It’s tornados versus Hadoukens in these first-to-five online sets, as Gachikun and Tokido battle it out in Street Fighter V. While Tokido needs no introduction, Gachikun is rated as Japan’s best Rashid, with John Takeuchi naming him as the nation’s master of the Turbulent Wind during an interview at Red Bull Battle Grounds back in November.
His skill with Rashid is something to admire, going incredibly close with Tokido during these two best of five sets, applying careful pressure with tornados and expertly dodging through Ryu’s fireball game with Rashid’s V-Skill roll. For anyone looking to play Rashid, these sets are required viewing.
With Season Two fast approaching for Street Fighter V, a lot of the craziness from Season One will no doubt be patched out, as Capcom attempts to normalize some of the wackier elements of certain characters. While R. Mika is the character who seems to be receiving the most brutal changes, Chun-Li is another character that is no doubt in Capcom’s sights for rebalancing.
To catalogue the craziness that came from her Season One V-Trigger, Mothman has created his celebratory combo video which shows off some of the more ridiculous combos Chun-Li could pull off with her V-Trigger. Her Renkiko could remain untouched and many of these combos may still be possible come December 20th, but if not, this video will act as a reminder of the madness that could happen in Season One of Street Fighter V.
Kicking off next year’s Summer of Smash, Gamers HQ has announced that Smash ‘n’ Splash 3 will be returning in 2017, with a brand new venue and even more waterslides to have fun on in-between matches. Acting as the premier Smash tournament held at a waterpark, Smash ‘n’ Splash 3 will be moving from the Key Lime Cove in Gurnee, Illinois to Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin which has a 30,000 foot convention center attached to it, as well as both a water and amusement park.
Running tournaments for Super Smash Bros. Melee, Project M, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. 64, Smash ‘n’ Splash 3 will be the tournament to kick off the summer season. It’s also the greatest place to go 0-2, as you can go forget your sorrows by riding some waterslides and rollercoasters. Sign-ups are available over on the official smash.gg page for Smash ‘n’ Splash 3, and the Kalahari resort is taking room bookings starting at the reduced price of $129, so get planning now if you are determined to attend this event.
Capcom are really going back to the roots of the Versus Series with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, as it has been revealed that Norio Hirose will be the director on the latest entry in the series. Confirmed to be working on MvC:I in an interview with Japanese gaming website Game.Watch, Hirose is a veteran programmer from the early days of the Vs. Series, working on X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Street Fighter, the original Marvel vs. Capcom, as well as Project Justice and Capcom vs. SNK.
With Infinite attempting to be a reboot of the Marvel vs. Capcom formula by returning to its 2v2 roots, it makes sense to call in one of the programmers from those early games to head up the project. With the Infinity Stones also being said to be similar to the Groove system seen in Capcom vs. SNK, Hirose’s work on the original title in that franchise will also prove valuable in creating something equally as engaging in MvC:I.
The whole interview is worth a read if your Japanese is decent, as it discusses the reasoning behind some of the character choices for this original trailer, the thought that Marvel vs. Capcom 4 could have been a 4-on-4 fighter, as well as their plans on the outline of MvC:I’s cinematic story.
Hold onto your hats Smash fans, as Super Smash Bros. Melee may finally be getting an official rerelease. In a report released by Eurogamer today, it has heard from multiple sources that the Nintendo Switch will be able to play GameCube games via its Virtual Console service.
Three games have been prepped and tested for launch with the Switch–according to Eurogamer’s sources–with Melee being among this starting lineup. Nintendo is also looking into getting the Wii U GameCube controller adapter to work with the Switch, but Eurogamer could not confirm if that decision has been finalized. With the rumors of a Super Smash Bros. for Wii U port for the Switch, having the GameCube adapter working natively for the Switch and for the Virtual Console would make the system the perfect place for playing Smash.
The question then arises if Nintendo would use either the PAL or NTSC version of Melee for this rerelease, and if any other aspects of Melee would be tweaked for this rerelease. There is also the worry if this Virtual Console version would run on a monitor to the same specs as Melee played on a CRT, as playing with additional display lag would sink the possibility of this rerelease being adopted by the competitive community.
With Nintendo having its official reveal event for the Switch on January 12th, these questions should hopefully be put to rest and a new age of Smash could hopefully begin on this new console.
Continuing their series on how to defeat all of the Super Smash Bros. Melee top tiers, SSBM Tutorials have set their sights on the Hero King of Altea, Marth. Known for his graceful swordplay, beating Marth means weaving around the tipper of his sword to avoid taking major damage from his aerials and his deadly forward smash.
Seeing as his forward smash is his main grounded kill move, learning to defend against this overheard sword slash is vital to defeat a Marth player. While it looks powerful, running up and shielding it is the best option, as it has a substantial amount of recovery following the slice. If you shield the hit, follow up with a wavedash out of shield to punish with your own smash.
As for his aerials, most of them can be crouch cancelled if the Marth doesn’t connect with the tipper, so abuse an enemy Marth’s poor spacing to strike back while at low percents. Marth’s aerials lack any lingering hitboxes, so if you get a read on when your opponents likes to throw out attacks, you can run in and whiff punish their aerial assault.
With the recent controversy regarding the Smash Box’s provisional ban at Genesis 4, the Smash-o-sphere has flared up with discussion on whether this new type of controller should be allowed at events. Players have extolled the virtues of the Smash Box on the hand and wrist health of players, as well as it acting as the first controller specifically made for competitive Smash, while others have warned the dangerous precedent the Smash Box sets for future controller modifications which use macros and other such shortcuts to make high level techskill easier to pull off.
Hoping to set the record straight, the Smash Box’s creator and owner of HitBox, HitBox Dustin, has released his own video which aims to clarify some of the misconceptions and worries surrounding the new controller. His first major point is tackling the fear that the Smash Box will open the floodgates for drastic controller mods which completely swap button inputs and allow for certain move macros. Dustin argues that in its current prototype state, the Smash Box is a modded controller but if it is Kickstarted and made real, it will be an official third party controller which is factory made to specific build standards without mods. Every Smash Box will be the same when it comes off the production line so, unlike the Gamecube controller, there should be no variance in the quality of Control Sticks or whether it can shield drop effectively or not.
Speaking of shield drops, Dustin points out that like the notches that many players mill into the gate around their Control Sticks, the D-Pad section of the Smash Box essentially acts like those notches but it always gives you that perfect shield drop angle, as it does not rely on the inherent inconsistency of the Gamecube controller.
The main complaint, according to Dustin, seems to be a philosophical issue that the Smash Box is a fundamentally different way to play Smash compared to what has been common for the last 15 years. This is indeed true, but when playing Smash requires using controllers which are not designed for competitive play and have major inconsistencies in terms of build quality, offering a bespoke option which caters specifically to the competitive crowd seems like a great option going forward. I personally fully support the Smash Box and would like to try it out for myself, but these discussions about controller legality are important as Smash continues to grow as an esport.
With tons of information coming out of the PlayStation Experience about Akuma–thanks to players getting some serious hands-on time with the Ansatsuken master–we now have a decent grasp of what the returning Street Fighter can do in Season Two of Street Fighter V. In order to help potential Akuma players learn the ways of the Satsui no Hado, VesperArcade has gathered together all this information into a single, comprehensive Akuma breakdown video.
While he doesn’t show any Akuma gameplay besides the official trailer released by Capcom, Vesper goes through all of Akuma’s normals, specials, V-Skill and V-Trigger as well as speculating on some of Akuma’s combo potential, based on the information gathered from play sessions at the PlayStation Experience. If you are looking to play Akuma come December 20th, note down anything you find particularly interesting and get testing on launch day.
As the Super Smash Bros. series is not designed purely around competitive play, there has been a fair bit of jiggery pokery which each game’s competitive ruleset to reduce instances of over-centralized play and polarizing stages. In this way, Smashers have been accustomed to banning certain stages–and even tactics–to stop the metagame descending into the same match-ups or stage picks over and over again.
Seeing as the idea of willfully banning elements of a game seems counter-intuitive, MySmashCorner has created a new video, running through what makes something ban worthy, using specific examples from Smash’s history. One need only look at the legal stage lists of games like Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U to see how thinking has changed on the legality of specific arenas, due to players discovering polarizing tactics on those select stages.
MySmashCorner also touches on the idea of banning whole tactics, like Meta Knight’s infinite Dimensional Cape in Super Smash Bros. Brawl or wobbling in Melee. Whereas the infinite Dimensional Cape warranted a ban as all it takes is for one Meta Knight to take the lead and they can then disappear until the timer runs out, wobbling can be prevented by a player knocking the computer controlled Ice Climber off the stage, with characters like Fox being able to do this with ease. Even then, the Ice Climbers do not overcentralize the meta with the presence of wobbling, with it being rare for an Ice Climbers to place in a top 8 of a major. Compare this to Brawl, where Meta Knight already made up most of Brawl top 8s without the use of the infinite Dimensional Cape.
This analysis raises some interesting points about what makes something ban worthy and should hope stop some players calling for a ban for things which they just find difficult to beat.
Shown in the ESPN 2 broadcast of Capcom Cup 2016, Morrigan and Captain America are confirmed to be returning to fight in Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. These MvC veterans are back to fight alongside newcomers Captain Marvel and Megaman X, sporting the same movesets from previous MvC titles.
In the extended gameplay trailer, we see Captain America throwing out a Hyper Charging Star and Morrigan using her Darkness Illusion Hyper Combo, so expect to chuck shields and fire off Soul Fists sometime in 2017. There is also a glimpse of one of Megaman X’s Hyper Combos, where he equips the First Armor from the original Megaman X. One can assume that this Hyper Combo will be similar to Arthur’s Golden Armor from Marvel vs Capcom 3, with Megaman X receiving either new moves or buffed stats thanks to this upgrade.
As for more information on the nitty gritty of Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, make sure to watch this interview from the PlayStation Experience, with Mike Evans and Mike Jones from Capcom and Marvel Studios. According to the interview, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite is be the first title to be developed in-house at Capcom USA for over a decade, rather than being outsourced/co-developed with another company like Dimps or Eighting. With Capcom USA seemingly having full developmental control on Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, this should ensure close developer support once MvCI is out there in the wild.
