Carmack
There is shame in being defeated at a game you once mastered. Not like a Quake 2, old school FPS player picking up Halo: Reach for the first time and losing to some younglings online; I’m talking about something far more irksome.
Hear this legend friends:
My High School friends and I consider ourselves world class contenders on the N64 Super Smash Bros. stage. And when I went to university I introduced it to a new group of warriors.
Later, when Super Smash Bros. Melee was released for the GameCube, I was living with some of these warriors. I wouldn’t say we became world class contenders, but we were certainly downright fierce competitors.
One night one of our warriors came back from a pilgrimage and told me he had been beaten at Melee. He said he was “outmatched.”
I am a proud practitioner of Sophykhon-Do — the fighting game philosophy that states you to train every character. But it seems these Melee opponents trained one character and instead mastered the game.
I might not have personally been defeated but it felt that way. And I will feel this way until I’m in a melee with these legendary beasts. Even if they play like this; we self-proclaimed masters will crash our pride into anyone else’s.
i do miss SB64. i remember many the friday tournaments, and how i won all of them.
I still occasionally experience phantom sensations in my… Man-regions. It’s like my balls are still there in spirit, even though they were ripped from me in untimely fashion on the day of my Melee defeat. Sigh.
as far as i’m concerned, mastering one character in a fighting game is not mastering the game. especially when the character happens to be a high-tier one. for example, in street fighter (all incarnations), can you really claim mastery when you’re always picking either akuma, ryu or ken? sure you might win lots of matches, but it’s no where near as impressive as owning with dan, or hugo consistently. so if you’re just going to master one character in the game, you may as well master a low-tier one, at least that way you can humiliate your opponent. however, the true meaning of mastering a game is you master EVERY single character, and can beat anyone using ANY character simply on a whim.
/bow
Yes Sempai
personally, i will always use pikachu in sb64, and i will always win against sean. to me, i have mastered winning, and that makes me happy, even if i use the cheesiest character.