After weeks of championship action, the folks over at Showdown are ready to return to their normal weekly tournament schedule with another Churning the Butter event.
Tonight, they have once again taken over Folsom Street Foundry in San Francisco, California to put on an Ultra Street Fighter IV tournament for the regional players. If you’re interested in seeing what the NorCal cats have up their sleeves, be sure to check out the stream below and show your support. You can also head on over to Twitch if you prefer to chat.
Want to check these tournaments out for yourself? Well, you’re in luck, because even if you missed out this week, Churning the Butter is held every Thursday at 8 PM PDT during ShowDown’s game night at Folsom Street Foundry.
If you plan to take part in the Tekken 7 tournament at Evo (or even just get in some casual play) and play on pad, you’ll need to be sure you have a DualShock 4 handy.
According to Mad Catz community manager Mark “MarkMan” Julio, previous models of the Sony controller will not work with the arcade boards they are lugging to Las Vegas for Evo 2015. He is expecting the developers to provide a full list of compatible controllers in the near future.
While you’ll typically see Street Fighter and Marvel players competing on arcade sticks, the Tekken community seems to include a higher number of pad warriors. It would be a shame to show up, ready to throw down, and miss your chance, so be sure you heed this warning before heading to Nevada this July.
In order to fix the multitude of issues that hampered Ultra Street Fighter IV’s launch on PlayStation 4, the folks at Sony recently pushed out a patch addressing graphical oddities like disappearing fireballs, Decapre’s “shortened” teleport, and more. Unfortunately, no word was released concerning the title’s increased input latency, which caught many by surprise as this version was supposed to erase the inherent lag of its predecessor on PlayStation 3.
Despite the lack of reassurance that this issue was being looked into, it appears as if the latest update did improve the PlayStation 4 latency, if only by a little.
Display Lag, who previously the aforementioned research, and Khaos Gaming took to Ultra Street Fighter IV separately after its upgrade to ver.1.02 to see if anything had been done to reduce lag effects. While both organizations came to slightly different conclusions, their individual tests show that a very tiny adjustment has been made, one that results in just under one frame of improvement.
That being said, the overall figures shown above are still rather disheartening. Display Lag found that latency in the PlayStation 4 version of Capcom’s flagship fighter continues to clock in at around 133ms (~7.2 frames), while Khaos Gaming came to an average of 113ms (~6.8 frames) during their experiment. These numbers are a far cry from what we’ve seen of the community-standard Xbox 360, which features 85ms (~5.1 frames) of lag, and even the PlayStation 3’s relatively poor average of 107ms (~6.4 frames).
While this port was developed by third-party studio Other Ocean Interactive, Sony and Capcom have promised that they are stepping in to make sure corrections are made.
For the time being, Capcom Pro Tour events that had previously switched to PlayStation 4, namely Evo 2015 and Community Effort Orlando 2015, are free from using it during their competitions. Both have officially switched back to Xbox 360.
Evo 2015’s Mortal Kombat X prize pool will be boosted with an additional $50,000 according to a brand new announcement from Warner Bros. and NetherRealm Studios. The largest fighting game tournament in the world joins the likes of Combo Breaker and Community Effort Orlando in a collection of events that have seen extra dosh thrown their way from sales of the game’s Blue Steel Sub-Zero skin.
With this, Evo 2015’s payouts continue to rise to ridiculous amounts. Capcom and Sony are prepared to provide $50,000 to Ultra Street Fighter IV finalists, while Microsoft and Iron Galaxy Studios have joined forces to send over $50,000 of their own.
As the largest fighting game tournament in the world, Evo regularly brings some of the most fierce competition to Las Vegas, but this year’s installment is sure to be even more exciting thanks to these ever-growing prize pools.
Evo 2015 is scheduled for July 17-19. More details can be found through the event’s official website.
As Capcom Pro Tour soldiers on and more competitors make global trips to participate in premier tournaments, we’re starting to see automatic qualifiers fall to lower placings when the champion has already earned their way to Capcom Cup. In fact, Stunfest 2015’s qualifier dropped all the way to Infiltration in third place since the top two players were already locked in.
In order to combat this and sidestep any issues that may arise at events where the qualifier falls to the players tied for fifth, Capcom has seen fit to tweak the circuit’s rules slightly. Should the top four players at a double-elimination event already have a spot at Capcom Cup, that qualifier will be eliminated in favor of adding one more leaderboard player to the overall pool.
“We believe this is the fairest way to determine Capcom Cup participants,” the official announcement states, “and it will reward those who put in the work to accumulate points over the course of the entire year.” Prize money will not be affected in any way.
This rule change is set to go into effect immediately.
Hypothetical question: if you had a chance to sit down with Street Fighter V, what would you try out first? Maybe test Ryu and Chun-Li’s returning 3rd Strike moves? See how M. Bison’s teleports have transitioned to the new title? Get your first real shot at playing Charlie in almost two decades? There’s certainly a lot to be excited about when it comes to the upcoming fighter and, fortunately, that hypothetical question could become a reality for a select few of our readers.
The fine folks over at Capcom have provided Shoryuken with 75 (yes, seven-five) passes to E3 2015, which can then be used to stop by the developer’s booth and play Street Fighter V. That’s right, the game will be making its playable debut at the convention and you can be among the first to try it out for yourself.
Entering is easy! All you have to do is head on over to Twitter or Facebook, leave us a quick message detailing why you’re excited to play Street Fighter V, what you hope to try out during your time with it, or something else to that effect, and wait. We’ll be selecting winners this weekend, so be sure to keep an eye out for further announcements to see if you’ve scored a pass.
E3 2015 is scheduled for June 16-18. We ask that you please have a way of traveling to the Los Angeles Convention Center in sunny Southern California and feeding yourself before entering, because those accommodations are all up to you.
Level|Up Series returns tonight with another installment of Wednesday Night Fights Online Edition’s second season. Moving from the world of offline competition to netplay is sure to provide a look at players who don’t often get enough attention, so tune in below for some great Ultra Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat X action.
The folks over at VGBootCamp recently went live with another installment of Smash @ Xanadu from Xanadu Games in Baltimore, Maryland. These weekly broadcasts provide a great look at the region’s Smash community, and tonight’s installment will feature competition in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. 64.
If you’re interested in some Smash Bros. action, be sure to tune in. The stream is live below, but you can also head on over to Twitch to join the chat.
After four weeks of competition, ESL’s Mortal Kombat X is set to kick into high gear tonight with spring’s Mid-Season Showdown. Previous tournaments have served to narrow the playing field down to sixteen competitors, and those players will be going at each other’s throats tonight to prove they have what it takes to earn a guaranteed spot in the grand finals next month.
Some of the more noteworthy names you can expect to see play tonight include cR|Sonic Fox, Senor Abram, Pig of the Hut, Shujinkydink, BugvMan, REO, and more.
The tournament’s stream can be found below, but you can also visit Twitch if you prefer to chat with fellow viewers.
cR|Sonic Fox vs. reefer
Senor Abram vs. Pig of the Hut
Shujinkydink vs. C88|Cupcake
Crawlingshadow vs. Killstreak
Bread vs. Immortal Angel
Emperor Rebelo vs. Scavenger928
CrazySteady vs. BugvMan
REO vs. Deb
This week’s installment of Next Level Battle Circuit is now streaming live courtesy of Team Spooky. As always, the event is being broadcast from its namesake, Next Level Arcade, in New York City. Tonight, they’ll be running Ultra Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat X, featuring some of the best players on the east coast.
If you would like to check out these weekly tournaments, be sure to head on over to Next Level Arcade and take part every Wednesday. The address has been included below.
4013 8th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11232
The stream is currently live below, but you can also visit Twitch to join the chat. Full brackets will be made available through Challonge.
