could almost be mine

>Street Fighter II (arcade)
>the jump-off point of my biggest gaming obsession

there's something about SFII in arcades that could never be replicated. people who were even semi-good at it were local legends, and putting those quarters down to be next in line was like entering the Octagon for an adolescent.

>Virtual On
>expanded what was possible with fighting games with its unique
>twin-stick controls and 3D arena. I would still love to own
>an actual Virtual On cabinet one day...

loved this game; Saturn conversion was fun and VOOT made me buy a Dreamcast. it really only works in the arcade though, especially with the versus cabinets facing each other.

>Tekken 2/3
>so many hours battling friends and perfecting techniques.
>crazy CG intros and loads of modes beyond just ‘Story' and
>'Vs.' BETTER than "arcade-perfect."

Tekken was probably the first FG series that made the "Story" interesting for me. had more style that Virtua Fighter because of that. Tekken 3 running on original PS1 hardware was still an OH SHIT moment for us when we brought it home from Blockbuster.

>Guwange
>helped me fall in love with the beautiful chaos of bullet hell
>shoot-em-ups. looks utterly impossible, but isn't...

ESP Ra.De for me (also a Cave title though). never loved the memorization pattern shooters but the bullet hell shoot-em-up hit the spot. there is nothing in gaming like navigating an impossible section of a Cave bullet hell shooter.

>TMNT (arcade)
>perhaps the first licensed game I played that actually did the
>source material justice and made me feel like I was
>controlling my favorite characters from TV/movies. I'll never
>forget seeing this in the arcade for the first time.

hell yes. I was a heavy TMNT fan as a kid and put more hours into TMNT2 on NES than probably any other game.

>Tetris (GameBoy)
>my GameBoy was essentially a Tetris machine. I might as well
>have glued the cartridge in.

so much Tetris. my Dad loved it, so it was sort of the one game we could share common ground on (he didn't mess with videogames after that until years later, when he got addicted to Gran Turismo)