Have you ever settled an argument with video games?

Yo let’s go

This past week, I was handed a story from Soranews24 of a tweet about a Japanese father. What followed was his own personal chronicle of how he met his daughter’s boyfriend and challenged him to a match of Guilty Gear as a show of dominance, which ended about as badly as you can imagine.

While yes, he won the set 10-6, his gloating was a bit much for his family and his junior high daughter. He ended up with no dinner and got kicked out of the house just because he’s been playing Guilty Gear since 1998 and proved his personal vendetta against Slayer mains. Still, it’s impressive he had anything in common at all with the young man who was seeing his daughter, even if he used it as a vehicle to shame him and see if he was worthy of dating his daughter.

Okay, so the true worth of this particular story is a man with a family played Guilty Gear with the new generation of gamer, even if he did it confrontationally. But with a byline like, “He’s not fit to be my daughter’s boyfriend,” Dad declares after witnessing junior high boy’s lack of fighting game skills,” it immediately makes me think of all the times I was mad enough at someone to tell them to turn on your damn 3DS, you are not hot shit with Diddy Kong, let’s go. The motto was built into that game after all. “Settle it in Smash!”

My favorite aspect about a fighting game is that we’re both playing within the confines and rules of this specific video game, on an even playing field with only our reaction speeds and execution to prove who’s better. I’ve settled who was buying pizza next at a party with Marvel 3. I’ve had some friendly matches with TheBlondeBass regarding character choice in Guilty Gear Xrd after his art exhibition went up. I think I’ve once told my wife the winner in a game of Injustice gets to choose the restaurant we’d go out to for date night.

Of course fighting games aren’t the only venue this happens with. I think any normal, well-adjusted adult is used to throwing insults and bets in Mario Kart. While I’m wary of expecting a fair outcome when item choice can rubber band wildly between a banana peel or a blue shell, at least more people can get involved in matters of opinions splintering a group apart.

So fair reader, what kind of arguments have you settled with video games? And what games have you used to frame your superior ideas or dissenting thought processes? Thinking on it, with the Switch now out for a while now, it can become an instant dueling machine. Can’t decide on a movie with a friend? Put your Switch into portable mode, hand your friend a joy-con, fire up Ultra Street Fighter II (or the upcoming Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Edition), and put your friend and their shitty taste in movies in their place. I can see it now: Makoto versus Dudley in 3rd Strike, a streaming party of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid versus Steins;Gate.