SNK has not been shy about offering assistance to the fighting game community and The King of Fighters XIV events; the most recent example of such support is being offered to upcoming North East Championship 17:
Big E Gaming is proud to have SNK as an official sponsor for NEC17. They are donating KoFXIV merchandise that we'll raffle off at the event. pic.twitter.com/DK3cQcw2ly
The company has also been offering support to smaller community endeavors, such as the survey that James Alderson has been circulating.
#KOFSurvey will be open until Dec. 10th, 2016 for all languages. That's because our community effort is now supported by SNK! pic.twitter.com/7ika0VUAu2
This support is extending to many smaller venues, along with the bigger ones, so it’s clear that SNK is paying attention to the tournament scene. This bodes well for the game moving into 2017.
The Skullgirls community has been sticking to its strategy of showing up and making a splash at a handful of events through the year. This tactic worked great for Combo Breaker, CEOtaku, GUTS4, and most recently the European major Revolution 2016. The community is going to continue on, supporting the next event on the list: Frosty Faustings.
In response to the community’s efforts Skullgirls publisher and developers–Autumn Games and Lab Zero Games respectively–have put forth a pot bonus for Frosty Faustings.
Very excited to announce support from Autumn / Lab Zero for $1000 bonus at FF for Skullgirls! Looking forward to a hype tourney! #getfrostypic.twitter.com/1hELpwVK3M
This support of Skullgirls tournaments has been persistent for every event the community decided to focus on so far, and seeing them persist with this support so long after the game’s initial release in 2012 is a truly marvelous sight in today’s market.
There have been a lot of whispers and speculation circling Pokkén Tournament for the past 6 months, concerning the DLC characters coming to the game–at least on the arcade side. Empoleon has been expected for a long time; after being officially announced just last week, we finally get to see first hand what Empoleon the Emperor Penguin Pokémon can do.
We see it riding in on a Surf wave, gliding on ice it creates, and stunning opponents with powerful combo extenders. There’s a lot going on here, but we won’t have a chance to play Empoleon until it drops in Japanese arcades on the 15th of this month. And as always: no word yet on if these DLC characters will make their way to the Wii U.
Sales are fairly common, especially on Steam. Getting a few bucks shaved off a purchase can be the difference between getting into the next big fighting game of your life–or not. Today we see another such sale announced, but with an interesting twist.
From December 8-18th, owners of Skullgirls on Steam are getting a 25% discount of the upcoming Nitroplus Blasterz -Heroines Infinite Duel-. Additionally, players looking forward to Nitroplus Blasterz who have yet to pick up Skullgirls are going to enjoy a 75% discount for the game, available after purchasing Nitroplus. If past sales are anything to go on, then the sale would include the base Skullgirls game, all of the DLC, and the Skullgirls Second Encore complete package.
This kind of collaborative discount is very nice to see, and nice for anyone looking to pick up one or both of these titles.
The Marvel vs Capcom series has a long, well respected legacy of games. We’ve enjoyed these games from their humble beginnings with X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes, onto the first full fledged Vs. game, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, all the way up to the upcoming Marvel vs Capcom Infinite that was announced this weekend. There is no better time to celebrate the franchise, as X-Men Children of the Atom released in December of 1994, making this the 22nd anniversary of the franchise
Let’s take a moment to appreciate our history with some older combo videos, taken from various games in the series. Paying attention to some of these games may even give you some hints as to what we can expect from the upcoming title.
It’s always nice seeing older games being attended to. Simple ports get us excited, but when the developers go a step further and add features to their game–features like netplay and extras–that’s what gets us really worked up.
While rumored for a release sometime this year, Garou: Mark of the Wolves was finally released for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita yesterday, after Sony’s keynote at the PlayStation Experience. This announcement came with a really well-done trailer, showing off the game’s core mechanics, in addition to the new features of this current gen port which include new screen borders, a special Gallery mode and special PlayStation themes. We didn’t need this trailer to tell us to get hype, but boy is it a welcome sight.
There likely isn’t a single person in today’s FGC who hasn’t heard the name Daigo Umehara. The landscape of today’s game owes a lot to the exploits of Daigo over the years, with one of the most famous moments in competitive gaming history–belonging to Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike–thanks to him. We may not have even reached the level of esports that we enjoy today without him pushing the community and the level of competition as far as it’s gotten today.
Yahoo esports has just put together an inspiring documentary on Daigo, getting words from himself and other pillars of the community on his personal life and his history with the FGC. He’s a very humble person, expressing respect and appreciation for the community along with his desire to give back to everyone who loves the game. It’s a great documentary; check it out.
Controllers have been a fairly touchy subject for much of the community, whether Smash or FGC. In the FGC people are mainly concerned with interruption of matches on wireless controllers, or unfair controller-specific macros; the Smash community is sort of the inverse, where there are so few controller methods that the thought of having to ban a control method is rarely brought up. That is, before the Smash Box.
Smash Box is a new control method for Smash games that borrows heavily from the Hit Box philosophy, laying out the inputs in a keyboard style with only buttons. Your typical GameCube controller is subject to a lot of variance in successfully inputting certain movement techs in Super Smash Bros. Melee, such as dash backs and shield drops. Players have resorted to modifying their controllers to install better analog sticks or include shield drop notches, as well as taking out the springs in triggers to increase input success rates and these are allowed in tournaments, as long as there are no button macros. Like these controller mods, the Smash Box does make techniques like shield dropping much easier, but it requires relearning potentially years of muscle memory to perform these movements on this specialist controller.
However, the Smash Box does this by remapping the buttons used to play Melee, which is something the game doesn’t natively allow you to do, unlike most modern fighting games and even later Smash games. As a result, the Smash Box does represent a potential precedent which opens the door for hundreds of new controller modifications, where players are remapping their D-Pads or other buttons to do inputs which Melee and the standard controller doesn’t allow you to do normally.
The main trade-off for the Smash Box is that it is leagues more comfortable for your hands compared to a controller, and that it is the first controller designed specifically for high-level Smash. When pros like FOX|Mew2King and C9|Mango complain about severe hand and wrist pain from using a GameCube controller, the Smash Box does potentially stop future players from developing chronic hand problems. Moreover, when Smash 64 TOs are letting players compete using computer keyboards, PlayStation, HORI, and Xbox controllers alongside the traditional N64 pad, there is also a precedent for new controllers with different button layouts to be allowed at tournaments.
However, due to the “massive change in muscle memory required to use it,” the Genesis 4 TOs have provisionally banned the Smash Box. As such, lead consultant on the Smash Box and notable Falcon main Gravy has come to the controller’s aid to argue why it should be legal at Genesis 4. Give the video below a watch and make sure to sound off on your thoughts about the controller’s legality.
As the most publicized event on the calendar for Capcom and Street Fighter V fans draws near, this weekend we will finally see the best 32 players in the game right now fighting tooth and nail for the throne. The outcome is still undecided–so for now all we can do is speculate, analyse, and talk to the players.
Esports channel “theScore esports” recently took a few moments to briefly interview both BST|Daigo Umehara and EG|Justin Wong about their feelings going into Capcom Cup. They both seem excited to test themselves against the intense competition. Check out their responses below.
This year’s “The Game Awards” sees a few well known titles getting some spotlight. The King of Fighters XIV, Street Fighter V, Killer Instinct Season 3 and Pokkén Tournament have been nominated for Best Fighting Game 2016, and Team Liquid’s Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma and Team Razer’s Lee “Infiltration” Seon-woo also receivied nominations for Best Esports player.
After being nominated for Best Fighting Game, Atlus is celebrating with a 20% discount on their fighter in the Playstation Store. Dropping from $59.99 to $47.99 is a decent discount, especially for anyone still straddling the fence on getting it. The game has a large visual overhaul coming in the form of the next patch, version 1.10, so this may be the perfect time to hop on The King of Fighters bandwagon if you haven’t already.
