I kinda skipped over SF4, I have it and play it with a friend of mine, but I won't play it online. I like 4, but I play 3s most of the time.

I find the question "what was it like in 09" a little funny because that was not very long ago, but things have definitely changed because of SF4.

Things haven't changed as much as remembering what it was like when 2, and CE came out though, in like 91 or 92 or something, we were fucking crazy about it, and it costed money, every day at lunch and after school, I would sell single cigarettes to people at our arcade/pool hall to keep playing. And you tried your hardest not to lose or you'd have to wait and wait until you could play again.

I remember gradually learning the moves off other people, or watching how they did stuff. Someone from out of town would come in and know some move no one else did yet. Just seeing someone do an SPD was godlike at first. There was no internet back then, we bought magazines, I remember when something like an Electronic Gaming Monthly came out with an issue with the moves. When CE came out and you could BE ONE OF THE BOSSES, I switched from Ken to Vega for a while.

Then when the SNES version came out we played it even more. I actually used to think that special-cancels were just the game fucking up in my favour cause I was mashing too hard, no one talked about frame data, no training room. Thinking back, there were a lot of game mechanics in SF2 that have always been in each game that we know about now that we were oblivious to. The SNES versions really helped us get better at it since we could play non-stop, I spent enough time at that pool hall, or the Dairy Queen by my house playing as it was.

Hah, we all thought Mortal Kombat 1 looked exactly like real life back then too, which is another series I played a lot of.

I slightly remember playing SF1, but I don't think anyone gave a shit about that game.