Oh yeah, this is the reason I don't miss arcades.

[Darque]

Darc Requiem - exactly my point. As I said, I was really into fighting games. I was once even the winner of a double-bracket Street Fighter:CE tournament. (Interestingly enough, everyone took Ryu and Ken as their two characters, while I had Zangief and Dhalsim. I went undefeated, so the final round was supposed to be my Zangief versus my Dhalsim. But no, they didn't give me 1st and 2nd prize, the cheap jerks.) That's a great reason to stop the fanboyism and just learn to love your fellow gamers. Even though I have Sony stuff, I'm really more into the XBox and Nintendo stuff - but I've never refused a challenge on Tekken.

Since the arcades are virtually dead (especially around here in New England!) it would be nice to be able to hook up with people to play head-to-head. But everyone seems to be so wrapped up in proving their own system's superiority that there's never any common ground for them to play against each other. Once upon a time, arcades were the rule of law in video games, and fighting games were the unchallenged rulers of the arcades. Now, Street Fighter is officially defunct, existing only in a few rehashed ports, and fighting games in general have been on the decline for years. After all, just like you said, it's hard to appreciate the head-to-head aspect of fighting games online.

I'll even add that console controllers are simply not built for fighting games - the last controller I bought that I really loved for fighting games was a Capcom Power Stick Fighter for the SNES. Big, black, and intimidating, I perfected the Spinning Pile Driver on it, and Dragon Punches were as easy as falling off a log. But D-pads and thumbsticks really don't do justice to the complex control schemes and button layouts that fighting games require. So that, too, might have something to do with the steady decline in fighting games over the years.

All the more reason to make friends with each other so that we all have someone to play against! After all, isn't it better to settle your differences over a pulse-pounding three-round battle between two skilled fighters, instead of just arguing online over which system is better?

-Darque