If you want to style on your opponents with explosive setups and tricky mix-ups, Ibuki is most definitely your girl. In this latest highlight video from RnK_Lucius, he shows off just how crazy a good Ibuki player can be, with some impressive bomb juggles and stun combos.
The editing is as equally as slick, with clever transitions from combo to combo and a suitable soundtrack to match the raw speed of this ninja. Also, for that extra little bit of disrespect, Lucius has chosen not to blur the names of any players that rage quit matches during the creation of this highlight video. If you ever face this Ibuki, don’t go reaching for that Ethernet cable or you could end up exposed in a future mixclip.
The beginning of 2017 is filling up mighty fast, as another big US tournament announces its return for the first quarter of the year. Hosted at the Marriott Cool Springs in Franklin, the Kumite in Tennessee or KiT for short, is hosting 12 separate tournaments over two days, promising a weekend bursting with entertainment. Pokkén Tournament was formally announced as the first game on the title card, but 11 others have since joined the roster.
Outside of tournament mainstays like Street Fighter V, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mortal Kombat X, Guilty Gear Xrd REVELATOR and the like, games like Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Project M will also be represented at KiT 2017. Over $13,500 worth of pot bonuses have been announced, with NetherRealm Studios putting in a whopping $10,000 for this year’s Mortal Kombat tournament and Team Ninja adding $1,000 to the DoA5:LR pot. Barring BlazBlue: Central Fiction, Project M, and The King of Fighters XIV, tournament champions will also receive a sculpted trophy of a character from their game, so you may walk away with a bronze head of Heihachi or Bowser, as well as your prize money.
Registration is still open for KiT 2017, with December 30th acting as the last day to sign up online. There will be on-site registration on Friday 6th January, but this is cash only, so bring your wallet with you. Make sure to check out the smash.gg page for any additional information.
Released just before Get On My Level 2016, Panda Global’s first world rankings of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U players was the first real attempt to create a unified ranking system for this iteration of Smash. Similar to the Melee It On Me top 100 for Super Smash Bros. Melee, this player list acted not only as a who’s who of top players in Smash 4, but also as a guide for tournament seeding and a sort of “shopping list” for esports teams, looking to pick up unsigned players within the top 50.
A lot has changed since that initial list, with players yo-yo-ing between the top positions and new talent from across the USA, Japan and Europe elbowing their way into that top 50. With that in mind, Panda Global and the PG Stats team are compiling a new top 50 ranking for 2016, planned to release ahead of Genesis 4 in late January.
There are still two tournaments this year which will count towards this PGR version 2, those being 2GGT: ZeRo Saga and the UGC Smash Open. With much of the Smash 4 community vigorously debating who is in the top ten, let alone number one, this list will no doubt a hot button topic for the first half of 2017.
The PlayStation Experience is going to be quite the convention for fighting game fans, as Sony has announced another fighting game that will be on the showfloor from December 3rd to 4th. Created by the author of “Playing to Win” and designer of Yomi and Puzzle Strike, David Sirlin’s Fantasy Strike will be at the PlayStation Experience, planned for a future PS4 release. For those who aren’t familiar: Fantasy Strike is a fighting game which aims to vastly lower the entry barrier for fighting games, by having most inputs be assigned to a single button.
No quarter circles, 720s or pretzel motions here: all special move inputs are assigned to one button press. Crouching has been removed and throws can now be countered by pressing nothing. You did just read that right, taking your hands off the stick when someone tries to throw you will initiate a “Yomi Counter,” reversing the throw with a cool reversal animation and giving you a full super bar.
Fantasy Strike is still in early development, but David and his team have so far implemented eight characters from the initial ten available in the Yomi card game, with the team planning to add more characters, more modes and GGPO matchmaking into the final product. Fantasy Strike is also coming to PC, and is actually playable in a pre-alpha state–but it does require a Patreon donation for access.
If you are at all interested in the concept of a fighting game which cuts through the complexity of input systems to get to the juicy core of mindgames, spacing, footsies and so on, swing by the Fantasy Strike booth at the PlayStation Experience to try it out for yourself.
Acting as one of the most requested characters to be given the “Art of” treatment, IzAw has finally turned his attention to Marth and Lucina in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. The two sword users have had a resurgence in popularity as of late, thanks to buffs to almost everything in patch 1.1.5 and top players like Pugwest, SS|Mr. E and MKLeo performing well with Marth in particular.
As with previous “Art of” tutorials, the video covers the entire movesets of both Marth and Lucina, detailing how to use all of their specials and normals effectively in combat. There is variation between the two characters, as Marth gets certain kill confirms and 50/50 setups thanks to the tipper on his sword, but they fundamentally play the same way.
If you want more in-depth Marth information, make sure to check out some of the videos made by Rising VeXx, who we have previouslycovered on Shoryuken. His videos will help round out your Marth knowledge with more kill confirms and gimmicks like the Stun Jacket.
Announced back at SNK’s panel during this year’s Evo, there has been relative silence on the PS4 and PS Vita rereleases of Garou: Mark of the Wolves as of late, probably due to SNK’s focus on King of Fighters XIV. Well, it seems that its release should be pretty soon, as the game’s trophy list has recently surfaced online.
The trophies mostly concern completing the Arcade Mode with the entire roster, as well as beating Survival Mode and clearing Arcade Mode without using continues. The only difficult trophy on the list is the “Mark of the Wolves” trophy, which involves getting 10 consecutive victories on Ranked multiplayer, but this should be no problem for veteran players.
With King of Fighters ’94 available to buy on the PlayStation Store, with Samurai Shodown and Fatal Fury scheduled for release later this year, it’s the perfect time to be an SNK fan. With the PlayStation Experience on the horizon in December and SNK being on the list of exhibitors at the show, it stands to reason that a release date for Garou: Mark of the Wolves will be revealed during the convention.
The calendar for fighting game events is starting to fill up for next year, as yet another prestigious tournament has announced its return for 2017. One of the UK’s biggest tournaments, Hypespotting, is coming back for its sixth installment at the Glasgow Hilton next April, gathering the whole of the UK in Scotland for a weekend of fantastic fighting action. 2017’s lineup will include modern tournament games like Killer Instinct, Tekken 7, Guilty Gear Xrd: REVELATOR, Street Fighter V, King of Fighters XIV, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, alongside old favorites 3rd Strike and Street Fighter II Turbo.
As with previous Hypespottings, the world famous Pub Quiz will return, alongside the new Affro’s Arcade, which will provide attendees access to new indie games to enjoy in between tournament matches. The Hypespotting crew will be partnering with events up and down the UK for their ‘Road to Hype’ series as well, where winners of specific tournaments will gain free entry to the main event up in Glasgow. With Hypespotting 5 acting as a Ranking Event for the Capcom Pro Tour, a UK qualifier for the Mortal Kombat Cup and the site of a Pokkén Tournament invitational, expect 2017’s event to have even more big names attached to it.
Tickets are now available to purchase over on the Hypespotting website, with there being a 25% discount on weekend entry tickets until the end of 2016, so get buying your tickets now if you are definitely coming to 2017’s event.
Calm down everybody–not that kind of trump. With Smash 4’s changes to the ledge, where players can push other players off it in a process called “ledge trumping,” a whole meta has developed around whether to trump or not. In their quest to advance the Smash 4 meta, the Beefy Smash Doods have dedicated a whole video to the power of faking a ledge trump.
They outline two major ways to fake an edge trump, by either just dashing to the ledge and waiting for the opponent’s get up option, or by jumping off stage and then jumping back on to line up with their get up. The Beefy Smash Doods suggest dashing to the ledge to fake a trump, then doing a short hop back-air to cover both the roll and jump get up options. Quite a few characters can autocancel their back-airs, meaning that the back-air whiffs, you can then punish with your most damaging option. This short hop back-air does not cover a get up attack, but seeing as that is the most uncommon and slowest option off the ledge, you could just full hop to avoid most get up attacks.
You can also footstool a player jumping back on stage, which can force them to regrab the ledge. You can then punish the ledge regrab with a meteor or a down-tilt, seeing as the recovering player loses their ledge invincibility.
You’ve watched tournaments, you’ve poured over frame data and you can recite lines from the Smash Brothers documentary by heart; now it’s time to start playing Super Smash Bros. Melee. However, unlike most fighting games, getting started with Melee take a little bit more set up time than something Street Fighter V or King of Fighters XIV. In order to instruct new players on what to get and where to get it, SSBM Tutorials has created a comprehensive beginner’s guide on how to begin your Melee career.
The guide first tackles getting all the kit needed to play Melee. If you want to go the old fashioned route, this means finding a physical copy of the game, a Gamecube or Wii to run it on, a CRT television to avoid input lag along with a Gamecube controller. If you are wanting to use an emulated version of Melee in order to play netplay, you’ll need a computer capable of running the Dolphin emulator and the Netplay build of Melee, alongside a Gamecube controller adapter.
Once the physical aspect of playing Melee is out of the way, the rest of the guide details how to pick a character, how to learn basic tech skill and where to look to improve as you are learning the basics. Seeing as they are called SSBM Tutorials, I’m sure they may have a few videos to help you out.
Known for her tricky V-Trigger setups and wild mix-ups, Ibuki’s more unpredictable tools don’t mean much if you cannot hold the neutral for very long. To teach Ibuki mains how to approach the neutral and play an effective footsie game with her, Rommaler has created a 40-minute tutorial, covering many of the aspects of Ibuki’s neutral game.
How to move around the stage, controlling space with pokes, knowing what are the best ways to whiff punish with Ibuki; all these things and more are covered by Rommaler in his tutorial, making it required viewing for anyone looking to main this teenage ninja. I’d even recommend having Training Mode open at the same time, in order to practice certain options Rommaler suggests you learn.
