Category: Fighting Games

Courtesy of a quick translation from Pentao via PokkenArena, we now have an English version of the huge batch of Pokkén Tournament patch notes that dropped last night. If you thought the previously announced changes for the arcade version were somewhat lacking, well, you’ll have a lot to chew on come June 15th.

While the patch notes themselves are rather extensive, here’s some examples of the most significant changes:

Charizard

• Burst Mode: Synergy Mode time decreased.

Suicune

• jY (Water Gun) now does less blockstun.

Pikachu

• Pikachu’s Nuzzle now has longer recovery frames if you whiff.

Chandelure

• Charge-Release [X] currently reduces the time you have negative statuses on you. Now it also increases the effect of negative statuses on opponents, too.

Mewtwo

• Burst Attack: When you miss with your burst attack, your post-BA invincibility is shorter to make it easier to punish you for failing to grab your opponent.
• All Pokémon Attacks: Drain more Synergy when used.
• Barrier: Timing to block an opponent’s attack is slower.
• Back Y in Field (Fire spin): Timing on canceling fire spin is now slower, must be canceled later.
• Homing Attack: The 2nd part of the Homing Attack now has reduced hits. This makes it easier to CA the homing combo. However this nerf does not apply to Burst Mode Mewtwo X.
• Counter Attack: Fixed the bug where inputting back + CA would sometimes cause you to lose synergy for some reason.

Shadow Mewtwo

• Recover: Recovery time after using recover reduced.
• Thunder: You can now combo after hitting thunder on an aerial opponent instead of slamming them with a hard knockdown.
• Back Y in Field (Light Pillar): Increased hitstun on aerial opponents. Miracle Eye variant also receives this buff.
• Back Step (Field): You can now cancel into an action out of Shadow Mewtwo’s field back dash sooner.
• Counter Attack in Burst Mode as Shadow Mewtwo X: Can now combo out of Mega SMX’s counter attack in burst mode if it either criticals, or is fully charged.
• Psywave (Vortex): Increases how much life is consumed when fully charged. Damage dealt as chip damage decreased when fully charged.
• Earthquake: The gap between attacking and blocking after this move is increased, making it more punishable/less +.
• j.Y in Field: Increased recovery when used. Cancel timing altered. More easily loses exchanges with enemy projectiles.
• Homing Attack: Same nerf as Mewtwo’s. Also does not apply to Mega SMX.
• Time in Burst Mode is reduced.

Supports:

• Croagunk: If an opponent blocks Croagunk, Croagunk reduces their recoverable life.
• Quagsire: Reduces the outward knockback of mud bomb, making enemies more easily trapped in it.
• Diglett: the recovery for summoning Diglett is increased. Diglett’s base damage and damage against guards is reduced.
• Cresselia: No longer has invincibility.

To see the full list of changes, check out the full post on PokkenArena.

It is worth nothing that the somewhat universally agreed top tiers, Mewtwo and Shadow Mewtwo, received the largest amount of nerfs. Both still seem strong, however, particularly Shadow Mewtwo, who received some interesting new combo opportunities and a better recover.

PokkenArena’s Lucario Mod Milin points out, the changes address guard breaks across the board. More importantly, perhaps, is it’s timing. He notes:

 This patch will drop on the 15th of June, a Wednesday, and also just so happens to the be the Wednesday before the weekend that St. Louis Showdown, a Pokkén Tournament Championship Series Minor Event in Illinois, and APEX, a medium to high profile tournament in New York. Both of these tournaments will each feature a great range of skill and some of the top class of Trainers in the Pokkén Tournament scene. It will be interesting to see how these competitors incorporate the changes at the highest levels, and levels of skill in between!

What do you think of the changes? Do they go far enough, or too far? What about the timing? How do you think tournaments should address the issue with the patch? Leave your comments below!

Sources: PokkenArena, Pokkén Tournament

When Deep Silver announced that it was bringing The King of Fighters XIV to Europe last month, fans breathed a sigh of relief as it meant that, unlike some other games, they would be getting KoF XIV at the same time as other regions.

Deep Silver’s Production Chief, Julien En Rab, recently spoke to Gamelove about various topic regarding the latest iteration of the game.

Regarding bringing the game to Europe, En Rab confirmed that they talked directly to SNK, without going through Atlus. He also states that, alongside bringing the game at the same time as other regions, any future updates to the game will also come at the same time.

As for localization, he confirmed that all of the text–barring special move names–will be translated, but the voices will remain in Japanese.

He goes on to mention that the game is a return to the series’ roots, focusing more on fundamentals in a way that fans of KoF 98 and 2002 will find familiar, while adding in mechanics that bring in new fans. The idea is to “get back” the fans of the older games while still cultivating new blood.

As for competition and eSports, he states that SNK is coming from an arcade background and, like a lot of companies, it’s still new to this whole eSports thing. That said, he stated that SNK has allowed them to bring the game to events such as Stunfest, and the upcoming Japan Expo in Paris. However, he notes that, for them to create an international, pro-level competition, they would have to work closely with SNK.

Of course, this is just part of what En Rab talks about in the interview. Orochinagi has an english translation of the interview, with a few added questions of their own on their site.

Source: Gamelove via Orochinagi

The latest episode from The Daily Dot eSports channel invites Peter “Flash” Susini for a “Best of III.”

After a recap of the Capcom Pro Tour, recent changes in the Pro Tour rules, and the Evolution 2016 lineup, the team interviews Flash about his fighting game origins, which stemmed from playing Dance Dance Revolution competitively. They speak in depth about Flash’s gameplan and how he approaches mindgames in tournament settings.

Recently, at Combo Breaker 2016, Flash scored second place in the tournament, losing only to EG|JWong’s Karin.

Check out the full interview, as well as a duel between Flash and Danke, below.

And be sure to check out this previous episode with Xian who discusses Capcom Pro Tour rule changes.

Source: The Daily Dot eSports

As we already know, Street Fighter V’s upcoming June update will bring with it a host of features, including the long awaited cinematic story expansion and returning character Ibuki. However, it will also bring a few other things aside from these.

Dengeki Online recently ran a bunch of brand new screenshots that showcase some of the new things happening with the game’s stages. We already know that the alternate, daytime version of the Kanzuki Estate stage is coming, however the screens show alternate versions of other stages, such as Shadaloo Base, as well.

More exciting, however, is a screenshot that shows that stage transitions–currently available only on the Bustling Side Street stage–are coming to other battlegrounds as well. The screenshot in question shows a transitioned version of the City in Chaos stage.

You can check these screenshots out in the gallery below, but do take note that these screenshots are from the Story and Extra Battle modes, so we will have to wait and see if they’ll be available in regular competitive play.

Click to view slideshow.

Source: Dengeki Online

Ahead of the mayhem down in Los Angeles next week, SNK have released the move lists for all 36 playable characters in their special E3 demo for King of Fighters XIV. This gives those lucky enough to attend this year’s E3 the time to do some research before they hit the show floor, so they can gather as much information as possible before KOF XIV is actually released.

Each move list comes as a PDF so if you are so inclined, you can download each character’s move list to have on-hand when you attend E3, ready to crush anyone who dares challenge you at the King of Fighters booth. With SNK having a presence at E3 this year, it wouldn’t be out of line to expect some news surrounding the game to surface as well.

Source: SNK Playmore

Circa eSports are steadily building themselves a killer roster of FGC names, and today they announced that they are continuing that push by investing in four Rivals of Aether players – TurquoiseColor, ProDoubleSushi, TandoriBraetus and Zam.

Each of these players are top representatives for their character and consistent tournament threats, a status quo that is not expected to change as Rivals of Aether moves towards release.

The team joins Circa’s already impressive roster of FGC players, which includes Super Smash Bros. for Wii U player 6WX, Street Fighter V’s LPN, Combo Breaker 2016’s Tekken 7 winner Anakin, 3-time 8-Bit Beatdown Champion Nicky, and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 player Jibrill.

With such a strong line up, we should probably get used to hearing a lot more about Circa in the coming months.

Source: Circa eSports