Meet The Tekken Boys.
It's summer again, and it's back to the proverbial old grind. Me, five other boys, a PlayStation 2, and Tekken. It's not the best way to spend a summer break, but hey, it's not as if we're the club types. We're not exactly diehards or addicts, and Tekken isn't exactly the reason why we became friends.
So read on.
The Tekken Boys (me, Andrew, Garry, Noel, David and Neal) were borne out of quite... interesting circumstances. I'm old, I can't recall.
Anyways, the common denominator between and among us is our propensity to play computer games. We weren't and aren't exactly the Counterstrike Peepulation (this group would involve, in one way or another, Saroot and Wong [who happen to be not Chinese]) or the Ragna Cum Laudes (seeing that I don't play Ragnarok), but as far as I know, we're the only group in our high school classes who played Tekken religiously... well, save for me who would never in my lifetime would ever block low frequently.
The idea is that we were Tekken fanatics, to the point that simple discussions over canteen burgers and shakes (which proves that we're ancient: the BurgerShake combo costs around P10) would revolve around tenstrings and ways to avoid the Phoenix Smasher (which was the cheesiest move back in Tekken 3). Now we have graduated to more meaningful discourse, like our love lives and politics, but we still play Tekken.
So again, meet the Tekken Boys... and how they play Tekken (kaya nga Tekken Boys eh!).
Andrew is the Mishima sage, although he ocassionally uses Xiaoyu (which doesn't matter). Proficient in juggles and in canned strings, Andrew's the man when it comes to manipulating the game from mid-range. Garry, on the other hand, was (just to make that clear) a Tekken junkie and holds the claim/record of "knowing" most of the characters. This guy thrives on juggles and could kill you off one (or two, or three, but most of the time a shatload) of launchers. Noel is a power player, the master of cheese, and spends most of his time attempting just-frames which either kill you, or in most circumstances, kill him. When it comes to counterhitting, Noel is the king of the nonexistent hill.
David is a throw-man: nobody will ever be able to pull off King's chain throws like he does, and that means nobody. On the striking end he will own you with kicks given his proficiency with Hwoarang and Baek. Neal is our group's master turtle: he can kill you by just standing there and blocking all your shots until he finds that opening to crush you. He's a really good defensive guy, but he's not really keen on offense.
As far as I go, I suck. No, wait, as far as I know, I have crushed each and every Tekken Boy with characters nobody uses: Jack, Roger, Kuma... but what I lack in juggles and combos I play the cerebral game, the thinking man's fight. And then I end up losing... but not today.
Anyways, the common denominator between and among us is our propensity to play computer games. We weren't and aren't exactly the Counterstrike Peepulation (this group would involve, in one way or another, Saroot and Wong [who happen to be not Chinese]) or the Ragna Cum Laudes (seeing that I don't play Ragnarok), but as far as I know, we're the only group in our high school classes who played Tekken religiously... well, save for me who would never in my lifetime would ever block low frequently.
The idea is that we were Tekken fanatics, to the point that simple discussions over canteen burgers and shakes (which proves that we're ancient: the BurgerShake combo costs around P10) would revolve around tenstrings and ways to avoid the Phoenix Smasher (which was the cheesiest move back in Tekken 3). Now we have graduated to more meaningful discourse, like our love lives and politics, but we still play Tekken.
So again, meet the Tekken Boys... and how they play Tekken (kaya nga Tekken Boys eh!).
Andrew is the Mishima sage, although he ocassionally uses Xiaoyu (which doesn't matter). Proficient in juggles and in canned strings, Andrew's the man when it comes to manipulating the game from mid-range. Garry, on the other hand, was (just to make that clear) a Tekken junkie and holds the claim/record of "knowing" most of the characters. This guy thrives on juggles and could kill you off one (or two, or three, but most of the time a shatload) of launchers. Noel is a power player, the master of cheese, and spends most of his time attempting just-frames which either kill you, or in most circumstances, kill him. When it comes to counterhitting, Noel is the king of the nonexistent hill.
David is a throw-man: nobody will ever be able to pull off King's chain throws like he does, and that means nobody. On the striking end he will own you with kicks given his proficiency with Hwoarang and Baek. Neal is our group's master turtle: he can kill you by just standing there and blocking all your shots until he finds that opening to crush you. He's a really good defensive guy, but he's not really keen on offense.
As far as I go, I suck. No, wait, as far as I know, I have crushed each and every Tekken Boy with characters nobody uses: Jack, Roger, Kuma... but what I lack in juggles and combos I play the cerebral game, the thinking man's fight. And then I end up losing... but not today.
As you may have noticed, we are a house divided when it comes to gameplay mechanics and fighting styles (Jin can never be a common denominator among us: among us, only me, Neal and Noel don't know squat about him). As far as our subjective opinions towards the world's biggest asskisser (whose name will not be mentioned here for fear of virtual contamination), or our political stands, we are pretty much united.
As far as I'm concerned the Tekken Boys are one tight group. Yes, we had our differences before, especially between Andrew and Noel. What they couldn't do in terms of physically hurting each other we settled in those epic Tekken Tag Tournament matches, which until today still bring some poignant fight-scenes worthy of being videotaped and sent to TekkenZaibatsu (although personally, I'm getting bored looking at Jin/Kazuya vs. Paul/Lei matches). What we fail to do academically we compensate at Tekken.
Now we have practically evolved. Now we talk about stuff that still revolve around Tekken, but in a different way. My usual quotable quotes still revolve around something like, "Love is like a tenstring - you can't hit them all," or "Political awareness is like hitting Law's Junkyard Combo: in order to hit the full b+2,3,4, you hit mid, low, mid. Sometimes you also have to hit high." That second one I invented just now... so get me drunk.
Yeah, maybe other groups and barkadas would fancy coffee or pizza or clubs, but we don't do that. Tekken is perhaps the most cost-efficient addiction we have had, since the days we hung around Avengers (or Abangers, whatever) waiting for a vacant PS1. Never mind the sweaty smells we get hunting for PlayStations.
Now that I come to think about it... there's nothing really wrong with being a Tekken Boy.