenses. And there is far too much "ga-ga" between the actual matches for my tastes.

Now, I understand why the WWE operates the way it does; They're trying to get away with doing as little as possible and make a living off of not putting the folks they have under contract in any more danger than is necessary. It's a very smart business decision on their part, and as a businessman, I don't disagree with that decision. What is unfortunate, though, is that, at the end of the day, their product eventually becomes completely predictable. And if I see where a story is going before it gets there, I tend to find that rather tedious and boring.

And the bullshit they fill the shows with between the matches is abysmal dreck. A comment was left in yesterday's entry about how the storylines of pro wrestling are much like a male soap opera; "the invented stories of each are equally as stupid and trite." And I ABSOLUTELY agree. I wish it wasn't there.

I know a large percentage of the population apparently gets off on it, but I just don't care for the out-of-the-ring shenanigans. The "You hit on my wife and now I must kill you!" or "You're a smelly butthole and so we shall fight!" bullshit really doesn't do anything for me. 

I just want to watch two guys get in the ring and beat the shit out of each other to prove which of them is the best. Right now, TNA is giving me that. The WWE is not.

But I still like watching brightly-colored violence, and there are few better places to get it than in a wrestling ring.

Let me get this straight: You don't like wrestling. (part 1?)

"Yeah, I don't like wrestling. I like the real shit. UFC, MMA, that kind of thing."

This is the typical response i get from men who find out I like wrestling.

"I used to watch, back when it was the WWF/back when they had The Rock and/or Stone Cold," is the response I get from everybody else.

So, basically, when I mention that I like professional wrestling, everybody feels the need to not only tell me that they don't like it, they also tell me WHY IT SUCKS.

First of all, to everybody watching "MMA," that is the most mis-leading name of all time. "Mixed Martial Arts" is not a fighting style, and FUCK UFC and all of the other so-called "MMA Promotions" for confusing the masses.

Go back and watch UFC1, from 1994 or whatever. It was a boxer, a sumo, a kickboxer, a jiu-jitsu guy, a karate guy, etc. Eight guys out to prove what the best fighting discipline was. No pads, no "stopping the fight to protect the athletes," no weight classes, none of that bullshit. The Ultimate Fighting Championship was just that - an 8-man tournament to determine the Ultimate Fighter. And Royce Gracie was better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu than any of those other guys were at their respective disciplines. THREE TIMES.

UFC is a far cry from what it set out to be, and is now a bastardization of Pro Wrestling's showmanship and the Olympiad Games' overabundance of rules so deep you don't ever get to see an actual fight.

Or, in the case that you actually DO get to see a fight, you get two guys covered in tattoos (because they're that HARD, you see) hugging, while punching each other in the kidneys until one of them falls over. Then they try and wrap body parts around each other, often resulting in a "Triangle Choke," so called because the guy in the hold has his face in a triangle between the other guy's wang, left testicle, and right testicle.

Or the thing that plagued boxing pay-per-view events, 30-second knockouts. Hey, it's totally impressive for the guy doing the knocking out. It's not impressive for the sucker that just shelled out $50 for the event and spent $100 on snacks for his friends that he invited over.

In the mid-1990s, Royce Gracie was the best fighter in the world. In 2010, nobody can pronounce his first name correctly, nevermind even remember it. Instead, we get the "Ultimate Fighting Championship Champion" (thank you for calling the department of redundancy department) Brock Lesnar, canceling fights because his tummy hurts. Referees are suddenly stopping fights at indiscriminate times to "protect the fighters," or not, because "the fight is too important." Everybody's wearing padded gloves and boxing shorts. It disgusts me.

Now, to the crowd you "used to" watch "WWF" programming:

You're the equivalent of what traditional sports viewers call a "fairweather fan." You like something that all of your friends like, because it's doing well right now. People who watched Stone Cold and The Rock in 1998-2002 are the wrestling equivalent of the lady who went into Sports Authority a couple months ago, and asked if they had any Netherlands' jerseys, so she could wear one to the World Cup Finals. Ten bucks says that lady had never even heard of the Netherlands before April.

Look, Stone Cold Steve Austin was one of the most compelling characters on television, ever. There's no denying that fact. He drank on the job, he got to swear at and beat up his boss, he gave people the finger... He embodied what the blue-collar worker wanted to do every day at the office or on the construction site. So, basically, a pissed-off, drunken, sociopathic redneck. The exact kind of thing that reasonable people make fun of each other for being.

And if Austin wasn't your flavor, there was The Rock, a man so obsessed with saying things more outrageous than you could imagine that nobody bothered to notice that he was also probably the world's biggest asshole. No wonder his only friend was Mankind, a guy so dirt-poor and smelly that he hung out with a sock, when he wasn't busy getting thrown off steel cages through tables.

Nobody seems to remember that in 1998 and 1999, Ken Shamrock was one of the biggest stars in the WWF. You remember Ken Shamrock, right? He tapped out to Royce Gracie in under a minute, at UFC1. I mean, he was the guy in the red wrestling trunks who would go crazy and suplex referees all the time, because he had a temper that he just couldn't keep in check.

Or what about in 1999, when the Undertaker went even darker than usual and started abducting wrestlers, and brainwashing them into joining his "Ministry of Darkness." Really? You forget that a 7-foot guy called The Undertaker (who is still wrestling now, by the way), was BRAINWASHING wrestlers, and forcing them to join his cult of death?

How about in November 1999, when Kurt Angle joined the WWF? You remember Kurt Angle, yeah? He won the OLYMPIC FUCKING GOLD MEDALS at the 1996 Olympiad Games in Atlanta, Georgia in Freestyle Wrestling. Kurt Angle was to wrestling what Royce Gracie was to Mixed Martial Arts (back when they were still mixed) -- THE BEST IN THE WORLD. And then he joined the WWF, and started acting like the world's biggest dork; preaching abstinence, well-balanced diets, and spilling milk all over himself.

It seems that people who no longer watch wrestling only remember eight matches, and seven of them are The Undertaker vs. Mankind in the Hell in a Cell match atthe  King of the Ring 1998 Pay-Per-View event. You know, the one where Mankind kept getting thrown off the steel cage, in what was one of the most brutal, disgusting, barbaric, revolting events in the history of humanity. The very fact that this match is as highly revered as it is makes me question the humanity of the people who talk about it fondly.

Mankind (whose real name is Mick Foley, which is what he's going by now) had one of his teeth driven up THROUGH HIS UPPER LIP during this match, and it got STUCK in his BEARD. No, think about that for a second. Imagine being thrown around so hard that one of your TEETH pops loose. And then, it gets driven THROUGH YOUR SKIN! And people talk FONDLY if the match where this happens.

(But don't forget, professional wrestling isn't real. UFC, the promotion where referees stop fights because one guy is getting punched by padded gloves, THAT'S real. But the one where a guy who gets a tooth driven through his lip is fake.)

The late 90s were a time when the WWF were in direct competition with rival wrestling promotion, WCW. The two companies had wrestling programs broadcast simultaneously on Monday nights, and both were always trying to one-up each other, in the war for that thing that stops intelligent television from existing: Ratings. People were figuratively and literally killing themselves just so one company could get a little bit ahead in the ratings, so they could charge a little more for advertising.

WWF totally ended up winning that war, by the way. One week in 1999, when WCW's show, Nitro, was pre-empted for the NBA finals, WWF Raw scored a 10.0 in the ratings. A TEN. That basically meant that at least one out of every 10 people you knew was watching wrestling, that night. And it didn't hurt that it was one of the better Raws ever produced.

WCW never recovered from that loss in ratings, and basically bankrupted themselves over the next year, trying to regain the lead (despite being owned by Time-Warner), They closed up shop in early 2001, and the WWF owner, Vince McMahon, was more than happy to buy his competition for a measly 3 million dollars (which was the cost of a month's worth of episodes of Raw, incidentally - So, basically, operating expenses). For that $3 million, the WWF gained access to most of WCW's talent, and every single one of their assets - Including their video tape library. McMahon saw ahead, and quickly began releasing DVD sets that included WCW matches for his more popular WWF stars.

A lawsuit with the World Wildlife Foundation forced World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. to "Get the 'F' Out," and become WWE. And that's when a lot of people stopped watching.

So, basically, WWF won the war, and then all their fairweather fans gave up on them. Way to go, guys.

I don't know what my point was in all this. I just really needed to vent about the stupidity i see in people's opinions about pro wrestling. Maybe tomorrow, I'll write about why I DO like wrestling.

But I'm not promising anything.

Virtua Fighter 5

I busted out my copy of Virtua Fighter 5 over the Labor Day weekend, on the XBox 360. I forgot how much fun that game was. As a fan of the series from the very first release in the arcades in the mid-90s, and playing countless hours of VF2 on the Sega Saturn (it was a pack-in game when I got my Saturn!), when VF5 finally came to the XBox 360, I had to be there, right away.

Virtua Fighter was the very first 3D fighting game. Its use of polygons instead of pixels was revolutionary at the time, and Sega definitely saw what the future of gaming would be, arguably before anybody else. Between VF and Sonic 3D Blast, Sega was all on top of making 3D games before 3D games were the norm. I wonder what happened?

Anyways. VF is much like other fighting games, in that you pick your martial artist and go head-to-head against other fighters from all over the world. The controls are complex in their simplicity; In addition to the 8-way Joystick/D-Pad, there are just three gameplay buttons; Punch, Kick, and Guard. Pressing combinations of P, K, and G will execute different attacks; For example, P+G is a throw attack for every character. K+G is usually a stronger kick attack. Throw in directional pressed on the joystick, and you've got an infinite number of simple combinations that are executed instantly, each with their own range, power, speed, and priority.

One of the unique features of Virtua Fighter is that each sequel has only ever introduced two new characters, and only one of the characters was retired (Taka-Arashi, the Sumo Wrestler from Virtua Fighter 3, was apparently too difficult to calculate hit detection for, in relation to the other characters). But every game gets completely re-imagined backgrounds, and brand-new character models for each and every character, and cleaner, crisper controls.

VF5 introduced two new characters: El Blaze is a Lucha Libre expert, very reminiscent of Mexican Wrestling sensation, Rey Mysterio (before Rey got a bazillion tattoos everywhere). Also joining the cast is Eileen, a teenage practitioner of Monkey Fist Kung Fu.

Of course, with my being a pro wrestling fan, I've always gravitated towards the grapplers in fighting games, and VF is no exception. My character of choice is Wolf Hawkfield, a Canadian native American Heavyweight who integrates the most popular maneuvers of pro wrestling into his move set. In addition to all kinds of chops, clotheslines, elbows, and kicks, Wolf also has a wide variety of powerful throws and devastating suplexes, in addition to a handful of bone-crunching submission attacks. If only he weren't so slow, I may consider him the ultimate fighting game character.

The only downside to VF5 is that the online community has all but vanished, as the game is nearly 3 years old, by this point. Two minor updates to the game have been released in the arcade since the XBox 360 release (re-introducing Taka-Arashi, as well as an all-new character, Jean Kujo). Even if Sega were to just release the most recent update onto consoles, it could breathe new life into the game.

Or we could just wait for Virtua Fighter 6. Which I'm perfectly content doing.