Author: Casey "Waveflame" Rinaldi

The online portion of the 2018 Capcom Pro Tour continues marching ever forward, as we now head into the home stretch of events with the second Online Ranking Event for Eastern Europe — and the final event for the region, period — taking place this past weekend.

Eligible regions included Latvia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Romania, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Estonia, the Ukraine, and Greece. With 55 players competing, the competition for those crucial Ranking Points was guaranteed to produce some fierce battles.

Results

Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition

1. ROGDSC|RASS (Balrog, Birdie) – 150 Points
2. SSYSDR|SwagSkheletor (F.A.N.G, G) – 70 Points
3. Tempo (Chun-Li) – 40 Points
4. Duwactik (Urien) – 20 Points
5. Shady (G, Blanka, Balrog, Abigail) – 10 Points
5. SunMate (Birdie) – 10 Points
7. DrGulag (Laura) – 1 Point
7. jyjyjy (Akuma) – 1 Point
9. LoHii (Urien)
9. Gr1ngo (Blanka)
9. Zolwiol (Alex)
9. Salatmaker (M. Bison)
13. Kewdzo (Juri)
13. Xenom_MSK (Kolin)
13. DevilDaddy (Akuma, Guile)
13. Cookie (Cammy)

You can see a full replay of the top 8 matches, with commentary by Unequalled Media’s HDJammerz and Tyrant, below.

The next CPT Online event will be the second event for Southern Latin America, taking place this Saturday, August 25th. Eligible regions include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Registration is currently live at smash.gg. The event will start at 10:00 AM BRT/PDT, with the top 8 beginning at 4:00 PM. BRT/PDT. As always, those matches will be streamed at twitch.tv/capcomfighters, the Capcom Fighters YouTube Channel, and the Street Fighter Facebook page.

Source: Capcom Fighters (YouTube)

Following the conclusion of the BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle tournament at Evo 2018, Producer Toshimichi Mori stepped on stage to officially announce that the remaining nine DLC characters: BlazBlue’s Izayoi, Nine The Phantom, and Mai Natsume; Persona 4 Arena’s Mitsuru Kirijo, Akihiko Sanada, and Labrys; and Under Night In-Birth’s Yuzuriha Sougetsu, Merkava, and Mika Returna would all be arriving to the game this week. And with a new wave of characters comes more special interactions, and they’ve been compiled here for your viewing pleasure.

There’s also a compilation of all nine of their Astral Heats, each retained from their respective games.

Finally, Arc System Works America has officially updated the English dub version of the character reveal trailer played at Evo, which was the “World Premiere” announcement the company teased for the Bar Fights event last weekend. This marks the first Character Introduction trailer to receive an English dub.

Cross Character Pack 4 (which contains Izayoi, Mitsuru Kirijo, and Merkava), Cross Character Pack 5 (which holds Mai Natsume, Akihiko Sanada, and Yzuriha), and Cross Character Pack 6 (which adds Nine The Phantom, Labrys, and Mika Returna) can all be purchased individually for $4.99 each, and are also included in the All-In-One Pack, which also gets you the previously-released Platinum The Trinity, Orie, Kanji Tatsumi, Aegis, Carmine, Jubei, Naoto Shirogane, Vatista, and Hakumen, for $19.99. Team RWBY’s Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long are also permanently available for free.

Sources: JROKGaming; JustaPeanut; forced memes; Punchy777; Arc System Works America

Following up on his recent breakdown of base Vegeta, Maximilian returns with another breakdown, this time focusing on base Goku. Noting that a lot of his neutral and normal attacks are “fairly Goku-like,” and will be familiar to players of his Super Saiyan and SSGSS incarnations, Max feels that base Goku really distinguishes himself in his unique combo routes, making note of his ability to seemingly get multiple Smashes per combo with one of his unique normals, as well as his interesting downward Ki blasts that can be launched into the sky, held, or extended into his medium Auto Combo, providing him will full-screen conversations if they hit.

After a basic overview of his specials, Maximilian transitions into discussing his Spirit Bomb, which sees him gathering energy which can be charged to unleash a long-range, launching command grab that can knock opponents further into the air the higher its level, which can set up big combo opportunities.

Moving on to his super special moves, specifically his Level 1, the Kaioken, Max shows off some of the currently-optimal pathways for the rekka-style attacks, though he feels the best aspect of base Goku is his Level 3 Super Spirit Bomb, which inflicts a notable amount of damage on both hit and block, in addition to catching Vanishes, so it may be best to try and Reflect it if you see it coming. Max feels this could be the strongest aspect of this Goku, due to its ability to set up near touch-of-death situations, especially from his fully-charged Level 3 Lend Me Your Energy special. You can see the full video below.

Have you found any good tech with base Goku so far? If so, feel free to share it in the comments.

Source: Maximilian Dood

Yesterday, the online portion of the 2018 Capcom Pro Tour continued its steady forward march with the Finals of the second Online Ranking Event for Northern Latin America. Eligible regions included Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, the Republic of Panama, and Puerto Rico. With 101 registered entrants, it was certainly going to be a tough time to crack into the top 8 and score some precious Ranking Points.

Though this event was played to top 8 on its originally scheduled date of Saturday, July 28th, a PlayStation Network outage forced the top 8 matches to be temporarily postponed and rescheduled until after Evo 2018. A Champion has now been crowned, though — and we have results and replays here for you.

Results

Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition

1. OWL ALLIANCE|Crossover (Akuma) – 150 Points
2. Mono (F.A.N.G) – 70 Points
3. TIGERS|LuiMan20 (Dhalsim) – 40 Points
4. RH|Zeromex7 (Balrog) – 20 Points
5. Lilo24k (Balrog, Abigail) – 10 Point
5. Jochy (Akuma) – 10 Points
7. MGR|NovaMage (Kolin) – 1 Point
7. RD_EricKOF1 (R. Mika) – 1 Point
9. RISE|Caba (Guile)
9. DR Ray (Ibuki)
9. PXLN|Roberto (Ryu)
9. FS|Fraud0noko (M. Bison)
13. Infused|Droker (Akuma)
13. -Starlight- (Nash)
13. Juanfraroth (Alex)
13. Taker (Ibuki)

We’ve got replays of the top 8 action below, featuring commentary from LevelUp’s Alex “Calipower” Valle and Godspeed, below.

The next Capcom Pro Tour Online Ranking event will be the second event for Eastern Europe, next Saturday, August 18th. Eligible regions include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and the Ukraine. The tournament will begin at 10:00 AM BST, with the top 8 being streamed at 4:00 PM BST at twitch.tv/capcomfighters, as well as the Capcom Fighers YouTube Channel and Street Fighter Facebook page. Registration is currently live at smash.gg.

Source: Capcom Fighters

From the fall of Marvel vs. Capcom, to the rise of Super Smash Bros. and Street Fighter V, Evo shifts into the modern esports era!

After detailing the origin point of the Evolution Championship Series, theScore esports returns with Part 2 of their documentary on “The Story of Evo.”

Following Daigo Umehara’s back-to-back victories in Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV in 2009 and 2010, Capcom made the pivotal releases of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in 2011, ushering in what would become a new 7-year era for the Versus Series — that would sadly end with 2017’s Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite being excluded from this year’s main lineup of titles.

In the meantime however, another force was slowing rising up, Super Smash Bros. Melee, which made a triumphant return to the Evo main stage in 2013 after raising a whopping $94,683 for breast cancer research, ending a five-year streak of absence. Notably, they trumped Lab Zero’s Skullgirls, which to this day has yet to taste main stage glory. However, as noted by James Chen, Maximilian, Liquid|Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez, and Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar, they first had to combat Nintendo’s attempts to shut down that portion of the event.

However, the Smash community would not be denied, as Evo 2015 and 2016 played host to the four biggest Smash tournaments of all-time between Melee and Wii U. In more recent times, we’ve had the controversy of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle being added to this year’s lineup months before release, to the massive 5,065 player debut of Street Fighter V in 2016, to last Sunday’s Dragon Ball FighterZ Grand Finals between Echo Fox|Sonic Fox and Cyclops Osaka’s GO1 being the most watched set in the history of Evo. There is also the rise in developer support, with new characters, entire games, and tournament circuits being announced in Las Vegas, not to mention the expansion into the East with the debut of Evo Japan.

The video closes with a rundown of all past and current Battle by the Bay and Evolution Championship Series Champions. You can enjoy the entire video below.

Feel free to share some of your favorite Evo moments in the comments.

Source: theScore esports

From the fall of Marvel vs. Capcom, to the rise of Super Smash Bros. and Street Fighter V, Evo shifts into the modern esports era!

After detailing the origin point of the Evolution Championship Series, theScore esports returns with Part 2 of their documentary on “The Story of Evo.”

Following Daigo Umehara’s back-to-back victories in Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV in 2009 and 2010, Capcom made the pivotal releases of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in 2011, ushering in what would become a new 7-year era for the Versus Series — that would sadly end with 2017’s Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite being excluded from this year’s main lineup of titles.

In the meantime however, another force was slowing rising up, Super Smash Bros. Melee, which made a triumphant return to the Evo main stage in 2013 after raising a whopping $94,683 for breast cancer research, ending a five-year streak of absence. Notably, they trumped Lab Zero’s Skullgirls, which to this day has yet to taste main stage glory. However, as noted by James Chen, Maximilian, Liquid|Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez, and Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar, they first had to combat Nintendo’s attempts to shut down that portion of the event.

However, the Smash community would not be denied, as Evo 2015 and 2016 played host to the four biggest Smash tournaments of all-time between Melee and Wii U. In more recent times, we’ve had the controversy of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle being added to this year’s lineup months before release, to the massive 5,065 player debut of Street Fighter V in 2016, to last Sunday’s Dragon Ball FighterZ Grand Finals between Echo Fox|Sonic Fox and Cyclops Osaka’s GO1 being the most watched set in the history of Evo. There is also the rise in developer support, with new characters, entire games, and tournament circuits being announced in Las Vegas, not to mention the expansion into the East with the debut of Evo Japan.

The video closes with a rundown of all past and current Battle by the Bay and Evolution Championship Series Champions. You can enjoy the entire video below.

Feel free to share some of your favorite Evo moments in the comments.

Source: theScore esports

Though we’ve already seen the patch notes for the latest update to Dragon Ball FighterZ, I’ve always preferred a visual aid to compliment a list of changes — especially for such an extensive update, one that altered 24 of the game’s 28 characters, in addition to adding base Goku and Vegeta into the mix.

Content creator rooflemonger appears to agree with my sentiment, as he has recently crafted a full breakdown of each and every single listed patch change that was provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment, covering all the changes to Training Mode, online matchmaking, general quality-of-life changes to the game (such as a faster-moving cursor at the character select screen, the ability to add input delay to offline Versus matches, and the ability to alter your team’s order before the start of the match by holding the applicable Assist button at the Versus screen).

Of course, the meat and potatoes of a patch notes video will be documenting the character-specific changes to the vast majority of the roster, and rooflemonger provides a visual demonstration of most of the buffs and nerfs (as well as timestamps in the video description) sorted by the order in which characters were officially listed in the patch notes. In total, the entire video clocks in at a little over an hour; a lengthy yet very informative watch if you’re interested in the direction the future competitive meta may be leaning in. You can view the full video below.

What were your favorite changes coming out of the latest DBFZ patch? Were there some characters you were hoping to see buffed or nerfed that weren’t altered much, or do you feel certain warriors were perhaps overturned in one direction or another? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Source: rooflemonger