ZZZZZZ Ok so another Two years from my previous post and I was just picking up Skullgirls back then. I (am not making any promises) promise that I will not make this a common trend. I'll try and keep it from once every two years to every year :P
Anyways, this blog post will not only mark my eight years playing FGs, but also my two years of playing Guilty Gear....god damn I'm getting too old for this shit. I'm not gonna go over every little thing that happened with me and FGs since if you know me personally or follow me on twitter then you probably already know, but I will talk about some of the stuff I normally don't talk about for both my time with MB and my time now with GG. For better or worse fighting games kind of sort of had a huge impact on my life. It forced me to become more of a social person, even if I don't really like the person and believe me there's /a lot/ of people I'd rather not deal with if I don't have to. It also help become more competitive in more aspects of my life. When I first started back in 2006 I was the total opposite of what I am now. Shy, timid, soft spoken and I had major self-esteem issues. It took me constantly talking to and hanging out with the #SRM crew on IRC, lying to my parents so I can actually go to a tournament in Philly and joining the military to fix a lot of those issues. I wasn't really a competitive person either and I had no drive or motivation to better myself in fighting games either.
I can't exactly explain what it was that changed that when I played MB. Whether it was watching SBO 2006 for the first time or watching Zar and Sp00ky play back at NEC 2006 and thinking "Man I really want to beat these guys", something inside me just snapped and all of a sudden I really wanted to get competitive with the game show off my skills. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that my driving force for wanting to get better is out of spite for other people saying I can't get good at a game...as silly and stupid as that sounds. The only reason I even considered going to a tournament was because I remember some people in the #MBAC channel back on EFnet were saying no one from #SRM would ever travel to a tournament and win and I even remember quite a few people in #SRM saying I wasn't a good player and only won because of Ciel character me. If it wasn't for that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have even considered traveling or rather I wouldn't have traveled right then and there. I really didn't care about the money or anything like that. My Eighteen year old self back then just wanted to throw in everyones face, "Hey I was able to go to this tournament and make one your WC player and arguably best overall USMB player at the time free as shit and I'm some 'scrub' from Ohio. What about you?" Granted I didn't say that, I was really, REALLY close to doing so.
I know with my time playing FGs one of the things people really didn't like about me was the fact I came off as cocky and arrogant and I thought highly of my skills. I also never really "feared" anyone as a player and thought I could beat whoever I had to play and as far as MB goes...that's actually pretty true. In MBAC the /only/ people I ever really lost to consistently was Jiyuna and Lord Knight and the former I made that fool into a fucking mute the rest of the weekend after I beat him in Final Round. In MBAA again the only person I consistently lost to were Lord Knight and Tonberry. Yes I'm also taking my loss against Doren2K at FR 2010 and H-F Blade at EVO 2010, but other than that I was able to pretty much beat the majority of the MB players consistently or at absolute worst go even with them...whether it was casuals or tournament. I'm sorry, but I'm not really going to downplay my skills as a player, especially when I have eight years of tournament results to back my mouth up. Melty Blood should go without saying and if you've ever actually seen me play or watch sets of my play in Gear then you can see how good I am in Gear. The /only/ difference is in Gear I don't have anywhere near the track record I had in MB. Yes I placed well at regional and won a few local / state level tournaments since +R came out, but I haven't had that "breakthrough" tournament I had in MB. Despite that however there's not a lot of people who I play in gear who I would consider myself afraid of or who beats me consistently. Only people I can name was Elvenshadow, Kenji, Zidane (online. we haven't played offline), Kensou and Kyle W. Everyone else I either go damn near even with them or beat.
Throughout my time playing FGs competitively my motivation for wanting to get better was never just for sake of wanting to get better or to better the scene or any of the noble nonsense. It's simple. I just do it so I can spite people and be like, "Hey. If I decide to take whatever game you're playing even remotely seriously then odds are I can most likely push your shit in harder than anyone you play on a consistent basis." It was one of my main reasons for picking up Guilty Gear. I might have said on twitter that I'm a vindictive person and I hold grudges. Well a couple of years ago I was talking to TitaniumBeast about the NC scene after I left and the topic somehow came up about Guilty Gear. Well I said that if I really tried I could become a good HOS player and he essentially says "LOL No." At the time I didn't think too much of it since I wasn't playing Gear, but when I finally did play Gear I never felt that I couldn't become a strong Order Sol player or a strong Gear player in general and I used his doubt of me to as fuel to get better and better.
It sort of sucks that I have such a selfish and stupid reason for wanting to get better nowadays, but for some reason it really seems like it's the only way to get myself going. If I try it to help out other people it's pretty much a waste of time since the advice I give will either fall on deaf ears or the people who "show interest" actually has no interest whatsoever and I'm essentially just wasting my time. I never really felt like I had to get better for the sake of a local scene since I never had a local scene to call my own, except for my time in North Carolina and that was very short lived since by the time SSF4 and MvC3 came out everyone there was pretty much done with Melty anyway so it was just whatever. Maybe Xrd will actually change that about myself since there's quite of few people who's "interested" in it. I'm not holding my breath, but I would love to be proven wrong.
So yeah, my main driving force for wanting to get good at FGs was out of spite and just wanting to show everyone up in a game. Sort of stupid really. Hopefully my next blog post (whenever that will be) will be a bit more light-hearted, but yeah lol Happy eighth FG anniversary!
Also don't be afraid and try to use this blog post as a means to make a point about myself...just make sure you're a player worth a shit and don't waste damn near 7 years to do so. :P