Street Fighter 4: But the kid in me loves the frosted side!

Its symbolic of the internal I've fought with myself since Street Fighter 4 was first revealed 2 years ago. The first trailer showed instant promise with Ken and Ryu squaring off in a hyper stylized bout that quite obviously wasn't game engine and the conflict was born. The grown up gamer in me, embittered by a decade of remakes, re-releases, and false promises scoffed and folded his arms while the kid gamer in me, still waiting in the arcade line 4 or 5 victims back rubbing two coins together, wet himself with excitement.

For a time, Capcom made it easier to decide the victorious personality. The arcade release of Street Fighter 4 was a game that made no effort to win back the hearts of fans that were lost, cradling those souls that still prayed regularly at the SSF2T altar. The old characters were utterly unchanged holdovers from SSF2T, while the far less explored and exploited Alpha and SF3 casts were completely overlooked. The new characters were quite idiotic, illustrating everything thats wrong with exploiting popular trends in favor of real character design. The plot was non-existent and the audio was but a shadow of the epic heritage nigh twelve games calls for. The sole saving grace of SF4 was that the gameplay, lifted from the most "functional" member of the Street Fighter family and augmented with a few "safe" competitor embellishments. Many would argue that all that matters is gameplay, but a series as long winded as Street Fighter deserves better. It deserves more than a fresh coat of paint and some Bloody Roar style super moves after a 10 year hiatus. The point is I hated it, I hated myself for hating something called Street Fighter, and I hated Capcom for making me hate myself.

Then, without warning the conflict heated up again. The release of a home port was inevitable, but the release with DLC, competent netplay, revamped audio, a strong emphasis on plot, and an expanded roster of characters was unexpected. I found myself scrutinizing every little detail released, each time my normally vocal cynic reduced to muttering in the face of some feature that simply could simply not be hated.

And he we are. On release date. Entirely undecided. Is it right not to swing?

Gamestop Chronicles: The Naruto Switch

A couple years ago I abandoned Naruto on account of it being elevated to Dragonball Z levels of irritation by the mainstream anime fanbase (read: children), but I been hungry for a new game lately and it seemed like a nice segue. Now a new game came out for 360 a few months ago, Broken Bond, and the reviewers are giving it fair marks, but it costs 60 bucks and it jumps into the series plot further down the line than I can remember. It seemed to me that its predecessor, Rise of a Ninja, priced at 15 bucks, similarly rated, and starting at the beginning of the series was a win win, even if it sucked.

Now I've turned my back on Gamestop entirely, but Best Buy and BlockBuster don't carry anything older than a couple months unless its hot and Circuit City is dead, so for a 2 year old licensed game with a brand new sequel, I was stuck. Gamestops website said the Gamestop closest to me had none, so I stepped into one on the other side of town. The idiots inside were too busy talking about how awesome Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe are going to be to help me, so I found a $15 used Rise of a Ninja case on the shelf and brought it up.

At this point let me remind you that Gamestop has this dumb policy where anything that isn't the sales hotness gets its disc unwrapped, decased, and stored in a paper sleeve in a drawer. The dumber extension of this policy is that store employees get to take said games home and preview them for days at a time and scratch the hell out of them, potentially fucking customers who pay actual money, but thats another story for another day. "New" games (it's not really new once you take it out the box, assholes) a lone box remains on the shelf as representative. Used games get these awful generic black cases that are simply recycled as are needed.

Point is, the "case" for Rise of a Ninja is destroyed. Warped, cracked, and broken to the point where I'd be embarrased to have it sitting on my shelf. I wade through their dumb conversation and request another case. The employee facilitates me, swapping it with a less broken case. I pay, I leave, I get in my car. Now The Stranglehold Incident and The 300 Incident have taught me to check every cd/dvd/game case before leaving the parking lot, and its a good thing I did because my less broken (but still lame) case was totally empty. Granted, I didn't expect an instruction booklet or map or registration card, but I at least expected a game.

So I go back into the store and interrupt another highly stimulating conversation (this time about the merits of Star Wars Episode 1) to present my predicament. After an apology and a moment of shuffling the employee draws a cd from the counter into the case and hands it back to me. I leave again, but seconds later in the parking lot, I realize he didn't even look at the game he shoved in the case, and when I'd seen it, it was face down. I decided maybe I should check.

I am now the owner of a "brand new" copy of Naruto: Broken Bond that I only paid 15 dollars for.