Did you ever play fighting video games when you were growing up? When I first got into video games, back in the Super Nintendo/Sega days, my mom didn’t want me playing Mortal Kombat, so I only had the various titles in the Street Fighter series.

I was a master of Mario, but I was never very good at fighting games. I could hold my own against the computer on normal difficulty, but my friends who were the best at those games would generally beat me. Often, they’d whittle away half of my health repeatedly using the same move – Ryu or Ken’s grapple, or repeated jump kicks. When I finally got my hands on Mortal Kombat, the same thing would happen with Liu Kang’s high and low fireballs.

Why do you have so many hands?! And how do you have a six pack, you sumo wrestler?

I usually didn’t take this well. “Cheap!” I’d cry. “You couldn’t beat me fairly so you have to use the same cheap move!” Gamers even coined a term for it – “cheese.”

The thing that I knew – and that I didn’t want to admit – was that if I could perfect the timing, I’d do the same thing. After all, it was within the rules that the game designers installed, and it was effective. It provided a competitive advantage…a lot like flopping.

(more…)