Author: Crow_Spaceboy

There were a lot of reasons why Bim? won DreamHack Austin, but the one that got a noticeable pop from the crowd was a particular Diglett guard break. Well, it turns out that Sceptile is not the only Pokémon capable of these sorts of setups.

YouTuber Shadowcat has developed similar options for Braixen, too. The wily fox does a ton of guard damage, blows up CA attempts on wake up thanks to Diglett, and forces mixups off the 2nd guaranteed Flame Pillar.

K Prime would like to remind you, however, that Diglett isn’t the only assist capable of such setups. Check out this Farfetch’d guard break!

This stuff seems to be in high supply with Braixen since she can support cancel many moves, which is rare in this game.

Once you’re in Braixen’s insane burst mode, you even have some ways to score two guard breaks in succession.

Not even being a ghost will help you escape.

With the game still very much in its youth, it’s easy to imagine a world where even more setups of this nature will come to be.

Sources: Shadowcat, K Prime

Normal attacks may “win” against throws, but a more nuanced situation occurs when these two options collide in Pokkén Tournament.

Most normal attacks have a built-in property where, if the attack is grabbed during startup, they put the attacker in a brief stagger. This interrupts the attack’s startup and only rewards the attacker with frame advantage over the throw-attempting opponent. This design decision was implemented to force attackers to use specific attacks that are designed to beat throws, instead of just mashing jab to stop throws entirely. For example, Lucario’s 8X does not stop when grabs touch his startup.

That design decision may become a footnote in light of this new tech.

YouTuber Zenkuri discovered that you can guard cancel the stagger animation of your normal attack. This allows you to not only punish the throw attempt with virtually anything you want, but since you will be hitting them during their throw recovery, you’ll net a critical hit damage boost as well.

You can also cancel the stagger animation with a jump, allowing you to score instant jump attacks. Considering nearly everyone has a divekick-like move, this basically means free jump ins for the whole cast.

With this tech, grabbing may end up being a lot harder if you don’t have a proper meaty setup.

Sources: Zenkuri

Editor’s note: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer and do not reflect Shoryuken as a whole.

“So, wait. How would you even run a tournament for Pokkén?”

This has been the question that has plagued this game pretty much since its inception. Frankly, this was my thought, too, despite my place as a more vocal supporter of the game. It is no secret at this point that the game has a very experimental way of being played, one which causes a particular set of hardware hurdles for tournament organizers, small and large.

There were lots of little things that DreamHack did for the streamer and spectator that really showed they were trying to run the highest quality event they could for this odd sport. These little things–like the switching player perspectives on the main stage between rounds–are great, but they are not the focus of this article. I want to document, instead, how they tackled Pokkén’s penultimate rival: logistics.

Prior to DreamHack, I can only think of two Pokkén events post-launch that I would qualify as majors: Final Round, which ran so soon after release that almost no one had time to actually study or play the game, and Texas Showdown, which had a comparatively smaller, and less publicized, 31 man tournament.

Pokkén’s stage being setup up minutes after doors opened on Friday.

DreamHack’s 105 entrants are 1/10th the size of those that have already signed up for Evo. So, while only a microcosm of what’s to come, it’s an important one. You can, in a lot of ways, consider this a experiment for all other future big Pokkén Tournament, well, tournaments.

DreamHack is obviously a company with a long history and strong reputation, so while I was certainly expecting them to be able to at least run a competent tournament, I was not expecting 32 monitors and Wii U’s at the ready, all LAN’d in pairs, all equipped with Pokkén controllers.

A row of casual setups as the doors opened on Friday.

The sight was disarming.

Considering this was advertised as a BYOC event (and still is, in fact, as of this writing), you can imagine my surprise. GamingGenerations partnered with Dreamhack to provide the setups for Pokkén (and SFV, too!), and this expenditure saved DreamHack a lot in the way of headaches.

The man in charge running the tournament, Mr. CEOJebailey himself, seemed to think so as well. He would later go on to tweet about the event:

Contrary to popular belief, Pokkén Tournament is pretty easy to run once you get past the equipment hurdle. Community has also been great.

— @CEOJebailey May 8, 2016

 

There’s something of a marketing genius to be mentioned about the Pokkén controller. It’s unique enough and comfortable enough to at least entice a purchase, but, well, I never went that far. I just use the Wii U GamePad at home because I already had it and just never really bothered to set aside the time to investigate the controller further. I adjusted to the controller on-site very quickly because, let’s be fair, it’s not that much different. It’s lighter, smaller, wired, and has huge shoulder buttons that you can’t miss. That this thing doesn’t work with other titles seems criminal, as I think I would probably play the Wii U a lot more with it as an option.

But, I digress. The decision to cover every station with controllers meant that anyone at anytime could play. There was no waiting for people to bum controllers off others, and matches never slowed down because a stick broke.

If anything, in that light, they were over-prepared. It was wonderful.

But not every hardware related decision was a good one.

Since the real tournament didn’t begin until Saturday, DreamHack treated Pokkén delicately, sweeping it constantly with employees to ensure everything was running smoothly. In light of the game’s hardware, this was important for obvious reasons. However, DreamHack decided to make things harder on themselves by removing the Wii U GamePad from every station, so if a LAN acted up or if the system had to be restarted for any reason whatsoever, they would have to go fish for a wireless Wii U controller to sync up. 

DreamHack’s Champion “Bim?”, standing, was one of the first players to arrive for casuals.

At a later point someone had used a Wii U controller to play during LAN mode, instead of the Pokkén controller. How do I know this? Because once you are in LAN mode, any other controller other than the one you are using becomes inoperable.

That’s one way to prevent wireless controllers from pausing tournament matches!

But because all Wii U GamePads were inaccessible, you would have to wait for an employee to get a controller, sync, restart, etc. Unless other events, too, manage to have a Pokkén Controller per setup at the ready, I can see this being very difficult on organizers. 

Still, there may be a bigger problem than controllers themselves: LAN mode.

Crowd watching Pokkén during top 16 on Saturday.

Pokkén finished on time and was a great experience for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons was definitely not LAN mode. Now, DreamHack cannot be held responsible for the mode itself. It’s not their fault that sometimes you are just sitting there staring at “Searching!” on a screen for up to a minute or more. (Bizarrely, my experience playing online is that I almost never spend longer than 5 seconds before a match appears. Go figure.)

Adding on top of that was the actual LAN adapters for the Wii U. The Ethernet cables from each machine were plugged into the adapter, which rested on the table itself, and then the cables were zipped neatly into holes that lead underneath the tables. Sure, this solves a clutter problem, but having the adapters sit on the table is worrisome. I wondered why I occasionally saw matches drop during casuals. I think I found out why, later.

I was labbing with one of our locals, Slippingbug (Shoutouts to you for getting top 16, bro!), and we found some cool tech. I let out an “A-ha!” and palmed the table with not a particularly large amount of force. I’m animated, okay? The game didn’t appreciate that. It dropped us both immediately the moment my wimpy hand touched the table. It happened again later when I found something that made me erupt in table-slapping laughter. We investigated the LAN adapter, which as far as we could tell, had not actually been impacted in any way. 

I am 5’4” and 135 pounds. You would not mistake me for Rico Sauve. I hope you understand my point.

I do not believe this happened for any tournament matches, though I can easily see an emotional player having something not go according to plan, then inadvertently rage quit with a bump. There were connection issues multiple times during even top 16 and 8, though nothing as monumental as a connection dropping mid-game. Between the very real problems of waiting for LAN to find opponents, and the hint of a possibility of a game dropping mid match, I believe future events must be prepared for anything like this if they want a memorably smooth tournament.

Which, ultimately, DreamHack was. I got hilariously sick, had to take an alternate route to the event because Mo-Pac was shut down, lost my parking pass, and didn’t make it out of my pool. Yet, the tournament organization, the staff, the people I met, and the games I played and watched were so great that I wouldn’t have traded it in at all.

Sources: DreamHack, CEOJebailey, GamingGenerations

During my time playing and exploring Namco’s experimental hybrid fighter, I have become fascinated by one of its quirkiest system mechanics: the Phase Shift. When Namco first advertised this game’s switching phases, I believe most gamers (myself included) were focused on the phases themselves. How does each phase play? Do the buttons change for the same move? How will you play the game with one Wii U? Etc., Ad Nauseam, forever and ever until the end of Pokkén.

At the time, what got lost in the noise was the switch itself. Phase switching isn’t just a simple swirl of the camera; it is, more and more, the meta-defining mechanic that determines your combo length, pressure, wake up timing, and other options. It is, perhaps, the very heart of this game’s future.

And Psyant seems to believe this too, making an incredibly in depth video covering the subject!

A Phase Shift is far from a random chance occurrence. The game employs an invisible point system of “phase points” that accumulate every time you hit an opponent. If you’ve explored Pokémon games down to their nitty gritty details before, this may bring back memories of IVs. IVs were invisible stat points in those games, and it’s possible Phase Points are some sort of call back to this secret depth.

All Pokémon have a 12 point limit in each phase, and once one Pokémon reaches 12 points, the Phase Shift occurs. Different moves get different knockdown properties once the shift takes place, so knowing your safe jump timing off of, say, a charged Field Phase Counter Attack vs. a charged Duel Phase Counter Attack is a big deal.

You can also reset the phase points to 0, as demonstrated in this silly (but useful for demonstration purposes) Blaziken setup. It turns out that the windbox from Burst Mode activation always resets the phase points to 0. Another thing that causes Phase Shifts are combos that reach 21 hits, and this is a (very expensive) way to circumvent that.

Keeping track of your phase points will help you maximize your knockdown and damage opportunities. This is powerful information, particularly if you like to employ okizeme-heavy gameplay (read: Lucario, Garchomp, Machamp…) But how can you keep track of that which cannot be seen?

Thanks to Pokkén player SSJ-Luffy, this information is now readily available for the whole cast. Cozy up with this excel sheet, grab a cup of coffee, and get to work on manipulating those phases to last as long (or as short!) as you need them to.

Sources: Psyant, Monkey D Vegetto, SSJ-Luffy

Around the same time America was having its largest post-launch Pokkén Tournament event to date, courtesy of DreamHack Austin, Japan’s Kanto region held a large, talent-drawing event as well. Pokkén Kanto Tournament shows off some of the finest play from across the ocean with several surprising characters. The level of play is fairly high across the board, offering a look at the gap of technique and thought that the much younger scene here in the states is working to close.

Don’t miss Azazel’s impressively patient Machamp, GengarOuji’s slippery reactions, or the jump cancel-heavy technical prowess of Shiruo and his Charizard. Nay, Lizardon! We’ve embedded the grand finals below, but you can find many more matches in the playlist here.

If you’d rather watch the event in its entirety, you can find archived stream footage here.

Sources: Pokkén Kanto Tournament, SHI_Gaming

Don’t let Pokkén Tournament’s character select screen fool you into thinking Braixen is “Standard”; this fox is packing some serious technique.

User FreeMagee on /r/PokkenGame has discovered a trick for canceling the startup of the FireFox’s Up+A attack, Flame Charge. Though this attack seems designed as a combo ender, this technique instead allows the Braixen to extend their combos further by shaving the recovery of the preceding launcher Up+X. This not only gives the little Fire Mage a bit more damage output, but as FreeMagee notes, it also allows for a (all important) safe Sunny Day buff. For those wanting to take Braixen to the next level, here it is.

 

 

As demonstrated in this video by OfficialMASTERLINKX, you’ll know you’ve done the technique right when the flash of Up+A surrounds Braixen at the last moments of Up+X. Instead of taking the enemy pokémon for a ride, you land daintily on the ground below. Of particular note is that the technique seems to only be possible on hit, hinting at some underlying system mechanics allowing the player to safely option select this. 

Can Braixen FCC possibly be the start of some canceling exploits to come with other characters?

Sources: OfficialMASTERLINKX, FreeMagee

Despite being heavily nerfed after his Japanese arcade dominance, everyone’s favorite pesky poltergeist keeps scaring up new tech.

Most of Gengar’s high execution tactics have a consistent theme: they tend to involve multi-part moves that have the ability to be cancelled before the first attack comes out. Built into these moves is a very small input window where you get both the attack you wanted, and the recovery of the cancel. Let’s break these discoveries down in chronological order.

Zano Shiran put together a quick explanatory video on Astonish Canceling.

 

Perhaps the best documented and oldest cancel tech for the G-Man is the “Astonish Cancel.” Normally doing jump+A results in an Astonishing Gengar face being summoned from the floor, followed by a built-in divekick. You can cancel the move before the face comes out and return immediately back to the ground. With Astonish Cancels, you can recover on the ground and have the projectile come out.

This allows Gengar to extend into some of his highest damage combos, and play with his opponents expectations on block.

Note that though Astonish Canceling is technically unsafe, punishing it requires the opponent to risk getting hit by the built-in safe Divekick. The ability to cancel this attack properly is both an important combo and mixup tool for any aspiring Ghost Trainer.

Building upon the same technical idea, Johnathan Brown has found that you can shoot a charged Shadow Ball and cancel the recovery into Gengar’s Shadow Stealth stance at the same time! This effectively opens up even more pressure with Gengar, giving him the ability slip out if his Shadow Ball is out prioritized in zoning wars. There’s a chance this can also be performed to a similar extent with other moves that slip into Shadow Stealth; what can you find?

Have a nice 300+ damage combo while you’re at it.

Given the age of the game and the complexity of the character, the flexibility that this tech offers is frightening.

Sources: Zano Shiran, Johnathan Brown