Author: Franz "d3v" Co

This August, SNK announced The King of Fighters XIV World Championship: set for sometime next year, the tournament will see competitors from all over the globe fight it out in The King of Fighters XIV. Now, we know of the first of the global qualifiers. In a recent tweet, Canada Cup Gaming announced that Canada Cup 2016’s King of Fighters XIV tournament would be a qualifier for this KOFXIV World Championship.

We're proud to announce #CCG2016 is a KOF World Championship Qualifier!! #KOFXIV details at https://t.co/ZHaM7CrSKw @AtlusUSA pic.twitter.com/D0SsxFa7Q4

— CanadaCupGaming (@CanadaCupGaming) October 5, 2016

SNK and Atlus will be flying the winner of the event out to the KOFXIV World Championship next year, wherever that may be held. Interested competitors can sign up at smash.gg.

This makes the KOFXIV tournament at Canada Cup the third major qualifying tournament at the event; Canada Cup is a Capcom Pro Tour Premier event, with the winner of the Street Fighter V tournament flying to Anaheim for Capcom Cup 2016. It is also a part of the King of Iron Fist Tournament 2016: North American TEKKEN TOUR, with the winner qualifying for the North American finals later in November.

Source: Canada Cup Gaming (Twitter)

Throughout Street Fighter’s competitive history, for the most part Japan has been somewhat ahead compared to North America. While there has been an exception at times (Street Fighter Alpha 2 was considered America’s game), generally the West has been playing catch-up to the land of the rising sun.

With Street Fighter V however, many thought that the USA would finally be on equal footing with Japan, thanks to the fact that the game would not have an initial arcade release in the latter. However, that hasn’t been the case and Japan (and Asia in general) is still considered stronger than the US when it comes to the game.

In an interview with FloKO at the 2016 Tokyo Game Show, veteran fighting game player and analyst Mike Ross got straight to the point about why he thinks the US lags behind. According to him, it’s all about attitude.

Ross explains that American players tend to make excuses on why they lost, he states that “American players love to cry, love to complain, love to blame their character, love to blame something other than themselves.” This means that they think that there is nothing wrong with their play, that there is no way for them to get better.

In addition to this, he also explains how traveling and being able to meet and fight players from different regions is also important. This is something that he feels that American players aren’t doing enough and that it’s rare to see them compete overseas. The Japanese on the other hand tend to fly out and compete in international events more.

Of course, that’s not all that they talked about in the interview. Head on over to FloKO for Ross’s thoughts on other topics, including 2018’s upcoming Evo Japan.

Source: FloKO

Dead or Alive 5 Last Round: Core Fighters is finally coming to Steam. According to an announcement on the Steam Community forum, the free-to-play version of Dead or Alive 5 Last Round is now available to download on Valve’s distribution platform.

Originally spotted via an entry on the SteamDB data-mining website, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round: Core Fighters allows players to play the basic DOA5 Last Round experience: arcade, online and offline versus, trials, and training mode for four base characters. Additional characters, costumes, as well as story mode can be purchased separately.

To celebrate the launch of the free-to-play edition on PC, Team NINJA is giving away one free character for the month of October. Starting today up until October 30, DOA5 newcomer Mila can be purchased free of charge on Steam.

Interested folks can head on over to Steam to check out DOA5 Last Round: Core Fighters.

Source: Steam

An odd new glitch has been discovered in the home version of Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-. The glitch in question makes certain effects such as hit sparks and auras–as well projectiles and even the backgrounds during the Instant Kill moves–disappear.

Hoenhiem has put together a playlist showing how certain characters are affected by the glitch. We’ve shared a few of the videos below, you can check out the rest over on YouTube.

Source: Hoenheim

With as specialized as the genre is, it’s rare to see fighting games be crossed over with other video game genres. As such, it’s refreshing to see an indie developer do just that with Honey Rose: Underdog Extraordinaire.

Just released on Steam Honey Rose: Underdog Extraordinaire combines fighting games with a life management visual novel. Players take control of Red, a university student who’s also an amateur masked fighter.  Players need to balance Red’s studies on her last chance to graduate from university, with her dream of fighting in the masked fighting tournament and facing her idol, Big Blue.  It’s an interesting mixing of genres that’s both fresh and somehow not unexpected, considering how many fighting games (BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena) borrow from the visual novel genre for their story modes.

However, the hybrid genre isn’t the only innovative thing about Honey Rose: Underdog Extraordinaire.  The game sports an interesting payment model that its developers are calling “Pay-What-You-Liked”. The game itself is free, to support the developers, they’ve put up 8 pieces of “DLC”. Note that we put the term in quotes because, the DLC actually has no content at all. What they are instead are 8 donation tiers that anyone who wants to support the developers can use to do so.

This “Pay-What-You-Liked” model is an interesting use of Steam’s DLC system to implement what’s basically the “Pay-What-You-Want” model seen in places like Humble Bundle.  The fact that it makes the game itself free to download and play however makes it a much more interesting experiment – it allows players to actually try the game out, and then pay for it if they enjoyed it.  If this new model sees some some modicum of success, it may be a way for other indie fighting game developers, to attract people to play their games and experience the genre.

Source: Steam via Steamed

If you were at Evo 2016, you may have seen a bunch of shiny silver and gold metallic arcade parts from Sanwa Denshi on sale. If you missed the chance to get these at the event, we have some great news for you. After the limited release at Evo 2016, Sanwa Denshi will now be officially releasing their silver and gold metallic parts!

Starting on October 11, the Sanwa OBSF-30-AG (Gold) and OBSF-30-AU (Silver) pushbuttons, as well as the LB-35-AG (Gold) and LB-35-AU (Silver) 35 mm balltops will be available at retailers such as Arcade Shock, Paradise Arcade Shop, and Sanwa Denshi’s own store. Prices for these have not yet be released, and may very depending on region, exchange rates, and shipping costs.

In addition to these, Sanwa also recently showed off 24 mm variants of the metallic push buttons as well, and metallic dust and shaft covers for the arcade sticks. They have stated that they are looking into putting these into production, with the metallic dust and shaft covers being the last ones down the line.

Sources: Sanwa Denshi; Arcade Shock