TappaTappaTappa

Last night I went to the gym after work. I'm on an herbal detox program right now, which recommends avoiding lots of exercise, but I had to go. I couldn't stand it anymore. And it was a fine time.

I went home, made some food and worked on some art. At about 9:30 or so, I had an itch. An itch only Street Fighter 4 could scratch. I called up Ryan and told him to fire up his PS3, cause I'm feeling in-de-structable! (that would be funny if you had SF4...)

I've been getting better and better with the Arcade Stick, so I felt this was a good test to see if I was really back up to speed. Ryan and I are very similarly matched (I have the experience of a lot of Street Fighter games, Ryan just has pure videogame skill flowing through his veins...). I knew if I won roughly 1/2 the time, I would officially be up to par with my old Street Fighter skill.

Plus, Ryan gets pretty competitive and knowing I might be slower than normal would only drive him to beat me harder.

And I'm relieved to say, it went well. I certainly didn't decimate Ryan or anything, but I did manage to win by a (slim) majority.

We played at least 20 matches, and I think the divide was about 60/40 by the end. And that's with me blowing a few rounds trying to for a win with my Zangief against Ryan's Ken, because I just knew I could pull it off (I didn't).

It was a total blast. There was much trash-talking, swearing, shouting, hooting, name-calling, cries of agony and cheers of victory the whole time. By the end, Lindsay was like "Shut up! Do you realize how loud you are?!"

We culminated in an epic final bout, where we were both frantically fighting as hard as we could. It came down to a 3rd round stand-off, each of us down to just a sliver of health. I won, but just by the skin of my teeth.

During the last few seconds the match, Ryan said he could hear the "TappaTappaTappa" of my buttons through the mic.I was hunched over the stick, hammering at the buttons, gritting my teeth and practically sweating in fear.