Month: February 2004

     I was walking down a long, damp, stone passageway, and came to a heavy wooden door guarded by Todd Rundgren. Todd Rundgren smiled broadly at me, saying nothing, but maintaining his smile. I motioned towards the door and he opened it for me.

     Inside was a pitch black room. Chris Squire of the band Yes (I couldn’t see him, but in my dream I knew it was him) was inside, wearing headphones and furiously playing bass through an amplifier. All by himself. Todd Rundgren then stopped smiling and extended an open palm to stop me from entering. He proceeded to explain that Chris Squire fears evil spirits and that he was playing bass in a dark room because evil spirits like dark rooms, and that Chris felt his playing would improve if he practiced while confronting his fears. Then I woke up.

Everyone who was a real cool dude in the 90’s knows about the arcade classic Street Fighter 2. Capcom’s less famous original Street Fighter game gets mentioned every once in awhile based simply on its historical interest. I recently read something interesting that I had never known about it:

“The dedicated versions of the game used special pneumatic controls that were connected directly to the game board via air hoses. Depending upon how hard the control was hit, the game would choose the type of hit the player character would perform. These controls wore out or would constantly require adjustment due to abuse.”

So at one time, those kids who you see slamming the hell out of the buttons would actually have had a reason to be doing that.

More, from a newsgroup posting:

“The harder you hit the button, the harder the punch. (Instead of “Jab”, “Straight”, and “Fierce” buttons that we’ve grown to love from our SF games over the years, this just had two buttons..one for
punching, one for kicking. If you tapped the punch pad lightly, you’d get “Jab” and if you wailed on it, you’d get “Fierce.” The original SF came in two flavors…one with the pressure sensitive pads, and one with the 6-button layout we are familiar with.”