Author: Franz "d3v" Co

Posted on

ESL Announces the Mortal Kombat X Community Cup for PlayStation 4

The ESL has been a big supporter of Mortal Kombat X’s competitive scene. That looks to continue with the announcement of the Mortal Kombat X Community Cup for PlayStation 4, which will tie into the new Tournaments app on PS4.

The Community Cup, which has already started in Europe and will start this weekend in North America, allows players to fight each other in online tournaments. Signing up for these is free, and can be done through the ESL’s Mortal Kombat Community Cup listing on the PlayStation 4’s Events tab.

For anyone interested in following the action, check out ESL’s brackets for Europe and North America. The European cup will have its first event tomorrow while North America will start this Saturday. Prizes for the cup have yet to be announced.

Source: ESL via Test Your Might

Posted on

Street Fighter V Servers Going Down For Maintenance on October 25

Capcom occasionally takes down the servers for Street Fighter V to conduct maintenance on them. Whether it’s to apply a new patch, or just fix some issues with match making, these down times represent a good chunk of time where Street Fighter V players are unable to play online or earn Fight Money.

It seems that one such maintenance period is scheduled this week.  Hopping on to Street Fighter V, a new system message states that the game’s online servers will be taken down for maintenance on October 25 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM PDT. You can see a screenshot of the system message below.

STREET FIGHTER V_20161024101908

Capcom has not revealed what the maintenance is for, so it’s probably just routine matchmaking fixes rather than a new patch. Additionally, the message states that the maintenance hours are subject to change.

Source: Street Fighter V [in-game]

Posted on

HORI Hayabusa Silent Optical Joystick Now Available at Arcade Shock

For many folks who play fighting games at night, silenced arcade sticks are a must so that any sleeping loved ones aren’t disturbed by furious QCF motions. Most of these sticks use special silenced push buttons with padding to cut down on the noise. However, even with these, there’s one other part that causes noise in an arcade stick – the joystick itself

With most of the noise from an arcade stick lever coming from its micro switches, the best choice is to use one ditches those switches in favor of an optical sensor. One such joystick is the HORI Hayabusa Silent Optical Joystick.

Now available for the first time ever over at Arcade Shock, the Hayabusa Silent Optical is based on the proven Hayabusa arcade stick, but uses a special set of optical sensors instead of micro switches. The optical sensors help cut down on the noise while the proven Hayabusa body and low contact pivot make for a longer lasting, more durable arcade stick.

The HORI Hayabusa Silent Optical Joystick is now available over at Arcade Shock for $59.99.  Interested players however should try to get these as soon as possible as stocks are very limited.

Source: Arcade Shock

Posted on

King of Fighters ’94, Fatal Fury, and Samurai Showdown Coming to PlayStation 4

SNK has done a great job of bringing some of its classic titles to PlayStation 4.  First they brought back the Last Blade 2, then they followed that up with Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Now, they’re bringing up a trio of classic Neo-Geo fighters to Sony’s console in Japan.

The first of these, releasing on October 27 on the Japanese PlayStation Network is none other than the King of Fighters 94. KOF ’94 will be released as part of Hamster Corporation’s Arcade Archives series. This means that it will be an emulation of the original arcade game, but with support for PlayStation 4 features such as screenshot and video sharing as well as uploading scores to online leaderboards.

Following after the the King of Fighters ’94, SNK announced that they would be also be bringing Fatal Fury: the King of Fighters, and Samurai Shodown to PlayStation 4 later this year. This is addition to Neo-Geo arcade classics Metal Slug and Alpha Mission II.

Source: Famitsu via Gematsu

Posted on

Relearn How to Hit-Confirm into Combos with K’ In Post-Patch King of Fighters XIV

If there’s one character that was hit quite hard with the nerf bat in The King of Fighters XIV’s 1.03 patch, it was K’. Considered by some to be the strongest character in the game before the patch (even more so than Nakoruru), K’ can no longer easily confirm into Ein Trigger’s Second Shell, to follow up his safe pressure for damaging combos.

For K’ players however, this represents a challenge–as it’s now harder to confirm into his juggles, even off crouching light normals. Luckily, Frionel has shared a video showing how K’ can still confirm into Second Shell for some decent juggles.

The key to getting Second Shell to combo after crouching lights is to do them faster and cancel into Ein Trigger earlier when K’ is much closer to his opponent, so that the former doesn’t whiff due to pushback. This however still only works on standing opponents. On crouching opponents, the K’ player needs to instead do crouching light kick into standing light punch to get the Second Shell launcher into juggle.

Source: Frionel (Twitter)

Posted on

SNK Launches New Line of King of Fighters T-Shirts, Will Give Them Away As Prizes at Tournaments

Here’s some interesting news for The King of Fighters fans who love collecting series merchandise. SNK has just announced a new, exclusive line of 15 King of Fighters themed t-shirts.

However, the kicker is that these t-shirts seemingly aren’t going to be for general sale. SNK has not given any word on how–or even if they will be–selling these in the future. Instead, these t-shirts will be given away as prizes at future KOF tournaments.

Whether or not this means that the shirts will only be given to the top placers at a tournament, or if they’ll be giving them out to tournament attendees through some other means is unknown. If they do the former though, wearing these shirts could be a mark of pride, showing that the wearer is good enough to place high at a King of Fighters event.

Source: SNK (Twitter)

Posted on

SCR’s Street Fighter V Tournament Brings On the Clutch in Capcom’s Top Five Moments

SoCal Regionals 2016 brought us one of the most hype Street Fighter V tournaments yet. With the event being one of the last remaining Capcom Pro Tour Premier events on the calendar, everyone involved brought their A game in the hopes of qualifying for Capcom Cup this December.

Out of all the action at the event, Capcom has picked out 5 moments featuring some some very clutch moments–such as the heart-stopping comebacks from Evil Geniuses KBrad and PR Balrog, as well as insane confirms from MJS|Haitani and Xyzzy.

Source: Capcom Fighters

Posted on

Headbutts, Headbutts and More Headbutts: Adriano Lopes Strings Together Headbutt Loops in This Urien Street Fighter V Combo Video

One of Urien’s most interesting combo tools is his so-called headbutt loop. With good enough timing and execution, players can loop up to four of his dangerous headbutts into one combo.

In this new combo video, the headbutt loop is just one of the tools that Adriano Lopes uses to great effect to pull off some stylish combos. Specifically: one of the combos he does strings together three separate instances of the headbutt loop. The rest of the combos aren’t slouches either, showing just what the Illuminati lord can do when he utilizes all of his tools.

Source: Adriano Lopes

Posted on

The King of Fighters XIV’s Latest Balance Patch is Now Live

The wait is now over for The King of Fighters XIV players: throughout the past few months, SNK has been talking about a balance patch to address some issues with the game, and now, that patch is finally live on PlayStation 4.

The patch itself brings some significant changes not just to the game’s characters, but also to some of its systems. One of the more notable changes is the removal of the “F-shiki” fuzzy guard that was first discovered in the demo versions of the game.

A more significant change, however, may be the fix to wake-up rolls. Prior to the patch, these had a bit too much throw invulnerability. Now, that extra throw invulnerability has been removed.

The changes that players have been looking forward to the most are to the characters. Top tier characters such as K’ and Nakoruru have received some significant changes. The latter’s bird no longer destroys super projectiles, and her crouching C has had its hitbox reduced, among other changes. The former on the other hand now has to spend more meter to deal damage.

Comparatively, low tier characters have received buffs as well. For example, Sylvie Paula Paula has received a number of hitbox and damage buffs.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the changes. SNK has released a long list of patch notes – 19 pages long to be exact. We’ll leave you to your reading…

Source: SNK

Posted on

Get More of Xyzzy’s Amazing Birdie with This Street Fighter V Ranked Match Compilation

If there’s one new name that’s caught the eyes of many these past few weeks, it has to be Xyzzy. The Korean newcomer put on an amazing show with Birdie at both South East Asia Major’s main and amateur tournaments before doing it again at SoCal Regionals this past weekend.

That said, before this, Xyzzy was already dominating online, even making an appearance in top 8 of the online qualifiers for ESL’s Brooklyn Beatdown. More recently, he’s been on a tear through ranked where he now sits at #2 right behind Evil Geniuses’ Momochi.

For those wanting to see more of Xyzzy’s Birdie, RektScrub has put together a compilation of some of his matches online from the past few months. These include matches against other top players, including the angry one himself, Team Secret’s Poongko.

Source: RektScrub