NeoEmpire took a little time to get to know James Chen a little better in an interview posted today. He talks about his long, long history in the fighting game community, his role as a commentator, MK9, and MvC3.

Gaming for over 2 and a half decades and a player around since fighting games inception back in the days of Street Fighter 2, in all those years seeing everything, everyone and every game come and go what was your favourite period?

Being as old school as I am, it’ll probably surprise everyone when I say my favorite period is right now. Yeah, there are issues with the scene being “too friendly” and lacking the proper drive and such, yeah the games may be more catered to the casual player and not the hardcore players, and on and on. But never before has the scene been this large and this available! The ability to have streams for people to watch from all around the world, to spread the knowledge, joy, and excitement of the Fighting Game Community to anyone willing to tune in is amazing. Back in the old days, we were excited if we got 60 people in a tourney and it was a struggle to record the matches and make them small enough for 56k modems to download at a reasonable pace. Now, we have tourneys that are regularly 200+ people that are streamed LIVE to the world. It’s really hard to say there’s any time that’s been better than that.

Continue reading on NeoEmpire…