My 14 Years Without Fighting Games

Back in 1995, I didn’t think I would ever quit fighting games. I was still riding high on the Super Street Fighter II rush, mashing away on the Super Nintendo port at home. It was around this time that my mom was taking night school out of town, which meant that my dad, brother and I would spend our time waiting for my mom to finish class at the local mall. At the time, this mall had an awesome arcade, and I would regularly play (and get smoked) in Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Mortal Kombat 3.

Never did I think that a series of factors would ‘make’ me fall out of fighting games for 14 years. What happened?

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Hitting the Road with PGR 4

For the last few months, PGR 4 has been my go-to “bored game”. When I don’t feel like playing any other video game in my collection, I pop PGR 4 into my 360. Not to say that PGR 4 is a bad game, but racing games aren’t really my scene. I get bored quickly of any arcade racing game that isn’t Mario Kart and realistic racing games such as Gran Turismo and Forza frustrate me to no end due to their demand of precision driving control skills that I just don’t have. The only reason I even have this game is because it came free, along with a chat pad and headset when I bought last year’s subscription to XBOX Live.

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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Love Post of Objections, Spiky Hair and Adventure Game Awesomeness

As much as I love video games, there aren’t many games I truly geek out about. I like Gears of War, but it’s not a game that has any lasting effects on me when I’m not playing it. When it comes to games I truly geek out about, such as the Street Fighter IV, I constantly talk about it, thoroughly analyze it and evangelize it as much as I can. You don’t need to dig very deep into my blog to realize that I am a huge Street Fighter IV junkie.

While I have not said much about the Phoenix Wright series on my blog, that first game is one of those I truly geek out about. It’s not a perfect, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t leave a huge impression on me.
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Pick Up Post: Capcom Takes My Mobile Money

Capcom is one of my all-time favourite developers and publishers. I have fond memories of playing a bunch of Capcom games outside of their obvious choices, such as Street Fighter and Megaman. This week, they followed Gameloft’s lead and put a bunch of their iDevice games on sale. I highlight a few that I picked up and one you should avoid.

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The Top 5 Most Viewed In Third Person Posts of All-Time

Because I write In Third Person solely as a personal outlet of gaming nerdiness, I don’t pay much attention to my analytics. Even if no one in the world were to ever see this blog, I would continue writing in it anyway, just to get these gaming-related thoughts out of my head and onto something a bit more tangible. Well, as tangible as the Internet can be. If you or anyone else decides they want to read my musings, power to you.

And read my musings you have. Sure, my traffic may not rival the Craigslist posting your mom put up to promote your family garage sale, but there are a consistent number of people that frequent my site, according to my numbers. Thank you to everyone that has ever read my blog and a special thanks to everyone who checks in regularly.

Whether you’re a regular reader or just found my blog on a whim, I’m going to present to you the five most popular posts on my site. I was actually kind of surprised by the results. Click through to find out what the hottest content is on In Third Person.

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Pick Up Post: Gameloft Dollarama and an iPad Adventure

I have to hand it to Gameloft and their iDevice pricing strategy. Their aggressive $1 sales have won a lot of good will with me, which I have returned by buying almost a dozen of their games. I have generally found their games to be of relatively good quality for mobile, and their games on sale for $1 are much more in-depth and content-rich than the majority of $1 games available on iTunes.

Hit the break to see what two Gameloft games (and one non-Gameloft adventure) I just picked up. From what I know about these three games, they’re all good buys at regular price, but really are a steal at their sale price.

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Capcom vs. Namco and Namco vs. Capcom Rumors and Speculation

According to a number of hints dropped by Street Fighter creator Yoshinori Ono, Tekken creator Katsuhiro Harada and a report from Game Informer indicate that the game Yoshinori Ono will announce is not just one game, but two. According to Game Informer sources, Capcom is making a Capcom vs. Namco game with the Street Fighter IV engine while Namco is making a Namco vs. Capcom game based on the Tekken 6 engine.

While this sounds exactly like what Capcom and SNK did, the element of 2D vs. 3D makes this a whole new beast.
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Street Fight Concepts That Made Me a Better Basketball Player – Part 2: Punishing Mistakes

This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing

PUNISHING MISTAKES

One of the most common mistakes in Street Fighter is a poorly-timed projectile attack. For instance, if I’m Ryu, and you properly react to my fireball, you can jump over the fireball and kick me in the face before I can do anything to defend myself. In Street Fighter, when your opponent makes a mistake, you want to punish them for their mistakes by hitting them with the most powerful attacks as possible.

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Excited for Rock Band 3?

When it comes to my level of excitement for the release of a game, not many games in my life matched the hype I felt the original Rock Band. I was in the apex of my Guitar Hero love around the time when rumblings of a full-band music game from the developers of Guitar Hero II appeared on the Internet. When the rumblings finally turned up this initial video for the Rock Band proof of concept, I was sold. So sold, that I was the first person to pre-order the full Rock Band kit at my local EB Games and was even the first to pick up my kit because I showed up at the same time as the guy who was delivering the Rock Band kits to the store.

Three years, four Rock Band branded games, hundreds of hours played and hundreds of downloadable songs bought later, I’m kind of burned out on the plastic instrument formula. I forced my way through Lego Rock Band for the achievements and can’t find the motivation to even begin the career mode in Green Day: Rock Band. Rock Band 3 looks to revive the genre with new features, new songs, and for those who want it, a pro mode that takes the genre into realistic new heights. Are these changes enough to bring me back in?
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The Death of 1 vs. 100 on XBOX Live

Nine months after 1 vs. 100 launched on XBOX Live, Microsoft announced earlier this week that the game would not return for a third season. While I did not play the game that often myself (which sort of makes me part of the problem), I thought that the game was very forward-thinking in its execution and quite fun to play. I’m sad to see it go.

Why did this happen? I don’t have any insider information on the situation, so anything I’m about to say is strictly speculation. But based on the information that’s publicly available and my understanding of games and business, I’m going to try and write my way through what I think happened.

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