Let's start off with a history lesson. I've been playing video games since as long as I can remember. Whenever I was at the mall, I'd ask my mom for my allowance and head to the arcade. Whenever my family was on a trip somewhere, I'd spend all my "trip money" in arcades. I once went to visit a friend in Myrtle Beach for a week and spend over $250 in multitude of different arcades. I played a lot of fighting games in those days. Truthfully, I stuck mostly to the singleplayer, too intimidated by the really good competitive players to put in my quarters. The few times I did, I'd mash away and sheepishly walk away when I lost.
 
I was pretty decent against my friends however and we'd spend hours playing all sorts of fighting games on home consoles. From Killer Instinct to Street Fighter 2 to Clayfighter to Tekken 2, we'd grind away at each other without ever having a firm grasp on what we were actually doing. Some years ago, arcades began to fade away and disappear from most malls and as home consoles got more advanced, I slowly stopped playing fighting games. The only "fighting" game I played with much consistency was Super Smash Bros. for the N64 because it was the game my "casual gamer" friends had and were actually quite good at. This is when I began to watch you tube videos, read websites, and Gamefaqs guides trying to figure how to use my bottom tier Link against their top tier Kirby, Pichachu and Ness - even though "tier" isn't a term I would really learn until years later.
 
I'd always been fascinated by really good fighting game players, looking on as the strange teenagers banged out 40 hit combos and could play for hours on 2 quarters. I was always too shy to ask these guys for tips, being several years younger and being afraid of looking like a noob. I always felt like they were cut from a different cloth and I would languish in mediocrity for all of my days. So, I eventually stopped trying to be any good at fighting games, tucking them away for when friends were over and we could bust out some Smash Bros. or Killer Instinct and have some silly fun.
 
With the release of Street Fighter 4 and the Tournament Edition sticks, I saw an opportunity to maybe get back into the fighting game scene and possibly be half-decent. However, due to financial constraints and the logistics of getting my hands on a actual stick (being in Canada, they're damn hard to find), I couldn't pull the trigger at the time of the games release (getting a stick was important as I feel like for me, it was the only way I could get serious about a fighting game having spent so much of my youth in arcades). Time passed and eventually I could afford a stick and the game but by this time it had been so long since the release I was too intimidated to try and jump into a scene when I knew I would be starting from scratch. So, again I figured I would languish in mediocrity, dreaming of being "ok" at fighting games, watching live streams and YouTube videos, thinking the timing just wasn't right for me.
 
That brings us right up to present day. With the release of Super Street Fighter 4 in just weeks and it's reduced retail price, I again thought maybe - just maybe - I should give a go. I began researching where I could maybe find a stick. Amazon had them but putting more debt on my credit card didn't seem like a good idea, and I wasn't sure about shipping such a large box to my apartment. I would be more comfortable buying one over a counter or maybe used. I scoured craigslist and Kijiji, hoping someone would let theirs go for a decent price to no avail. 
 
Finally, the other day I swung by a local EB Games, just to see if they maybe had them. The employee barely knew what I was talking about, so I decided to go a bit our of my way to check out another local EB games, and lo and behold, they had three! Two Marvel vs. Capcom editions and one Round 2 edition. I hummed and hawed for several days before last night, I finally pulled the trigger.