Since it’s Intergalactic Shmuppreciation Month , I may as well start a topic that relates to it as well as an overall gaming skill in general.
Ah, button mashing… Even since the early days of Space Invaders where only a whopping ONE bullet was allowed to be on-screen at a time, people have been hitting buttons as fast as their fingers would let them. With the debut of the 2D fighting game, button mashing went from a test of arm endurance and physical skill to the cheapest technique of gameplay in the book.
Personally, I still love to button mash. Heck, I still love playing games like Track and Field on the NES, that one minigame in Alien Hominid HD where you have to keep mashing 2 buttons to eat the food faster than the computers/other players, and any game that involves torturing one’s digits just to see something really fast happening on the screen. I’m simple like that _ Recent button mashing has turned into its own art style; you can do it the standard (but inefficient) way with your thumb, flex your arm with your fingers in a snapping position and using the side of your middle finger, or even using a pen/your thumb wrapped in a t-shirt or some cloth and rubbing the buttons back and forth! On the subject of Street Fighter, I do fall in the category of the pathetic button mashing noob. The only character I can actually perform specials with is Ryu and everyone and their grandma knows how to throw a Hadoken in their sleep in this day and age.
For those freaks like me who enjoy button mashing to such a disturbing extent, there’s actually a device that measures how fast you can hit one or 2 buttons per second. It’s called the Hudson Shooting Watch and it’s really good for getting your presses per second up! I’ve used it for about a month and a half and I’ve got from around 9-10 presses/second to 11-12 when I’m doing well. You can try an online version here as long as your have a numpad, but I’ve found it to be harder to play with than the Shooting Watch.
To get a general idea of how insanely fast people can go, Takahashi Meijin, the man who popularized the Shooting Watch, could go at an astounding rate of 16 presses/second with only one button! Personally, my record’s 12.2 per second with a single button and I’ve been training my mashing hand for a while now!