Ricki Ortiz, also known as HelloKittyRicki, is an American professional

fighting game A fighting game, also known as a versus fighting game, is a video game genre, genre of video game that involves combat between two or more players. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as Blocking (martial arts), blocking, grappli ...

player specializing in the ''

Marvel vs. Capcom is a series of crossover fighting games developed and published by Capcom, featuring characters from their own video game franchises and comic book series published by Marvel Comics. The series originated as coin-operated arcade games, though ...

'' and ''

Street Fighter , commonly abbreviated as ''SF'' or スト (''Suto''), is a Japanese media franchise centered on a series of fighting video and arcade games developed and published by Capcom. The first game in the series was released in 1987, followed by six ...

'' series. Ortiz joined the

fighting game community The fighting game community, often abbreviated to FGC, is a collective of video gamers who play fighting games such as '' Marvel vs. Capcom'', ''Mortal Kombat'', '' Soulcalibur'', ''Street Fighter'', ''Guilty Gear'', ''The King of Fighters'', '' ...

in the early 2000s and has since consistently ranked highly in high-profile tournaments.

Early life

In an interview, Ortiz described her childhood as "normal and relaxed." She was raised by an engineer and a

metalworker Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale ...

; her grandmother babysat her while her parents worked. Ortiz first came in contact with fighting games when her father brought her to a Golfland Entertainment Center in

Milpitas, California Milpitas ( Spanish for "little milpas") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in Silicon Valley. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 80,273. The city's origins lie in Rancho Milpitas, granted to Californio ranchero José Mar� ...

. By the time Ortiz reached middle school, she spent time at the local arcade almost every day after school.

Career

Ricki Ortiz left the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

for the first time in her life in 2001 in order to compete in a major tournament in Texas, following advice of her "friend and mentor" John Choi. After graduating high school, Ortiz moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in order to experience the local

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware ** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board * Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games * ...

scene. Ortiz first competed at the

Evolution Championship Series The Evolution Championship Series, commonly known as Evo, is an annual esports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games. The tournaments are completely open and use the double elimination format. As with Super Battle Opera, contestant ...

in 2003 and has consistently ranked highly since playing games such as ''

Marvel vs Capcom 2 is a crossover fighting game developed and published by Capcom. It is the fourth installment in the ''Marvel vs. Capcom'' series, which features characters from both Capcom's video game franchises and comic book series published by Marvel Com ...

'', '' Street Fighter III: Third Strike'', ''

Capcom vs SNK 2 ''Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001'', known in Japan as , is the sequel to the fighting game ''Capcom vs. SNK''. It was originally released on NAOMI hardware in arcades. As in the original, players select a team of fighters from vario ...

'', ''

Street Fighter IV is a 2008 fighting game published by Capcom, who also co-developed the game with Dimps. It was the first original main entry in the series since ''Street Fighter III'' in 1997, a hiatus of eleven years. The coin-operated arcade game version was ...

'', and ''

Street Fighter V ''Street Fighter V'' is a fighting game developed by Capcom and Dimps and published by Capcom for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows, Windows in 2016. An Arcade game, arcade version exclusive to Japan was released by Taito in 2019. Similar to th ...

''. In 2010, Ricki Ortiz placed second in the Evolution ''Super Street Fighter IV'' tournament. In 2016, Ortiz came in second in the 2016 Capcom Cup, losing only to

Du "NuckleDu" Dang Du Dang (born May 12, 1996), more commonly known by his nickname NuckleDu, is an American fighting game player known for playing Guile and Decapre in Ultra Street Fighter IV, Guile and Zangief in Street Fighter X Tekken, and Guile and Rainbow ...

in the finale and winning US$60,000 in the process. Prior to this event, Ortiz trained two and a half weeks straight with Ryan "Filipino Champ" Ramirez, though she did note that her practice schedule throughout the rest of the 2016 season was less than ideal. During the 2017 Capcom Pro Tour, Ortiz stopped playing ''Street Fighter'' for several months and was not nearly as active as in past years. However, after NuckleDu pulled out of the 2017 Capcom Cup, Capcom offered his auto-qualification to Ortiz as the runner up of the 2016 Cup, which she accepted. Ortiz lost to

Tokido , better known as Tokido, is a Japanese fighting game player who plays the '' King of Fighters'' and ''Street Fighter'' franchises. He is known for playing multiple fighting games on a competitive level in addition to Street Fighter, including ' ...

in the first round of the tournament.

Style

Ortiz prefers the ''

'' franchise over other fighting game series, and has found herself needing to juggle it and the more popular ''Street Fighter'' franchise. In an interview with ''

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'', Ortiz stated that she is not comfortable playing online matches due to the inherent

lag Lag, or similar, may refer to: Lag * Łąg, Poland * Lag (company), a French guitar maker * Lag (cue sports), a brief pre-game competition to determine which player will go first * Latency (engineering), a slower response time in computing, commu ...

. She described playing online as being "like I'm playing blind almost, because you're taking my best attributes away." Ortiz's ''Street Fighter''

character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

of choice had been

Chun-Li is a fictional character in Capcom's ''Street Fighter'' video game series. The first ever female playable character to appear in a fighting game to gain mainstream recognition, she first appeared in ''Street Fighter II: The World Warrior'' in 1 ...

since she first played the game at nine years old. In an interview with ''ESPN'', Ortiz stated that " hun-Li isthe one who makes the game fun for me," and that she had great difficulty switching to a different character when Chun-Li was

nerfed Game balance is a branch of game design that is described as a mathematical-algorithmic model of a game’s numbers, game mechanics, and relations between the two. Game balance consists of adjusting values to create a certain user experience. Play ...

in 2017.

Personal life

Assigned male at birth, Ricki Ortiz came out as a homosexual man in 2003, though she noted later that it "didn't feel right". In 2009, Ortiz came out as transgender, noting that ''

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'' helped with this. By 2012, depression affected Ortiz's fighting game career, though her mental state improved after reconnecting with an old friend and taking advantage of the resources and support groups available. In 2014, Ortiz started transitioning.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ortiz, Ricki Living people People from the San Francisco Bay Area American esports players Evil Geniuses players Fighting game players Transgender sportswomen American transgender people LGBT people from California Women esports players American LGBT sportspeople LGBT esports players 1991 births