18-year Street Fighter veteran Patrick Mifflin details a year of fighting game tournament activity leading up to his likely retirement after Evolution 2009, and his progress trying to recover from the 2003 injury that would force his departure from competitive play.

• 1Oct 10

  And people thought I wouldn't take to shooters...

  I'd say I'm off to a pretty good start.

  • Posted Oct 1, 2010 6:11 pm GMT
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• 29Sep 10

  Bunburyoudo Defined

  Bun = Pen
  Bu = Sword
  Ryou = Two
  Do = Way(s)

  "Literary arts and military arts, both ways."

  

  As both a writer and a competitive gamer, I can't think of a more appropriate gamertag.

  • Posted Sep 29, 2010 11:32 am GMT
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• 18Sep 10

  Rebuilding DarkCatalyst: Closure and a New Beginning

  Well over a year late with this entry, but things started happening so fast that I couldn't possibly keep up with blogs, and I was too burnt out once it was all over to say anything.

  In the lead up to Evo, I was both enjoying how nice it was to finally have a thriving local scene and trying to put my finger on just what it was that didn't feel right about the fighting community post-SFIV. It took a long time for me to finally figure it out, but I have.

  Evo itself left a bad taste in my mouth, just because I don't feel I performed up to my usual standards. There are a lot of reasons for that which I could list, but I'd really rather not go into it at this point. To make a long story short, no matter what else I end up saying in this post, I intend to go to at least one more Evo and put on the performance I was unable to in 2009. I owe it to myself and to all the time I've put into playing Street Fighter over the last 19 years to have that one really good showing at the Super Bowl of video games. I've even gone so far as to make a pact with ShenlongBo and Kreatzion that we'll all attend next year's event, so I'm looking forward to that.

  I honestly don't think I would be the player I am today had Javier Moreno not written his Street Fighter community primer back in 2002, in the lead-up to the first Evo to actually bear that name. For someone who was actually playing from the beginning, it's hard to imagine someone coming up with a more inspirational article - any player with any competitive drive around that time craved having their name mentioned alongside the likes of Thomas Osaki, John Choi, Mike Watson, and of course, Alex Valle. I was no exception.

  Looking at the current scene, that's not on the table anymore - adding one's name to that list of old pros is simply not up for grabs now. Apart from the obvious Justin Wong and Daigo Umehara, who will probably always transcend the otherwise decisive generation gaps we're seeing start to form in the community, a completely different breed is dominating today. Becoming a top player today will not get your name mentioned alongside Choi and Watson, but rather, alongside players such as Gamerbee, Infiltration, Poongko, and Momochi. All respectable players, but not a list that carries the same meaning.

  It's safe at this point to call AfroLegends the final new member of the old guard, and with that, so goes much of my motivation to become a great Street Fighter player. Of course, there's still a big reason why I can't just pack up my gear and head off into the realm of casual gaming for the rest of my life.

  See, no matter what I end up doing, I'm still going to be competitive as all hell. You just can't pry it out of me.

  I still want to be competitive in gaming and I still want to play fighting games, I just really need to change my priorities up - I'm at a place in my life right now where I really have to get more out of my gaming to justify its continued presence in my life. I look around, and I see competitive gaming, eSports, still in its infancy. I see a lot of really intelligent people, who may not even be the best players around, but have still found their corner of the gaming world, taken this beautiful growing masterpiece, and made a life for themselves out of it. So it's basically a matter of justification for me; I've put in my time. I want mine.

  Of course, to make this work, I have to diversify. I'm not Japanese, there's not so much fighting game stuff going on over here that I can get what I'm looking for from fighters alone, so it's time to expand.

  Despite my disdain for shooters (or more specifically, the attitude far too often attached to them) over the years, I've still got a fair amount of natural talent and a strong willingness and ability to learn when surrounded by the right people. I've already jumped into Halo: Reach and am open to playing other competitive shooters as well. I fully intend to be competing at a high level within 12 months in any shooter I decide to get into over the next little while. I have to say I'm quite impressed by what I've seen of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 thus far...

  NHL 11 and Forza 3 have also become more competitive than I imagined, which gives me incentive to jump back into two games I already loved.

  I'm not leaving fighters behind entirely, but I am jumping back to the one that gave me, arguably, my biggest success to date in the form of an APEX League divisional title. I am, of course, talking about Tekken. Tekken 6 is one of my favorite 3D fighters of all time, and it's felt really good to go back to playing it lately. The fact that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was announced just hours ago also makes my decision to make Tekken my main fighting series feel all the more right.

  So that's my game lineup for the time being. Halo: Reach, Tekken 6, Forza Motorsport 3, NHL 11.

  However, my immediate priority is getting rid of my Halo rust and reaching a competitive level there.

  All these changes will also come with a necessary screen name replacement. DarkCatalyst was a passionate but inevitably unsuccessful fighting gamer. What I'm becoming, while the level of success is far from certain at this early stage, is a different gamer with different game selection and a different approach. I haven't settled on the new tag yet, and may not for a couple weeks, but I'm definitely going for something that reflects what I come from while representing what I'm after.

  Truly, gaming has not been this interesting to me in years. I very much look forward to this new journey (and it certainly will be a journey).

  • Posted Sep 18, 2010 5:51 am GMT
  • Category: Games
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