An additional counterpoint in response to the post-EVO 2013 article.

A recent post by Jeremy Huggard has ignited a fire within the Fighting Game Community today from his recent article “Adrift in a Sea of Hadokens.” This article comes out scrutinizing every current fighting game except for Street Fighter, only to have it end up as his sole focus. Even the title itself scrutinizes the science behind effective zoning and belittles it by calling it “spam.” And his issues didn’t end there as you’ll note in the following passage:

“If you’re a gamer and have even a passing interest in the fighting genre, watching the annual Evo tournament can lead to thrilling moments. To be honest, this year’s lineup of titles was underwhelming for me. I’ve never viewed Mortal Kombat as a serious fighter, Super Smash Bros. Melee exponentially less so. Injustice: Gods Among Us still needs balancing and is basically a bloodless bastard son of Mortal Kombat, anyway. King of Fighters XIII is fun to watch but way overdependent on 50-hit super combos. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is clunky and stiff compared to many of its modern peers. Persona 4 Arena couldn’t cram more tired anime clichés in with a crowbar and a tub of butter. I actually adore the total bedlam of Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, but even the best commentator can have trouble trying to follow exactly what’s happening. Skullgirls is barely worth mentioning.”

To give you some additional perspective, I will explain briefly outline the nature behind these titles and the players, as well as clarify why each of them presented such a phenomenal showing at this year’s Evo.

Mortal Kombat, otherwise known as MK9, was shown to have a large amount of players this year. The top 8 of this game covered 7 different areas in the and showed a fairly diverse casting, as the characters were Kung Lao, Sonya Blade, Kitana, Liu Kang, Shang Tsung, Kabal, and finally the winner of 2013’s Evo Cyrax. This game is known for its fairly fast pace, strong reliance on punishing your opponents blocked/whiffed moves and optimizing your damage on your confirms. The real surprise was when team Fnatic’s PerfectLegend had ended up tying for 5th this year after two previous shows as Grand Champion. The quick execution needed along with very quick reading of your opponent really shines in this game.

Super Smash Bros. Melee originally was in an up for grabs slot in Evo 2013. The tournament’s organizer, Mr. Joey “MrWizard” Cuellar, had the great idea of a donation drive to raise money for The Breast Cancer Research Foundation to recognize who the last slot would go to. The Super Smash Bros. community raised $94,683 to have their game included on the world’s greatest stage for fighting games, Evolution 2013. This year had an amazing showing, consisting of several high-level players like Mew2King, Mango, Wobblez, |HungryBox, and formerly retired player, Armada coming back and giving Super Smash Bros. the chance to show what it can really do.

Injustice: Gods Among Us was another title that was discussed in this article as a “bloodless bastard son of Mortal Kombat“, when in fact, these games have very little aside from the cosmetic that make them resemble each other. The only real mechanics that resemble each other involve air juggles, the animated style, and non-clashing projectiles. There’s actually a very in-depth system ranging from the way it’s possible to do unbreakable throws on negative attacks to the idea of a “clash” system that allows you to not only break a combo, but wager your own meter to possibly gain some of your health back. These changes, along with the advanced mixup game, allow for a very challenging mind game to be played between the players. As for the complaint about balance issues, every game has balancing issues, and yet, Christopher “AGE NYChrisG” Gonzalez from Afterglow Elite has proven time and time again that a “low tier” character like Green Arrow is capable of winning majors.

King of Fighters XIII was reduced to a “fun to watch game but is way too overdependant on 50 hit combos.” While HD Combos are a flashy and extremely damaging part of KoFXIII they are only a minor part of it. Many people have started playing KoFXIII, trying to only do those large combos, only to find out that the footsie game (which is an integral part of fighting games that require intelligent use of normal moves to control spacing) along with knowing your short damaging combos that do not require the use of meter. I used to main KoFXIII and had the same problem until the very accepting and friendly community of KoF with my friends like James Jr., AGE Mario, AGE Romance, ArcadeShock Reynald, Blackrose, Kane BlueRiver and countless others helped me become a solid player. Not only is the execution level very unforgiving, but the timing, control, and extremely balanced roster allow this game to be a battle between players, not gimmicks.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was considered “clunky and stiff compared to many of its modern peers” by Mr. Huggard. This couldnt be farther from the truth. Most fighting games, like TTT2, run at 60 frames per second. The thought that rolls through the heads of these players is “Okay, that’s negative, what can I do to punish it?” Tekken being a very fast paced game hidden behind what some people might consider slow is very misleading. These players recognize what situations what combos work well with and how to trap their opponents into hitting a bad button at the wrong time. The window for inputs and countering is extremely small, taking a lot of skill and timing to correctly do either. A good example is how to properly move in the game. The “clunky and stiff” look is coming from canceling dashes to remove the recovery frames from a dash allowing them not only to move fast but to be safer while doing so. TTT2 is actually a beautiful game in high level play, and the showing of America’s own Bronson Tran making his comeback to almost the top of the Tekken ladder after such a long absence was extremely exciting to see since most people thought that Cafe|ID’s own Knee and Nin were going to take it all.

The reason Mr. Huggard said Persona 4 Arena wasn’t up to par was because, “Persona 4 Arena couldn’t cram more tired anime clichés in with a crowbar and a tub of butter.” Now that’s not even a complaint on the mechanics or actual play but just mostly, I’m assuming, art style, soundtrack, and characters? If he has looked into the game he’d realize that the characters are actually from a series of role-playing games called Persona. Most of the cast being from Persona 3 (Mitsuru, Elizabeth, Akihiko, Aigis) and Persona 4 (Kanji, Yu, Chie, Yukiko, Teddie, Yosuke, Naoto) while also bringing completely new characters (Labrys, Shadow Labrys). These games do rely on some of the “anime stereotypes” but really if you look at the message that these games encourage, (like friendship, loyalty, honesty, and responsibility) you can’t really dislike those messages. The game is extremely fast paced with what most people consider moderately high execution and advanced mind-games. All of this combined, with the ideas that are instilled make it a great game to not only watch and play.

Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 was another highly played game considered by Huggard who stated that even “the best commentator can have trouble trying to follow exactly what’s happening.” This isn’t really accurate, since many great commentators like Brokentier’s own IFC Yipes and UltraDavid and James Chen of UltraChen TV have been able not only follow and understand what’s going on during the match, but also take the time to answer Tweets. In James Chen’s case, he helps people understand the terms that are thrown out so that new players/viewers could understand what they were saying on commentary. This game IS very active, and at times, can be very overwhelming to watch. But if you want to become good at the game, you can learn how to understand what is happening on-screen.

Skullgirls is, in my opinion, a very underestimated title as Mr. Hubbard shows by saying it “is barely worth mentioning.” For a little backstory, Skullgirls actually started off as one players dream of having a Marvel vs. Capcom 2-style game when people had moved on to the next iteration. The player’s name was Mike Z, and through his hard work and the huge support of the community, Mike was able to get everything together to create Skullgirls. Now it’s worth mentioning that Skullgirls is still being currently worked on, and more characters are on their way. It’s also worth mentioning that during the same donation drive I mentioned earlier with Smash Bros., the Skullgirls community was able to raise another astounding number which was $78,760 for The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. This game is extremely fast paced, features very high execution concepts, and a beautiful hand-drawn style that shows the love that this team has put into their game.

Now another thing I wish to talk about is the match between Seonwoo “Infiltration” Lee and Ryan “Laugh” Ahn. Huggard just brushes this off saying that it was a boring fight of fireball spamming while he wasn’t paying attention to the finer details of the match since he was too busy paying atttention to the potential drama. Laugh and Infiltration were teammates on MadCatz’s team Western Wolves. These two travelled together, and Laugh not only helped coach Infiltration during some of his best wins of the past year, but was also the main person Infiltration could talk to since he isn’t comfortable speaking English. There’s the potential drama he talked about, two team mates pitted against each other in a top 16 match deciding who would make top 8 at Evolution this year. The match was based on a heavy spacing war between the two while trying to find the opening they needed to be able to hit the other person. This is done by “pump-faking” fireballs, altering the timing and speed of the projectiles, and if they find the opening, punishing them with what damage they can get in. Unfortunately for Laugh, he was unable to take out last year’s champion and was eliminated from the tournament. This match had the whole room silent as they watched the two fight it out for the last spot, even the commentators Seth Killian and James Chen had become silent, as they watched in anticipation of what was an extremely exciting match. Alex Valle from LevelUp once said “Semifinals is the point where you start eliminating your friends.”

The final thing I wish to touch on in this article before my final thoughts is in relation to Infiltration’s choice to switch to Hakan against Eduardo “PR Balrog” Perez-Frangie. Huggard only slightly mentions this by saying, “The crowd this year went nuts when a player swapped from Hadouken-happy Akuma to grapple-focused Hakan.” The reason for this is actually based on multiple layers. The reasoning on why Infiltration switched to Hakan is because the matchup is actually in Hakans favor, meaning that most of the moves Balrog can do will be punished by Hakan. This makes the match in Infiltrations favor, allowing him to start countering the character and the player instead of just trying to go off of previous experiences, (which was not working for him.) The reason that the crowd went wild is because Infiltration is known for playing what some people considered two of some of the worst characters in the game, Hakan and Gouken. Hakan is a crowd favorite, due to his stylish moves and lack of on-screen play at major tournaments. Infiltration’s adaptive style allowed him to win, thus knocking out America’s last hope and moving on in the tournament.

With all this in front of you, do you still believe that these fighting games are not only boring, but either outdated or irrelevant? I hope that this piece has helped introduce many possible newcomers and former naysayers to look deeper into our commitment as parts of the Fighting Game Community and perhaps someday, possibly join us. There are many stories that this article did not addres, however, like the young prodigies that we continuously find throughout California to Georgia and even as far as Saudi Arabia and beyond.

We are passionate, competitive, and extremely dedicated. I hope that this article has opened some of your eyes to the depth that lies beyond those pixels.

Duk “Illgamesh” Yi is the founder of the Midwest fighting game team Skill Over Tier and co-tournament organizer at NetBattles. He continuously works to better his city and community by continuously organizing local events and helping newer players to learn. You can follow him on and .

[The views expressed in this article belong to the author and may not represent the views of PutThatBack.org as a whole]