Turkey…and STREET FIGHTER II! And “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down!”

I hope my readers (all two or three of them) had a great Thanksgiving.  If you’re not from the States, then I just plain hope you had a great day today.  While the jaded and cynical part of me says that the reasons behind observing Thanksgiving have more to do with the economy than actually, you know, giving thanks, the kid inside of me says that it would be really awesome if the whole world sat aside one day to rest, reconnect with friends and family, eat lots of food, and think about all the great things that have happened to us in the past year.

Such as Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.  First of all, I don’t think that title is long enough.  Capcom should have tacked on “old school revival” there at the end.  Then, the acronym could be SSF2THDROSR; the greatest acronym ever.

I have, and always will, suck at fighting games, but since I grew up in the nineties I loved Street Fighter II (despite my suckiness).  Many a fourth-grade lunch period was spent arguing over which franchise was superior: Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter.  While I gladly concede that MK had a better story and a more fully-realized fantasy world, SF always had more depth and complexity when it came to mechanics; of course, in the fourth grade, what I said was more like “But all the guys in Street Fighter II, have like more moves and stuff!”  Ah, childhood innocence.

My friends all preferred MK, mostly because they had…issues…involving violence.  You see, while I was the glasses-wearing fat geek, all of my “friends” were the athletic types from rich families; in other words, bullies with an entitlement complex and sociopath tendencies.  Of course they liked MK better: you could rip out somebody’s spine in it!  You could totally set somebody on fire.  Sure, every character had the same basic move set–right down to how those basic moves worked–but it had BUCKETS OF BLOOD!  BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!

I wonder what my friends are up to now?  I wonder how many of them needed counseling, are now abusive boyfriends/husbands, or finally came to peace with whatever demons they had wrestling inside of them.

I don’t know why I just told that story, except to say that SSF2THDROSR (I’m calling it that whether Capcom wants me to or not) is, for me, more of a trip down memory lane than Mega Man 9.  It brought back all those birthday parties at the skating rink, where my fat ass was stuck playing video games because I couldn’t skate.  It brought back one of my friends trying to convince me that Ryu was a “Shotokan ninja,” though his mastery of ninjitsu was not mentioned anywhere in the manual, the short-lived comics series, any video game magazine, or anywhere.  It brought back not-so-fond memories of CPU opponents being mind-reading machines that never, ever allowed for one single mistake (Easy just means you won’t be beaten quickly).  It’s all awesome, and I highly recommend this title, especially if you’re too young to remember the first time SF2 came around.

I do have to find fault with Capcom calling versus mode “multiplayer” however.  Seriously Capcom?  Multiplayer?  This is a one-on-one fighting game; it’s VERSUS MODE OR NOTHING.

Anyway, when I wasn’t playing SSF2THDROSR or Fallout 3, I was eating and watching TV.  First of all, Cartoon Network pulled off the greatest Rick Roll ever at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  If you missed it, you can find a video here.  Second of all, I saw Jingle All the Way for, like, the zillionth time.  Really.  During the Holiday season at my house, that movie is weekly–sometimes daily–viewing.  I love it.  It’s not a good movie, not even a little, but it’s one of my favorite holiday movies simply because it’s so bizarre.  I mean, it seems like your typical holiday affair, but when you really let it sink in, you realize that it takes place in some alternate reality where the absurd is not just everyday, but people don’t even freaking notice it.  It’s not something easily described by words; if you’ve never seen it, please see it at least once (without the MST3K riff tracks!).

Well, I will not be getting up at 3 AM to hunt down sweet Black Friday deals.  If I want a GPS navigator bad enough, I’ll pony up the $10 I would save by standing in line for three hours, and all the video game deals are for stuff I either already have or don’t want, even at AMAZING DISCOUNTS!  So the plan for tonight is to play Left 4 Dead until my eyes bleed.

Happy Thanksgiving!