Author: Lance "Tarnot" Hood

Over a month into the life of Street Fighter V, we’ve finally made it to the moment many players have been waiting for since long before we were certain he’d make it into the game: Alex is playable. The community has been hard at work deconstructing the returning fighter, so we’ve rounded up plenty of footage of exactly that. Of course, we’ve got some standard roundup fare, too, so let’s get started.

We being things today with a combo reel from Sebastian Rikk. This is far from the only combo collection we’ve got in store, but it is the most traditional, in that it offers plenty of practical options for various amounts of meter.

In a similar vein, Evil Pixel put together an extensive tutorial for everything related to Alex combos. If you’re looking for a one-stop video to learn the ropes with the new guy, this is the video you should watch.

Alright, now we can move on to the less practical end of things. It’s important for combos to deal as much damage as possible, but it’s also important to go about dealing that damage in the most stylish way possible. What is the perfect style to damage ratio? Well, I don’t know much about math, but I can say for sure that these combos from Venom47 have a potentially disproportionate amount of pizzazz.

Speaking of damage, just a few hours into the life of the character, Redwolfxx may have already found Alex’s maximum output, which sneaks just over the 650 mark.

It looks like Alex has plenty of combo potential following specific trade situations, too. To demonstrate some of these conversions, Oscar Cruz put together this quick video.

This next Alex video, from Ambassador Foxx, focuses entirely on combos involving juggles. Give it a look to make sure you’re getting the most damage possible when you send opponents sailing skyward.

If you’re up against anyone but Zangief, this stun setup from hameko can result in a kill. As with anything of this nature, it’s pretty unlikely that someone will let the entire sequence happen in a proper match, but hey, it could happen.

アレックスでスタン耐性1000組をピヨらせる打撃択ルート。しかし投げの選択肢が微妙。 pic.twitter.com/FyKMESMCfF

— ハメコ。(hameko) (@hameko) March 30, 2016

The final episode of Shadowloo Bootcamp dedicated to F.A.N.G went live recently. In it, host Ricardo “Mono” Roman discusses anti-air options, footsies, and zoning with the poisonous newcomer.

Now for the finale! It’s not exactly the most practical option, but lordofultima figured out a way to carry opponents from corner to corner with R. Mika through a series of combos and setups. The interesting part about this is that Zangief–Mika’s target–is set to back recover and perform a jab on wakeup, so Mika has no trouble keeping opponents locked down even when they try to escape through back techs.

What have you found with Alex (or anyone else)? Send us your footage and it may make it into our next Street Fighter V community roundup!

Sources: Sebastian Rikk, Evil Pixel, Evil Pixel, Venom47, Oscar Cruz, Ambassador Foxx, Redwolfxx, hameko, GamersGrid TV, lordofultima

Evil Geniuses’ Momochi is back with another entry in his series of Street Fighter V lectures. This most recent episode highlights the ins and outs of returning fighter Birdie.

In the footage, Momochi discusses topics like using and canceling his chain, how to apply his zonk-style negative edge tactics, and how these can be combined to psych out opponents and bait them into easily punishable jumps. He also talks about the difference in Birdie’s grabs, including how to properly set up tick command grabs as a mixup off a standard hit-confirm string, before moving onto buttons and the V-System.

As with any video of this style, those of you who spend time fending off the punk rocker will also learn how to stop his scarier strategies.

Source: Momochi & ChocoBlanka TV

Evil Geniuses’ Momochi is back with another entry in his series of Street Fighter V lectures. This most recent episode highlights the ins and outs of returning fighter Birdie.

In the footage, Momochi discusses topics like using and canceling his chain, how to apply his zonk-style negative edge tactics, and how these can be combined to psych out opponents and bait them into easily punishable jumps. He also talks about the difference in Birdie’s grabs, including how to properly set up tick command grabs as a mixup off a standard hit-confirm string, before moving onto buttons and the V-System.

As with any video of this style, those of you who spend time fending off the punk rocker will also learn how to stop his scarier strategies.

Source: Momochi & ChocoBlanka TV

It’s Alex Eve, and everyone is chomping at the bit to step into the ring with Street Fighter V’s upcoming roster addition. As things like this tend to go, some masters of file manipulation have already figured out how to harness the power of this french fry-haired warrior, and were kind enough to share some footage of their exploits, which we’ve gathered up for you below.

For at least a month (probably longer) Street Fighter V players have been certain the next major event, the next week, the next–I don’t know, maybe the next time that a white cat walks across their windowsill and blinks in their direction–would certainly herald the coming of Alex’s trailer. That trailer, sadly, never came.

But you know what? Tommy decided we don’t need an official gameplay trailer to hype us up for this newest champion, and they took matters into their own hands, compiling some early in-game glimpses at Alex to show off his tools.

Redwolfxx spent some time in a lobby against Dantarion’s Alex and uploaded about ten minutes of footage to show what they saw. For more of Dantarion’s Alex footage, check out yesterday’s small roundup.

The addition of Street Fighter V’s challenge mode has made picking up early combos easier than ever. While these aren’t likely the most optimal combos–Capcom’s challenge mode offerings rarely are–they do offer a look at some of what we can expect to see from folks when they start stringing blows together.

We wrap things up with this video from Shinich Z, showing Alex performing his own take on Evo Moment #37. I mean, it really wouldn’t be a day -1 roundup without some sort of reference to this event, right?

We’re sure to have plenty more Alex footage tomorrow once he makes his official debut, so be sure to check back. And remember to send in your findings, as they may end up being part of tomorrow’s Street Fighter V community roundup!

Sources: Tommy, Redwolfxx, Timzy921, Shinichi Z

As companion pieces to his post-patch analyses for Sheik and Mewtwo, Team SoloMid’s Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios released three more reels dedicated to Nintendo’s recent Super Smash Bros. for Wii U update. In these new videos highlighting Cloud Strife, Metaknight, and Greninja, ZeRo aims to demystify these nuanced changes.

If you’re like me, you’re probably still wrapping your head around the fact that Nintendo actually buffed Greninja; not that the character was overpowered before, mind, but it has suffered its share of unexpected nerfs since the game’s release.

Could this mean we’ll be seeing an uptick in the occurrence of Greninja? We’ll have to wait and see.

Source: ZeRo

With NorCal Regionals behind us, we dive right into another roundup of Street Fighter V content. Let’s get started!

Ambassador Foxx kicks things off today by demonstrating Karin’s reset potential through a series of chained jab follow-ups. These may look pretty basic on first glance–and you may have seen some of them before–but, upon closer inspection, one can see that Karin causes the reset after the second jab instead of the first, thanks to its additional juggle properties which don’t appear on the first jab.

Like many resets, some of these are more useful than others, and none should be a go-to option all the time, but if you’re looking to add some variety to your gameplay between bouts of boisterous laughter, this is a good place to check.

When fishing to tack on that last hit to tick the stun bar over into a dizzy, we’ve got plenty of options. Thanks to a new video from Benji Topaz, Necalli players now have a few more. As you’ll see in this next video, Necalli has a handful of fuzzy guard options that he can pepper in to keep opponents on their toes.

We close out today’s roundup with a collection of video-based hitbox data from Overheat’s GameTime. Sure, we’ve all seen plenty of hitbox data by now, but these videos present the information in (very) slow motion. So far, they’ve compiled footage for Nash, R. Mika and Vega, all of which we’ve included below.

Send us your videos; they could be featured in our next Street Fighter V community roundup!

Sources: Ambassador Foxx, Benji Topaz, Overheat’s GameTime

Top tournament performers fuel themselves with things like fuzzy jump option selects, pristine movement, and intricate matchup knowledge, but these aren’t the only pieces that combine to construct a successful competitor. As Martin “Marn” Phan demonstrated over the weekend at NorCal Regionals, sometimes knowing how to play the metagame to psych out opponents is just as important as anything happening on-screen.

Marn’s methods for inflicting a sort of mental guard break state on his opponents were abundant at the recent event: getting the crowd involved through shirt removal feints, mimicking Rainbow Mika’s Critical Art animation, kissing his biceps, issuing mid-match call-outs, faking handshakes…the list goes on. Not only did such strategies help Marn’s forward movement through the famed Death Pool and on to the top 8, they also made the event that much more enjoyable to watch.

In this case, Marn provided enough extra entertainment to draw the eye of ESPN, who compiled a quick collection of his best moments from NorCal Regionals outside of the game itself. Give it a watch below.

For full results from NorCal Regionals, head over to our coverage hub.

Source: ESPN, tip via Menno