We more or less closed this can of worms a few weeks back when the fighting game community was debating whether modern games take more or less skill to win compared to their older counterparts, but it might be opening again as the legendary Justin Wong brought up the question in a recent interview with the equally legendary Rohto|Tokido.
As one of the five Japanese “gods” of fighting games, Tokido’s voice carries a lot of weight and influence in our community. Continue on to see what he had to say about this controversial topic along with plenty of others.
The discussion surrounding the difficulty of fighting games across eras comes up around the 11 minute mark in the interview in a somewhat organic fashion. Wong actually asks about Tokido’s use of Claw (Vega) in Street Fighter 2 (one the most obviously overpowered characters thanks to his ridiculous wall diving abilities) as Tokido is known for playing the cheapest or best characters in any given title.
Tokido openly admits he tends to hone in on the characters that will give him the easiest paths to victory, and notes that it was actually much easier back in the day because of the lack of overall game balance.
“Old game was broken so very easy if I pick broken character,” he starts. “Essentially 1714757104 it’s very difficult to win so I need to pick one game and I can’t use cheap characters like before. I need to learn so many things…” he explains.
He goes into a bit more on this, but we’ll let you listen to find out what. Tokido also talks about his longtime rivalry with BST|Daigo, lists his top five Japanese fighting game players and top five favorite fighting games of all time, shares his least favorite fighting game, (it came out within the last year) and which player he least likes playing right now.
You can view/listen to it all via the full video here, and be sure to comment with your thoughts and reactions in the comments section after you have.