Before my time in footbag, juggling, boxing, and most of my other activities, there was the arcade. My hometown had a few arcades, but one reigned supreme if you wanted to test your skill. Gunther’s Games, located in downtown Columbia, Missouri. Picture it; 1991. I collected comic books and skateboarded at the time. The Super Nintendo was slated to come out that year, something that every kid eagerly anticipated. Best console of all time, just to note. Anyway, arcades were all the rage in the 80s and 90s. I would haunt the one at the Columbia Mall, spending hours playing Double Dragon II and Golden Axe, among other games. Never competitively, just for fun. I was what we now call an ‘arcade rat’, a kid who spent their days in the arcade. I wasn’t alone; it was very much a social scene at that time. Friday and Saturday nights, and after school on weekdays were our usual times. Just one of many hobbies I’ve collected, I enjoyed the flashing lights and dank atmosphere of the arcades. I’ll talk about the games a little, but this story is really about the colorful 80s and 90s arcade scene, and what it evolved into.
Gunther’s Games
Video games were a fun pastime for me, like many kids of the 80s. Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda provided hours of entertainment. I didn’t see gaming as competitive. This all would change one random day in 1991, when I walked into my neighborhood grocery store to find they’d installed a new arcade cabinet. The game? Street Fighter II. A… fighting game? There weren’t many at the time, and the ones that did exist kind of sucked balls. I’d never seen Street Fighter I. Still, it was colorful and new, so I gave it a shot. And thus it began, my obsession with fighting games. There were eight distinct characters to choose from; Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Zangief, Dhalsim, Blanka, and E. Honda.
Street Fighter II Character select
Zangief, a wrestler, was the biggest and strongest, so I gravitated to him. The game had special moves and combinations, mechanics not universal in other games at that point in time. Not only this, it required strategy to win. I’ve always likened fighting games to speed chess. Positioning, forethought, reflexes, and timing factor into how a player will perform. Studying the game, its characters, and the matchups will give you an easy advantage. As an ADHD kid, this helped me focus.
I body slammed my way through Street Fighter II using Zangief’s spinning pile drivers. Not only could you play the machine, you could fight another player head-to-head. As I grinded and improved, I wanted to see if there was a competitive scene out there. Beating the randoms (casual players) at the grocery store wasn’t cutting it anymore. That’s when I started attending Gunther’s Games on a regular basis. There I found many strong players, most of them older than me. I showed up at my first tournament ready to wreck shop. Pretty much all competitions now are double elimination, meaning you have to lose twice before you’re out of the event. Back then, however, no one knew what they were doing. It was single elimination, pretty cutthroat. I can’t remember if I beat my first opponent, but I do remember when I got stomped. The dude’s name is lost to time, but he was a Chun-Li player. With a cigarette hanging from his mouth, he bodied me in our one game. It was over quickly. The guy just kept throwing me, which I had no answer to. The original version of Street Fighter II was subtitled The World Warrior, developed by Capcom. It being the first time the company had taken the franchise seriously (Street Fighter I was rumored to be terrible), thus the game tested a lot of new ideas. That also means a lot of mistakes were made designing it. They simply didn’t know any better. The World Warrior was not a fair game, and is now what we call ‘broken’. The guy who beat me won the tournament with the exact same trick every time; jump-in, then throw. No one had an answer to it because there was no answer. Only when Capcom released an updated version of Street Fighter II called Championship Edition did they fix many of these bugs. Anyway, after I got my ass handed to me, I wasn’t heartbroken, or driven to get better. More like, “that just happened,” and went out skateboarding.
high School Yearbook (Middle)
I did not quit Street Fighter, however. Instead, I chose a new character; Guile, the American military man with the greatest flattop of all time. Guile was a bit broken to put it lightly. He had glitches that could be weaponized against opponents. This again got patched out with the Championship Edition update, but I’d found my character. From that point forward, I began to dominate.
Street Fighter II Cabinet
Guile wasn’t my only character. Ken and Ryu were staples as well. The first Bruce Lee clone in fighting games, Fei Long, became my main (most used character) with the fourth update to the game. You’ll believe me when I tell you, I wrecked shop. I remember matching the same guy who beat me in my first tournament a few years later. He’d fallen out of the scene while I’d hit my prime. With fast reactions only a teenager can wield, I bodied him. The memory barely has stuck with me. By the time of that battle, he was in my rearview, i.e., I thought little about my victory over him. I owned Street Fighter II at Gunther’s Games.
Artwork 1992
Now that I’ve covered the game and the location, I’ll talk about the arcade scene around it all. If you’ve ever seen a 80s movie with an arcade, they’re usually neon-lit and grungy. I can confirm this is correct. Arcades were inherently 80s, even in the 90s. They attracted a lot of kids with nothing to do, aka, arcade rats. The prime for arcades was definitely in the early 90s, thanks in large part to Street Fighter II and the fighting games that followed it. Cliques were bound to form with the amount of young people frequenting the arcades. I had my friends, mainly the patrons at Gunther’s Games. The mall crew had their own, too. Rivalries have always existed in the arcade scene, all the way back to the 70s, if not earlier. Competition increased greatly with the introduction of fighting games. People became territorial about arcades, and even arcade machines. “No one beats me on my cabinet,” I’ve been quoted as saying. I can tell you firsthand, tempers can flare during games. As you’ll see below, I was no exception to this.
One winter day around 1992 I was playing on a cabinet when someone I knew from around the way approached me. It’s important to note he wasn’t a bad soul at all; he just caught me at the wrong time. I was salty about something I can’t recall now, and it showed in my game of Street Fighter, which I was losing. He decided to taunt me for some reason. I suppose he didn’t read the signs, or the vibe I was putting off. My obsessiveness has fueled my temper in the past, so the more that I sucked at my game, the angrier I grew. Taking him by the neck, I smashed his head into the cabinet’s screen. It didn’t break, luckily. He was distressed afterwards, as you’d imagine. I believe I said “sorry”, before going on my way. I was 16 at the time.
Another time didn’t have anything to do with Street Fighter. We were playing NBA Jam, a basketball game known to elicit shit talking. Long story short, one of those old payphones hung on the wall next to us. You remember the type; black receiver with a metal cord connecting it to a dial case. Well, the cord ended up wound around my buddy’s throat. We got past it and remained friends for a while longer.
Post High School?
Other incidences occurred, including knocking someone out of their chair. These were only the arcade-related altercations, to note. You might think I was a bit of a ruffian then. You’d be right. It sounds pretty raw as I put all of this to print. But at the time, in the moment, I didn’t think much about it. This wasn’t exclusive to me; it was part of the arcade culture in the 80s and 90s. Punk, hip-hop, and grunge/alternative were well-established arcade elements by the 90s. Beefs were common, with fights breaking out every now and then. I never saw an all-out arcade brawl, but I know they occurred elsewhere. Someone supposedly got shot in the shoulder for talking shit in a fighting game on the east coast. Now, there were plenty of positive experiences I can and will note, as could many people who were part of the scene then. But that other side of the arcades did exist, one in which competitiveness brought high levels of salt.
I experienced territorialism firsthand. On a trip to Kansas City when I was 15, I had my mom stop off at a mall where I heard Street Fighter I might be. It wasn’t there, but they did have a lively arcade. A line had formed to play Street Fighter II, so I stepped in and began my normal process of wrecking opponents. Quickly a group of local players formed around me, who took issue to me beating them on their turf. Comments like “fuck this guy up” were thrown around while I played. Finally losing, I stepped off while they gave me the evil eye. I wasn’t braggadocious in those days, but instead let my gameplay do the talking. If I had been boastful, I’m fairly sure I would have been jumped, then and there. Anyway, that memory has always stayed with me.
Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting
My interest in competitive play began to wane after I graduated high school. Street Fighter II’s hype had cooled, and I’d discovered footbag which set me on another path. I still played for fun, but the arcade experience was wrapping up as I moved on to other hobbies. Soon I left for California to chase my dreams as a top level footbag player. A story for another time.
Classic Super Street Fighter II Turbo Footage
This could have been the end of my history with arcades and fighting games, if not for an event that happened in 2009. I lived in Portland at the time, and headed up the largest footbag group in the country. We had a house of players who performed and competed on a regular basis. This is also around the time I instructed chess, a game I’ve enjoyed since childhood. When we weren’t playing footbag, we were usually playing video games of some type. Some Street Fighter, but also Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, to name a few. Arcades had wound down at that point, a victim of home consoles like the Playstation and Xbox. With the decline of arcades, fighting games had trailed off as well. The ten year window of 1999-2009 has been called the dark ages of the fighting game community. Many players left during this time, me included. Something happened, however, that brought many of us old heads back, as well as reinvigorated the scene with new people.
Portland Oregon
After a ten year absence of the franchise, Capcom decided to make Street Fighter IV. The game was designed to evoke the fond memories of Street Fighter II, after the very different/less than popular Street Fighter III. In that game’s defense, it built a cult following and flourished into a great game with its two updates. Still, it hadn’t been the roaring success II was. All of this changed when IV was released.
Street Fighter IV
I remember the day I brought Street Fighter IV home. I carried it through the door like Moses coming off the mountain. We threw it into the Xbox 360 and fired it up. The game played great and was immediately addictive. After the house got hooked, I began to wonder what the Portland fighting game scene looked like. Putting out feelers, I connected with the local players, who’d congregated around an arcade called Tilt, located in the Portland Mall. They were initially skeptical since I was an outsider. I respected it; these were people who’d grown up in arcades, same as me. I wasn’t the worst player, but wasn’t top tier, either. I attended a few tournaments at Portland’s local retro-arcade, Ground Kontrol. Fun fact; GK was one of the first barcades in the country, a trend that would catch on over the years. After becoming familiar with everyone, we started hosting sessions at our house, called ‘casuals’ in the FGC. I climbed the ranks of players as the scene swelled. Street Fighter IV was a hit, bringing both OGs back and new folks in. Taking slight offense when a local member mistook me as a new player, I had to enlighten him about my history. I’d been away from the game, but was far from new.
Soon I began running fighting game events at Ground Kontrol with my friends. I suppose it’s my nature, getting pulled into organizing things. Portland’s FGC had a few beefs that I navigated with my impartiality. That and my experience in promotion landed me squarely in role of organizer. Folks considered me the nice guy, never knowing of my past aggressions. I’d become refined in my many years away from the arcades. Well, mostly refined.
Ground Kontrol
The scene continued to grow, now centered around the events we hosted. The old arcade scene, the FGC, had experienced a renaissance. It got to the point we decided to open our own location, a little lounge dedicated to competitive gaming. Portland at that time was still a place where “young people go to retire”, according to the show Portlandia. We were an army of adult-children with our shopping cart races, naked bike rides, zombie dance-offs, neon pirate mini-golf, Zoobombers, and retro-arcades. It was the perfect breeding grounds to further our cause. In 2011, Best Bout Gaming opened in SE Portland.
Best Bout
Part business, part community effort, Best Bout was not a large location. We started small to minimize costs. As one of my friends declared of the venue; “it’s Shaq’s locker”. We packed that place opening night. Being the headquarters of the Portland FGC, we ran our monthly tournament (Best Bout Beatdown) and weekly casuals from there. Aside from having tables of set ups (monitors and consoles), we hosted a few arcade machines for fun. Murky with deep purple neon, the vibe of the old arcades endured.
Lounge Area
Southeast Portland
What also endured from the old days were the beefs. Now, some rivalries can be fun, and keep a scene hype. But there’s a threshold were it becomes something else. I began to see things I remembered from days long past. We had one player who’d pulled a knife on an opponent at a local arcade; he was always beefing with someone. More than once, folks stepped outside to deal with their issues. Most of the time this didn’t end with hands being thrown, but not always. A friend of mine stood 6’6 at around 325 lbs., basically making him the bouncer of Best Bout. Sometimes people would show up drunk and belligerent. Those who couldn’t be reined in were dragged out. Our front door was almost always open, leading to people passing by to poke their head in to check the place out. I actually scored a date from this once. Anyway, one night a drunken gentleman happened upon our establishment. He didn’t play games, and simply looked like a piece of shit. He glanced about before casting random insults our way. My 6’6 friend didn’t take kindly to that. The confrontation ended up in the street, where my comrade introduced the bloke to MMA, countering his punch with a strike of his own. The man crumpled and was subsequently dragged away by his friend. Still he shouted insults, god bless him. Fun side story; my bouncer friend trained and took cage matches from time to time. One in particular stands out; the time he called his shot similar to Babe Ruth. He claimed before the match that he’d hit his opponent with a ‘tiger knee’, a move used by the Muay Thai character Sagat in Street Fighter. I didn’t see the fight firsthand, but he brought video back. “Check this out,” he said, showing me the footage on his phone. Indeed, when the bell rang, he ran up and hit his opponent with flying knee, all 325 lbs. of him. He proceeded to beat the man to the floor before the match was called. It lasted a total of fifteen seconds or so. He repped our scene by using a video game character’s move in the ring. Respect.
Portland and Boise Crew at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo
Anyway, other incidences of mayhem happened over the years, including someone almost getting his skull cracked with a chair, all over a lost game of Marvel vs. Capcom 3. A player slapped his pistol down on the table before a match not long after that. I let him know that was one step too far.
Lord BBH Wins Street Fighter II Tournament
The shenanigans didn’t end with Best Bout, however. We traveled, too.
Portland and Seattle Crew
Journeying up to Seattle for tournaments, I witnessed a few altercations. More than once the Seattle FGC wasn’t asked back, or was kicked out of venues hosting their tournaments. I remember attending a tourney at this brass rail family-friendly restaurant. We were so out of place. Soon the staff and management realized that, too. During grand finals (the final match of the tournament), the cops were called. Upon hearing this, my friend in grand finals promptly ghosted out, leaving his opponent sitting there, confused. You don’t fuck around with warrants.
Flexing
It goes on and on like this. I had my arcade stick stolen at an event. My buddy’s phone got snatched at another. With that many people, you needed to keep your eye on your gear at all times. The scene had grown too big to know everyone well. We received noise complaints semi-regularly, and saw the sun come up at our venue many times. Money matches (betting on your games) were commonplace. Part of the fun was putting something on the line. If it wasn’t money, it was bragging rights. I once won a match where the loser had to go stand in the rain for all to see. Pop offs (victory gloating) happened all the time. The FGC is notorious for having the best pop offs in history. Being the second oldest competitive video game community (the first being the high score scene), we’ve mastered the art thanks to our roots in the arcades. You can watch any video of failed pop offs from other communities, and then FGC pop offs, to understand the difference between cringy and masterful. The difference is usually someone screeching at the top of their lungs versus someone executing a well-thought out response. You’ll know quickly if it was solid or not by everyone else’s reactions.
the greatest pop off of all time, Multiple Camera Angles
Speaking of pop offs, I’ve always said everyone should have a friendly rival. Keeps the fire going and can be extremely fun. Mine in Portland was a gent known as Sam B, who talked a mad amount of shit, usually with food in his hand. Come to think of it, he was everyone’s rival, and one of my favorite people in that scene.
This Man is a Fraud
Back at Best Bout, everyone bet on everything. This included wagers as random as Wheel of Fortune video games. Players talked smack a good amount of the time. Pranks and trolling were commonplace. Too drunk to drive, people sometimes crashed on Best Bout’s couches for the night.
Wheel of Fortune Money Matches
Aside from the occasional altercation and disorderly drunkenness, we banned/perma-banned people for various issues, including hygiene. Things got a bit rowdy at times. Folks puked in the street. Maybe we played our music too loud. A lawsuit was even threatened at someone for slander, a beef between two former friends that grew increasingly worse. The landlord was a nice lady who eventually regretted her decision to rent the place to us. I did my best to mitigate our rowdy ways with the neighborhood. If it’d been a place other than Portland, I’m sure we’d have been expelled from our location. Aside from all the trouble, though, it was super hype. Just as we traveled, folks would visit us from other cities. Our good friend Cody from Boise would drive carloads of people seven hours to Best Bout. More on him in a moment. Suffice to say, these were the good times in Portland.
Best Bout Nights
The party lasted a few years. I’d be up all night, then sleep until I had to teach chess in the afternoons. Then we’d open Best Bout. Rinse and repeat. An issue arose over time; we were barely breaking even. We weren’t losing much money, but we weren’t making much beyond rent, either. A decision had to be made; level up or call it quits. Best Bout needed to either relocate to a larger location with greater investment, or close. One of my business partners had left due to having a kid, and the other became wrapped up in college. The community really stepped up to help keep things running during that time. Still, carrying the point responsibility became exhausting to me. I’d also developed a neurological issue in the form of a tick. This had most likely come from the endless flashing lights of Best Bout. It became more and more noticeable over time. As if convulsing, my head would snap this way and that. Once others started asking about it, I realized an unfortunate truth; what I was doing wasn’t good for me anymore.
Evo Champion Jason Cole
I made two decisions after going on vacation. One, I wasn’t continuing Best Bout Gaming, and two, I was leaving Portland. Rent by that time was spiraling out of control. Portland had been discovered; the influx of people was driving rent up. The weather was another factor in my decision. Moving from sunny Colorado to Portland years earlier, I’d developed headaches from the lack of sunlight. Eventually this subsided, but returned in my last few years there. Though atmospheric, the gloomy weather always threatened depression. It affected my sleep, energy, and focus. Besides this, I’d fallen into a rut. Fatigued from running Best Bout, I needed my own renaissance. Stagnation is the enemy of the soul. It was time to go.
We had one last party as a farewell to the venue. It was a banger, running late into the night. We received noise complaints for the last time. One hell of a way to go out.
Last Hurrah
Waking up late the next day, I packed up Best Bout. Not long after, I packed up my place. I’d narrowed down where I wanted to go to two options; San Diego (where I’d lived many years earlier), or Boise, Idaho. I chose the new and headed to Boise, which was on the rise at the time. There, in the sunshine, I had my renaissance.
For many years I considered myself retired from the fighting game scene. Street Fighter V came out, but I’d moved on. My head tick slowly resolved itself.
Only years later did I consider returning to the scene. I’d stayed in touch with my friend Cody, who headed up the Boise FGC, but seldom attended casuals in the area. When I did, it was mostly to catch up with old friends I’d met at events in Portland and Seattle. More than once I made a drunken cameo.
My friends didn’t push for me to show up, thus I remained retired for many years. Eventually I found myself trying out new groups and scenes in Boise. This included the Hash House Harriers, i.e. ‘drinkers with a running problem’. That was fun, but I was still too slow to keep up, even with a bunch of drunken runners. Eventually it dawned on me that I had a built-in group in Boise; the FGC. I was reminded of this after running into Cody at a local comic book convention. Similar to the work I’d done in Portland, he’d brought setups and was recruiting for the local scene. Though I didn’t wish to return to organizing, I was interested in making new friends. People gravitated to Cody, and so it went with me. Another friend later admitted that he and the other organizers had somewhat of a plan to bring me back. I’ll give it to them, it worked.
Spacebar Arcade in Boise
Realms Arcade in Boise
It’s been four years since then, and I’m still in the scene. I’ve won my share of local tournaments, but never at a regional, national, or international level. I did place 17th at Evolution 2022 for Super Street Fighter II Turbo, basically the world championships for fighting games.
Evolution Championship Series
I continue to enjoy the older games more, but also try to keep up with the kids and the newer games.
Casual Match between top rated Street Fighter II Player (Cigarbob) and myself (redshredz)
In an ironic twist, Cody ended up moving to Portland, joining the scene I’d once run. In our heart-to-heart before he left, he confided that he was looking to have his renaissance, as I had done. I only saw him one more time, but more on that in a moment.
Cody’s departure left a vacuum in Boise FGC leadership. As you can guess, I got pulled back into the role of scene manager. Unlike Portland, however, Boise had far less beefs and rivalries. The landscape of the fighting game community had changed in my absence. Stricter codes of conduction were implemented due to the changing times. Esports were now mainstream; the ‘old dirty FGC’ wasn’t going to cut it anymore. The grunge of the arcade culture was over. Though the community honored its visceral past, it couldn’t continue. Times had changed. That doesn’t mean an altercation doesn’t happen here and there; one of our younger players was almost jumped by two drunken gents outside a gaming establishment a few years ago. He was ready to fight them both before I broke it up. Though I respected the kid’s heart, we now work to avoid conflict such as this.
Boise FGC Organizers
So this is where I am today. As a younger generation takes over, I’ve been able to step back and play advisor to folks with more energy. The gent who runs the Boise scene now is very much like me, except without my past temperaments.
Back to the person who brought me out of retirement, Cody. In 2021 he passed away at the age of 38. Having issues with diabetes, he joked that he wouldn’t see 40. The blow crumpled me more than any punch I’ve taken in boxing or any injury I’ve sustained in footbag. It took a long time to get over that. As you get older, you see more and more people go around you. Cody’s passing affected me differently. In his time as the scene’s figurehead, he represented an escape from the grown-up world. When he hosted casuals at his house, we were all arcade rats again, carefree kids without the weight of adulthood. Cody found enjoyment in making others happy, while sometimes neglecting his own needs. The FGC is as much about community as it is about the games, and he stood at the heart of this. Due to his philosophies, the Boise scene had little drama or rivalries. Though it saddened me to see him leave for Portland a year earlier, I respected it. He was reaching for something new, something for him. And though his illness cut that short, he went out striving for betterment. This is an important distinction. Regardless if you succeed or fail, you take your shot. Cody took his.
Cody
We hosted a celebration of life at Boise’s local retro-arcade, Spacebar. It was a packed house.
I went on to inherit his Manx cat, Wheezy.
Wheezy and Cody’s Arcade Stick
So that’s about it. With my first tournament being over 30 years ago, I’m an old man in the FGC now. From the glowing neon arcade I grew up in, to the flashing lights of Best Bout, to now, it’s been a vivid ride. Not sure there’s a larger lesson in it, other than something a friend once said. “You’re never really retired.” I can’t argue that.
Red Husted 
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