**This is a series that I'm starting on my own personal blog about dabbling in fighting games. Normally I would just leave it there, but since I found inspiration for diving deeper into the sillyness of fighting games while spending time here on Giant Bomb I thought I would post it here as well. Also, I'm not really a writer I'm more of an artist. The Kano pixel art is my first attempt at pixel art.**

I grew up in the 90s a time when platformers, JRPGS, and fighting games reigned supreme. During that time in my video game chronology I stuck to the platforming scene more than anything else. I played games like Super Mario 3, Crash Bandicoot, Sonic the Hedgehog, Earthworm Jim and even the famed Croc. I had a faint sense of other video games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, and Final Fantasy. I dabbled, but I never spent enough time with these video games to really have strong ties to them or be any good at them.

By the 00s I owned an XBox and became a FPS kid because of Halo and took my real first dive into RPGs with Knights of the Old Republic then fell in love with that genre from there. I tried to have the same experience with fighting games when I bought Street Fighter IV on a whim because that was the game to get at the time, but it never grabbed me.

I sucked at fighting games and I had no idea how to get good at them. I knew the characters of Street Fighter and loved them from a childhood where I was exposed to a Jean Claude Van Dam version of Guile, but playing fighting games and sucking at them was just no fun. I was just always intimidated by them and never figured them out. I thought we had parted ways and I would just admire them from a distance for their awesome art, characters, and goofy stories.

Then I became an adult who spends more time playing video games in my spare time than anything else. And consuming a large amount of video games media than is probably recommended. I've come to a point where fighting games are still a huge part of the game scene. I love watching tournaments on Twitch. Now I want to tap into fighting games more so I can experience the fun of figuring out combos and getting to experience new games in the genre.

So where does one start on the process of learning how to fighting game? Well recently Mortal Kombat X came out and it looks fantastic, but I'm too cheap and timid to shell out $60 for a game that I will probably suck at. Instead, I aim my sights on the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection for the PS3. It includes Mortal Kombat I, II, and III for the low, low price of $9.99.

And so it begins, when I first boot up Mortal Kombat (OG) from the Arcade Kollection selection screen I'm greeted with a start screen. Then from there straight to the character selection screen.

I haven't played this game in a very long time and well I never learned how to play it properly anyways so I decided to take a rotation with all of the characters and see how they "feel". I know enough to know that sometimes I have success with characters with whatever haphazard button mashing I do during fighting games, so I wanted to test out how well I could do with each fighter. I did this without glancing at a moves list and just kind of getting a sense for the basic controls.

And the basic controls are weird. I kept trying to block by pushing back (ala Street Fighter) but that wasn't working, so I looked at the controls and found that block is a trigger? So odd. I guess I never really figured out blocking in these games because back when I played them at the ripe age of 7 or 8 I was full on assault and no defense. I wasn't a very tactical child I suppose.

Continuing to mess with the buttons I found some good moves. The uppercut in this game is just earth shattering. I spammed the crap out of it. But that only got me so far. The AI gets a bit smarter with each progressing round.

I kept running into AI that would leg swipe me and I couldn't figure out how they were doing that. Back to 'ye old control configuration. The sweep is a back and low kick. Learning this starts my favorite combo of leg sweep to upper cut. Works lovely.

Through learning the basic controls and playing with all of the characters I find that I really like playing with KANO (she says in a low announcer voice). He's just got that karate teacher, commando, cyborg mojo that I like. So I start playing more consistently as Kano and begin to learn some of his special moves and try to learn his fatality.

Kano has a pretty simple projectile which is some sort of cyber punk dagger that he throws at his foes. It's just a block hold and a back + front. Super easy to master for a n00b like me. He also has a cannonball maneuver where he does a tumble through the air to create a Kano destruction ball. As of the writing of this blog I have yet to successfully pull this off. It is basically all of the direction arrows hit sequentially, but I normally get hit in the face before I can pull it off. I wish there was some sort of practice mode, but that is probably asking a lot out of this game.

Kano also has a pretty simple fatality. Only a few short button clicks and then he rips the heart out of his defeated opponent. Of course at the beginning I would be so excited and focused on the winning the match that I would blank on the fatality or run out of time or not be close enough to my opponent. So it took a while and a lot of winning, but I finally do the fatality with regularity. And that feels good. Feels like I'm learning.

And overall playing the game, the controls felt very stiff (well it was a PS3 d-pad, so my expectations weren't high) and I felt like I landed some hits that didn't actually land. Still after continuing to sit down and play the game I did feel like I was getting better. I am just playing AI but I was starting to develop (in a fledgling state) some muscle memory and a sense of how to react in certain encounters.

I also became a little obsessed with the game during the long afternoon I spent trying to climb the tower and defeat all of my enemies. Towards the top of the tower with the difficulty ramped up there was a lot of cursing and near game controller tossing. All due to my own ineptness more than anything the game was doing. Although I will say, I feel like Scropion is always cheating somehow. I swear I uppercut that fool then all of a sudden he has disappeared.

I did manage to climb all the way to Goro. And at first I thought it would be impossible for me to beat him. He's a big goon so I thought I would spam him with a bunch of projectiles, but no he has a projectile and it is way more powerful than mine. Then when I got too close he would grab me and bash my head in for half my health. Stupid Goro.

But I stuck with it. I found out that if I stay low and hit him with a low-kick he kind of staggers a bit, then when I hit it at the exact right time I can upper cut him then hit him with some projectiles and continue to do that. And through persistence, a very low amount of skill, and pure adrenaline I beat Goro!

Then the game froze.

I think it was in shock.

In my head I feel like I have beaten MK1, but I think I will have to go back and hope it doesn't freeze on me again and beat it for reals. I have to say I had a lot of fun playing MK1 and I feel like a learned a lot. I may never be the most skilled fighting gamer but I certainly feel like I can play these games now and have fun. Fighting games are not impenetrable. Sometimes you just got to be okay with not being good at something.