After finishing the game with Balrog, Sagat, Honda, Blanka, Ken and Guile without any problems I was soon grinning to myself like an idiot at how much better I had clearly become in just one night.

And that is when the nightmare started…

Me and Abel were walking along innocently reminiscing about destroying Guile and toppling Zangief when it happened…

He appeared before us as he had many times before but something had changed… this time, something was different… we had no idea what hit us, left, right, front, back, even inside out and upside down! Were we still here? Had the world ended? All we knew and all that we were aware of was that our hearts were being ripped apart and thrown callously against a wall… and, and that laughter… that face staring down at us time and time again.

We screamed for the nightmare to end but it was relentless. Anything we tried was punished. Anything we attempted, was destroyed. Any glimmer of hope we had, gone…

And just when we had given up hope entirely, just when all seemed lost and we questioned our own sanity, it happened. Was it luck? Was it sheer willpower? Was it the work of a more powerful being? We may never know, all we know is that in the end we were standing and he… Seth, had fallen.

After purchasing Street Fighter IV I decided that the first thing I should do (after I stopped salivating and giggling with excitement like a schoolgirl) was to unlock all the characters.

So after reading this guide I had only the simple task of finishing the game with certain characters and beating Seth which I felt should be a walk in the park. After all, I was playing on the easiest setting!

I picked Ryu to start with and my first adventures were extremely successful, I uppercut-ted Balrog’s face, I swept Honda off his feet, I fireballed Sagat’s one good eye(this resulted in more giggles), I dodged, parried, back flipped and even levitated off the ground as I stomped the yard all over the cpu (ok maybe I didn’t do all those things but you get the point).

And then, just like in Toy Story when Buzz finds out that he’s just a toy and can’t really do all these amazing things, I was brought crashing down to Earth by a Dr Manhattan wannabe named Seth.

Upon encountering this bulging blue behemoth I found out that his plan for recreating the universe was apparently to hand my ass to me on a platter over and over again, whilst simultaneously laughing in my face (this promptly stopped all forms of my giggling).

In fighting Dr Manhat… err Seth, I soon realised that he is clearly psychic and knows everything I am going to do even before I do! Luckily enough however, he is not too bright and I managed to find a super advanced skilled move that only I could perform (like repeatedly low sweeping) to beat him.

After patting myself on the back for a job well done I unfortunately had to put the game down for the night as real life came knocking on my door. Little did I know what would be waiting for me when I returned…

My name is Steve I am 26 years old, I work in accounts and this is my Street Fighter IV adventure!

A brief history on me:

I’m not a total Street Fighter noob, I played Street Fighter 2 to death when it first came out as well as Champion Edition and World Warrior. However I only ever played at my local arcade and have not played  the game for many many years.

For the last few years I have been playing various FPS games, mainly a team game called Enemy Territory in a free ladder comp and have even managed to be a part of a winning team in the grand final.  I have been a gamer my whole life playing on various consoles and now mainly just on PC.

So how did I pick up SFIV after so many years of not even caring about Street Fighter? Well that would be my brothers fault! He lavished the game in front of my eyes when I was over at his place innocently visiting my cute 2 year old niece only to be sucker punched, enthralled, flabbergasted and pulled into the magic that was Street Fighter IV.

It looked so new and yet so familiar, as my hands grabbed the controller for the first time it all came back to me, fireballs, hurricane kicks, dragon punches and this all new ‘Focus Attack’ left me feeling like Keanu Reeves as the only word I could muster from the clog in my throat was “WOAH”

We played about 80 games that night and I left wanting more. When my brother later showed me the new fighting stick he had purchased to play with, I knew I had to get one and buy this game now! So as soon as my jaw lifted off the floor I raced home and purchased SFIV on PC, signed up for Games For Windows Live(my GFWL is “Hetar”) ordered myself a fight stick and thus starts my foray into an old and yet entirely new game called Street Fighter IV.