The Fighter that started it all for you?

[MrPopo]

I saw the original Street Fighter II once in an arcade, and started playing. I accidentally picked Dhalsim first, and then stuck with him because he had the expando limbs. Of course, the CPU handed my ass to me. Once I pulled off the Yoga Fire and spent the rest of the matching trying to figure out how to do it again.

I immediately started requesting the home version, Street Fighter II Turbo on my SNES. Much good times were had.

[LivingtheDream]

Street Fighter 2 of course. When Mortal Kombat came out in the arcades I became hooked and left Street Fighter behind for a looooong time...up until MK3 :p.

ABACABB...can you guess which console I played on when MK was released on home consoles?

[wip3outguy7]

LOL... I tried MK for awhile when it came out but quickly went back to SNK fighters and Street Fighters. I was the only one in the arcade who would give the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo machine a go when it came out. I remember watching the arcade operator empty machine of tokens after a week of service. There were only two in the bin... and they were mine.

[khyrox]

Karateka (Apple / C64), Barbarian (PC), Budokan (PC), and I know plenty of people hate Tongue of the Fatman (PC), but I love it for some reason...

[SpaceBooger]

Street Fighter II - played it first on the SNES in high school and only used Blanka. Once I got to college they had SF2 in the student center - I spent all of my free time mastering new characters. The funny thing is that once I got used to the arcade I sucked at the home ports.
As for 3d it would be Virtua Fighter at the same student center arcade.

[Killette]

Street fighter 2 for the snes

[superlarz]

MK1 in the arcade... the Genesis. I played a lot of SF2 on Genesis though.... Back in the day I owned all of the MKs on Genesis when they originally came out.. Nowadays I own MK1 on Genesis, MK2 on PSN, UMK3 on Saturn, MKtrilogy on PSone.. I have SF2 on snes and VF2 on Saturn. I have to say, the MK games get the most play time.

[Kemiroch]

Oddly enough, my first fighting game was MK for the GameBoy. Most of the time I would just cheese it with Sub Zero. Freeze, Uppercut, Freeze, Roundhouse, repeat

After that I was a KI junkie until I went back to consoles after moving to PC for an extended period.

[marurun]

The first fighter I every played was Street Fighter. It was really clunky and I quickly tired of the awkward mechanics, but wow, the voice samples were sure interesting

My first fighter that hooked me on the genre (and incidentally my second fighter) was Street Fighter II, the original release. I ran into it in a small arcade at a mini golf/go kart place. I was hooked. Other early fighters included Mortal Kombat (almost turned me away from the genre because it sucked so hard), Art of Fighting (awkward at first but totally worth it once you "get it"), KOF 94, Samurai Shodown, Virtua Fighter, and Toshinden (god awful). All of these I encountered in arcade form and loved, except mayby VF. VF I sorta turned up my nose at in arcades but when my high school put a Saturn and a Playstation in the game room in the new athletic facility I re-discovered VF. I also discovered it was hands down better than Tekken or Toshinden (what ISN'T better than Toshinden), even though both of those were more popular with most students.

[Ramatut4001]

I never had a 16 bit console when I was a kid but my friend had Street Fighter II for SNES. He used to get so pissed when I occasionally beat his carefully laid strategy by button-mashing. I really feel like I was there for the birth of this whole thing.