Hi, this started when I was a kid at about six years old in year 1992 or so, there were television programs about fighting shows such as WWE (at that time it was WWF (World wrestling Federation), Jet Li, Bruce Lee, Jackie chan's movies and so on. Those were my favorite shows I enjoyed watching.
When I was allowed to go down to the shops below my apartment, I saw a shop where there were people playing Street Fighter 2 series. When I was watching them playing, I was like wow, there were people holding gamepads to control the people in the television screen, how cool was that. I pestered my parent that I wanted to play too and buying one for me, but they ignored me. They forbidden me to play video games.
At age of twelve, I managed to save my pocket money secretly and went to quite far away game shop just to avoid letting my parent seeing me playing video game
and I played my first fighting game, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. It was in year 1998 where this game was newly released. It was recommended by the shop keeper as I recalled that I wanted to play Street Fighter series, but they were all out of stock.
I played Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter on Sega Saturn and choose Ryu and Wolverine as my first two ever characters to play as. I picked Easy mode control since I am a beginner and this was where I realized that pressing a button on the gamepad allows me to perform the characters special move easily. It was pretty fun throwing Hadoken often. I once used Manual Mode and I do not know how to perform their special move where they kept on doing their basic punch and kick attack.
The shop keeper introduced some other fighting games to me when Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter was sold out such as King of Fighters 96, X-Men vs. Street Fighter and so on. However, I still enjoyed playing Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter most.
In year 1999, my family and I shifted house to other place which was behind a shopping mall that had an Arcade centre with several different fighting games. Surprisingly, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter was there. I was excited to play it and bought token to play this game. The different in this version were the exclude of Norimaro, I can't select Easy or Manual Mode and I can't continue after I lost which the screen straight away show "Game Over" screen.
Without any choice, I went to search for information using the school internet on learning how to execute move by performing the "Hadoken" motion QCF + P. Slowly, I am able to perform the characters special moves. There were also two similar fighting games which were Marvel vs. Capcom and Marvel Super Heroes in the Arcade Centre. I noticed many of my local players enjoyed playing Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel vs. Capcom most because of infinite combos (Wolverne in MSH and Gambit in MVC).
There were other fighting games there such as kof98 (there were lots of kof98 arcade cabinets there as well as kof99), Tekken 3, Tekken Tag Tournament, Street Fighter Ex, Street Fighter 3 Third Strike, Street Fighter 3 Second Impact, Garou Mark of the Wolves, Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, Soul Calibur, Rival School Justice iirc as in year 1999. I have only played a few but still, I enjoyed playing Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter most at that time.
In year 2001, I joined a PC shop as a member for my internet research school project which was introduced by my classmate. There were fighting games there that can be played in the PC and my best favorite was X-Men Children of the Atom. This game made me became a fan of Gouki which he was a surprise hidden character where he challenged me as a CPU opponent before fighting the sub boss. I managed to unlock Gouki by inputting his code and I started to main him mostly afterward.
After I got my internet connection in year 2003, I did research on fighting games and came across Fighters Generation website:
https://www.fightersgeneration.com/ I was trying out some of the characters which had "Franks Favorite" logo shown on top of their characters profile. Most of them were fun to play as. I have also started playing Soul Calibur as my best favorite 3D fighting game which the logo "Franks Favorite" was on that Soul Calibur's web page too. A pity that I never gets to try other fighting games which I have seen in year 1999 as they were removed in the Arcade Centre.
In year 2008, I got a Playstation 2 as birthday present where it was less expensive at that time due to Playstation 3 comming. I bought several fighting games which were typically highest rated fighting games in Fighters Generation website. I enjoyed playing most of the King of Fighters games in Playstation 2 because of the training mode's options menu which was the best I have seen.
In year 2009, my sibling and I bought Playstation 3 as they wanted to play Resident Evil 5. I bought a few fighting games such as Super Street Fighter 4 (Buying this together with Arcade Edition's upgrade patch to try out Evil Ryu), Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (After a decade, the Marvel vs. Capcom series returned), Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (Was interested in trying out Vergil), Street Fighter X Tekken (new crossover fighting game in year 2012), Tekken 6 (scenario campaign mode), King of Fighters 13 (I wanted to try out Ex-Iori), Marvel vs. Capcom Origin (I wished Marvel vs. Street Fighter would be included) and Ultra Street Fighter 4.
In year 2016, I bought Playstation 4 together with Street Fighter V as my first Playstation 4 game, then followed by Tekken 7 (Gouki and Geese Howard), King of Fighters 14 (Return of Geese Howard, my secondary favorite fighting game character of all time) and Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (Just to play epic Street Fighter 3 Second Impact and New Generation, but I only played Second Impact).
In year 2015 onwards, I started to play fighting game seriously, much like those professional fighting game level such as Justin Wong, Daigo, Tokido and so on because I wanted to participate in my local fighting game competitions after seeing one of my local citizen winning the Evo 2013's Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition tournament and maybe one day will follow his footstep if possible.
Sorry guys, lots of paragraphs, but I tried my best to shorten it and this is the best I can do.