First post, by Iris030380
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When I was a kid, exactly 12 now that I recall, I came across a brand new shiny Arcade game in my local Lazer Quest called Mortal Kombat. It was less than 2 months old and was extremely loud. The digitized graphics and gore just blew me away, and even though the only arcade game I would normally ever entertain was GOLDEN AXE, and I had no time for Street Fighter, there was something about MK that just drew me in.
A year later and I would walk the 5 miles into town four or five times a week with my £2 daily allowance to have 8 credits worth of game time on the new MK machine at my local smoky arcade, before walking back the 5 miles again.
Over that year I'd worked my way up from losing in the first round of every match to watching the older kids play for hours on end, watching their styles and weaknesses. Beating the arcade on hard in one credit became easy. I could go through the entire game with Scorpion or Sub Zero without getting hit once. Younger kids would give me THEIR money just to watch me complete the game on a character of their choice. MK was the first game I ever really took competitively, obsessively.
So after a year the older kids I'd watched to learn would challenge me and lose constantly. If I didn't want them to win, they wouldn't have a chance. Sometimes I'd let them win to give them the feeling of being able to beat me so I could persuade them to play me again. But one day someone walked into the arcade called Paul.
He was a number of years older than me, probably towards 18 or so. He wasn't a geeky kid, he was pretty cool. He came over to the crowd of people around me watching me finish the game - showing off as usually using only the same attacks time after time - and he challenged me and totally beat me, easily. After about 15 more games, which he paid for, the score was about 12-3 to him, and each of those 3 games I'd won was SO close and took everything I had. After that day whenever we were in the arcade at the same time we'd play for hours, on his money (I was just a kid) and I was the only person he would play. I stopped playing arcades altogether after MK3 came out, and that arcade got burned down one night long after I'd stopped going. But considering no one I'd ever met could even challenge me, that Paul was something else. It was something I'd see later in 1997, when I took Quake 1 online with wireplay, and met some of the UK's best Q1 players. They totally outmatched me, not even close. The ammount of skill someone can achieve, given the right game, is insane. Probably as high as any other physical athlete in a given sport, if not more.
I wonder if Paul still plays MK on Mame from time to time, like I do. I reckon I could kick his ass now, anyways.
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