As people grow, rivalries develop and perhaps none can be as profound as sibling rivalry. They're family, you love them, you live with them, and sometimes you can't stand them. My little brother and I got into the usual bouts and collisions that most kids do, who broke who's toy (he owes me $400 for an original Optimus Prime, Snake Eyes, Shipwreck, and assorted GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man toys, and I owe him for stomped Ninja Turtles, Joes, and a severely injured Pooh doll), who gets the last of the ice cream. "I told you not to tell dad!", et cetera and et cetera. This changed when we recieved an NES from our uncle, it more shifted to "IT'S MY TURN!!!", "YOU'RE CHEATING!", and in the case of Contra "STOP DYING ALREADY!"...fists were still thrown.



Along with the physical fights, we would compete by scores, finding secrets. We would play the occasional sports game, but I was never a sports fan. This continued for a few years until a phenomenon arose in the arcade. Our mother was dragging us through the mall for new shoes for us, this usually included us looking at the nikes, adidas, etc cool stuff that cool kids wear, then eventually picking up something from Payless. After a long session of begging and pleading, she allowed us to go to the arcade. Eagerly grabbing change and thanking her we raced to the arcade. Once inside, we saw a small crowd around a new cabinet. Looking in closer, we saw the controls, 6 buttons? How could someone keep up with that many buttons? There was a list of characters and arrows pointing in different directions, what did all this mean?



After the guy in front was finished playing, he went to talk with his friends. My brother and I finally got an unobstructed view of the game. "Insert Coin" flashed on the screen as the scene started up. Two men ready for combat, then in a flash, POW, one goes down. Then the title, Street Fighter II! We had to play it, and eventually did after a short wait. I picked Blanka, he picked Ryu. The match was awkward at first, it took a little while for us to learn that there was no jump button, occasionly through random spastic bursts one of us would pull off a special move. People around the cabinet would tell us how to do moves and by round 3 we were somewhat capable(no, not really). We knocked each other down to our last bits of life, my little brother was moving in for the final blow, I duck down and sweep him. I laughed as the "OOOwwwaaaaah!" comes through the speakers. We were both grinning, knowing we'd be playing this as often as we could. But there was another reason we were smiling.

We had found a way to beat each other's ass down without getting in trouble with our parents.

We got a game in any chance we could when we went to the arcade, even beat some other people on occasion. Eventually this sprouted into other games from this new genre called fighting games. Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury, Mortal Kombat, Virtua fighter. We had a pretty sweet time when we stumbled upon a Neo Geo cabinet that had 99 credits on it.

We still fought about other stuff, we're brothers, we fight, we love each other, can't stand each other from time to time, we're family.

And remember, Winners don't use drugs!