‘Street Fighter 2’ Turns 20 Years Old. Good Lord.

It’s been brought to my attention that Street Fighter 2 turns fucking 20 years old this month. All of a sudden my receding hairline, graying follicles, and achy back make sense. I’m getting old as fuck. It feels like just yesterday I was begging enabling parents for quarters to play a few rounds of this son of a bitch at the movie theater. Or begging them to take me to the local arcade so dudes ten years older than me can take me to the woodshed in the game.

But I didn’t give a fuck, it was Street Fighter 2.

This game is such an inextricable part of my childhood. So many memories are bound around fucking around at aforementioned arcades or playing this game for hours with friends. We weren’t wizards of the paddle, but we could throw fucking fireballs with the best of them. As the games progressed and competition took to the internet and such, I dropped out of the fighting game scene. I didn’t have the patience or the dedication to become proficient at them. Fuck, maybe even the skills.

This series has definitely helped sculpt the sort of responsibility shirking asshole that I am today. No doubt a good amount of my internal narratives are filtered through fighting game metaphors, and this is definitely where my love for them began.