Everyone has a fighting chance
Southern California has been one of the strongest scenes for Super Street Fighter II Turbo in North America for a long time, and it shows in every tournament they hold. Rewind II — a retro tournament held at Esports Arena in Santa Ana, CA — is no exception to this.
Thanks to silentscope88, the replay is now available on YouTube; you can watch the top level play of legends such as Tomo, Killer Miller, Brenttiscool, Alex Valle, and Afro Legends duking it out below.
Source: silentscope88
Sailor Moon S is a game that looks simple at face value. However, the technical nuances are deep enough that you could go over it for hours and not touch everything.
In this short video from Koushun, we see several details about the basic mechanics of the game. Much like throws in the game, light attacks have shorter ranges based on which side you are facing.
Much of the wealth of information in today’s video comes from its discussion of guard cancels, and how it can impede block strings.
Source: koushun1022
This weekend was great for The King of Fighters community. Not only did we see some of the top North American players for the series come out to Fuerte Beatdown IV, but we saw some of the older titles get a lot of love at the event.
The King of Fighters 2002 has long been considered one of the best games in the franchise, and its heavy damage and crazy setups make it exciting to watch. This made the last stretch of Fuerte Beatdown — which features Luis Cha, PachuKOF, and Simba — an exhilarating set of matches from start to finish.
Source: Team Spooky
The HORI Fighting Edge, in the previous generation of consoles, was possibly the most unique joystick offering manufacturers had to offer. It took a long time for us to see the model return to modern consoles, but HORI has finally modernized it.
In this review from IPlayWinner, they note that the stick design remains iconic and classy, but notes the lack of the features that made it special — such as its lighted sides and the touch buttons on the top panel. They also note that its lack of PS3 support, and feel its Hayabusa parts put it behind models such as the Qanba Obsidian and the Razer Panthera.
You can also read our own review of this controller from is release back in December 2017.
Source: iplaywinner
As an older title that helped pave the way for some of the mechanics we see in fighting games today, Sailor Moon S on the Super Nintendo has some interesting quirks. Throw mechanics are one of these quirks, and like in most older titles, they are not without their flaws. For example, the first player side gets the priority in throw inputs performed at the same time. Also, throw range increases if you are on the left hand side, as opposed to the right.
One of the more interesting things is throw teching, which is something newcomers to the game — as well as transplants from games like Super Street Fighter II Turbo — struggle with. This video from Koushun explains exactly how everything works.
But there’s more to it than just teching, as player one teching a throw results in player two having an unblockable followup, among other quirks.
In the case of Sailor Mercury, a teched throw when she’s player one can result in an actual frame disadvantage, which punishes her for the attempt.
But player two Sailor Mercury gets one less frame of disadvantage off of a teched throw, but also benefits from having five frames of invulnerability after and an unblockable setup off of the tech. So it becomes a real case of knowing the drawbacks and advantages of each side in the throw game.
Source: koushun1022
People within the Tekken community were caught a bit off guard by the emergence of Tanukana last year. The Xiaoyu player soon became well-known for her play, and began to be recognized not for her gender, but for simply being a solid player.
However, she is not the official first lady of Tekken in Japan yet — as there was one woman who blazed the trails before her. Yuyu has long been considered the best female player in Japan, and was sidelined for a couple years due to marriage and pregnancy. Once she returned, she played Tanukana in her hometown of Kobe, and claims to have never lost to Tanukana in tournament or casuals.
Now, the two will square off for the world to see at Kemonomichi 2, the second of Daigo Umehara’s showmatch events, on March 10th!
Meanwhile, it’s also been revealed that Ito will be at Kemonomichi 2 to take on Kotaka Shoten in Super Street Fighter II Turbo!
Source: Daigo the BeasTV
Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition brought with it plenty of new additions for us to analyze and play around with. Some of them have been very useful for everyone, but some have major flaws which has immediately and universally found them discarded on the competitive scene.
With the new V-Triggers — much like the Ultra IIs introduced in Super Street Fighter IV — some have found uses, while others have been found to be significantly weaker. In this video, VesperArcade chronicles three of the worst, being Zeku, Ken and Juri’s V-Triggers IIs, and suggests what Capcom could do to make them useful.
Source: VesperArcade
While Super Smash Bros. for Wii U still pulls in respectable numbers in the competitive scene, there are signs that the scene for the game is starting to stagnate. Spectator numbers are starting to dwindle, with Frostbite this year garnering half the viewers on Twitch for the game as they did last year.
This leads ZeRo to ask whether the game is dying. When coupled with the above factors, the lack of sales for the Wii U, and the lack of patches in recent history, these are ingredients for a game that ZeRo postulates to be in a dire situation. While esports organizations are still investing in the scene and attendance numbers are still high, the Smash 4 community needs to examine how they can keep the attention of those who are still actively competing.
Source: ZeRo
David Spence’s tapes are back, and we are about to see something from the annals of Evo history. Before the tournament series known as Evo came to fruition, its founders were running the Battle by the Bay series in California.
Footage from these tournaments have rarely materialized, but this time we get to see top level play of Super Street Fighter II Turbo at B5 in 2001. Featured in this tape is play from the likes of AfroCole, John Choi, and Alex Valle, who made top three respectively.
Source: Atari FGC
Upon its release, players from every genre, even the fighting game community, became hooked on Overwatch. Its fast paced first person shooter meets MOBA mechanics made it an exciting and fun title for everyone. But what if it were something closer to home for us?
TGN decided to see for themselves and made this interesting –and humorous– imagining of Overwatch designed as a 2D fighting game. While it obviously looks a little janky as it is filmed in-game, this re-imagining certainly gets your mind going on how an Overwatch fighter would work. The addition of Reinhardt doing a taunt before performing his Ultimate is a nice touch, as well as the fight actually moving between areas in Volskaya Industries.
While Riot looks to be prepping a fighting game for the future, it remains to be seen if Blizzard will have any of its franchises duking it out in 2D.
Source: TGN