I was 10 yrs old at the time. My mum used to work in a cafe at a Leisure Centre, and downstairs in the swimming pool area was a little arcade, with 5, maybe 6 cabs in there. At first they'd had SF 1 in there for several months, which we used to hang around and play but it never really caught our attention too much. We'd soon be jumping back onto double dragon!

I'd spend pretty much every day of the week down there whilst my mum worked, so i used to see a lot of the Cabinets come and go, because the guy who ran the arcade area, used to update with newer games, or replace the broken cabs.

One day i got my daily coin-op allowance off my mum, and went running downstairs in anticipation for another day playing double dragon or altered beast... whatever....

It was then i noticed the original SF cab had been replaced, with a new game called 'World Warrior'...i stood there and watched the demo play out for several minutes before putting my 10p into the machine and having a go myself. Naturally i got destroyed on my first go, not knowing what the hell i was doing lol...but something made me keep playing. The mystique of these new characters, strange characters like Dhalsim and Blanka really grip the imagination of a 10yr old.....And Ken and Ryu just seemed so 'cool' as computer game characters. Especially to a young kid....hell, they still do now lol.

Soon i was down there everyday, spending all my money that my mum gave me, just on this one machine. Gettin tips from the older guys who used to go down and play, and before you knew it, word got round that This amazing 'World Warrior' game was in the Leisure Centre, and Everyone would be down there pumping their coins in all day long. It was fantastic...

Fast forward a year or so, and the next thing we knew......World Warrior was replaced with 'Championship Edition' ...HOLY F!!! you could now play as the Bosses!!! ....

The rest .....as they say, is history.......

It's 1991. At this point in my life I was 16, and I was a slave to the Shoot-em-up: Xevious, Gradius and the ultimate: R-Type. I remember I was told about a little amusement arcade in Birmingham City Centre by one of my mates. It's opposite the Pizza hut, and the ground floor consisted of gambling machines crammed together like commuters on the underground. The videogames were in the basement; I walked down a dimly-lit flight of stairs to see what would become a favourite haunt of mine for years to come. As I walked to the cabinets, I noticed a chinese kid playing a fighting game - I'd played Double Dragon and thought it was a good laugh (never really liked the graphics though) and enjoyed playing Golden Axe. Suddenly, the character he was playing as literally flew up through the air and punched his opponent.

That was it.

I watched the kid play, pressing buttons and waggling the joystick in almost mystical combinations as he played. THAT was the moment that started me losing a good portion of my life stuck to a Street Fighter cabinet. It took me about two weeks to figure out how to do a Dragon punch. I remember I did it once, completely by accident  - but couldn't do it again. I ended up asking the chinese kid (whom I saw in there a lot after that) and he showed me the way....

It was sitting in the front of Wal-mart next to the Simpsons Arcade and TMNT Arcade. I would play the latter two over and over and one day I got board and decided to try that third machine. I played Dhalsim because it seemed like he had an advantage. I only played it that once.

A year later after moving to a new city my parents bought me an SNES fearing that I might have trouble making friends over the summer. I rented various games, and eventualy Street Fighter II as well (never making the conection between this and the arcade until much later.) I loved it so much I called my best freind (guess the SNES wasn't necessary) to come over and play it with me. Been hooked ever since. I bought every strategy guide and played it almost non-stop for the next few years. Then came the versus series and sequals. Thanks Capcom.

I was like 6-7.  It was at this restaurant my dad used to work at.  It was probably the most popular machine there.  I was hooked and have been so ever since...almost 20 years now!

What's really funny, is that I didn't even learn how to do special moves until I had already been playing for nearly a decade (as a child, I was too stupid to know how to read the instructions on how to do them, and my older opponents always refused to tell me how to do them...as a result, even today my gaming strategy tends to focus on strong basics and combos with specials being icing on the cake).  It was sad really...as a little 7-year old, I only wanted to know how to throw a fireball more than anything!  LOL

Anyone remember how people thought that Raiyu and Ken were brothers or enemies?  LOL