patrick miller writes about videogames

So I’ve been hopping on GGPO to play more Super Turbo of late (might even start streaming every now and then at twitch.tv/pattheflip), and I realized that my brain gets kind of “itchy”, for lack of a better word, when I get in protracted fireball wars (most often in Ryu/Ryu matches).

It’s like, we’ll swap fireballs once, twice, three times, and then I lose it and just feel like I HAVE to jump because, well, he’s probably just going to throw a fourth fireball, right? Then I get DPed and block a bunch of fireballs and do it all over again. After noticing that pattern, I’ve been trying to keep track of that mental itchiness and push it to the back of my mind. It’s kind of neat!  Mental stamina and discipline is something I’ve never given a whole lot of thought to in fighting games, but it’s totally there. I’m tempted to play a few sets where I just disable my jump inputs entirely.