As I’m sitting here, feeling quite spacey, I’m reminded of a concept Andy introduced me to a day or two ago: the meta-cheap. Having M. Bison slide into your opponent’s character repeatedly until you win is cheap, within the constructs of Street Fighter II.

Hitting your opponent in the face while playing the game is not cheap, within the constructs of a game—but it most definitely is still cheap. Hence, meta-cheap.

I haven’t seen that used in any video game duels, yet, but I suspect its day will come. Hell, it might have been fun to meta-cheap Testament in the Guilty Gear XX battle that went down in Seattle last summer—though it’d be embarrassing to still lose.

Ah, yes, Seattle. I never did get that down in my blog, did I? The noteworthy event of that weekend trip was, as you might guess, the Guilty Gear XX battles that Andy, Nate, Jon, and I participated in. (Two consoles were set up with GGXX; another had Soul Calibur II, and the other three featured Half-Life.) We held our own quite well with most of the other players…and then some guy with his own controller (a big-ass one, emulating an arcade game’s controls) arrived. He selected Testament every single time, and he kicked our asses every single time. For a long time. My proudest moment was destroying him once with Baiken (in the first battle; I lost the other two); I don’t know that many other people even got that far against him.

In response to this, Andy announced the formation of Team Anti-Testament. This coalition of the willing eventually swelled in ranks to include Gabe (of Penny-Arcade, the event sponsor) himself. Gabe admitted that GGXX wasn’t really his thing, and even he fell against Testament.

Team Anti-Testament eventually took a break for lunch; during that break, Nate devised a cunning plan. It seems that another contender had set up shop at the second GGXX console; he too had is own controller, and he usually (though, to his credit, he would actually pick other characters on occasion) would select Bridget, and he usually cleaned house. (Unlike Testament, though, we could actually win against Bridget, sometimes.)

Thus Team Anti-Testament set Bridget in an epic battle against Testament, and claimed the other GGXX console for our own, and fun was had by all again.

If you’re wondering, Bridget lost the first battle. In doing that, though, he found some weakness that he was able to exploit to destroy Testament thereafter. Hahaha.