Hiya!

A rather strong caveat before you do read on. I debated with myself if I was qualified to write about this. I’m not exactly a fighting game god nor am I exactly great at fighting games in general. However, there are already a lot of armchair “fighting game experts” who have given their two cents regarding this topic. So, I might as well join in on the fun! So, take whatever I say here with some skepticism. This is just my lame view regarding this topic.

Recently, at this year’s FightClub Championship, a very young player named Hinao won the entire thing. Winning this automatically earned him a spot at the Capcom Cup for Street Fighter 6. What makes this amazing is this was Hinao’s very first tournament based on what I can gather. I said Hinao is young… but that’s kind of an understatement. That’s because he’s only 14 years old!

It’s easy to call him a prodigy to explain why Hinao is just that good enough to enter the Top 32 for this year’s Capcom Cup. If you do, how would you explain the likes of EndingWalker, Blaz and Craime? These 4 players have been doing very well against a lot of the “old guard” of fighting games. Blaz has already qualified for this year’s Capcom Cup and EndingWalker had manage to earn his spots for the previous couple of Capcom Cups. I can’t believe these were flukes.

Some players are saying the reason why so many young players are winning Street Fighter 6 tournaments is because the game itself is easy. I do agree with that sentiment to a degree. If a scrub such as myself can get several characters to Master rank in the game, then there is a degree of simplicity in Street Fighter 6. Despite that, I have no illusions I can beat the likes of Daigo, Tokido, Justin Wong or Punk. Okay, maybe Justin Wong. After all, I did beat his V-Rival counterpart. That’s like the same thing, right? I kid, I kid.

So, while I would agree Street Fighter 6 is a much easier game to get good at than the previous entries, I don’t think that’s the reason why the likes of Hinao, Blaz, EndingWalker and Craime are routinely making it out of pools even besting some of the veteran Street Fighter killers. I don’t think it’s because they’re younger as well. I guess they may have better reflexes so they can react better and they can work their “mental stack” more efficiently because of their youth. If there is an edge, it’s very minimal. If that were the case, you would see a lot of young’uns rolling up to official Street Fighter 6 or other fighting game tournaments and creaming older players left and right.

So, what’s the secret sauce? Why does it seem like there a lot of younger people simply doing super well in fighting games like Street Fighter 6 nowadays? Well, I hate to break it to you but I don’t think that’s actually the case. Simply put, there are just more fighting game players who are naturally talented at fighting games now but they aren’t exactly prodigies. They are gifted at fighting games like Daigo, Tokido and Justin Wong but they’re more well known because of today’s better tech.

Take Justin Wong for example. While we know him as one of the best American fighting game players of all time, he didn’t exactly start out like that. He started out just like everyone who gets into fighting games. Justin Wong was a scrub. He got better, though. Much, much better. The point is it took him time. Based on what he said, it took him an entire summer to graduate from scrub to legend. After that summer, he would be routinely beating on players older than himself.

Like EndingWalker and Blaz, Justin Wong was really young. He was around 14 or 15 years old when he started dominating in games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2. The same can be said for a lot of today’s legendary fighting game players. People seem to forget Xiao Hai was also very young when he started competing and winning in fighting game tournaments at the very youthful age of 9 years old. Heck, the name Xiao Hai literally means “child” in Chinese! Xiao Hai isn’t a child anymore but he still hasn’t lost his edge, even winning this year’s Esports World Cup against Blaz!

So, how does today’s tech come into play with why it seems like there are so many youngsters nowadays beating on fighting game legends of yesterday? Two reasons. The first is it’s so much easier for today’s gamers to get into fighting games. The second is because of the Internet.

Think about how fighting game legends like Daigo, Tokido and Justin Wong’s journey to become legends. They had to go to an arcade with a fighting game machine, play against another play and win in order to keep playing. If they lost, it was back of the line! The better they got, the more they got to play against other players. You might say they can practice on the home ports of whatever fighting game they want to play. The problem is home video game consoles were pretty limited when compared to their arcade counterparts. This is a big reason why DSP‘s earliest claim to fame was getting 4th place at EVO 2005 for Super Street Fighter II Turbo on the original PlayStation. Even on something as “beefy” as the original PlayStation, porting an arcade game to a home console was very dicey! Fun fact: DSP lost to Tokido in Losers.

That is certainly not the case these days. Arcades are still alive but developers today make fighting games specifically for the home market. So, all fighting games are optimized to be played at home systems. This means you can practice on the same game which is going to be used in an official tournament. You can also play to your heart’s content at any time. Just boot up your PlayStation 5 or whatever and start playing some Street Fighter 6! No need to wait for your turn!

Not only that, most developers add a lot of extra stuff in their fighting games such as the now very important Training option. This way, you can practice your combos and figure out things, like how fast a move comes out, what are the specific ranges for each attack, which buttons are safe on block, which attacks can link to another attack, what normal attack can be canceled into a special attack, etc. That simply wasn’t possible during the arcade scene unless you had another player willing to not do anything while you test out all of these combinations. Heck, Capcom even added things to the Training stage so you don’t have to go to the internet to figure out things like frame data anymore! It’s right there!

After your done with your training, it’s now time to test your mettle against other players. This is where the Internet comes in. While it took a while, fighting someone online has become standard. There are still a few hiccups with lag and all that but, for the most part, fighting someone online feels very seamless. With most fighting games having built-in ranking systems allowing newbies to not just run into online monsters from the get go, it eases them in as they fight other players of their skill level. That way, they never feel overwhelmed… most of the time.

Then there are the tutorials. Before the Internet, the only way to get tip and tricks on fighting games were from printed materials like gaming magazines and general word-of-mouth. The magazines must have been painful way to enhance your fighting game knowledge as they only come out once a month! By the time it’s released, whatever tech that was in there might be old news! That’s because I would assume talking to other players and getting help from them was the actual way players got better then.

Well, screw magazines and word-of-mouth today! Just go to YouTube or an Internet message board and look up some fighting game knowledge there! There is an abundance of fighting game players who are pumping out tutorial videos and even coaching newbies for a fee. So, if you want to get good at a fighting game, any fighting game, just go online and look up how to git gud at it!

Because of these two factors, there are simply more younger people who are playing fighting games now. You have to remember how fighting games were rather niche during Daigo and Justin Wong’s time. EVO is a big event now but, way back then, it was just held in a small venue. Since there are more newbies joining the fighting game community all the time, there are bound to be more prodigies and those naturally gifted at playing fighting games now. So, of course we see the likes of EndingWalker and Blaz all of a sudden making their mark. It’s something that happens all the time with guys like Punk, NoahTheProdigy, MenaRD and JAK. They were called youngsters before but they have become staples and legends in the fighting game community in their own right.

I will still root for the legends like Daigo and Tokido. That doesn’t mean I won’t also root for the younger players like EndingWalker and Blaz. Rather than treat them like young players who are trying take out the old-school players, we should be treating them like what they are: really good players. Not young or old fighting game players. Just fighting game players.

Byee!

What’s your take on the idea there are more really good young fighting game players? Let me know in the comments section below!