I’ve been following two things for about thirty years now: fighting games and Monster Hunter. I bought most of the hardware, and I’ve touched almost every entry in both series. But looking back, what stays with me isn’t which title was the most fun — it’s who I played with, and how.
The Arcade Golden Age
As a teenager I read Gamest every month. The publisher went under and the magazine folded; it became Arcadia, and I read a bit of that too. In Street Fighter I went through every version — II, II’, II’ TURBO, Super II, Super II X — and then on to ZERO, ZERO2, ZERO3, III, 2nd Impact, 3rd Strike.
It wasn’t just Capcom. Darkstalkers, up through Night Warriors and Vampire Savior (I mained Bishamon). The VS. series that started with X-MEN VS. STREET FIGHTER, Capcom VS. SNK. On the SNK side, The King of Fighters from ‘94 through ‘99, plus Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury, and The Last Blade. Tekken only 2 and 3, and I barely know Virtua Fighter. I went through pretty much all of the 90s fighting games — the full list is in the appendix at the end.
I knew Umehara’s name back then too. From the ZERO3 era, I have a memory — on TV or online — of him beating an American top player with V-Akuma. Back then I was sitting at the cabinet like everyone else. I wasn’t strong, but I was all in.
Stepping Away, Once
In my university years, I retired from 3rd Strike. After that, even when I went to an arcade, I stopped playing myself. It became a place to watch other people’s matches and smoke. Eventually I stopped going at all. It was around the time 2D fighting games as a whole had entered their winter. When SF4 came out I was surprised — “how many years has it been?” — but even that I only watched; I hardly played it.
Saturdays, Bringing Our PSPs
My console Monster Hunter started with MH2 (Dos). I plugged a LAN expansion unit — the PS2 Network Adaptor — into the console and played online. I quit quickly, but that was the first.
Then came the PSP era. Portable, 2nd, 2nd G, 3rd. Friends would bring their PSPs over, we’d eat snacks, gather on Saturday and hunt together until Sunday morning, smoking the whole time. That way of gathering was the best part.
The hunting itself you can do in any of the later titles — the later games are better made, if anything. But that room only existed in that stretch of time. Doing the same thing online isn’t the same. It wasn’t that the game was good. It was that the room was good.
Only the Hardware Keeps Piling Up
The 3DS era ran through 3G, 4, and 4G. The relic-gear grind and the hundred guild-quest laps in 4G were such a slog that I honestly almost drifted away right there. On PC I played Frontier alone — a Japan-only online-service title that also ran on Xbox 360, PS3 and more besides PC. I was appalled by the Gōriki-dama, and I was buying the paid-gear package every month. There was a monthly course fee just to play, and they sold gear on top of that. On top of that, there was even a paid course (the “N Course”) that gave your home PC the same drop-rate multipliers as playing from a net café. The power creep never stopped, either.
I bought a Wii U for the sole reason of the Japan-only Wii U version of MH3G HD. That’s roughly how I ended up with every piece of hardware Monster Hunter came out on. With World and Iceborne on PS4, it finally felt like one complete form. From there I moved to PC with Rise, and that’s where I am now.
Online, the Threads Snap
Around World, I still had friends I was connected to online. There was no fight, no declaration that anyone was “done.” We just stopped hunting, the reason to stay in touch disappeared, and at some point the connection was gone. I don’t even know where they are or what they’re doing now.
Relationships held together by an activity have no other thread left once the activity stops. Later, when a G-rank expansion is added, or a new title ships, all it adds is more things to hunt alone. It doesn’t bring back the lost “gathering in the same room.”
I Came Back, But
On the fighting-game side, I touched USF4 a little, came back for real with V (Ibuki), and now I use Kimberly in 6. I follow the SF6 competitive scene too. It’s a strange thing, that someone who read Gamest as a teenager is still watching the same genre. Being able to see Umehara and Sako, still active, on the same screen as players younger than me — I think it’s not a bad time to be watching.
But the best part of all the years of following this was still the first one: the snacks and the cigarettes, and that room, from Saturday to Sunday morning. The games have advanced. The room isn’t coming back.