Sword Siblings

The male brain is awesome. Walking down the street means you're scanning everyone around you Terminator-style. Well okay, you're not scanning them in order to steal their clothes like the popular Austrian robot, but you rate them. Females are categorized into would/would not bone and males into could/could not take in a fight. It's not a super scientific or even accurate process. According to my brain, I can take on just about the entire city of Nottingham and I'd fuck most of them, too. And yet we invented space travel! Go, brains! WOOOO!

It's 2014 and we still have those basic, barbaric urges to shag and to fight. I'm not sure how to feel about that. It seems a bit primitive and redundant nowadays, but it's that desire to compete, to show off your skills and to dominate those around you that made stuff like Street Fighter II so incredibly popular in school. Most of us couldn't access internet porn back then, so we weren't too tired to fight. Our desires for massive beating sessions were aimed at fictional characters like Ryu, Guile or Ken Masters rather than our own... well, you know.

Every day after school we'd all gather at one of the houses of kids who had Street Fighter II and beat the crap out of each other till our parents couldn't take it anymore. It was amazing - brought us together, too. Let's face it - kids are assholes. They'll bully each other for anything, whether you're fat or skinny or poor or you walk funny or what the hell ever. But when we met for competitive gaming, none of that really made any difference. There wasn't the fat kid. There was the kid who plays a really mean Blanka. There's was guy who beat arcade mode on hard. Street Fighter II became our escape from everyday life. On there we could be awesome, we'd be warriors, gladiators, heroes and villains and the next day in school we'd talk about the matches we had played and we all got along.

Well, until some of the more talented kids got really good at the game and everybody else got frustrated and gave up and the bullying started all over again, but it was fun while it lasted. Beat 'em ups quickly became one of my favourite things in life. I already told you about how kids paid just to watch me play King of Fighters at the arcade, how I met my first girlfriend there and all those old stories, so let's not get into that again. I was never great at sports, my parents never showed up when I did anything for school projects, but for a while, I was the fucking king of fighters and no one can take that away from me. It's a pretty epic memory.

A few years later we reached that weird age of gaming where absolutely every game had to be in fucking 3D. There was the Sony Playstation now and it could play fucking Tomb Raider, which looked even worse than it did on PC. Though of course back then we thought it looked pretty awesome. But yeah, 3D racing, 3D platforming and, of course, 3D fighting, meaning beat 'em ups, which looked like this...

had to make way for beat 'em ups looking like that...

Visuals improved a bit over time, but...

...yeah.

It's not like all of these games were horrible or anything. In fact, Virtua Fighter was pretty impressive, had an insane list of moves and neat animations. Aesthetically, however, these games were... OH COME ON, FUCKING LOOK AT THEM! Am I the only one who thinks 2D games looked WAY cooler back then?

I wanted to like them. I played them, gave them a fair chance. Battle Arena Toshinden, even brawlers like Fighting Force, but nothing moved inside my pants. Until my brother brought home a new disc, all black and shiny and inside a cracked casing, because most PSX game cases would shatter if you looked at them too hard... and the title on the manual read SOULBLADE. Depending on where you're from, the game was also known as Soul Edge, but who gives a shit? It was one of those yucky 3D fighters, but it had a pirate on the cover and a guy in bdsm gear and swords and... damn, that opening sequence gave me fucking goosebumps.

Completely retarded, nonsensical little song, but back then it got me so hyped up, the whole thing looked so incredibly cool, I just wanted to play. I still get goosebumps looking at that stuff today. And yes, it was about as ugly as all the other 3d fighters back in the day.

Wow, look at how young Mitsurugi still was in that one!

For some reason this game did it for me. It wasn't just another Eastern-style martial arts game, it wasn't over the top silly like Toshinden (which had Earthworm Jim in it, for fuck's sake!) or as hardcore as Bushido Blade. Just a bunch of characters and their katanas, nun-chucks, sai, katars, greatswords and so forth. Put two of them in an arena, only one of them walks out. You couldn't dismember enemies on there and it would take quite a few hits with your weapon of choice to "KO" (!) a foe, but sometimes realism shouldn't stand in the way of fun. The game was realistic enough where it counts. Not only were the battles and fighting-styles incredibly well-animated, but in the sequel, Soul Calibur on Sega's Dreamcast, you could watch little motion-captured sequences where each character showed off their respective style:

I know this can't really compete with any of the regurgitated crap we get from Activision, Ubisoft and EA every year now, but back in the day this was the shit. We'd all sit in the living room and instead of watching a dvd or actually playing the damn game, we sat there and watched some of these characters. It was like one of those Shaolin shows. Just ignore the cartoony textures, polygon count, lack of boob-physics and check out those animations. This is where 3d fighters could really shine!

As you might still recall, I've spent the last couple of weeks playing a heavily-modified Smash Bros. with Claire, which is another series of fighting games I genuinely enjoy. My favourite aspect of Smash Bros. is also my biggest gripe with the game: Every character has the exact same amount of special moves, they're all accessed the exact same way and you don't really "master" those moves. I'm not saying there is no learning curve or that there is absolutely no skill involved, but pulling off your character's unique moves and abilities is as simple as pushing one button along with the analog stick. Or just masturbate that C-stick and special attacks will squirt all over the place. Oooo baby!

Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Smash Bros. is more about situational awareness, stage and item control, there are other factors at hand here which make this game in every way as tournament-worthy as Street Fighter or Soul Calibur. Heck, aren't they still playing the Gamecube version at EVO right the fuck now?
But sometimes I just want an epic duel. Just me and my enemy. No four player chaos, no pokemon summons, no UFOs or chain chomps. No way out, no cheap tricks. Draw your weapon and fight it out. And Soul Calibur is so great for that.

Yeah. I dug up the old Xbox, fired up Soul Calibur V and Claire and I have been at it all day and night. And we played some Soul Calibur, too (hurhur). We're about even when I pick a random character and she picks her favourite fighting style, though of course I do get the unfair advantage when I pick my character of choice, seeing as I've been practicing with that style since I was a teenager.

That said, Claire is good. Damn good. Talented, clever, a rapidly fast learner and we had some incredibly tough, close matches, which I had almost lost. Fortunately for me, she does tend to lose focus after a while and makes mistakes, but she'll probably destroy me once she figures out how to bring out her A-game and keep it out there for more than just a few moments. Not entirely sure whether she'll persevere and get better or whether she'll eventually give up, but she will beat me if she keeps on practicing. Which will be a little sad and embarassing and hopefully a one-off, but it'll also be incredibly sexy.

Meanwhile, my friend back in Germany from the old East vs West videos (Street Fighter IV, King of Fighters XIII) is warming up his Xbox so we can duel a bit on there. So... there's a new East vs West video on the horizon. And since Claire is gonna fight him, as well... hmm... I dunno, maybe "The Beauty vs The Beast" or something. Put our friend in a nice dress, ask him to put on some makeup and then have Claire all angry and scary, baring her teeth, wild hair, that kinda thing. Might be a nice cover image for such a thing. I can't wait!

-Cat