In fighting game competition, there are supposed to be winners and losers. Players are either one or the other once a match has concluded. But sometimes, the fates like to throw a wrench in that rigid dichotomy with the anticlimactic and almost unheard of draw game.
At last night’s Next Level Battle Circuit, local competitors players Chris “Kreymore” Landon and Alexander “Lexx” Bautista met in an early-bracket Street Fighter V match, trading two games before starting a third to decide the winner of their set. Kreymore found himself on the wrong end of a slight life deficit and, with just 30 in-game seconds to go, began playing conservatively to avoid taking another hit. He was eventually able to whittle away Lexx’s health with stray hits from Menat’s orb, and with time expiring, both players were left with matching, near-empty lifebars.
In this situation, Street Fighter V gives both players a point for the round, but seeing as they were in the final round, this ended their game with a 2-2 score, thus prompting the rare ‘Draw Game’ graphic. Fortunately, this bizarre and unlikely situation had an obvious solution: the competitors simply jumped into another game to decide the winner while the commentary team laughed it off.
Ian Walker loves fighting games and writing about them. You can find him on Twitter at @iantothemax.