Here's a little Tekken related story I’ve been through recently: Me and my friend felt really sorry for the mentally disabled kid that moved in 7 months ago so we asked his parents if he could join us at the local arcade. They allowed it and brought the kid downstairs, let’s call him Jimmy. Jimmy was ecstatic when he heard that he could go to the arcade with us and that made us really happy. He has been lonely since he moved in and I really didn’t think he had any other friends in school as well because of his Fragile X syndrome. This was confirmed by his parents later on, so we decided to take him with us every weekend. We’ve played Metal Slug, fighting games, Time Crisis and all those classics. Most of the people in the arcade have been really kind to him and he has been having the time of his life, we could see it in his eyes. However, he became really interested in Tekken 7 after two months. He didn’t want to play it, probably because he was scared to lose or maybe he couldn’t find a character he could relate to, but he used to watch us play and get really excited over the matches.

One afternoon, when we arrived, the Tekken cabinets were full and there were two guys playing against each other: one of them played Heihachi and the other one played Paul. So we started watching them after playing some Time Crisis. After some time, we realized Jimmy started making these noises when Paul hit Hei. Every time he hit him with a Demo Man, he went “DAAAAOOOWWWWOOAH” and every time he hit a death fist he went “MAMAMAMAMAMA-HEH”. After a cabinet got empty, Jimmy immediately sat down and wanted me to sit down next to him. He was looking at the character select screen as he started to drool for a bit. We knew that he was looking for Paul, so I picked Paul for him. He started making the noises he used to make a while back. We realized he wanted to learn how to do Death Fist and Demoman. I started to teach him and he was able to do them after 5 minutes. We played several games with him, obviously he wasn’t that good but we let him win one out of each three games. When we were on the way back home, I saw him trying to erect his hair with his own spit.

A week later, which was the last Friday, me and my friends went to Jimmy’s house after our classes were over to pick him up to go to the arcade. His mom said he already went to the arcade to attend a “local tournament or something”. We immediately rushed to the arcade and saw a huge crowd around the Tekken cabinets. We asked around what was going on and people said that the tournament finals were being played. Then we heard the noises… “MAMAMAMAMAMA-HEH”, “DAAAAOOOWWWWOOAH”. IT WAS JIMMY. He was in the tournament finals! Apparently he also learned how to do qcf+3 and f,f+2 mix-ups and he got a new sound effect for those too which was pretty similar to a dog bark. After an intense set of 3 games, he won. We couldn’t believe it. Every single person in the arcade cheered for him. He ran towards us and hugged us. We all teared up a bit. We celebrated with chocolate cake in my house afterwards.

So what did we learn guys? We learnt that everything is possible with the power of friendship and love… and that even a fucking retard can play Paul.