Author: Franz "d3v" Co

As the year ends, most people’s thoughts start to go towards the releases of said year, and which ones are the best. One of the spaces where people can look to for this is The Game Awards, the successor to Spike’s Video Game Awards.

One of the categories that The Game Awards has is naturally for the Best Fighting Game, where players get to vote from five nominees for which game they believe deserves the award. For this year, the nominees for the award are quite varied, going beyond traditional fighting games and looking at some of the year’s more innovative titles.

The nominees are:

• Tekken 7
• Nidhogg 2
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
• ARMS
• Injustice 2

It’s interesting to note, however, that while we have more fighting game nominees this year — five up from four — there are less fighting games in the awards in total. No fighting games have been nominated for eSports Game of the Year, nor any fighting game players for eSports Player of the Year.

The Game Awards 2017 will take place at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 7, 2017.

Source: The Game Awards

With another month comes yet another character reveal for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle. This time it seems that another character from Persona 4 Arena will be joining the fray.

Arc System works has teased that another Persona character will be revealed for the game during their monthly live stream this Friday, November 17. While no official confirmation on the identity of the character has been made as of yet, following the pattern of reveals seems to indicate that the new character will be Yukiko Amagi.

The prior Persona 4 Arena character reveals for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle have followed the order that they join the players party Persona 4, starting with main character Yu Narukami, followed by Yosuke Hanamura, and Chie Satonaka. Of course, this also hints that the likely P4 reveals after this one will be Kanji Tatsumi, followed by Teddie, Rise Kujikawa, and finally Naoto Shirogane.

Of course, this is all speculation for now — who knows if Arc System Works will follow this order, or toss a spanner in the works throw people off. We’ll find out this Friday, November 17, at 8:00 PM JST (3:00 AM PST / 6:00 AM EST).

Source: Arc System Works via Persona Central

As you all may know, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite has three more DLC characters for this season coming in the form of Venom, Black Widow, and Winter Soldier. Now it seems that we have our first look at Venom, as well as the completed select screen, thanks to some off-screen photos shared on Twitter.

A player who goes by the name of Darkshotgun on Twitter has tweeted off screen photos of Venom and the select screen with the three characters.

Click to view slideshow.

Darkshotgun mentions that Venom is not a big body character. In addition to this, the screenshot also confirms some alternate costumes — as Venom has an Anti-Venom skin, and Jedah has his own alternate costume.

As for the select screen, we’ve know for a while that it would be unbalanced due to having more Marvel characters than Capcom (at least for now). That said, some have pointed out that it does call back to previous 2v2 games in the series which also had similarly unbalanced select screens.

FGC detectives have since sniffed out the source of these photographs, not only confirming their legitimacy but landing a certain top-level Marvel player in some hot water. Next time you want to show off pre-release screens, make sure to cover your tracks!

Lemme know when you see it pic.twitter.com/M4ZYJOHR9p

— Invited|Higher Fix ™ (@MechaMacGyver) November 14, 2017

Sources: MechaMacGyver (Twitter); Darkshotgun (Twitter)

Some time back, Square Enix revealed how the box art for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT would look like in the West. As is usually the case for these things however, Japan (and likely most other Eastern markets) will get their own unique box art.

While the Western version’s cover for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT focuses on just three characters – Cloud Strife, the Warrior of Light, and Claire “Lightning” Farron — the Japanese box art showcases as many characters as possible. Specifically, the cover art (which you can see below) features just about all of the “hero”‘ characters coming in from the various Final Fantasy games, starting the aforementioned Warrior of Light from the first Final Fantasy all the way to Noctis from Final Fantasy XV.

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT hits PlayStation 4 in Japan on January 11, and North American and Europe on January 30. And it turns out Dissidia isn’t the only fighter Noctis will be included in next year…

Source: Square Enix via Gematsu

In fighting game circles, November has become a prime month for leaks, what with many competitive circuits seasons coming to an end, as well as the PlayStation Experiencing drawing near. This year is no exception as a pretty massive leak has just dropped over on Reddit.

The leak concerns itself with a number of fighting games (and a couple of non-fighters). While it’s easy to dismiss this leak as just someone on the internet making stuff up, there is some evidence that indicates that it may be worth taking seriously. Specifically, the same person had apparently leaked the inclusion of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Injustice 2‘s Fighter Pack 3.

Regarding Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, the leak talks mostly about DLC characters currently in development for the game (beyond the 6 currently announced characters). Specifically, it mentions Star-Lord, Ms. Marvel, Green Goblin, Wolverine, Cyclops, Psylocke, Magneto, Storm, Deadpool, Doctor Doom, Daredevil, Asura, Lady, Gill, Rashid, Captain Commando, Nina, Deis, Regina, Gene, Vergil, Akuma, and Apollo Justice. While the number seems imbalanced towards the Capcom side, it does reflect the fact that the current DLC pack is Marvel heavy. Now not all these will drop at the same time, the leak indicates that these are split up into multiple seasons, and that the game is set to have at least five seasons’ worth of characters.

In addition to the above, there’s also mention of other updates coming to the game. These include a an upgrade to the game’s graphics and UI, a four player 2v2 team mode, and the addition of Ultron-Sigma as a playable solo character (in the vein of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom‘s giants).

Now as for Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, the leak mostly talks about the characters coming to the game. Specifically mentioned as DLC characters are Sagat, Sakura, Cody, and Sodom. This is in addition to 2 newcomers, one of which may be Roxy, and the other, a Shadaloo Doll. In addition to these, there is also word of Crimson Viper, Q, Necro, and Oro being added as free characters.

In regards to Critical Arts, of which we recently learned there would be no second critical art at launch, the leak states that the original plan was to add them at launch, but that they will no be added at a later date.

Not content to focus on game’s getting updates, the leak also has some info on some of the 8 DLC characters for Dragon Ball FighterZ.  Three of the DLC characters are supposedly Broly, base form Goku, and base form Vegeta. In addition to these, Bardock, Raditz, Goku Black are also supposedly in development, and even nearly complete, however it’s unknown if they’re part of the launch roster, or are being held back as DLC.

In addition to this, the leak talks about a version of Dragon Ball FighterZ coming to Nintendo Switch sometime later in 2018.

The most surprising bit of information in the leak is that Soul Calibur VI is supposedly in development. The game is supposedly in development for PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch (with no Xbox One version). The Switch version will supposedly have Link return as a guest character. The game, or at least the PlayStation 4 version should be revealed at PSX.

Beyond that, the leak covers some non-fighting games, with information on the status of the Resident Evil 2 remake, and the existence of Devil May Cry 5 and a Pokemon game for Nintendo Switch.

Of course, being leaks, we advise our readers to take all of these with a grain of salt, and to stay locked on to Shoryuken for more on this and related stories as they develop.

Source: Vergeben via ResetEra

With today’s games, many players end up looking towards patches to help them deal with issues (instead of learning to deal with them). Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is no different, with more than a few players wondering if how Capcom will be balancing the game.

Now, a list of rumored balance changes for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite has surfaced online. The list, which can be seen here, focuses on a few things: notable Dante, Dormammu, and the Reality Stone. Specifically, it hints at changes to Dante’s “Hammer” move, adjustments to Dormammu, and nerfs to Reality Stone’s Infinity Surge. This is on top of some general changes, such as a 20% reduction in Infinity Storm time and a removal of pre-fight tagging.

That said, more than a few folks have pointed out that the list does seem somewhat questionable. Some have have stated that the list feels more like someone’s wishlist, questioning the fact that the character-specific changes only affect a few top tier characters. Others have noted how utterly destructive the changes can be: the nerfs to Reality Stone can flat out make it useless for high level play, and the removal of pre-fight tagging can negatively affect some match-ups while taking out tech that allows players to avoid getting immediately opened up at the start of a fight.

That said, the list is unconfirmed for now. So stay locked on to Shoryuken for more on this story as it develops.

Source: Shoryuken forums; r/MvCI