| In 1994, I was 12 years old. I had my own Super | | | | He has lived in Virginia ever since. |
| Nintendo from months of hard work and | | | | Analyzing the Data |
| dedication. My brother Matt was 22 years old and | | | | Initially we only cared about the overall win/loss |
| temporarily living at home. We didn't have a lot in | | | | record. But as time progressed we realized we |
| common. He liked sports while I was more of a | | | | could use the data we had collected as a basis for |
| comic book guy. The one place we could connect | | | | optimal character selection. For example, according |
| was sitting in front of the SNES with controllers in | | | | to our date, Sagat beat Zangief 92% of the time, |
| our hands. Our game of choice was Street Fighter | | | | while Guile beat Zangief only 71 % of the time. |
| 2 Turbo. | | | | Clearly, Sagat was the wise choice in this situation. |
| It was really the perfect combination of our | | | | In the end, we logged 5,157 matches. The results |
| tastes in entertainment - competitive enough for | | | | were amazingly close. I led with 2,608 victories, |
| the sports fan, and stylized enough for the comic | | | | while Matt has secured 2,546 victories. We tied 3 |
| fan. Our skills were nearly equal, and grew in | | | | times. Our most played match was between our |
| parallel as we battled daily after school. | | | | two best characters: M.Bison (me) versus Ken |
| One day Matt suggested we start keeping track | | | | (Matt). We fought that legendary battle 311 times, |
| of all our battles in a log. I have always been a | | | | with M.Bison mopping the floor with Ken 182 |
| fan of making lists, so I was all for it. We used a | | | | times. |
| financial ledger that was originally intended for | | | | I used an OCR software to read the data sheets |
| Matt's accounting class. We tracked which | | | | into an Excel spreadsheet (thank goodness I have |
| character was used in each battle, and who won | | | | good handwriting), and some interesting results |
| and lost (or tied, which is extremely rare). We | | | | came from analyzing the data. We only pitted |
| fought at least one match every weekday for | | | | characters against themselves 4% of the time. |
| three years. Our rules were simple: The winner of | | | | We picked Chun Li more in the summer and E. |
| the previous match had to choose their character | | | | Honda more in the winter. I never once pitted |
| first in the next match. No choosing the same | | | | Vega against Zangief. |
| character twice in a row. | | | | The original log book was lost over the course of |
| Three years after we began my brother moved | | | | moving three times. The Excel spreadsheet was |
| out again, ending our daily ritual. We would still play | | | | lost during a hard drive failure, before I knew the |
| a few matches here and there, but the | | | | value of back-ups. I only had the statistics listed |
| momentum was falling. We logged our last match | | | | above written down in an old notebook. |
| right before Matt left Minnesota to join the Navy. | | | | |