Author: Franz "d3v" Co

Purchasing an arcade cabinet isn’t exactly an inexpensive experience, doubly so with a modern cabinet that actually requires a fee paid to the publisher to keep it running. This is why what the Melbourne Tekken community has done to get a Tekken 7 cabinet is quite admirable.

Faced with the fact that they would not be getting Tekken 7’s arcade release, the Melbourne Tekken community decided that, instead of simply waiting for the home version like most other people, they would go and get an arcade machine for themselves.

The effort wasn’t cheap–a paired Tekken 7 cabinet set up with two Noir cabs costs around 20,000 AUD (about 15,000 USD). Luckily, community member Dion Xu donated half the amount, with shop owner Jin contributing the other half. In addition to this, various members of the community also contributed both their money and time, getting prices, phoning companies and doing other bits of legwork, to get the ball rolling.

The result of this is that a pair of Namco Noir cabinets with Tekken 7 now sit at Jin’s shop in Melbourne serving both as a place for local Tekken fans to play the game, as well as testament of what a community can do when everyone comes together.

For those in Melbourne interested in playing Tekken 7, you can find Jin’s shop over at 422 Bourke Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000.

Source: Rame Jeboo via Avoiding the Puddle

One of the roadblocks that arcade stick users tend to face when moving to a new console is having to buy a new arcade stick for it. With how high the cost of modern, top of the line arcade sticks with actual arcade parts can be, this is a rather expensive proposition.

This is the reason why more than a few players turn to modding to get their old sticks to work on new consoles. It’s also because of this that products such as Jasen’s Customs’ upcoming EZ Mod Board for the Mad Catz Tournament Edition 2 exist.

Jasen’s EZ Mod Board allows players a solderless method to mount a Brook Universal Fighting Board onto a Mad Catz Tournament Edition 2, giving it compatibility with multiple consoles from the PlayStation 4 all the way to the XBox 360. In addition to this, it retains all the functionality of the TE2, right down to the front side LED, meaning that most other mods for the stick will still work with it.

Pre-orders for the Jasen’s Customs EZ Mod Board opened today at both Arcade Shock and Paradise Arcade. The board itself will retail for $29.99. Take note that this does not include the Brook Universal Fighting Board itself, which retails for $89.99. While this does add up to a lot, it’s still less than the $150 to $200 for a new stick, with more functionality to boot.

For those wondering just how easy it is to install the board, Jasen’s Customs shared these installation guide videos.

Source: Arcade Shock, Jasen’s Customs

While the King of Fighters XIV will be playable at E3 next week, the event isn’t exactly the best place for the public to get some hands-on time with the game. Luckily, for those in Southern California looking for a chance to try the game, it’s also going to be playable at another venue.

Level Up’s Alex Valle has just announced over Twitter that the King of Fighters XIV will be making a stop on Wednesday Night Fights on June 15–the same week as E3.

Save the Date for June 15, 2016! The King of Fighters XIV is coming to WNF! More details coming up! #WNF pic.twitter.com/1IfmympXW9

— Alex Valle (@AlexValleSF4) June 6, 2016

Whether or not this will be the same 36-character build that SNK has been touring around Japan is unknown. That said, Valle has stated that more details about the game’s appearance at WNF will be revealed soon.

Source: LU|Alex Valle

While The King of Fighters XIV was just available to play at Combo Breaker, it looks like (some) North American fans of the series won’t have to wait long to give it another go. Sony recently revealed a partial list of games that will be playable at their booth at the West Hall of the LA Convention center at E3, and among the games is none other than SNK’s upcoming fighter.

Before any Angelenos start making plans of actually attending, it’s important to note that E3 is still mostly an industry-only event with the only portion open to the public being the separate E3 Live 2016 event taking place at L.A. Live. That said, companies do sometimes invite top players to their booth to play their games, so if we’re lucky, we’ll get some quality impressions and footage from the event.

E3 2016 takes place from June 14 to 16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Source: PlayStation

The latest arcade iteration of French Bread and Ecole Software’s Under Night series, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] will be getting a new character in an upcoming summer update for the game.

Named Mika, the new character is a close range fighter who wields a pair of giant gauntlets. She uses a combination of grapples, such as her Mika-chan Cannon and powerful forward moving moves such as her Mika-chan Missile and Mika-chan Tornado to pummel her opponents.

We’ve shared some screenshots of Mika, care of Famitsu, in the gallery below.

Click to view slideshow.

Source: Famitsu via IPLAYWINNER, Kurushii, with a tip from Gpop

One of the bigger discussions right now in the Street Fighter V community is whether or not upcoming DLC character Ibuki should be legal at Evolution 2016 this July. While a regular Capcom Pro Tour event would only ban characters released within a week of the event, Evolution has its own rules requiring characters to be out for at least a month for them to be legal.

Despite this, Evolution co-founder Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar has noted the fact that many players and fans would like to see the kunoichi playable at Evolution and opened a poll on Twitter asking whether or not they would want to see her playable at the tournament.

With Ibuki hitting the last week in June, would you like to see her playable at Evo 2016? #Evo2016

— Joey Cuellar (@EvilMrWizard) June 3, 2016

As of the poll’s close, just shy of 75% of the nearly 8,000 participants said they would like to see Ibuki participate in the event. Whether or not this poll will lead to Ibuki being playable at Evo–if she does miss the June 15 deadline–is still unknown.

Allowing newly released characters into tournaments is always a tricky proposition. We’ve already seen examples of new characters released close to certain tournaments dominating said tournaments in other games. However, Capcom and Street Fighter have for the most part avoided this in the past which could help sway things in Ibuki’s favor.

Source: Mr. Wizard

Recently, Capcom promised that they would be more communicative about the development of Street Fighter V’s post-launch content. Now, they’re taking their first steps toward following up on that with a new development update post on Capcom-Unity.

In a post titled “Updates on Street Fighter V Development Vol. 1,” Neidel “Haunts” Crisan addresses a few important issues: Ibuki’s delay, the game’s inherent input lag, and rage quitting.

In Ibuki’s delay, Haunts reiterates the fact that she was originally supposed to be released at the end of May. However, as previously stated, they had to delay her to the end of June, making her release alongside the cinematic story mode instead.

In addition to this, Haunts once again admits that they could have been more communicative about the situation. While they had planned to talk about the delay this week, he states that it’s clear that they should have been “more upfront with everyone about the timing.”

Furthermore, he states that Capcom will be targeting quality above all else which may result in additional delays in content deployment. However, he promises that they will be more transparent with these updates.

Regarding the input lag that the game has, Haunts has acknowledged that they are aware of the issue and have communicated it to their development team. Said team is looking into the issue and he states that they’ll let the community know when they find out more.

Finally, in regards to rage quitting, Haunts is happy to report that, with the latest changes to the system, the amount of players who leave in the middle of a match has been brought down by 60%. While this is an improvement, he states that it is clear that they still have a lot of work to do and that players should expect further measures to address the problem.

Haunts ends the blog by stating that they do have more news and information to share in the coming days and weeks.

Source: Capcom-Unity, with a tip from NightmareSteam

With the news of Ibuki’s delay, folks have been wondering if she’ll be legal at Evolution 2016’s Street Fighter V tournament. After all, it takes time for any new character’s effect on the metagame to fully develop.

In response to one of these inquiries, Evolution co-founder Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar tweeted the following:

@Grecco As long as she is out by June 15th.

— Joey Cuellar (@EvilMrWizard) May 31, 2016

He further clarified by restating Evolution’s rule on downloadable characters, saying that they need to be in the game 4 to 5 weeks before Evolution for them to be legal at the event.

Evo’s general rules state that DLC has to be out 4-5 weeks before the event to let people practice for our world tournament. #Evo2016

— Joey Cuellar (@EvilMrWizard) May 31, 2016

While we don’t know the exact date Ibuki will hit Street Fighter V, Capcom has already stated that she is coming with the cinematic story expansion at the end of the month. With this in mind, it’s highly likely that Ibuki will not be tournament legal at Evolution 2016, but we can hope.

Source: Mr. Wizard