MadCatz.



That name represents wasted money and crap products to this day to many a gamer out there. MadCatz know this so their PR people are actually trying disprove that, now that accessories are in vogue like guitars and joysticks. Too bad that they still can not make a good controller for the life of them. I made the decision to buy the fight pad form them. And at first all was great actually, the controller did make a difference for the better in my playing. Of course all this is true until the buttons decided to crap out and activate at times when I didn't even press them. Thanks to some connections I had with the store I was able to return the controller and just pay the difference on an arcade stick, made by motherf^%$in MadCatz of all companies.



Its MadCatz I know, but I can actually get this modded if needs be to be a better joystick relatively easily. That and I always wanted a joystick. "Now that I have a joystick, I will be able to just demolish even more people!" I thought.



I went from a state of being in absolute complacency with the level of control I had in fighting games, to feeling the white hot rage that comes from not being able pull a Shoryuken motion consistently. Several years of complacency like that makes your pride hurt real bad when you can't do a special attack. That feeling of helplessness that comes from knowing what you have to do but can't is the worst. "I want to actually pull off my Soul Throw Dammit!" ran through my mind countless times. This was also when I realized I did actually care for my BP in Street Fighter. I went from 2100 BP to a lowly 1500 BP quickly because I refused to use a PS3 controller. Eventually I got mad enough where I started using a controller for the rest of the ranked matches and switched to the arcade stick during arcade mode. "I am better than this!" I thought. I was angry at myself for essentially being back in square one.

The night after it clicked.

I was in a place where I haven't been since I started playing the original Street Fighter Alpha. I was actually learning to play fighting games all over again in a sense. This realization filled me with nostalgia about the days where I could care less about technique and winning and just having fun again. So what if I can't do a Shoryuken? I improvised back when I was playing alpha, I'll just have to improvise once more. I was in essence re-learning how to play fighting games.



"I'll get there eventually. I'll master Shoryukens again someday. I'll become a competent fighter again" were the thoughts that ran through my head. It was then that I realized that because of my retained experience and determination, that I was not in square one in terms of fighting games. All of this was familiar yet new at the same time. I realized I was in the New Game + of fighting games. My BP right now is about 1400 and will probably fall more, but that’s ok now. I'm new to Fighting games in sense. I'll just have to get back on the square I was at, one Shoryuken at a time.