The Frosty Faustings 2023 Post.
Originally uploaded Mar. 3rd, 2023.
Fashionably late, but never out of style.
It’s a Friday afternoon.
They rush home, soar up the flight of stairs, and boot up their hand-me-down dinosaur of a computer, running Windows 2000. The year is like, 2015 or something, but they don’t really mind the fact that it’s ancient. Hell, they could care less. Their door doesn’t lock – a remnant of a sibling squabble that went south.
They’ve got an emulator, their favorite rom site bookmarked, and YouTube in the background, and all the time in the world. Their favorite game – The King of Fighters ’97 – is already loaded into the emulator.
It was time to play.
Let’s clear some things up – Fightcade was installed, but that was secondary. They weren’t in it to fight others – The CPU was their greatest rival. For one, it didn’t get mad at them for playing on a wifi connection. Another, it never slowed down, not even for a second.
It might have been tough, but the kid was, too. Maybe even tougher.
Frustrated, the kid stops using their worn-out membrane keyboard and pulls out a logitech pad – a hand-me-down from their uncle. The guy in the youtube videos could pull off Iori and Clark’s moves just fine, so why couldn’t they? Why was it only Terry that worked on keyboard?
Some fiddling occurs while the emulator is paused to change up the controls.
Five minutes pass and they unplug the controller and go back to the board, furrowing their brow even further.
Seeing the credits scroll by after Orochi and his gang kick the bucket, again and again, is the dopamine kick the kid needed. It was all they needed.
They reset the emulator and start their arcade run once more.
Seven years later, the kid is walking on stage at CEO 2022.
It’s the Guilty Gear Accent Core +R side bracket’s top 8. They point into the crowd as they walk, two of their friends watching in the seats, hoping to get their sick pose on camera. (It’s not on camera, sadly.)
They sit down, smoke drafting up the stage floor. Their opponent takes the cabinet opposite of them, a Potemkin player. The kid is a little shaky – they played them before on a cabinet on the opposite side of the room, and the Pot kicked their ass.
But the kid’s got friends watching. They can’t lose.
And they don’t lose.
The kid gets beat again a set later (by another Pot. Can you believe it?), their run stopping at 5th place. The sheer weight of the result, however, doesn’t have the kid down. In fact, it’s the opposite – The kid is about to cry because their fist offline major, even if the game’s a side event, went so well. There’s a fire stoked in their heart, and the spirit of competition is absolutely blazing.
And they want to compete again.
I’ll be brief with what I didn’t like. The venue was a little cramped – at times it was a little difficult to get from point A to point B. The venue also got hot – specifically the room set up for casuals and whatnot.
But aside from that, the weekend of FF2023 was one of the best I’ve ever experienced.
I went with my friends from university. It was a grassroots rag-tag bunch of folk who didn’t really have a fighting game community in the area for the longest time. Playing Under Night In-Birth in the corners of the smash club venue was how we were born, and that grew into a larger group once Strive released. Two crew battles against two different university scenes later, and the group had an idea – what if we competed at a major?
And compete we did.
My +R run was stopped a game away from making it out of pools, but it’s more than I could ever ask for. With a little bit more patience, I absolutely would have made it. My favorite tournament set by far was against Woocash. When I started I thought I could never catch up to the people who’ve been playing the game for years, but I went last game, last round against them. Now I’m fired up and you KNOW my ass is making it out on winner’s side next time, you can count on it.
I got pictures with people I’ve only ever dreamed of meeting in person! Not just the top players I’ve been watching come out to these for years, but people I recognized from twitter clips because of the colors they used and the way they expressed themselves in game. My discord friends, too! (Shoutouts to Dream3r, T5, Jimbo and Gravfu in particular. You guys are kind of awesome and by kind of I mean very.)
I got to play casuals with those people, too! People I took tech from were like, right there. It’s an experience you can’t really get online. It’s completely different, because they’re there, and they can acknowledge how far you’ve come. It’s something I’ve learned to appreciate, now that I’ve had the time to think on it.
Watching top 8 in person was a magical thing, too. Seeing and conversing about the game with people around me was so cool.
And the thing that still shakes me to my core:
I was recognized by name.
On multiple occasions, at that.
All of the people I met and played games with – you’re cool as hell. Next time I’ll meet more of you, next time I’ll play more of you.
Most importantly, though?
That kid on that windows 2000 PC playing KOF ’97 is still here.
And they’re going to keep that damn flag flying.
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