Twitch Names Daigo Umehara Their First Global Brand Ambassador

Following his recent partnership with Red Bull, Daigo Umehara has now announced on his daigothebeastv Twitch stream that he has joined forces with Twitch, becoming their very first “Global Brand Ambassador”.

His new position will involve promoting Twitch all over the world, beginning in Asia–and this will not be limited to the realm of fighting games, but will include gaming in general. He will be traveling to non-FGC-specific expos and conventions, having a particularly large role at the upcoming Twitch Con. He will apparently be entering future tournaments under the tag Twitch|Daigo, but it is unclear how this will affect his listing in the Capcom Pro Tour. No mention has been made if there is any change to his arrangement with Red Bull.

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Information on this development is still sparse, but we can certainly expect to see more of Daigo in his new role in the future.

Source: @Twitch; daigothebeastv; EventHubs

ZeRo Lists His Personal 1.1.6 Patch Top Tiers for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

To address changes to the game brought by patch 1.1.6, Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios from Team SoloMid posted this video listing his personal top tier list for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. This video is the first installment of a promised series; he breaks down in depth how he feels his top eleven fighters stack up against each other in the updated game state, based on his observations and personal opinion.

Interestingly, ZeRo’s choices for his top three Smash slots are all non-Nintendo characters, including a certain ex-member of SOLDIER–and ZeRo has already spoken out about how strong he feels Ryu is in the game.

TSM|ZeRo recently posted videos offering Smash 4 players counter-strategies to defeat Little Mac and Link.

Source: ZeRo

Step Your Game Up FGC Panel at FanimeCon 2016 feat. Mama Dao, Hypefiend, Alex Myers and Pavocado

Every Memorial Day weekend, one of the most popular anime and gaming conventions, FanimeCon, takes place in San Jose, California. An FGC Q&A panel, titled “Step Your Game Up,” took place at the most recent event. The featured panelists were Showdown Community Manager, Carolyn “MamaDao” Dao, Ronin eSports’ Alex Myers, Street Fighter V competitor and commentator, Anthony “Hypefiend” Nguyen and top R. Mika player, Pavo “Pavocado” Miskic.

Some of the questions by the audience members included asking about keeping composure after losing to opponents in a tournament, how to practice combos properly, how to improve if you can’t travel to tournaments, and dealing with different player environments when traveling from out of state. You can view all of this one-hour panel in the two videos below.

Oh, and there is some NSFW language used in these videos so watch at your own discretion.

Source: Hi Joser, photos c/o Rose Sylvestre

Daisuke Ishiwatari and Mori Toshimichi Talk to Forbes About Their Game Design Styles

Ever wondered what inspires the (wonderfully) crazy artist, composer, and game designer Daisuke Ishiwatari to come up with the Guilty Gear characters and universe? In a recent article, Forbes interviewed Ishiwatari and Mori Toshimichi, the second being the creator of the BlazBlue series.

The two creators speak at length about their path to fighting game design. Ishiwatari’s ideas partially originated from Street Fighter and Garou: Mark of the Wolves, which were the two prominent fighting games around that time. Toshimichi, in turn, looked to Ishiwatari as a mentor in many ways, and followed his principles of making the fighting games “as flashy as possible.”

The Arc System Works designers speak in detail about their creation process and aspects they focus on while developing. Read the entire script over at Forbes.

Source: Forbes, tip from Dan

Step Up Your Slayer Game with Optimized Punishes in Guilty Gear XRD -REVELATOR-

Slayer has historically been one of the hardest hitters in the Guilty Gear series. Tanabata, a Japanese Slayer player, is helping continue this trend by exploring the ability to spend his Burst to power up one of his Overdrives. This new mechanic to -REVELATOR- adds invincibility and damage to an already terrifying move: Slayer’s Dead on Time.

While these punishes utilize anywhere from 50% to 100% tension, many of them don’t use it until the end of the combo, and could easily be left out.

Stopping a common Millia pressure string:

Punishing Sin’s jump Dust (while Sin cancels to overdrive here, this concept will beat any cancel he uses):

Punishing Axl’s DP on block, sometimes a difficult task for players:

Blowing through Axl’s most common blockstring:

Stopping Axl’s obnoxious full-screen presence in Sparrowhawk Stance:

Interrupting one of Zato’s most common pressure strings:

Stopping Faust before he cancels into his sweep:

Punishing Jack-O’s 2H (Crouching Heavy Slash) – her multi-hit normal:

In a similar vein, we have a fellow Slayer from Japan (TTK|Moga) who’s happy to share some situational combos.

Stopping Sol’s left/right mixup where he airdashes over you as a Gunflame approaches:

Winning the ‘Blitz Shield battle’ when you and your opponent keep going back and forth using Blitz Shield:

Source: TanabataHeidern Moga0425

TheoryFighter Teaches the Basics of Understanding Street Fighter V Hitboxes

Underneath the glossy exterior of every fighting game lies a very basic skeleton. At the end of the day,  no matter how pretty your chosen avatar model might be, Ryu is a square creating smaller squares that move towards another square.

Everything that seems complex, be it art, music, or fighting games, has a foundation to its construction. To help guide you through this idea, TheoryFighter has created a great video exploring and explaining Street Fighter V’s hitboxes. He knocks out hitboxes, hurtboxes, throw boxes, proximity guard, and more in under 5 minutes.

There are a number of ways to approach looking at hitboxes, though none come prepackaged with Street Fighter. PC users may enjoy their own methods, but if you don’t want to go through the trouble of meddling with your PC copy of the game, there are alternatives.

Dantarion has put together two very interesting hitbox viewers. The first one is fairly straight forward hitbox viewer that shows you all relevant data towards your characters and its moves. For the truly adventurous, however, he has a comparison viewer that lets you put different moves against each other to see how they interact in a controlled environment outside of the game.

Sources: TheoryFighter, Dantarion

Meet Don-Chan, New Shadaloo Soldiers, and More Classic Characters in Street Fighter V Profile Art

The Japanese CFN Portal continues to add new character profile art, bringing both classic characters and newcomers into the Street Fighter V universe. With all the buzz about Ibuki’s impending addition to the Street Fighter V roster, we mustn’t forget about her loyal partner in mischief, the tanuki Don-Chan! We also are introduced to a pair of new Shadaloo specialized soldiers, Arcane and Blade.

Ibuki & Don-chan

Ibuki & Don-chan

Arcane
Blade

Arcane; Blade

More classic characters have been added as well: Blanka finally emerges from the jungle, and we get a look at not only T. Hawk, but also his even-tougher-looking father, A. Hawk.

Blanka
T. Hawk
A. Hawk

Blanka; T. Hawk; A. Hawk

The addition of classic Street Fighter III and Final Fight characters continues with Remy, Necro, and Hugo getting new profile art, as well as Cody, Poison, and the Mad Gear kidnapper Damned.

Remy
Necro
Hugo

Remy; Necro; Hugo

Cody
Poison
Damned

Cody; Poison; Damned

The Tanden Engine-wielding Street Fighter IV antagonist Seth has also not been forgotten.

Seth

Seth

Check out more of the Shadaloo Activity Report‘s classic characters, R.Mika’s rivals, or the Matsuda family tree.

Source: CFN Portal

The Cast of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Slays the Demon in this 100% Combo Video

Akuma has always been the quintessential glass cannon of the Street Fighter series, and with the lowest stun of any cast member in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, he can quickly find himself at the wrong end of a round-ending combo.

In this new combo video, rKf attempts the “Gouki 100% Challenge,” attempting to kill Akuma in a single combo with every character in the game. While not every character is capable of dealing out lethal damage in a single series of hits, the video showcases some of 3rd Strike’s more interesting juggle properties and damage opportunities.

To see more of the innovative combos that inspired the Gouki 100% Challenge, visit rKf’s YouTube channel.

Source: rKf

Witness the Glory of Russia in this High Resolution Street Fighter V Art

The one and only Soviet Union-raised combatant in Street Fighter, famous for his Double Lariat move, is instantly recognizable by his outrageously bulging muscle and red trunks. The Red Cyclone doesn’t give his opponents a lot of time to admire him before they receive the Screw Pile Driver.

Character concept sculptor David Giraud recently shared a few high-quality screenshots of the fighter he worked on for Capcom. “It was a blast working on him,” Giraud wrote on ArtStation.com. “Working on Street Fighter is the ultimate dream.”

Check out the gallery below to take a look at the art for yourself.

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david-giraud-zangief

Source: ArtStation.com

Capcom Addresses Ibuki’s Delay, Input Lag, Rage Quitting In First Street Fighter V Development Update

Recently, Capcom promised that they would be more communicative about the development of Street Fighter V’s post-launch content. Now, they’re taking their first steps toward following up on that with a new development update post on Capcom-Unity.

In a post titled “Updates on Street Fighter V Development Vol. 1,” Neidel “Haunts” Crisan addresses a few important issues: Ibuki’s delay, the game’s inherent input lag, and rage quitting.

In Ibuki’s delay, Haunts reiterates the fact that she was originally supposed to be released at the end of May. However, as previously stated, they had to delay her to the end of June, making her release alongside the cinematic story mode instead.

In addition to this, Haunts once again admits that they could have been more communicative about the situation. While they had planned to talk about the delay this week, he states that it’s clear that they should have been “more upfront with everyone about the timing.”

Furthermore, he states that Capcom will be targeting quality above all else which may result in additional delays in content deployment. However, he promises that they will be more transparent with these updates.

Regarding the input lag that the game has, Haunts has acknowledged that they are aware of the issue and have communicated it to their development team. Said team is looking into the issue and he states that they’ll let the community know when they find out more.

Finally, in regards to rage quitting, Haunts is happy to report that, with the latest changes to the system, the amount of players who leave in the middle of a match has been brought down by 60%. While this is an improvement, he states that it is clear that they still have a lot of work to do and that players should expect further measures to address the problem.

Haunts ends the blog by stating that they do have more news and information to share in the coming days and weeks.

Source: Capcom-Unity, with a tip from NightmareSteam