Alex isn’t the only excitement to hit the fighting game community this morning. SNK Playmore has just released their latest King of Fighters XIV trailer, officially announcing the return of three elder statesmen: Tung Fu Rue, Choi Bounge, and Chin Gentsai.
While the clawed and drunken fighting styles employed by the latter pair are likely familiar to many fans, the reemergence of Tung Fu Rue is more of a surprise. While the transforming Hakkyokuseiken master has only been playable in a single King of Fighters title so far, he fills an important role in the overall narrative as the instructor of Geese Howard and Jeff Bogard.
As for how this fits into the possible leaked roster, nothing much as has changed. Tung himself was perhaps one of the biggest standouts, but Choi’s prison outfit also gels with the redesign he and Chang were rumored to have received.
King of Fighters XIV is set to launch for PlayStation 4 sometime this year.
Whether you’ve seen Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-‘s Millia in the hands of an intermediate player or top competitors, you’ve likely got a pretty good idea of what kind of combos to expect. Tired of seeing the same old Millia, Rele of Vienna’s Virtual Dojo dedicated hours to finding some needlessly stylish ways to deal damage with the veteran Guilty Gear cast member.
Instead of being a sometimes-tool, Chroming Rose takes center stage in many of these combos, but Rele makes use of other tactics as well. They use Roman Cancels to create stylish side-swaps, they perform loops to push grounded opponents all the way from one corner to the other, and sling multiple hairpins in the same combo thanks to timing everything around being able to successfully retrieve the pin between tosses.
If you’re looking for a refreshing take on Millia, be sure to give the video a look.
Wednesday Night Fights returns to the eSports Arena in Santa Ana, California tonight for the long-awaited first installment of their 2016 season. Street Fighter V has graced the community since their time off, and will join Mortal Kombat X and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U as the main titles on display for the next few months.
But that doesn’t mean those are the only games they’ll be featuring. Attendees can also expect community-driven efforts for Super Smash Bros. Melee, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Killer Instinct, Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, BlazBlue: Chronophantasma EXTEND, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, and Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late.
You can catch all the action by tuning into the live streams below or heading on over to their respective Twitch channels.
Taking a break from his extensive Shadowloo Bootcamp series, Ricardo “Mono” Roman returns today with two videos dedicated to M. Bison’s copious reset options in Street Fighter V. The dictator has seen his fair share of coverage since the game was released, but these setups should carry players looking to step up their skills even further.
In the videos below, you’ll be treated to strategies that involve EX Psycho Inferno, V-Trigger, headstomp crossups, and much more, all in the pursuit of trapping an opponent in another lengthy combo. Check them out and see what you can learn.
This week’s installment of Next Level Battle Circuit is now streaming live courtesy of Team Spooky. As usual, the event is being broadcast from its namesake, Next Level Arcade, in New York City. Tonight, they’ll continue competition in the newly released Street Fighter V.
Some of the players you can expect in attendance tonight include PIE|Sci, TA|Moons, Rico Suave, F3|Sleep, LI Joe, OG|Shine, AG|Native Impact, Chris Hu, TS|Sabin, BDG|Tinshi, Javits, DaFeetLee, F3|Alucard, and Zeus, among others. The full bracket is viewable on Challonge.
If you would like to check out these weekly tournaments, you can head on over to Next Level Arcade and take part every Wednesday. The address has been included below.
4013 8th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11232
The stream is currently live below, but you can also visit Twitch to join the chat. Full brackets will be made available through Challonge.
The folks over at VGBootCamp recently went live with another installment of Smash @ Xanadu from Xanadu Games in Baltimore, Maryland. These weekly broadcasts provide a great look at the region’s Smash community, and tonight’s installment will feature competition in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
If you’re interested in some Smash Bros. action, be sure to tune in. The stream is live below, but you can also head on over to Twitch to join the chat.
You may recall that a recent set of fan renders brought Street Fighter III favorite Q into the world of three-dimensions, but it looks like those were just the beginning. Thanks to a brand new mod for the PC version of Street Fighter V, it’s now possible to strip Bison of his skin and given him a new, (perhaps) more powerful body based on the 3rd Strike representative.
Since this is simply a skin swap, Q sadly doesn’t come equipped with his signature slaps and kicks, but it’s still a pretty nifty mod. We’ve included a handful of screenshots in the slideshow below, so feel free to let us know what you think.
It’s no secret that Patrick Miller, a past contributor to Shoryuken, has been on the forefront of providing fighting game knowledge for newcomers and veterans. Hell, he dropped a whole book on the subject back in 2014. It’s really good, too.
Following up on previous subjects like general improvement strategies and learning from a loss, Pat recently shared a handful of tips for quickly learning to play Street Fighter V’s Laura. He’s graciously given us permission to republish it in full, so check it out below or in its original form on Medium.
When Street Fighter V came out, I decided I wanted to play the field a bit and learn the game from all angles before deciding on a main character — I don’t really care about trying to optimize for tournament performance, and I figure since we’re probably going to be playing SFV for several years, it’s worth getting a broad base of experience early on. So I started with F.A.N.G. the first week, Ryu for the second, and I picked up Laura for this last week, but this time, I decided to document my journey a bit better.
Keep in mind that this is by no means a comprehensive guide on being a Laura master. Think of this as a guide to help you get started learning her basics and giving you a foundation to work from.
How I learned Laura
First off: Analyzing replays in CFN is quite possibly the most powerful learning tool we’ve ever had in fighting games, so I highly recommend doing a lot of that! I streamed some sessions where I studied VRyu and AutoMattock (aka JiBbo)’s replays, and the VODs are embedded below. The AutoMattock one was especially cool because he actually stopped by the stream chat while we were going and helped out!
Of course, there are lots of good Laura guides out there currently. These are the ones I used:
Dandy J’s Laura Mixup Starter Guide was super helpful for seeing some of the potential applications of her meaty fireball and crossup/crossunder mixups.
Bafael’s Laura BnB Guide is useful for learning some of her basic strings and interactions between moves, so once you feel comfortable enough with her moves to start working on combos, definitely check it out. There’s also a video version here.
AutoMattock is working on a Laura tutorial and has a few commentated match videos on his YouTube channel, so check it out and give him a follow. Also, you can find his CFN replays under player name AutoMattockMusic.
And if you want to swap tips with other Laura players, ShowdownGG’s Carolyn (MamaDao) Dao started a Facebook group. It’s closed, though, so you’ll have to ask for permission to join.
You should play Laura if…
Laura feels very similar in play pattern and toolset to Makoto from Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike; her movement is fast and explosive, and she has some pretty powerful damage opportunities with her frame traps, throws, and high/low/left/right mixups, but she’s really only scary when she’s standing next to you with a frame advantage.
She has a lot of tools to get close, but they’re all situational and dangerous, so a smart Laura player will be patient with footsies, fireballs, and vigilant anti-airs while she waits for an opportunity to close the gap. You can play wild and reckless to get in, but good players will be looking for every opportunity to knock you down and put pressure on you — and Laura’s wakeup tools aren’t particularly good. So if you play her because you like the in-close shenanigans, know that you’re going to have to play patiently to get there. (Interestingly enough, this is the part of Laura’s design that I like because it really evokes the way great Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighters win: Methodical, patient, gradual advantages, then a quick finish when the opportunity presents itself.)
As far as execution goes, she doesn’t appear to really be one of those characters that locks a lot of power behind difficult execution gates (she doesn’t even have any Dragon Punch inputs in her kit, which is nice). However, once you get past the basics, your damage output will require you to learn how to link her normals, especially off counter hits and crush counters.
8 Laura newbie tips
1. Be aggressive with her standing LP and LK; they both combo into her QCF+LP Bolt Charge, which gives her the frame advantage (+2) to continue pressuring if it hits, and is safe (with a slight disadvantage (-2) on block. Once you hit the QCF+LP Bolt Charge, you can go for a command grab (which can’t be teched but can be jumped out of), a regular grab (which can be teched and jumped out of, but you can recover from your whiffed grab in time to punish their jump with an anti-air), or more jab pressure to beat their counter-throw or poke attempt and combo into another LP Bolt Charge.
2. Laura’s V-Skill is probably the most interesting part about her kit. Use her dash to constantly change your range, and occasionally throw out the overhead to punish people who try to react to her dash somehow. You can use the dash to cancel her normals, meaning you can dash forward to catch people with a surprise grab, or dart out and bait a counter-poke. Also, if you hold the V-Skill buttons down after a dash, Laura will immediately go into the overhead, which is handy (V-Skill backwards into overhead can beat people trying to chase you down and poke). Also, her V-Trigger buffs her dash and her overhead, so don’t be afraid to activate it just to give yourself more opportunities to get in!
3. I know I’ve said this already, but be patient. Take your time counterpoking. Throw some fireballs out at midscreen just because. You can do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time, so get comfortable waiting for that time to come. And if you’re patient and they jump at you, you should be ready to anti-air with standing MP or her QCF+HP Bolt Charge and then you get momentum for free!
4. When you’re being pressured, be comfortable blocking for a while. Getting thrown three or four times isn’t the worst thing in the world. Be ready to counter-poke with standing LP at close range, standing LK a little bit further out, and standing MK a little further from that, but don’t get caught pressing buttons too much.
5. Get comfortable using her LK command grab after a connected QCF+LP Bolt Charge, a standing LK (on hit or block), and after her MP, MK target combo (on hit only), but don’t get too comfortable. Once they start jumping out, switch to your other pressure options for a little while. You’ll need to pay attention to which of your many damage options they’re most concerned about at all times, or else you won’t be able to convert her pressure into damage.
6. Her mixups are nice at midscreen, but she gets real scary once she puts you in the corner. Be careful about risking your screen position for crossups, as it’s usually more advantageous to slowly much them into the corner meat grinder. This means that you shouldn’t go for, say, meaty jump-in crossups after a knockdown unless it also puts them closer to the corner, and you should make sure you’re using the right P or K followup to her QCF+MP Bolt Charge (P makes you switch sides, K stays on the same side) to push them ever closer.
7. Use her fireballs. EX Fireball in particular is really good for covering pressure strings up close (cancel pokes into EX Fireball to stay all up in their grill), forcing them to block after a knockdown, and just letting you walk forward. One EX Fireball stays on the screen for like 3 seconds and goes for like a half screen, so even if they never get hit by it, you get a lot of screen space and pressure for one EX stock. Also, lots of people feel compelled to do something stupid when they see that fireball (like jump over it or DP through it) so be ready for that.
8. Her standing MP and crouching MP are great pokes that can lead to damage; I will cancel them into her fireball for pressure, or her QCF+LP Bolt Charge if I’m not sure whether the poke will hit, or her QCF+MP Bolt Charge if I know it’ll hit (say, hit confirming it off a jump-in or something). Her crouching MK is also very good; even though it feels a little slow, I consistently manage to catch people with the tip of its range, and then I cancel it into QCF+LP Bolt Charge to start the shenanigans.
Street Fighter V was North America’s fifth most downloaded game on PlayStation Network for the month of February, a recent PlayStation Blog post reports. While exact figures weren’t provided, the chart in question counts download numbers instead of total revenue, putting Capcom’s flagship fighter in same company as indie darlings Firewatch and Rocket League, Far Cry Primal, and Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Europe’s charts, where Street Fighter V failed to even break the top twenty. This matches its shaky start in Japan, which saw the title top out at a surprisingly low 46,836 units sold in the first week. For comparison, the vanilla release of Street Fighter IV on PlayStation 3 sold double that in a similar amount of time when it launched in 2009.
But it’s not all bad news, as Street Fighter V has seen relatively large ownership figures on PC when compared to PlayStation 4, with numbers surpassing 100,000 in the first week of its release and a total that currently sits at 136,123 as we near the one month mark.
While numbers are easy to compare, the community Street Fighter V was introduced to last month is much different than the one Street Fighter IV saw in 2009. The subsequent fighting game resurgence has made it so that no one game is entirely responsible for carrying the genre, which may have contributed to the rather lackluster numbers Street Fighter V has pulled thus far. More concrete figures should be available when Capcom releases their fourth quarter financial statements later this month, so stay tuned.
Picking an appropriate color for your fighter of choice is a decision not to be taken lightly. Assuming you stick to one palette, those bright duds become a visual representation of you as a player.
If you’re a hopeful Rash main looking to make this tough decision before Killer Instinct’s third season launch, you’ll be pleased to know that the developers recently released high resolution screenshots of every recolor the upcoming Battletoads representative will have, including a particularly stylish rainbow variant.
You can take a gander at all of these glorious color offerings for both original and retro Rash in the slideshow below. Feel free to let us know which is your favorite in the comments.
With the upcoming Killer Instinct update just around the corner, we’ll likely be seeing similar alternate color options for the rest of the newcomers quite soon. Rash will be taking his place alongside the rest of the Killer Instinct roster when Season 3 launches on March 29.
