(electronic music with bass)
- [Narrator] Being a kid in the '90s meant
spending most of your quarters
trying to beat your friends in Street Fighter.
The gaming community was filled with memorable players,
but one kid seemed to eclipse them all,
the legendary Tomo Ohira.
- One of the greatest video game players who ever lived.
(dramatic music)
- Tomo Ohira was this towering figure in Street Fighter II.
- A guy that legendary,
that's the kinda guy you wanna aspire to be.
- [Narrator] So why did the champion disappear?
(arcade music)
In 1991, arcades went through a Renaissance
with the release of Street Fighter II.
The game re-energized the coin-op business,
drawing people away from their home consoles
and back to the arcades.
Up until then,
arcade winners were determined by the highest score.
But with Street Fighter II,
players dueled each other in one-on-one competitions.
The fierce matches and cutthroat rivalries
made the game into a bonafide sporting event,
turning champions into legends.
And a group of all-stars was forming
in sunbaked Southern California.
(arcade decrescendo)
(electronic music with bass) To get this story started,
we first need to understand that Street Fighter
is a lot more than a bunch of button mashing.
And who better to explain the complexities of the game
than legendary players Jeff Schaefer and Mike Watson.
- What Street Fighter is really, is a chess game.
They have six different buttons that you can push,
and whether you're standing or crouching,
the buttons are different.
And so you have so much diversity
of different punches and kicks in a fighting game.
- Each character has their own specific moves.
Those specific moves can be used in combinations,
so there's so many different variations
available in the game.
- [Jeff] Based on whatever character I'm playing,
I know what distance that character's weak at,
so it's all about forming your game plan
around staying at that distance to win the game.
- [Game Voice] You win!
- This is the bread and butter
of becoming exceptional at any game.
That's Street Fighter.
- [Narrator] And if you haven't guessed it yet,
Mike and Jeff are really good at Street Fighter II.
(dramatic orchestral music)
- I became the best player in Orange County,
and then, eventually, I got banned from playing,
because it was a foregone conclusion
that I was gonna win.
- I would beat everybody.
There was no one I ran into that I didn't beat.
You know, I was a little kid,
just shooting my mouth off all the time,
but that was part of my strategy actually.
We always played to win.
- The whole crowd was thinking like,
"Wow, Jeff's on his own level."
You know, no one could touch me.
I was eating everybody for lunch.
(soft boom)
And that's when I met Tomo Ohira.
(dramatic orchestral music)
He was about thirteen years old,
probably weighed about 90 pounds and was five feet tall,
and he was just a little kid.
- He was a smaller guy,
so it wasn't intimidating or anything,
but man, he played lights out.
No mistakes.
His play's just amazing.
- He's a gaming savant.
I musta spent over $20 in quarters to beat him one game,
and I never beat him one game.
I can't win one game off the guy.
He's very much like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods.
They don't need to talk crap.
They already know they're the best.
- He was, hands down, the number one player at the time.
I was kinda dumbfounded by it.
It was like Tomo, me, Jeff,
and then fourth place is way down here.
- [Narrator] And in 1994,
the three participated in a Super Tournament
to find out who was the best player of all time.
- [Mike] There was a big Super Tournament in Nor Cal
that all of us went to.
- It was like the biggest Battle Royale ever
in the history of Street Fighter at that time.
We're finally gonna find out, right?
Is Southern California better than this group here?
It was literally shoulder to shoulder of
people packed in like sardines.
- [Narrator] And you can probably guess what happened.
Tomo won it all.
But then something unexpected happened.
The world's best Street Fighter II player
completely disappeared.
(dramatic electronic music)
- He just quit.
That was it.
He never played Street Fighter again after that.
- I felt a little empty, I guess.
He was my competition,
he was always the one that would beat me.
He just finally walked off into the sunset.
- [Narrator] Questions haunted the gaming community.
Where is Tomo?
Where is "The Champion"?
- [Jeff] Everybody asked about him for years.
- [Mike] His name rung out
through the arcades in Southern California.
Everyone wanted to find Tomo and play against him.
- [Narrator] But they never got
that opportunity. - [Game Voice] Three!
Two!
- [Narrator] The original gaming savant...
- [Game Voice] One!
- [Narrator] Was gone.
So at this point,
you're probably asking yourself,
"What became of the legendary Tomo Ohira?"
- This is my life now.
Getting balls out of the tree
for the neighbor's kids.
(light, xylophone music)
- My name is Tomo Ohira,
I used to play Street Fighter, long, long time ago.
I was known as the "First Champion of Street Fighter."
And the feeling was just incredible.
(music adds heavy bass)
I think people were a little bit surprised by
me leaving kinda suddenly,
because I had such a passion for it.
But eventually, it went from,
"Yes I won! Oh my God, I can't believe it!"
to, "Oh, okay, good, I didn't lose today,
"so now I don't have to be upset tonight."
And that's when I fell out of it.
- When we became adults, right,
you don't have the eight hours a day
to put into becoming like he was when he was a kid.
- He accomplished what he wanted,
he left on top and,
we played one final tournament and,
he won, so he kinda walked out on a high note.
- When something is done,
I think you should realize it, face it, and let it go.
So, now my passion is family.
I have twin kids that are two years old,
and as soon as they're old enough,
I will hand them a gaming pad,
and see what they can do.
Can you say, "I win!"
- I win! - I win!
- Yeah!
Say it louder! "I win!"
- I win! - I win!
- Yeah!
That's my life now.
And if I had to turn the clock back,
and do it all over again,
I would not change a thing.
(bell tone)