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There's a new arcade machine in the student center. The game was later called Bloody Roar on consoles, but the arcade version sports what may be the greatest name in video game history: Beastorizer. The name alone makes it amazing, but there's something else that makes the game fantastic; Beastorizor is a fighting game, and that means I will spend a lot of time playing it over the coming months.
There's also an often-played Marvel Vs Capcom 2 machine in the student center - which is probably a better game - but my interest in MvC2 hit its apex over a year ago when it appeared on Xbox Live Arcade. Beastorizer is new blood to me; despite being over a decade old.
Fighting games are a deep obsession for me. I'm not the greatest at them, but there's something openly captivating about the genre that immediately catches my interest when I'm able to play a new one. My love for them has even extended into an article I wrote for joystickdivision.com defining the core rules to every fighting game.
Fighting games are a personal hobby. I enjoy them the way people watch ESPN. Video games have become as normal as television to me. Everyone plays games as everyone watches TV; from Farmville to Halo. I'll play countless games to stay ahead of trends and to maintain my place in the Burkean conversation, but the phenomenal Super Street Fighter IV (SSFIV) is what I play to blow off steam after a long day. It's my Monday Night Football, and I've been carrying around a copy of Street Fighter III the way other college kids tote around Hacky sacks.
Beastorizer is probably not as good as SSFIV , but it's a new fighting game. It has the same rules as all other fighters, but it also has its own flair. The game as I try to achieve some form of mastery with each of the game's characters; figuring out how they tick and how get do the most damage out of them. It's a nerdy obsession bordering the line that fantasy football players balance on.
It's going to be a good year for my hobby. The next game in the Marvel Vs. Capcom series is coming out next spring, and an arcade version of Super Street Fighter IV is due for release soon. The Street Fighter community is also booming with regular tournaments streaming online as people practice for next year's EVO; the biggest community-run fighting game tournament in the world. This year EVO got full coverage on G4; TVs videogame-centered channel.
It's not really a sport, but fighting games are still incredibly enjoyable competitive events. They are games with more depth than chess (not that there's anything wrong with chess) but still require faster reflexes than most others. In fact, being good at Street Fighter means being able to count how many frames certain attacks take; a frame is one-sixtieth of a second. Understanding the speed isn't needed for something like Beastorizer, so come over to the student center and check it out. I'll probably be there too.
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