Old-school stories? Sure, still remember it pretty vividly!
Lived on Long Island back then. Not in Manhattan, but out in the suburbs. There were a lot of arcades and places that arcade machines around town back then. The biggest spot was a place that went through multiple name changes. It was called The Emporium, then Chuck E. Cheese, then the Emporium again, and then before we moved it became...Nathan's Hot Dogs (lol). This was a game center/pizza place where kids went for birthday parties.
All that changed in 1991. Now, I gotta say, I don't remember Street Fighter at all. I'm sure it must have been around some local arcades back then, but I have no memories of playing it until after SFII came out. Never heard anyone talk about it. and the only time I remember seeing anything on it was demos of Fighting Street on the TG-16 CD in Toys R Us.
When Street Fighter II released, I remember seeing a single machine in the Emporium. It was unplayed. Then several weeks later, they suddenly had multiple machines and crowds of people around them playing. Not kids...but teenagers and adults. Huge shift in the player base there. I was one of the few kids my age who played SFII (I was 10-11 when it came out) and I absolutely SUCKED at it. I mean, I couldn't even block-- instead of holding back, I was essentially trying to parry by tapping back at the right time, lol. I also remember going to a birthday party, at a place with mini golf and batting cages, and telling the kid's mom that I was just gonna stay in the arcade there. I got my ass kicked by an older kid who just picked Blanka and did his electricity. And my dumb ass couldn't beat it. I ran home and told my brother and he laughed at how dumb I was, lol.
From here, Street Fighter II just EXPLODED. If an arcade didn't have it, nobody cared about that place anymore. Multiple machines were in arcades. Machines were in comic shops, convenience stores, restaurants...you name it. It was everywhere and the hype surrounding it was insane. If you weren't into games (or even born!) back then, you just won't get how crazy the arcade scene became and was changed up forever because of this game. There was nothing else like it at the time.
On a personal level, this changed me as well. Since none of my friends played the game, I felt like I was almost "babysitting" other kids when I'd try to get them to play it and would spend more time hanging out with my older brother and his friends to play it instead. We were the first ones in our neighborhood to get a Super Nintendo (bought when SFII came out, of course), and had a massive gathering in our basement playing the game for hours on end. There was also a time when my brother beat me something like 21+ matches straight and got a perfect or two. He never let me live that down.
Then at the end of '92, we moved down to Atlanta. Not as many arcades as Long Island, but still enough around. But something happened. A new game had come out that pulled a lot of the Street Fighter players away. It had "realistic" graphics and even blood. Mortal Kombat had come out and it dethroned SFII. Sure, the release of Turbo/Hyper Fighting in 1993 helped a bit, but for the most part, it was all about Mortal Kombat. Samurai Shodown 1 also had a pretty decent following at one local arcade for a time.
Mortal Kombat was followed by MKII and then Killer Instinct as the big games. I don't recall Mortal Kombat III being particularly that popular until it came out on home consoles. I still kept playing SF2T and then SSF2, but that was pretty much it-- for whatever reason, none of the local arcades had Super Turbo. NONE of them. One place had the machine for a weekend before they moved it elsewhere. I watched a disgruntled Babbage's employee try and fail to play as Akuma multiple times and that was about it. Going back a year, Virtua Fighter came out and was kind of a novelty. People thought it was pretty cool, but it didn't quite have the same following as the 2D games. Ditto for Tekken. I remember VF2 being way more popular, but it wasn't at my local arcades. I don't recall a 3D fighter being big in my area until Tekken 2 came out.
Meanwhile, I moved on to Samurai Shodown II in '94 (didn't care much for KI and MK) and then to Street Fighter Alpha 1 in '95. Alpha 1 was everywhere but Alpha 2 was nowhere to be found in 1996. I remember playing it on PS1 before I finally played the arcade version.
That was also the beginning of the end. In 1995, the 32-bit generation started, and "arcade at home" started to become a thing. Arcades stuck around for another 5 years or so, and even had some big hits like the Vs. games and Tekken 3/Tag (absolutely HUGE in ATL), but the same crowds that were around back in the early 90s were long gone. I worked at a game shop during this time and made friends with plenty of people and went to various gatherings to play games. (I also finally made up for that SFII beating from my brother when I destroyed him and his friend in Alpha 2 like 40+ matches straight!
)
Anyway, going back to the early days of arcade fighters, I missed those days a lot and kind of floundered in the early 2000s. I'd play games with friends, but they were really only interested in Street Fighter or Tekken and didn't want to play much else. I was way more into the Neo Geo during this time. Then in 2001 I went to Japan and it was like I went through a time warp back to the early 90s. Arcades everywhere and lots of people playing them. Went back again in 2004 for a month and got to see KOF Neowave release...with massive lines queued up to play, just like the glory days of SFII! Moved there the next year and was right near a big game center, where I could go to play all the latest fighters. It was pretty awesome. I remember getting up one morning in July 2008 and walking down to the game center to be the first one to play the new Street Fighter IV machines that had just been set up. That sparked some popularity, but not huge crowds.
And then I moved back to the States. Arcades were long-dead, but online play was finally getting better on consoles. A lot of my friends have moved away or moved on from games (or fighting games), so I'm glad I can always hop on and play stuff any time!
