After getting some snazzy new haircuts on Black Friday, Tara and I headed over to GameStop to see if they had any crazy-as-crazy-gets deals. Well, they didn’t…just their usual “buy two used games, get one used game free” thing, and we’d been talking a bit about trying to find more two-player games for the Xbox 360 since it’s usually just me playing solo stuff like Fallout: New Vegas while she looks on earnestly. We browsed, I got hit on by an employee who was very impressed with my authentic Ravenclaw scarf, and then we left the store with three games in tow: Sonic’s Ultimate Game Collection, Street Fighter IV, and Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies.

Sonic’s UGC actually doesn’t have as many two-player games in it, but there’s a few good ones, such as all Sonic 2, Golden Axe, and all iterations of Streets of Rage. We played a bunch and got all nostalgic over the graphics and gameplay. Tara wanted a copy of DQIX for herself since each cartridge only has one save slot, and I was nowhere near ready to delete mine and make space; guess she’s seen me enjoying it a lot for over 85 logged hours now and suspects she’ll have a good time, too. Spoiler: she will! She’s gonna make me her priest character.

But we mostly decided on a new fighting game, as those are really easy to pick up and play together. I’m a big Tekken fan, much more than Street Fighter, but alas that series is still stuck on the PlayStation 3. We were not left with many other choices, and so we picked Street Fighter IV, not even bothering to “upgrade” to Super Street Fighter IV for like $10 more. Extra stages, colors, and characters are not that exciting in the end.

Early impressions of the game are that…well, it’s basically the same ol’ Street Fighter II we’ve all come to know and love, just with flashy graphics, some new moves, and really horrible cutscenes. I try to do special moves and cool throws, and Tara button-mashes her way to victory. We’re an amazing mix, and it’s a lot of fun–I’m looking forward to unlocking more characters though. To do that, however, one has to beat the Arcade mode with specific characters. That’s easy enough when you set the fights to Easiest difficulty, one round, and 30 seconds on the clock. Easy peasy…until Seth, that is. He’s the final boss, a sort of Dr. Manhattan wannabe with everyone’s special moves, and the spike in difficulty from him and the fight before is mountainous. Sometimes he clobbers me in a perfect round, and other times I can get a few hits in. My best strategy is to spam ranged attacks (like fireballs) and keep my distance. Which is why it is astounding to me that I was able to unlock this Achievement two difficulty levels higher:

Arcade Rat (20G): Clear Arcade Mode with 1 character on Medium or higher difficulty.

Not sure about a lot of the remaining Achievements. A lot involve grinding fights online. Hmm…

Oh, and we’re absolutely terrified of Rufus, but that’s an entire post in itself.