Author: Franz "d3v" Co

Dead or Alive 5 Last Round is no stranger to having crossovers from other franchises when it comes to its downloadable content. This latest batch of costumes shows that this isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Team NINJA has partnered with visual novel company Aquaplus to release a line of DLC costumes based on characters from their franchises. These visual novel franchises include Comic Party, White Album, Utawarerumono, To Heart, Tears to Tiara, Dungeon Travelers, and more.

Interestingly enough, Aquaplus already has its own fighting game, 2011’s Aquapazza, making this yet another fighting game crossover added to Dead or Alive 5.

Source: Team NINJA

One of the biggest bits of recent news in esports is the fact that Alliance, alongside Evil Geniuses, recently became independent from Twitch. The latter spun off both teams, pointing out that owning a stake in them represented a conflict of interest.

The interesting bit of news however comes from Alliance: Jonathan “Loda” Berg, one of the team’s founders, has announced that Super Smash Bros. Melee player Adam “Armada” Lindgren would be one of the players who would be given a percentage of the team. Specifically, Armada is the only player outside of the original members of Alliance who would be given a percentage.

This is an interesting development, as this makes Armada possibly the only Super Smash Bros. player who owns a stake in his esports team. Whether this means that the team will increase its involvement in competitive Smash is as of yet unknown.

Both Alliance and Evil Geniuses became part of Twitch back in 2014 as part of their acquisition of Good Game Agency. The latter has now mostly been folded into Twitch’s partnerships division.

Source: Jonathan “Loda” Berg via PVP Live

At the recent Hong Kong Retro Game Expo ’16, an interesting new fighting game was on display. Called Unholy Night, the game was developed by former SNK staff who previously worked on games such as Kizuna Encounter, The King of Fighters ’98, The King of Fighters 2001, and The King of Fighters 2002. While this may sound somewhat intriguing already, the really interesting thing is that Unholy Night is being developed for the Super Famicom.

Now for those who may not know or recall, the Super Famicom was the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. With the system being the first to see a home port of Street Fighter II, the SNES was arguably the first console where many players got to experience fighting games at home.

Now, Unholy Night isn’t the first example of a new game being developed on an older “dead” console. Many hobbyists and retro gaming enthusiasts do go out of their way to create games on these older consoles. Additionally, Hong Kong based console peripheral company Blazepro also seems to have some involvement in Unholy Night.

As for Unholy Night itself, the game features 6 playable characters and 3 attack buttons mapped to B, A, and X. Meanwhile the Y, L and R buttons are tied to a mystery feature (the movecard labels it with a “?”). The game itself is set to release in February of 2016 using a 32 MB cartridge.

In the meantime, check out these photos of the game at the event from Richard Wan.

Click to view slideshow.

Sources: Vincent Wan; SRK Forums

The stream for the King of Iron Fist Tournament 2016 tournament brought with it some new announcements for Tekken 7. The biggest of these is arguably the fact that Kuma and Panda would be returning to the game; in addition to this however, Bandai Namco also announced that the game would be getting a new online tournament mode.

When Tekken 7 hits home consoles and PC sometime next year, it will come with a mode which will allow players to set up and play each other in the same format as offline tournaments. The online tournament mode will support both single and double elimination formats, and will also feature spectating as well as text and voice chat. Additionally, the organizers can also allocate in game prizes such as in game gold and items.

You can check out some preliminary screenshots of this mode in the gallery below.

Click to view slideshow.

Source: Avoiding the Puddle

This weekend will see the grand final of the Dead or Alive 5 Last Round Battle Royal at Northeast Championships 17. Aside from being the finale to Team NINJA’s annual tournament series, this year’s event is special in that it’s taking place during the franchise’s 20th anniversary.

To help celebrate this, Team NINJA is giving away gifts to all the entrants of the tournament. Specifically, all entrants will receive free “I’m A Fighter” DLC costumes for Kasumi and Marie Rose on PlayStation 4. In addition to these, they will also receive a gold 20th anniversary pin. Players who make the top 32 on the other hand will be receiving a special black 20th anniversary pin.

Unlike similar tournaments such as Street Fighter’s Capcom Cup and Tekken’s King of the Iron Fist. The Dead or Alive 5 Last Round Battle Royal grand final is still open to all competitors. Winners of previous tournaments simply get automatic entry, paid for by Team NINJA, to the event.

Source: Free Step Dodge

As you may already know, Akuma is coming to Street Fighter V on December 20th. However, fans in the United Kingdom may get a chance to try him out earlier.

Capcom UK will be hosting a “Capcom Christmas Party” in their offices in London, where fan can come in to try some of the things that they’ve been working on. One of these–of course–is the latest update of Street Fighter V with Akuma.

We're hosting a Capcom Christmas party from our London offices on Dec 16th. Book a free ticket before they run out! https://t.co/uopephPw8i pic.twitter.com/z0jZgw5mKj

— Capcom UK (@Capcom_UK) December 11, 2016

Other games at the event will include Resident Evil 7 and Monster Hunter Generations.

The Capcom Christmas Party will take place from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM GMT at Capcom UK’s offices at the 3rd floor of the Metro Building in Hammersmith, UK.  Tickets for the event are available over at Eventbrite.

Source: Capcom UK

Since its inception, animal fighters have been a part of Tekken. As such, it should come as no surprise then that two of the series most iconic animal characters will be coming to Tekken 7.

At the end of the King of Iron Fist Global Championship stream, Bandai Namco dropped a new trailer announcing that Kuma and Panda will be returning to Tekken 7 when it hits PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC sometime in 2017.

Now while Panda is basically a palette swap of Kuma, she’s occupied her own separate slot in the select screen since Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and even gotten some animations unique to her in that game. Whether or not we’ll see more differentiation between these two in Tekken 7 is unknown.

Tekken 7 is set to release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC via Steam in sometime in 2017, with the exact date to be announced sometime next month.

Source: Bandai Namco

Ever since Killer Instinct’s Season 3 wrapped up and all its content was released, more than a few players have been wondering if there would be anything more for the game. Now, a new discovery in the Xbox One version of the game may indicate that there are still things to come.

Over on Twitter, Julian Duran has posted images and video of what may be a brand new Killer Instinct character that may have been discovered by poring through the Xbox One menu. Named “Kilgore”, the new character looks a bit like classic character Fulgore, except with a different face, and what seems to be a gatling gun on his arm.

@KillerInstinct @IToTheG what's KILGORE? pic.twitter.com/zs53LbfBVd

— Julian Duran (@BeGlad_I) December 8, 2016

@TheSilkiest pic.twitter.com/FyKki7XCM0

— Julian Duran (@BeGlad_I) December 8, 2016

Take note that this discovery doesn’t necessarily mean that a Season 4 for Killer Instinct is in the works, it could just be a new costume for Fulgore. With the Killer Instinct World Cup coming in March 2017, expect some more Killer Instinct news filtering out in the new year. Stay locked on to Shoryuken for more as this story develops.

Source: Julian Duran