Author: Sam "Trilby" Foxall

Ibuki’s kunai are integral to her gameplan in Street Fighter V, so learning to use them correctly is vital to do damage as this ninja schoolgirl. To stop Ibukis around the world misusing their kunai, the FGC Academy has created an instructional video, teaching all kunoichi how to properly manage their throwing knives.

As with handling any dangerous equipment, FGC Academy first goes over the improper use of kunai, like randomly throwing air kunai and getting punished or using more than two kunai in a single juggle. While it may look flashy and get the crowd on your side, excessive kunai use is just wasting resources and it’s better to learn and utilize the less flashy, but equally damaging combo whenever possible.

The main optimizations of kunai, according to FGC Academy, are hit-checking the opponent, using kunai to make moves like standing heavy punch safe and extending blockstring pressure by using EX kunai. If all goes to pot and you are running low, ending a combo with heavy punch Raida should give you enough time to reload at least one kunai. The video shows these kunai applications in action so try to see how you can further optimize these optimizations after watching this guide.

Source: FGC Academy

Editor’s note: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer, and do not reflect Shoryuken.com as a whole.

As fighting games are beginning to crack into the big time esports zone, Pro Tours are becoming a regular staple in the scene. There is of course the Capcom Pro Tour, but other games are getting their big circuits with the Killer Instinct World Cup, The King of the Iron Fist Tournament, Arc Revo Cup and the recently announced King of Fighters World Championships; it’s becoming easier to count the games that don’t have official tournament circuits than the ones that do. For all the pageantry, money and esports production values, the majority of these Pro Circuits are unwieldy things, with arcane rulesets which only obfuscate how players get to that final grand event. One need only look at the qualifiers on qualifiers for Capcom Cup 2016 and realize that this is a process in dire need of refinement. So, with a bit of streamlining and careful thought, I present to you my suggested outline for how to run a pro tour for the game of your choice.

REGIONS

Before getting into the nitty gritty mathematics of how players gain points and where the major qualifying events are, let’s first define the regional boundaries for this Tour. Deciding region sizes is important, as it determines how many qualifiers are going to be held, how events need to be dispersed so that everyone in the region gets a fair chance of qualifying and making sure that, when running a global event, each region gets some form of representation. As this event will have a final 32-man bracket, 6 regions works well; North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, South East Asia and Oceania. It is common practice to lump the Middle East in with Europe but with the growing number of events in multiple countries across the continent, it’s unfair to force Middle Eastern players to travel to qualifiers thousands of miles away just to compete in an already bustling region. Africa is a region that is in dire need of representation in event calendars as countries develop to have the infrastructure and player base to run these large events. However, for the sake of this Pro Tour example, the Middle East and Africa will be paired together. Until there is a research station staffed solely with fighting game players, Antarctica will be forever frozen out of the Pro Circuit.

EVENT STRUCTURE

Now that the regions are set, let’s set out how the events will work. The main problem with the Capcom Pro Tour is the number of different events with similar names: you’ve got regional qualifiers which lead into regional finals, online qualifiers, standard Ranking events, Premiers and so forth. With the regional finals, people from outside of a region can win the trip to the Capcom Cup, as seen with Daigo Umehara of Japan winning the European Regional final. It’s not exactly fair to people of those regions and it complicates an already confusing system. For this Pro Tour, there will be three types of event that lead into the final 32 man invitational event where competitors compete for the final prize. These events are:

Ranking Events – these are your bread and butter tournaments for earning points on this Pro Tour. Anyone from any region can enter these events, with the top eight to 16 players gaining points for placing — depending on tournament size. In order to stop tournament organizers running regular weekly events to make their regional players unstoppable on the points table, Ranking Events would have to land between 64 and 512 players, with there being a sliding scale of points allocated depending on the player cap. The governing body of this Pro Tour would have a set pool of points to allocate to each region, to stop tournament organizers having a monopoly on Ranking Events and to spread points fairly among countries within a region. I would suggest a maximum of two Ranking Events per month, which disperses events throughout the year and avoids a ‘feast or famine’ approach to player schedules.

Regional Qualifiers – these events would be held near the end of the Pro Tour’s cycle, a month or so before the Grand Finals. These events would be region locked, so no out of region players can snipe a place in the finals if they cannot win their own Regional Qualifiers, get in through points or by winning a Global Premier. These events would have an initial pools phase, where anyone from the region can qualify to compete in the final 16 man bracket. Eight players would automatically get to the bracket stage, based on their points total on the Global Leaderboard. It’s somewhat similar to how the last chance qualifiers have worked for the Capcom Pro Tour’s Regional Finals, where there are limited spots available in the final bracket for players who triumph in pools. Each region would get two of these qualifiers, with the winner gaining an automatic spot in the Pro Tour finals. Anyone who has already gained a spot in the final bracket can compete in these events to help their seeding for the finals, but that trip to the final bracket will go to the next highest placing player if they win the whole event. These events would be held at large regional tournaments like SoCal Regionals, Stunfest or Manila Cup.

Global Premier – As the name suggests, these events are open to everyone and award the winner with a place in the final 32 man invitational. There would be eight Global Premiers, spaced throughout the year to avoid overloading players with a run of high stakes events. In an ideal world, each region would host a single Global Premier but due to the dominance of the USA in both player skill and event management for many fighting games, most Global Premiers would end up in the USA. To use Super Smash Bros. Melee as an example, their eight Global Premiers would be at events like Evo, Genesis, The Big House, Shine, BEAST, Super Smash Con, DreamHack Winter and GOML. Like Regional Qualifiers, if someone has already won an automatic spot in the final bracket and goes onto win a Global Premier, their spot will automatically pass onto the next highest placing player. Due to the size and scale of these events, they would award players with the most points, and points would go to everyone in top 32, since some of these events can have over 1,000 entrants.

Do note that this Pro Tour would not have online qualifiers. This is mainly due to the logistical nightmare it can be to run a massive online qualifying event, where internet quality and outside interruptions play a part. Moreover, the offline and online play experiences are vastly different thanks to input buffers and the success of so called ‘online characters’, especially in games with dodgy netcode like Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Ultimately, the top 32 will be played offline, acting as the true test of player skill and as such, every qualifying player should have played in the same environment in their quest to reach the final bracket.

THE GLOBAL LEADERBOARD

As mentioned earlier, players can reach the finals by earning enough points on the Global Leaderboard. With eight Global Premiers and 12 Regional Qualifiers, there are 12 open spots left to be decided via points. The points cut off will be a week before the actual finals, giving players as much time as possible to gain enough points to qualify. Unlike the Capcom Pro Tour, there are no Regional Leaderboards; everyone goes onto one Global Leaderboard. This is to stop the problem of players being on multiple leaderboards in different continents and the resulting confusion of having to juggle point totals across several regions.

If a player qualifies for the finals via a Global Premier or Regional Qualifier, they are essentially taken off the Global Leaderboard and inserted into the final event roster, freeing up spots for other players and making it easy to tell who is in that golden zone to qualify through points. That player also does not actually gain any more points, the points they would have earned are divided up among the rest of the competing players. This is to stop qualified players hording Ranking Points and taking them away from players who are in need of them. The points that they would have earned are still tracked, as the overall points total for every player will determine their seed in the final bracket. This allows players to sit on their laurels after they have made it into the finals, but it comes at the risk of being seeded low in that final 32. This also means that the first person to qualify isn’t necessarily the first seed; those players who continually attend Ranking Events and Global Premiers are still rewarded with an easier trip through that final bracket.

Hopefully, this example structure acts as a simpler outline to running a Pro Tour and I hope companies will try to make their events easier for spectators and players to understand in the future. Also, there needs to be plans for an ‘off season’ in future Pro Tours; having back to back yearlong circuits is exhausting for everyone involved. We all need a break from competition now and then.

As part of their continued fostering of the Street Fighter V scene through its Proving Grounds tournaments, Red Bull has been keen to interview key members from scenes where they are holding events. This time, Red Bull got the chance to chat with Justin Baisden, lead tournament organizer of Fight for the 6ix in Toronto, to discuss the local scene, its player diversity and playstyle.

Due to the influx of East Asian players coming to the University of Toronto to get a top education, the region has developed a style which integrates the defensive, footsies heavy play that is prominent in regions like Japan, Thailand and China. Toronto was renowned for this during the era of Third Strike and it has trickled down into the current crop of Street Fighter V players, creating a cohort of competitors that combines tactics from different sides of the Pacific.

This diversity applies to players too, as people come from the greater Ontario region, the USA and beyond to play against the eclectic mix of styles and contenders that converge at Toronto tournaments.

Source: Red Bull eSports

As if this wily kunoichi needs more tricky setups to bamboozle her opponent, Lucius_RNK has discovered a new anti air setup with Ibuki in Street Fighter V. By using the freeze frame of Ibuki’s V-Trigger on reaction to an opponent’s jump, Ibuki players can perform an air throw to fling their opponent into a bomb.

Off the bomb detonation, Ibukis can either go for the Critical Art for raw damage or follow up with a longer combo. However, the follow up or Critical Art is not guaranteed if the opponent quick rises the explosion and the actual air throw timing is quite strict, so get practicing in Training Mode to get the timing perfect. There is the possibility that this setup may work with different bomb timings, as u/GummibearGaming theorizes that you could meaty the quickrise if the Ibuki throws out a slow bomb. There is more to discover from this tech so get in the lab and start testing!

Sources: RNK Clan; r/StreetFighter

With the recent release of Rising VeXx’s video on how Marth can use the Stun Jacket glitch in Smash 4, other dedicated Marth and Lucina mains have been digging into how this glitch actually works. Through the combined research of the Marcina Discord, YouTuber Crocketz has compiled an extensive guide which details pretty much all there is to know about the Stun Jacket.

While any character with a Marth-like counter can apply the Stun Jacket, only certain characters have moves which trigger the glitch. Bayonetta was the obvious target of VeXx’s original video, but further testing has shown that Zelda, Falco, Villager, Ike, Robin, and Zero Suit Samus have moves which trigger this glitch. There may be more moves that cause the Stun Jacket effect, so keep experimenting to see if there are more characters than this glitch works on.

It has also been discovered that by activating the Stun Jacket, you set the minimum hitlag of your next move as 16 frames, meaning your opponent has to wait until frame 17 before they can strike back. It is not a cumulative process, so any move that already causes over 16 frames of hitlag is not affected by the Stun Jacket. The Stun Jacket also activates on shield, meaning an opponent has to suffer 16 frames of shieldstun before they can drop shield and retaliate. So, the best way to use this glitch is to activate it via a jab and using the extended hitlag to confirm into true combos that were previously impossible to hit.

Source: Crocketz

While mainly known for his recreations of Tekken movesets, stuntman Eric Jacobus has shifted franchises and decided to try out the moves of fellow 3D fighter, Dead or Alive. For this installment, Eric has focused on the moves of Sambo practitioner and former assassin Bayman as his first foray into the world of DOA.

According to the stuntman, many of Bayman’s throws and strikes would actually be applicable and useful in real world situations, unlike the flips and Izuna drops of other characters in the Dead or Alive roster. While it may not be flashy, Bayman’s move set may actually help you out if you were stuck in a jam with some people who didn’t care if you were dead or alive.

Source: Eric Jacobus

For all of the high intensity rock on the Guilty Gear Xrd soundtrack, sometimes you want some smooth jazz to accompany your fighting. Covering the character theme of the gentlemanly vampire poet Slayer, the Consouls have jazzed up the already jazzy Jack-a-Dandy, complete with killer trumpet and tenor sax solos.

The cover is the perfect thing to listen to while you’re in Training Mode with a glass of wine, just learning your character and mastering their combos. The Consouls are getting through quite a few fighting games tracks as of late, covering themes from Super Smash Bros., King of Fighters, Street Fighter V and Skullgirls so keep your ears open for more fighting game covers in the near future.

Source: The Consouls