How did you get interested in Fighting Games?

[stereomonkey]

I remember when I was like 7yrs old.  My older cousins use to take me to the fish and chips shop in Ngaruawahia.  We would always go to get some chips and while we waited I use to watch them play Street Fighter.  I think it was SF2.  I always wanted to have a turn but the game was to expensive for them to waste a turn on me.

It wasn't till my mate Jamie had Super Street Fighter on Mega Drive that made me go "FUCK YEAH".  Ahh the many nights staying up playing that instead of doing homework.  Awesome

So you know how I ended up getting interested.  Now your guys turn!

[iMagneto]

the first fighting game i ever played..and what console i had when i was a kid, i was 8 or 9 years old, my father brought a console for me over Singapore, the first console was Nintendo... wasnt really good fighting games.. except Super Mario Bros 1,2 and 3. then they made a copy version of street fighter 2 =) But Its called Master Fighter 2 LOL
exactly like same game play... always come home after school.. and forget the whole about home work haha, so i end up bad grades haha. The year after i finally got Super Nintendo.. Even better with graphics heh heh~~ finally got rid of the old crappy fat pixels, So here comes Super Street Fighter 2 =) playing so hard...and practicing hardcore..

That year when i was in intermediate school, after school before head home, i always stop by at the dairy..woah!! First time playing on Arcade machine, and so many Maoris, Samoa, and Tongans were hardcore in Street Fighter 2, So the first time i'd ever challenge someone was a Maori... and Gezz too much Guile Cheaps... =( annoying.. theres no bison character....=(  "I wish it was Super Street fighter 2 in this dairy"...Couple days later... my wish finally came true!! lets kick some ass hehe, but i stil got pwned LOL.....

yeah well.. i got shit of heaps to spit about my fighting game life LOL~

[Will]

Shit man you guys got history haha..

Been playing high level Halo for a few years started to get sick of it towards the end of last year, in 07 tho I saw the famous J-Wong vs Diago full parry evo 2k5 vid on youtube and then thought it looked like a cool game (and there community) so looked into 3rd strike and then hooked into the community websites etc (SRK etc) then followed SF4 development from when it was annouced and then have been playing that since the release, still am held back to get better since sticks are hard as hell to find but ive got a TE on pre order from the next Mighty Ape shipment.

And thats me, only played with a few people on live from the site but ill be playing ALOT more once I grab a stick.

See you guys at XLAN!! 

[[NIUE] weazzyefff]

i've always been into all games since mario and duck hunt and i was always the man at sports and athletics and being the competive person i am i started to compete in gaming too, always wanted the best score in shit.
When it comes to fighting games i was always a fighting movie junkie, so anyway i started playing tekken 1 in the arcade section of our video shop in glen eden, i didnt like street fighter because it just used the same three moves over and over( fireball,uppercut,hurricane kick).Then i got ps1 with tekken and always had the tekken series for my fighting game spot in my collection. Yeah i thought street fighter sucked compared to tekken back then but i like it now because everyone plays it, what can i say, i'm a sheep following the other sheep.

[Lennysaurus]

I used to live out west in Henderson.  Keeling road.

Back in the day in Auckland there were arcades all over the place.  You could get on your bike and ride it somewhere.  You could almost guarantee that any block of shops had at least an arcade or a video shop with a ton of arcade games in it.  I used to love spacies.  I played all sorts of shit.  Two crude dudes, Bad dudes, galaga, double dragon, pang, 1942, Ikari Warriors, Ghouls and ghosts, NARC to name a few. 

My mum hated me playing video games and would never buy me (or let dad buy me) consoles so I always saved all my money up and bought my own shit.  I had a NES and a Mega drive, that I bought by saving up all my chore money.  I would bug the shit out of relatives all the time for odd jobs on the weekend to get paid and save for my shit.

Since I practically lived in the arcades in my spare time (God bless guitar strings and 20 cent coins with nylon glued to them) I remember when street fighter one came out.  Back when player 1 was ryu and player 2 was ken.  It took me ages to learn how to do a dragon punch, but i thought i was god when I could do it.  I even remember when I was younger my dad and I used to go every saturday after I played league to the amusement castle in Lincoln Road.  It was a pretty big spacey parlour near where the KFC is now.  It was awesome.  They always had all the latest games and my dad and I would take 5 bucks each and spend a few hours there.  (5 bucks at 20 or 40 cents a game was s hit ton in an arcade back then)

It was on one of these days that I first saw street fighter 2.  I always enjoyed street fighter one, but street fighter 2 was mind blowing.  I feel old saying this, but some of you younger guys probably dont realise how amazing it was to behold.  The graphics were unlike anything else to have ever been made at that point.  And the controls were so smooth, it just begged you to play it.  And to have 8 people to choose from was crazy.  I remember my first ever game of street fighter 2.  I waited in the huge line and put my 40 cents in the machine, the guy playing me had just pwned everyone else, and I was no exception.  I chose Zangief (for those of you that dont know me, I always pick the big smashing guy) and proceeded to get my ass whooped.  But it was the greatest whooping I had ever received up until that point.  The combos!!! The idea that if tthe first hit landed the rest were guaranteed!!! 

That was where it all started pretty much.  I used Zangief mostly and learned to tick throw.  Basically used that and cheesed the fuck outta people. 

As the years would pass I would continue to dabble, but didn't get competitive till highschool.  I went to boarding school, and at my boarding school we had a small arcade on site that used to be serviced by the guys that run the arcade across from the manukau picture theatre.  we used to muck around on street fighter and whatnot... until Xmen vs Street Fighter came along.  Thats right... Xmen AND Street Fighter... in the same game... fighting each other.  It was enough to make any teenage male explode with joy.  It got really really heated, and we would often end up fighting over it if someone learned a cheap glitch or what not.  Eventually my brother and I put our money together to import a copy of the game from the US and have our PSX chipped.  We used to go home on the weekends and sit there and practice combos all day.  This was around about the time of the internet starting to get big too, so we used that to learn strats and combos.  We pretty much wholloped anyone that bothered to play us after that in a sttorm of cheese.  I even one a tournament in Queen street years and years ago in the BK timeout, 1996 or 1997 I think.

I finished high school and went to uni.  This is where I met a bunch of guys that used to play up at auckland unis arcade.  The street fighter 2 hyper fighting machine up there was a huge hotspot for competitive gaming.  It would have people playing on it from the moment it opened, till the moment it closed, and most of that time were people challenging each other.  I met a samoan guy there called Fono.  He basically took me under his wing and taught me how to play Hyper Fighting and Super Turbo competitively.  He was awesome... easily the best Hyper fighting player I have ever seen.  I used to go there all the time.

a couple months later I found that there was a small arcade across from IMAX that had a hard out alpha 2 scene going.  I started challenging there hard out as well.  I actually ended up wrecking that scene cause I got too good for all the other guys.  I learned customs with chun li and rolento and no one wanted to play that anymore.  I used to go there and just play buy myself while I waited for class to start ater that.  I started playing alot of alpha 2 and 3.  Entered a few tourneys for alpha 3 and won from time to time.  Met hydro, igotpaid, and crazymobius at a tourney in papatoetoe.  Hydro and I used to have epic alpha 3 battles.

Then came yiffans.  I had always mosied in to yiffans, but never really played hardout.  At this point I didnt have a PS2 or a DC so I didnt have access to the games that were in there.  I didnt like the idea of paying a dollar a game so I used to go and watch.  Eventually I picked up an NTSC version of tekken 3 for my PSX and learned a couple of characters on that using faqs and info from websites and started playing that alot.  It only took me a couple of weeks to be "decent" at TTT.  By no means was I a powerhouse at it, and I coiuldnt toe to toe with any big namers, but I could go decent with most of the other intermediate guys and have some fun. 

Meet a guy down there that would become a very close friend of mine, Ioane.  Him and I for the next 5 or so years would spend alot of time playing street fighter together.  Mostly with him kicking my ass.  Taught me how to play CVS2 which I got pretty decent at.

Around about this time, internet gaming is hitting its peek.  Arcades everywhere are dying.  Yiffans becomes pretty much the only hotspot for competitive fighting games in the country.  No new fighting games are being developed except for tekken games.  At this point the community started to dwindle a bit.  I remember about this time coming across NZism but never signed up. 

Took a big break for a while.  Dabbled in some other games, but unfortunately due to the scene being like it was, it was incredibly hard to get into a new game without getting massive rapings.  MVC2, third strike, and the KOF games are really hard to get into when the guys that play them have very advanced techniques and perfect you into oblivion at a rate of a dollar a minute.

Got into tekken 5 until DR came out.  Played Jack5 and Ganryu from release.  I used to play alot in town at that point.

Years later I found GGPO.  And it all started again.  ALl my alpha 2 and 3 experience found something to be put to use and I was enjoying fighting games again.  It was great being able to play some of the top players on the WC of the USA and Japan.

Not long after HD remix came out, and I signed up to the site and would regularly play flux, gino, and alan online.  The rest is kinda history.

Man cant believe I just fucking wrote all that.  LOL.

[iMagneto]

i also remembered "The Warehouse" At pakuranga... back in the old days.. they were the king gamer console... display sega Mega Drive. LOL~~ i was so damm happy... when i was a kid..my mother took me there to visit relatives over at pakuranga, had some wendys for lunch heh heh, so i went in Warehouse and they put a demo out of Street Fighter 2 turbo! so i was hogging the demo,
more than hour lol, so i kick off playing 5 games LOL

[iMagneto]

LOL shit lenny.. ur so similar to me, modify the PSX and practice combo with ya brother, but instead i practice with "ryan" in mvc2
thats how we got so good... and fucked up simon badly! LOL during the high school year~ wagg high school and play marvel!

MARVEL BABBYYY!!

[fluxcore]

Wow, nice post Lenny Mine's pretty similar but without any tourneys or competition whatsoever, so actually way more sad :/
I'll go into more detail sometime...

[[NIUE] B1ackstar Ninja]

Righto , im almost 29 just so it gives an indication of how bad my memory is haha

My story is no where as exciting but I started out on a commodore 64 playing
The last ninja 1 & 2 , ghouls n ghosts , conan , pacman , rick dangerous etc at my mate driftoxs house .
Played a bit of 1942 at the weymouth fish n chip shop  in manurewa also when mum would give me 20c  

Anyway , One day we went to rainbows end and i got my $5 from the olds and changed it into those funky slotted tokens they had back in the day there .
I piled most of it in assorted ratty old arcades and then i saw sf2 .
Man what a awesome thing.....
I was attracted by all the sound the elephants made on dhalsims stage as it was up so loud .
Saw all these awesome sprites and fireballs and sonic booms going everywhere and dudes beating the snot owta each other .
Hell yeah I wanted a part of that seeing as I fuckn loved ninjas at this age and anything martial arts related .
I picked ryu and got may ass handed to me .
Didnt know what a fireball motion even was ......

Then when i went with dad one day to get the fish n chips .
They had got rid of bad dudes vs dragon ninja and replaced with world warrior .
I went up after intermediate school (1991-1992) and used to play till I got stocked for my 40 cents from a bunch of islanders lol

So I ventured down to the other weymouth dairy by the wharf .
They had champion edition !!!!!1
You could use the bosses?!!!!!!
Awesome cos they were the bosses I thort i would be undefeatable till some guy invisible throwed my ass with guile and then did golden stance to freeze and hence win the match . Cheap ass bastard..........

Anyway he was there abit and showed me the 20c with a hole drilled with fishing wire in it like lenny mentioned .
drop it in , pull it out ,free game
So i did that till we got caught by the owners amd banned .
the other shop had now got hyper fighting and I plucked up enough courage to go back in and actually won a few games using invisible throw .
Nearly got another hiding but some guy told me i was good for a honky so that was better than a smack in the mouth

Then we got a Amiga 500 and hyper fighting was released !
It came on 4 discs and you had to change the fucken disc after each fight lol .
It was terrible but I had sf at home!!!!!!!
none of my mates believed me and then they all started coming round till billy got a super nintendo with super sf2 .... bastard....

At high school we used to go up to papakura , they had a arcade just up from the warehouse and they had 3rd strike.
fuck the animation was unbelivable but the only guy I knew in there was ryu
(and chun?) and the charaters looked like crap compared to the hyper fghting characters so I never really played it .

Fast forward another few years or so , Id drop a bit of cash in at yiffans if I was ever in town , we were normally at mark1 comics which became groundzero in the arcade there right by yiffans so I started going in a bit more .

Ended up buying a hyper fighting arcade on my 20th bday for $800 .
That was mean as .
We'd have beers and play pool at home and generally fuck around .
Then i got engaged and we didnt have enough money for the bar tab so the cabinet was sold  

Id still muck around with sf on ps1 etc but nothing serious .

Then I heard about them making a new sf game with all the original characters and thort this sounded cool as fuck  
Also read about HD remix so got a hori stick from playasia and started playing again

Read a post on gpforums from flux and followed the link on his sig to the forums here .
Didnt join up for ages , I normally just browse but just before the game hit I joined up , met lenny and the other boys and yeah , right back into SF once again !!!

The more things change the more they stay the same aye  

SOnic Fuckn BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM !!!!!!!!

[[NIUE] BIRRY WONG]

Fuck hold up. This is from Lenny:

I chose Zangief (for those of you that dont know me, I always pick the big smashing guy)

And yet you seem to prefer Gen/El Fuerte in SF4?

I CALL FAKE STORY.




Anyway, i grew up in papatoetoe/otara. I remember going hungry at school because i would be saving my lunch money for the Street Fighter 2 machine at the fish and chip shop. I dont remember how i discovered it actually. I think one day i was going around to a mates place after school and we stopped there on the way. Had to stand on the old red/blue milk crates just to reach the buttons.

After we moved from South Auckland to Remuera, (Moved back to south auckland years later, but thats beside the point) I remember whoring out Mortal Kombat 2 on my neighbours mega drive (master system 2 maybe? i cant remember) Many a weekend would be spent on that machine. Although Sonic the Hedgehog 2 also made many an appearance.

Played a bit of KoF during my teens (Back in south auckland again. Its a sad time when arguably the whitest boy in the country cant resist the call of the ghetto. >_>) Beating down some scrubs out in Hunters Plaza, and getting owned by all the asians in town.

Didnt really start "playing properly" until first year of uni, when i took up MVC2. Id seen dave(ADism)/sol play it a fair bit, back when joe(joekage) was a yifans regular. I think it was about the time richard(samurai black) started playing it aswell. Managed to get pretty good at that, until KoFXI hit yifans.

This is where my marvel game turned to ass for a while, since i would just whore KOFXI and that fucking Gundam game. I was good at kofXI, and then they moved the machine to the shithouse cabinet, and so i went back to marvel. Realising my marvel game had turned to a steaming bowl of corn-laden liquid diarrhoea, I picked a new angle and started playing basically from scratch. Which is when i began my trademark Anak/Storm/Sonson team that i thieved from Anakaris_curse on gamefaqs, or The_Mummy on SRK. Since that point i found i have more fun using the most impossibly difficult characters. Not necessarily the weakest, but the ones that have unconventional elements in their gameplay that make them strong, but the learning curve makes them difficult to be good with. Part of the reason i use El Fuerte in SF4.

When SF4 first came out, i was abismal. I got so tired of losing to people i shouldve been able to run rings around, i decided it wasnt for me and went back to marvel. I also played Blazblue for like 4 weeks. In which i became the only person at yifans to use Arakune(For the reasons i just mentioned), and i was arguably one of the best at that game until the lack of competition got boring as shit, and so i took up SF4 again. As it became more popular i dropped abel (who i was maining for some reason originally) and picked up El Fuerte. (who i initially dropped because he was just too fucking weird to use at the time. And this was also before RSF was discovered, so he hadnt really been explored) I still suck pretty bad, mostly i think due to lack of practice.

But here i am, only really playing MVC2 and SF4 extensively. I dabble a bit in KOF, but dont really play it much at all anymore.

[kingpiccolo]

yeah i cant remember how old i was when i started playing games i know that SF2 had just come out and i use to play 1 but sucked hardcore at that and was scrubby at sf2 but use to spend all my money on it cos it was just soo awesome.

but i never really started playing competitively till i met lenny in 2002 i developed my style whilst playin him on console and emulators. lol we like spent soo much time playin like all the sf's.

hehe good times good times

[CptMunta]

The South Island story  

I was always into martial art games, Kung Fu Master, Double Dragon, IK+ even

But Lenny is right when Street Fighter 2 came out it was like wtf! It looked liked an animated cartoon back then! The artwork of the series had a huge impact on me back then and still has a heavy influence in my career as an artist.

I was really into the character designs, I loved the backgrounds, sprites, music and sound effects. the back of my exercise books were filled with sketches of Ryu and the crew.

We had two arcades close to school so we would bunk at lunchtime (sometimes during class) and go to FJs (closer, cheaper, beaten up machines, where all the bad kids hung out) or Marty's 40c per game but good machines also first to get Champion Edition!

I bought Special Champion Edition on Megadrive and bought a Gamepro Hyper Fighting guide. It was awesome! Spent my time at home training for the arcades. MK2 came along but the arcade machine was expensive (60c per game)and it's ai unfair so I didn't bother. Played it at home though. Go Megadrive!

We used to have $5 free play Saturday nights at Wizards with pretty good comp too. Had a you loose you leave policy. It was awesome sharing info and strats. Akuma code FTW! Hyper fighting and Super Turbo were my games, my Ryu was pretty solid loved Hurricane kicking through FBs!

Xmen's animation and graphics blew my mind. Like lenny when the crossovers came it too awesome! Would borrow a PS and rent them and play them straight for a week or so, or in the arcades. Got a used saturn and alpha 2 and would play that during the dole days.

I loved New Generation when it came out, thought parries rocked was inspired again by the design. Dabbled in 3s, alpha series and vs series when new versions came out.

Capcom Vs SNK pulled me back and then CVS2 had a healthy scene here too for a bit, Lots of good comp and a wide variety of teams. But Tekken got everyone at the arcade eventually with it's pretty graphics.

Played Xbox 3s and CVS2 till HD remix and SF4 were announced. We got SF4 for like 3 weeks or so (one of those weeks I was overseas) The arcade was pumping again for the time we had it. Would have had an awesome scene again if we had kept it. Really hope the next version gets a worldwide arcade release. With 2p on one cab for Christ's sake!
viva la revolution!

Bizarre fact
No shit!
I had a dream I was at the local arcade playing as a blue venom in a new Street Fighter vs game. 5 months or so later Marvel Vs Capcom 1!!!

I dreamt I was playing as ken what looked like a bootleg fighting game vs. kim from fatal fury. Weird thing is it had 4 buttons! Capcom vs SNK is released a year later!

What a waste of fucking premonitions.

[[NIUE] weazzyefff]

hey i won a $1000 ps2 package in this tournament in New Lynn when i was 14 at central park gaming store in the mall. It went on for two weeks to qualify for top 20, i was only 14 and i was in the grade 14 and up lol with over 300 people competing.It was GranTurismo3 S Class selection best time in 3 laps on Midfield Raceway. I got the best time1:06 i'll never forget it because i practiced the stage over and over at home and could only get 1:07,and the commentator was freaking me out taking the last few corners yelling on the fuckin mic right behind me, the pressure was intetense as.
And then in the top 20 it was TEKKEN4 my favourite game at the time , i knew i was gonna win because the rest of the guys were only good at GT3. Then after eliminations in the final 2 i won all 5:5 round matches.Man it was the best ever i felt like a superstar.
Does anyone out west remember that comp.Just thought i'lld share lol.

[fluxcore]

Let's see...

There were so many arcades back in the day, even my local fish & chip shop had a little cabin out the back with machines in it. My parents wouldn't let me go there, so it was always sort of mysterious and held an obvious appeal. This was probably '87 or so.

We went over to Europe in the early 90's, and SF was at fever pitch. Every video store, fish & chip shop had a SF cab in it, and always there were people playing. As mentioned by others, the game was just amazing, the graphics were enormous and so detailed, the game was so smooth, everything was just incredible. I never really got to play ever, but whenever I saw a machine with Final Fight or SF on it I'd just stand there transfixed, staring at the machine looping through demo mode over and over.
While we were in Europe the WW cart had just come out for SNES, so there were lots of machines in department stores demoing it (along with games like F-Zero and Super Mario World). There were always kids playing on the demo units, and I just watched. I think I had one game and basically couldn't do anything.

When we got back to NZ, after school some days we'd go to the fish and chip shop nearby which had a WW machine, and one of the kids I knew could do all the Guile glitches, and could be the game easily. I learned what you needed to do to do the magic throw, but I could barely do sonic booms, so it wasn't quite as easy as the instructions.
My parents wouldn't buy a console for me (not even a game boy), but each holidays I'd hire out a SNES or Megadrive with some street fighter or mortal kombat game and play them all day, either vs cpu or with friends that I invited over. One time I hired out a big 2-player arcade stick for the console and we played on that, it was awesome. I was so hopelessly entranced by all this stuff that in the back of a hardback exercise book I'd drawn 6 buttons and a stick and pretended to do the motions and stuff with it. I made a little notebook and filled it with commands and stuff for all different characters (this was back when all the moves and things were 'hidden' and not common knowledge), in my mind making a 'super' fighting game with all my favourite chars from SF, MK, SamSho and others.
To this day, every time I go into the hamilton K-mart I remember when it had a Megadrive demo unit with the then-brand-new Mortal Kombat 2, and one guy was doing the ground freeze move which I had never seen before, and the guy described how to do it as 'hurricane kick with lk' and I was confused until I realised he was talking SF notation I also remember when the Farmers in town had a huge big alcove filled with demo unit consoles, mega drives, master systems, game gears, etc etc...
I also got the furthest in Sonic 2 I ever had on a demo unit in the Toy Warehouse out in Te Rapa
This was about the end of intermediate school by now.

Then through high school I got a PC, so all my gaming shifted to that and I neglected consoles/fighting games for a few years while I was playing Command & Conquer/Carmageddon/Quake etc. Then I found a version of SF Alpha 1 on the PC, and had to buy a Sidewinder gamepad to play it with. This was the first time I ever played a game with Supers in it. When I played older street fighters without supers I'd practice doing the super motion by doing 2 qcf to perform dragon punches.

A couple of years later my friend's brother moved out of his apartment, and apparently his landlord had some arcade cabinets unused in his garage or something. So they did a midnight run with a station wagon and stole a machine. I was astounded to hear about this, but also so intrigued to find out what game it was. Apparently it had 6 buttons, so that was a good start.
Turning it on, it was World Warrior, the one that started everything off. Every weekend I'd be over there playing it constantly. To the point where some of the people in the apartment got really annoyed with the machine because it was kind of anti-social for the people that didn't play I mastered Guile's glitches, and some of my friends were pretty damned good players too, so this was really my first taste of proper competition.

About this time Callus (the very first CPS1 emulator) came out, and WW was one of the earliest games emulated, so I honed some of my techniques through that. It was truly amazing to have the arcade rom running on my PC!

Eventually our WW machine became really flakey, would reboot quite regularly and the colours got all warped and the screen was funky. The machine was put to rest, and I got the sticks and buttons to make a home stick. They were the MCA sticks that you usually find everywhere in NZ (the 'fish & chip shop sticks'), and these korean leaf-style buttons. I always liked taking apart tape players and things when I was young, so I had a crack at making a stick out of my MS Sidewinder pad that had served me so well up until then. I slightly buggered it up, but it still worked pretty much, so I had my first arcade stick for PC! I could now REALLY crank the sf! CE and HF had become emulatable by now, and we'd play all these games lots. BTW I still have this stick! Still goes strong!

I think around now Bleem! and VGS came out, allowing me to emulate the PSX version of SFA3 - so I was able to play World Tour mode along with my friends that had actual playstations!
Then the 2nd generation of CPS emulators came around, and with the CPS2 xors, the Alpha games and X-men series became emulated, and we played all those too. This was getting to the end of Uni now.

After Uni all my friends moved down to Wellington, so I didn't really have any fighting game competition. I met Gino at an anime screening at a lecture/movie theatre that I took a dreamcast+sticks along to, so we could play SF3:3s on the big screen afterwards. He was pretty impressed that someone made their own stick, and we became friends and started playing SF/MvC2/Tekken Tag together. I was really into SF3:3s at this stage, back when everyone in the US hated the game.
I met Stu at the Hamilton arcade one day playing MvC2 during a super session. We became friends too and after uni (whence I became a bum and dole-bludged for a year), he'd be over every week and we'd play MvC2 for like 8 hrs at a time until our hands couldn't take it anymore (here starts my hand problems!). The US people all started to pick up SF3:3s, but I was getting bored with it. Seeing how the game played at top-player level really put me off it.

Stu moved over to australia, and since then I've only had Gino to play against. We cranked many different games together, Super Turbo, UMK3, KoFXII, GGXX#R, GGXXAC, MvC2, Tekken5... and every time we went up to Auckland (really not frequently at all due to work schedules), we'd hop into Yifan's, but almost always there'd be noone there.
Around this time I really wanted to get to know all the rest of the NZ players of various fighting games. OzHadou was my inspiration - concentrate more on matchmaking and NZ-specific stuff, and try to get some events going, rather than strats stuff. SRK and TZ already exists for that kind of thing. So the idea of NZism came about. I made a site and a forum, and since Tekken was the biggest game in NZ and pretty much the only new thing out for years, I threw a tourney for it in Hamilton, with the idea of getting the Tekken players to join so they could all find each other better. They didn't bite, and basically the site was pretty much dormant for a couple of years.

Only with the release of SF4 have things really started to come together, and I've met some really cool guys now because of it! And of course increased my competition base by a factor of like 30!

I think over the years I've played almost every fighting game around to various levels of competency, obviously some I prefer to others, but lack of competition really kills things, so I'm really glad to know you guys now! Thanks!

[Gino]

Story:
Played various fighting games throughout the years, tekken, sf2, mk.
Started to actually try and play Tekken Tag against some the Hamilton people. Then I met Alan, schooled me at pretty much every capcom fighting game.
Played a lot of MVC2, GG, UMK3, HD-Remix and SF4. Then I won the Waikato Tournament.

INDESTRUCTIBLE (lol)