The struggle in terms of the strange

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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

8 Comments

  1. Matt M
    October 26, 2015 @ 5:58 am

    Was Streetfighter 2 the one that had the massive moral outrage over the content, as it was so realistic kids would be running out in the street to tear each others faces off and become a nation of fire-ball shooting villains?

    Reply

    • Jane Campbell
      October 26, 2015 @ 8:47 am

      I think that was Mortal Kombat.

      Reply

      • Elizabeth Sandifer
        October 26, 2015 @ 12:06 pm

        Yeah, Street Fighter II was the much more colorful and playful game, with markedly more complex mechanics. Mortal Kombat is yet to come.

        Reply

        • maruhkati
          October 29, 2015 @ 5:12 am

          It’s also (as I think you’re saying here) the better game, particularly if we’re talking about the first Mortal Kombat. I would argue that, especially in the sequels, there are enough much-welcome signs of silliness in the Mortal Kombat series to suggest that it didn’t take its 90s grimdark aesthetic particularly seriously.

          Well, that and the delightfully campy film.

          Reply

  2. Anthony Herrera
    October 26, 2015 @ 5:29 pm

    I always played as Zangief because nobody else wanted to and I was a pure button masher so I was never going to master a character to challenge anyone for the right to call them “mine”. Plus, Zangief is such a comical creation that he’s obviously supposed to lose which I often did when playing against a real person. He does have the best ending in fighting game history though.

    Reply

  3. plutoniumboss
    October 26, 2015 @ 7:31 pm

    Such was the impact of Street Fighter II that the series has never really been allowed to move past this point in the chronology. The “Alpha” series was intended as a prequel, but was more of a “Capcom Vs.” mashup. The story, such as it was, never progressed an inch. The biggest change was the inclusion of characters from Final Fight and Street Fighter 1. Compare Mortal Kombat, with its labyrinthine plot and numerous character deaths, counterbalanced by its paucity of actual strategy or fun. Street Fighter is the meat and potatoes of fighters; MK is all arcade spectacle.

    No worries, Phil; I shattered one of my controllers after losing to Karai in TMNT: Tournament Fighters. (It was clear plastic.)

    Reply

  4. S Blake
    October 28, 2015 @ 6:26 am

    I kinda like Street Fighter, was blown away by Virtua Fighter, and settled on Tekken as “my” fighting game, but the entire genre was pretty much destroyed for me when I saw someone (accurately) describe them all as basically a slightly complexified game of rock/paper/scissors.

    Reply

  5. maistrechat
    August 30, 2016 @ 8:43 pm

    One (very late) observation: I’m pretty sure Dhalsim is based on one of the villains from Master of the Flying Guillotine, a “yoga master” assassin played by Wong Wing Sang in brownface, who had the same telescoping arms as Dhalsim. His witch-doctor type appearance is probably a reference to Vamacharan Aghori. (see also Kapalika)

    Vamachara being where Western occultists got the “left-hand” path concept.

    Reply

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