Category: Fighting Games

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EG|Justin Wong Discusses Karin in Street Fighter V, Teammates and Stream Viewer Motivation with Daily Dot Esports

Shortly after winning Dreamhack Austin this past weekend, EG Justin Wong spoke with Daily Dot’s Efren Salinas about a variety of topics, including why he’s chosen to play Karin in Street Fighter V.

“I’ve been playing Karin in Alpha 3 and in Capcom Fighting Jam.  It’s been ten years since Karin came out, so I wanted to play her as my main no matter what.   Even if she was bad or good, but it just worked out.  In my opinion, I think she’s top three.”

Wong also feels that his fellow Karin players are not using her V-Skill, Meioken, which is as safe poke when Charged, and is plus on block when used during V-Trigger, as often as they should, adding that he usually can get 2 V-Triggers per round, since he uses it so much in the neutral game.

When asked what’s most responsible for  his recent success, Wong feels like it lies within his stream community.

“I think the reason why I’m doing so well is because of my stream.  I stream every day after work   I feel like I put so much time into playing, just because I’m playing with my Followers, my Subscribers, and I’m trying to help them, [and] while I’m helping them, I’m also learning more about the game.  So because I always have a strong community when I stream, it just pretty much always makes me want to come back.  Who doesn’t get tired after a day of work?  But I keep the grind going because I want everyone to get better in this community.”

The topic then shifted to Justin’s thoughts on the performances of his fellow Evil Geniuses.

“I think they’re doing pretty good,” he said.  “K-Brad has 64 Points, PR Balrog 128, probably more now like 130 or something?  So he’s doing really good.  Ricki obviously hasn’t been doing the best that she wants to perform, but me and F. Champ were telling her, “You should play Nash the whole tournament, so you can get used to playing Nash as a secondary, or as a main in the future, because her Nash is really good, but there’s no confidence in it because of tournament setting being 2 out of 3.  So she focused on that, and she made Top 8.  I think do think, in the future, that PR Balrog and Ricki will break that threshold of making 1st place sooner or later.”

Wong also gives his thoughts on Black Eye KaneBlueRiver being declared “The First of Marvel’s New Gods” by Red Bull earlier this week, after winning EVO last year, Street Fighter V sharing the same stage with Super Smash Bros. Melee and other e-Sports titles like Hearthstone and Heroes Of The Storm, SFV’s monthly DLC character releases and updates, as well as his thoughts on Invitational events, such as the recently-completed Red Bull Kumite, compared to our traditional open-bracket tournament formats.

You can see the full interview below.

Source: Daily Dot Esports

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Japanese Players Show Off Impressive Johnny Combos in Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-

Players in Japan have had their hands on the new Arcade characters in Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- for a while now. Since the release of the console demo, quick shares on new tech proliferated on the internet, especially for newcomers Johnny, Jack-O, and Jam.

Johnny in particular is widely considered as one of the strongest characters, as long as he can land a few coins. By throwing out some cash, he raises the level of his special slashing move, Mist Finer. Not only the move itself gets stronger, but Johnny can enter the stance and cancel out of it quicker to chain normal attacks faster.

Here’s a roundup of some impressive combos with Johnny:

Here, player DESIRE utilizes the new, charged Blitz Attack with Bacchus Sigh to reset combo after combo on Potemkin. When Bacchus Sigh lands on the enemy, the next Mist Finer slash can’t be blocked.

This clip shows how rewarding Johnny’s throw is. He’s one of the few characters who can combo after throw without spending resources, so this is a great, “unblockable” mix-up for him (although throws are now breakable in -REVELATOR-!). By spending some coins and meter on a Roman Cancel, he can set up a second combo with Bacchus Sigh, which then leads to a stun.

Without spending any meter, Johnny can set up Bacchus Sigh on the cornered opponent as long as he already built up a level 3 Mist Finer.

This one is rather more for show than practical reasons, since it requires level 3 Mist Finer from the start and spends all of Johnny’s coins, but it shows how much you can do with the new properties of the horizontal version of the Dust attack.

A single combo that kills Chipp, who has the lowest defense modifier in the game, but Johnny can pull it off without needing to crank up the enemy’s R.I.S.C. gauge (which increases damage taken after blocking moves). Having level 3 Mist Finer allows Johnny easier chaining of several strong normal attacks, as long as the enemy is crouching. Then the combo ends with his stylish, Burst-enhanced Overdrive, “That’ My Name!”

Are you picking up Johnny in -REVELATOR-?

Sources: DESIRE, VolhisiFo

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Canada Cup Vancouver Series 2016 Streaming Live from Vancouver, British Columbia

Canada Cup is branching off, back to its west Canada roots. To complement the original Canada Cup after its move to the more populous East Coast, Canada Cup Vancouver Series brings the action back to the West Coast. The winner of the Street Fighter V tournament also scores a flight to Canada Cup, so there’s quite a bit of incentive to compete. In addition to SFV are competitions in BlazBlue Chronophantasma, Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, Mortal Kombat XL, Pokkén Tournament, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late.

While Canada Cup Vancouver won’t be as large as its East Coast sister, it’s packed with some of the best players of North America. Some of the players competing include EG|Justin Wong, EG|Ricki Ortiz, EG|K-Brad, GoldenBoyNeo, BE|Kane Blueriver, OCV|Riceata, CCG|Air, Noel Brown and more.

If you want to check out the event, watch on Canada Cup’s Twitch channel, viewable below.

Watch live video from CanadaCup on www.twitch.tv

Results

sfv-tournament

Street Fighter V

Top 8 Losers

EG|JWong vs. EG|K-Brad
EG|Ricki Ortiz vs. Behrudy

Top 8 Losers

12M.OCV|RICEATA vs. CCG|Air
LushyLushy vs. Noel Brown

umvc3-tournament-622

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Top 8 Winners

BE|Kane Blueriver vs. GoldenBoyNeo
Gabriel Lam vs. EG|K-Brad

Top 8 Losers

NWM|Kyle P vs. Beeball
Noel Brown vs. EG|JWong

bbcpex-tournament

BlazBlue Chronophantasma EXTEND

Winners Final

Kyros vs. Clim

Losers Semi-final

VSB|Nekusonozaki vs. LoieAlucard

ggxrdr-revelator-tournament

Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-

Winners Final

WCAG|www.keeponrock.in vs. WindGodDude

Losers Semi-final

Sam Chow vs. LTL

Sources: Canada Cup

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Core-A Gaming Talks Televised Street Fighter, the Level of Play of Street Fighter Crash, and eSports vs. Grassroots in Their Latest Video

(Disclaimer: Missing Person is involved with the production of Street Fighter Crash, and is featured in the following video.  He is not affiliated in any way with Core-A Gaming outside of friendship with Gerald Lee and Guy Citron of the production team.)

With Street Fighter Crash going on currently and being televised nationwide on cable television in South Korea, the question has yet again arisen about how to keep Street Fighter grassroots or whether to take it completely eSports.  With that in mind, Gerald from Core-A Gaming explored the issue in his most recent video.  He showed some of the behind the scenes of the production of the event, as well as explored how the event itself is tied into the grassroots community that encompasses the ArcadeStream players and production team.

The video features some of the thoughts on the eSports side of the debate from famed players such as Infiltration, Xian, Xiaohai, as well as Nin, who is currently commentating for the Korean side of production and is currently putting in work to learn Street Fighter.  Gerald also gets takes from the English commentator staff, such as Ryan “Wood” Underwood, Etienne “Captain Maumau” Maurin, and Corey “Missing Person” Lanier, who discuss their thoughts of being thrust into the eSports side after commentating as a hobby for many months.

While this video neither seeks to sway you to one side or the other, it does posit some thoughts on the matter, and even ends showing that at the end of the day, the scene is still grassroots even after the glitz and glamour of being in an eSports arena fades.

Source: Core-A Gaming

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Skullgirls Tournament Standard Shifting Towards Best-of-Five Matches

Tournament standards rarely change, but they are by no means set in stone. Community decisions on changing the standard usually lean towards banning characters, choosing or banning specific stages, or more commonly which kinds of monitors and sticks/pads are acceptable. However, in recent months the Skullgirls community has slowly been shifting its mindset on how tournaments should be run altogether. The intention being to make entire tournaments run Best-of-Five matches, not simply for Grand Finals or even Top 8. In a Best-of-Five (often referred to as 3/5) set, a player must win three games to win the series.

To give a bit of backstory to this shift, it’s important to know just how quickly Skullgirls runs. There is no need to button check, thanks to push to set button select at the start of the round. Tournament mode hastens the starting of subsequent matches by backing out to controller select after unplugging any controller. There are very few cinematic events, where some other games have unskippable winposes, supers, cutscenes, or what have you in the middle of a match. The loading time for matches in comparison to most other current games also appear to be markedly quicker, making for an overall quicker experience.

All this culminates in Skullgirls tournaments often finishing ahead of time, or finishing on time despite another game cutting into the time allotted for SG. For example, at Winter Brawl X the Skullgirls TO decided to just run all of pools at the same time, resulting in two hours of bracket time being finished in about an hour.

As more players are starting to play Skullgirls and the tournaments are getting bigger, there has been a growing desire to shift to 3/5 matches. The community has been seriously having this discussion building up to this year’s Combo Breaker, with people for and against it disecting the pros and the cons.

This isn’t the first time the Skullgirls community as a whole has decided to alter the Tournament standard for their game, if you didn’t know. After the PS4 version of Skullgirls came out, the community eventually got to the point where they refused to play on PS3 setups. The main problem with PS3 was occasionally a setups with missing DLC or an out of date version would pop up, but a big reason was that the PS4 version simply looked and preformed better. After this point, most events moved with the community’s decision and provided PS4 setups, but that wasn’t the case every time. There was at least one tournament, not to name any one specifically, in which due to a  PS4’s were not provided for play. In that case, instead of playing on PS3 or making a big fuss, the Skullgirls players simply scrounged up their own setups to hold the tournament and Top 8 on.

As far as the community effort towards playing 3/5, two recent experiments were held with this new standard in place. Northwest Majors VIII and XenoEncore were two tournaments held in April, and both were sort of guinea pigs to test how 3/5 would run throughout a whole event. The majority of players and spectators from both events seem to believe that 3/5 ran amazingly, and look forward to having this trend continue in the future. That future currently being Combo Breaker, which has already aligned their rules to accommodate 3/5 for Skullgirls.

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KAKUTOP League 4 Streaming Live

Just a few weeks after the completion of its French edition, KAKUTOP is back with the full European edition of its invitational league. KAKUTOP League is a great opportunity to watch Europe’s best battle it out to determine the best all-around player. And with this being the first KAKUTOP to useStreet Fighter V, you don’t want to miss out.

As usual, play begins with two groups of five players. Each player in the group faces off against the other players in a best-of-five set. The top players from each group will then proceed to finals, where matches are best-of-nine, with deuce rules.

Group A

  • Alioune
  • YP|Valmaster
  • LLL|MBR
  • PXP|Problem X
  • BX3|Duppsko

Group B

  • RB|Luffy
  • Melty|Will2pac
  • CCL
  • Perilous|Packz
  • BX3|Phenom

You can watch KAKUTOP complete with Ken Bogard’s fast-paced French commentary on Gaming Live’s Twitch channel, but if you’re more interested in English, check out Unequalled Media’s English restream.

UnequalledMedia (English)

Watch live video from UnequalledMedia on www.twitch.tv

GamingLive_TV1 (French)

Watch live video from GamingLive_TV1 on www.twitch.tv

Results

sfv-tournament

Street Fighter V

Group Stage

Group A

Problem X and Valmaster advance to the finals stage. Alioune will play against Packz for the last spot in the finals stage.

1. PXP|Problem X (M. Bison)
2. YP|Valmaster (Chun-Li)
3. Alioune (Chun-Li)
4. BX3|Duppsko (Ryu, Birdie)
5. LLL|MBR (Ryu)

Rank Player Name Team Wins Losses Game ±
1 Problem X PXP 3 1 +4
2 Valmaster YP 3 1 +5
3 Alioune   2 2 +2
4 Duppsko BX3 1 3 -7
5 MBR LLL 1 3 -4
Group A Match Log

Group B

Luffy and Phenom advance to the finals stage. Packz will play against Alioune for the last spot in the finals stage.

1. RB|Luffy (R. Mika)
2. BX3|Phenom (M. Bison, Necalli)
3. Perilous|Packz (Karin)
4. Melty|Will2pac (Laura)
5. CCL (Chun-Li)

Rank Player Name Team Wins Losses Game ±
1 Luffy RB 4 0 +9
2 Phenom BX3 2 2 +1
3 Packz Perilous 2 2 ±0
4 Wll2pac Melty 2 2 ±0
5 CCL 0 4 -10
Group B Match Log

Source: Gaming Live

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One Piece: Burning Blood Demo Available in North America and Europe

Fans of the One Piece anime are in for a treat that could reignite their interest in video game adaptations of the series. Bandai Namco announced that One Piece: Burning Blood demo, which already launched in Japan last month, is now available in North America and Europe. PS4 and Xbox One users can get started on offline battles to determine who’s the King of the Pirates with four characters: Luffy, Ace, Franky, and Aokiji.

There’s also a new trailer showcasing the Pirate Flag Battle mode, in which players compete across nodes on a map, sailing to conquer more and more islands. By defeating CPU and other competitors, the victor receives points that culminate in seasonal rankings. The fighter with the highest score at the end of a season receives a special title.

The trailer also showcases a variety of other modes and fighters that make into the game, which will also comes out on the PC and PS Vita on May 31st.

Source: One Piece Burning Blood via Gematsu

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Skarmand Teaches How to Use Double’s Vortex Loop in Skullgirls 2nd Encore Tutorial

Resets are a big part of Skullgirls 2nd Encore. One of the more powerful tactics as far as resets come is putting the opponent in a repeatable loop, ending with them in the air. This tactic prevents many mashed reversals, forcing the opponent to honestly deal with the mixup before getting out.

Skarmand, aka Liam, recently won Northwest Majors VIII, but still found the time to put together this basic Double vortex covering many of the opponents options. If you find yourself playing Double and getting mashed out by supers on the ground, try putting them in the air and force them to play honest.

Skarmand isn’t a stranger to tutorial videos. He has many tutorials up on his channel covering things like how to properly punish unsafe tactics, and how to punish moves that seem unpunishable.

Source: Skarmand’s Youtube

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Pig Of The Hut Explains How to Handle Tarkatan Alien’s Rekka Pressure in Mortal Kombat XL

In his latest episode of The Armory, Pig Of The Hut explains how to deal with a character who’s caused quite a large amount of discussion in the NRS community as of late, Tarkatan Alien.  Though he was nerfed in the game’s last balance patch back in March, with players like cR Dragon winning nine consecutive ESL tournaments with him, the Xenomorph is still considered a problem by many.

Using what he calls “The Rule of 13,” which means using Armored attacks that have 13 frames of startup or less, you can perform an Option Select on the F134 string canceled  into Rekkas, if the Alien player chooses to delay them in an attempt to make them safer, which will guarantee you a full-combo punish against them every time you block correctly, regardless if they stagger the first or the second hit of the Tarkatan Rush.

Pig then demonstrates how to exploit the gap between his Tail Flip, which is generally safe at -7 on block, but can immediately be canceled into his Tail Slam, which is punishable at -17 on block, but has Armor on it.  Using Kenjutsu Kenshi, Pig is able to consistently full-combo punish with the 13-frame Double Slap.

If you find yourself lacking Meter however, Pig suggests Backdashing the initial Rekka, blocking the follow-ups on reaction.  Though it is a risk for someone like Kenshi, if your character has a faster backdash, such as Kano, Sub-Zero or Quan Chi, this is a much more effective tactic against him.

In closing, Pig mentions Tarkatan’s near-half-screen mixup with his Low-hitting Tail Snag and Tail Flip, as well as his Low Kut Command Normal that can lead into his Tarkatan Rush mixups.  Unfortunately, dealing with this will require a hard read of just jumping in for an attempted punish, or a full-screen punish if your character possesses the tools to do so.  You can also head over to his thread on Test Your Might, which has a list of character-specific punishes against Tarkatan for a wide variety of cast members that can utilize the “Rule of 13.”

Pig also promises a second video outlining how to deal with the “Dragon Serpent’s” Acidic and Konjurer Variations.

Source: Pig of the Hut via Test Your Might

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Pig Of The Hut Explains How to Handle Tarkatan Alien’s Rekka Pressure in Mortal Kombat XL

In his latest episode of The Armory, Pig Of The Hut explains how to deal with a character who’s caused quite a large amount of discussion in the NRS community as of late, Tarkatan Alien.  Though he was nerfed in the game’s last balance patch back in March, with players like cR Dragon winning nine consecutive ESL tournaments with him, the Xenomorph is still considered a problem by many.

Using what he calls “The Rule of 13,” which means using Armored attacks that have 13 frames of startup or less, you can perform an Option Select on the F134 string canceled  into Rekkas, if the Alien player chooses to delay them in an attempt to make them safer, which will guarantee you a full-combo punish against them every time you block correctly, regardless if they stagger the first or the second hit of the Tarkatan Rush.

Pig then demonstrates how to exploit the gap between his Tail Flip, which is generally safe at -7 on block, but can immediately be canceled into his Tail Slam, which is punishable at -17 on block, but has Armor on it.  Using Kenjutsu Kenshi, Pig is able to consistently full-combo punish with the 13-frame Double Slap.

If you find yourself lacking Meter however, Pig suggests Backdashing the initial Rekka, blocking the follow-ups on reaction.  Though it is a risk for someone like Kenshi, if your character has a faster backdash, such as Kano, Sub-Zero or Quan Chi, this is a much more effective tactic against him.

In closing, Pig mentions Tarkatan’s near-half-screen mixup with his Low-hitting Tail Snag and Tail Flip, as well as his Low Kut Command Normal that can lead into his Tarkatan Rush mixups.  Unfortunately, dealing with this will require a hard read of just jumping in for an attempted punish, or a full-screen punish if your character possesses the tools to do so.  You can also head over to his thread on Test Your Might, which has a list of character-specific punishes against Tarkatan for a wide variety of cast members that can utilize the “Rule of 13.”

Pig also promises a second video outlining how to deal with the “Dragon Serpent’s” Acidic and Konjurer Variations.

Source: Pig of the Hut via Test Your Might