For Peter, discovering Street Fighter 2 came through the halls of C.W. Lewis Middle School. Video game talk was okay there, but not okay enough that you still weren’t considered a dork. Within this status quo, Street Fighter was spoken of — and it was spoken of that there were secret moves, moves you had to practice that were more powerful than others. The beginning of button combinations had emerged.

At this time Peter could only find the game at the Deptford Mall. On weekends the mall was too crowded, the arcade game was in too high a demand to practice more than a few rounds. Then TemDee — maybe the worst comic shop a young kid could discover in South Jersey — moved. Within the next plaza, all in walking distance, a new arcade opened next to an adult entertainment shop. Perfect. Here Peter could get dropped off and later picked up, and between then was the pain of TemDee and Street Fighter 2. Within this self-inflicted learning ritual during the weekends, Peter could practice.

Then everything changed. At his local K-Mart, Peter discovered an Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine one night while his mother was running errands in May 1993. Here Peter learned of the Championship Edition, where you could play as the final four bosses. This unbelievable discovery led to a call to his best friend as soon as he got home, then school bus conversations and the sharing of the magazine. As sudden as a Dragon Punch, Peter’s most local pizza shop (Empiro’s Pizza) — the one that rested at the top of the street — got some arcades. The pizza shop’s arcade had Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers, which yet again blew Peter away and introduced four new characters to learn, along with Midway’s NBA Jam. This is when everything changed. There were not enough quarters to feed the appetite Peter had to learn about every character, finish the game with each to read the end stories, memorize and practice every special move. When the game became available within a 5-minute walk, everything changed for Peter.

Throughout the years, Peter has used his many platforms to deliver passionate, in-depth commentary on the Street Fighter franchise — in all its many forms and across every medium. He remains deeply dedicated not only to understanding the DNA of the brand, but also to wielding it for himself — carrying that same fire he first felt in the halls of C.W. Lewis Middle School, the crowded Deptford Mall arcade, and Empiro’s Pizza all the way into adulthood.