At this point we may as well give up pretending otherwise and just make this a video game blog.

I’ve been playing Virtua Fighter 5 in anticipation of Nagy’s return to Canada. The man is a natural born Virtua Fighter, and only three months of sustained training could possibly allow me to last more than two rounds. Still, for various reasons that I won’t go into, I’ve found myself longing for a 2-D fighter, so I recently picked up King of Fighters 2002.

I’ve always been a novice when it comes to fighting games, so I never really appreciated the differences between franchises or 2-D to 3-D beyond a supreficial level. So I was surprised to discover that as much as I enjoy Virtua Fighter’s complexity and problem solving, there’s nothing quite like delivering a K.O. with a button-mashed flying kick to the face just as an opponent is about to unleash some apocalyptic special move.

Here’s hoping King of Fighters XII, seen in the video above, comes out on consoles. It’s a thing of rare and fragile beauty.