You must die, I alone am best!

I've been obsessing over 2d fighters lately. Loaded up some old ROMs and started playing games like Garou and KoF 97-02, plus a half dozen random fighters that apparently never got imported. My wife, in her infinite wisdom and compassion, bought me a limited edition Halo 3 X360 controller, and a wireless adapter for my PC. So, I've been playing these ROMs with it, and it's been quite worth the effort (I love my wife).

Using money from the holidays, I was able to buy two copies of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core; one for myself and one for my sisters-in-law. A while back, the watched our cats for us when we were out of town, and spent the night there playing Guilty Gear X2 for 7 hours on end. Megan and Kelsey are probably bigger gamers than I am (currently, at least, I am working 60+ hours a week), and I've seen them become scary good at games in the past. I'm looking forward to seeing how skillled them become at this.

The only reason I was ever good at Guilty Gear is that I lived with John Hogrefe. He was a tournament worthy Guilty Gear player, with near flawless timing and execution. In the time we lived together, I only was ever able to beat him 33% of the time. Even then, that includes times where he wasn't playing his most proficient character, Baiken.

I remember once, John over-slept a tournament, and played it off with "Tourney players are cheap little pricks, who try to trap you into infinite hit combos cause they can't do a real 1v1". We arrived after the tourney was over, and started milling around, playing people who were still there. John broke this one guy's 23 win streak. He asked why John wasn't in the tourney, and John repeated what he had told me. The guy pauses, then says "Well, I was the one who won that tournament, so..." Meanwhile, on a different terminal, I ruin a 17 win streak, absolutely crushing Potemkin, and leaving everyone slack-jawed from my blistering assault (30 some consecutive non-special move hits in a row, the bastard never touched the ground).

I never really realized how good I had become, because from my perspective, I was getting my ass handed too me, day in and day out. But losing to John for two years in a row did more for me than I could have ever hoped for. After all, you only become stronger by facing a stronger opponent.