In between blog posts, I get around to my fair share of games, and I love challenges. There’s something really satisfying about sucking at a game, getting good, and eventually coming out on top. I’m not usually one to turn tail and run away from a challenge, either. But, today is no ordinary day, and Sesame Street Fighter is no ordinary game. I cannot beat this game, and I have accepted that.

The game is being hosted on Flavour Machine, which has a nice little collection of basic browser-based games. One of those is Sesame Street Fighter, and it is a typing game. The mashup sees Sesame Street characters standing in for some of the classic Street Fighter characters — Cookie Monster as E. Honda, Grover as Dhalsim, Oscar as Blanka, and Bert and Ernie as Ryu and Ken. Elmo is supposedly there as M. Bison, but I cannot independently confirm that because I am not good enough at the game to get to him.

Anyway, you type words really fast to pull off attacks, with each word you finish launching a special attack. There are different typing levels, too — animals for Cookie Monster, Russian cities for Bert and Ernie. Elmo apparently is German scientists, which I’m pretty sure is unbeatable as typing challenges go.

There are a lot of similarities to Street Fighter, with the most obvious one being that Oscar, like Blanka, is a cheap stunlocker who needs to be banned. When you’re getting attacked, you can’t input letter for a second, and boy does that get abused once you get to that guy. I lucked past him once (and only once) and managed to hack it past Ernie, but Bert is too much. I can’t beat Bert. I will never type Novosibirsk faster than Bert, and that’s OK.

Via Kotaku