Category: Fighting Games

This year’s NorCal Regionals will experiment with a new way to handle emergency registration, organizer John Choi announced this morning. Folks who register for Street Fighter V, Ultra Street Fighter IV, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on-site will be placed into separate pools without seeding or player limit, forcing them to face other late registrants in order to make it out.

Their reasons are three-fold. First, this makes the process transparent, heeding complaints from their previous outing. It also keeps late registrations from throwing chaos into an established bracket, meaning pool assignments won’t change from their first publishing apart from fixing errors. And finally, the organizers hope to deter emergency registration in favor of the online process, which will help brackets run smoothly at the event itself.

“Note that online pools are typically 16 or 32 man brackets and NCR historically receives over 50 emergency registrations, including many top players,” Choi explained in his official statement. “So it is your choice if you want to wait to do emergency registration, pay more money, and gamble on this final bracket being smaller in number or lacking seeded players.”

Pools for the three aforementioned titles will all run on the same day to avoid players gaming the system and waiting for an easier bracket. Adjustments will be made should the tournament receive zero emergency registrations, but we all know how unlikely that is.

Of course, this also has its downsides, notably for community members who can’t reliably plan for a tournament months in advance. Coupled with the already steep costs of emergency registration, this move could likely prohibit some players from attending the tournament altogether.

Choi also addressed last year’s biggest fiasco, which forced them to replay a portion of the Ultra Street Fighter IV bracket after noting that the game wasn’t updated properly. NorCal Regionals will be training every staff member in how to confirm a title’s version and double-checking before finals. Street Fighter in particular is set to run entirely digital on PlayStation 4 to alleviate chances of the mistake happening again.

NorCal Regionals 2016 is scheduled for March 25-27 in Sacramento, California. More details can be found here.

Source: John Choi

Back when much of Street Fighter V’s cast was still a mystery, widely circulated rumors mentioned that a character named Zen would debut alongside Laura and Rashid. As new developments came along, many assumed that the newcomer became F.A.N.G, but a new piece of concept art from e-Capcom dispels that notion.

According to brief details, a character named Zen was indeed created Street Fighter V. Although we now know he hailed from India, it’s still unclear at what point in development he was cut.

【#日刊ストＶ】ちまたで一瞬話題となった「ゼン」というインド人を開発が面白がって描いたイラスト。登場しません。（開発秘話）#SFVhttps://t.co/t4VWDKSwKT pic.twitter.com/ROZhW4Nf3g

— イーカプコン (@e_capcom) February 3, 2016

Could Zen make an appearance in Street Fighter V sometime down the line? That remains to be seen, so for now, feel free to let us know what you think of his design in the comments.

Street Fighter V is set to launch on PlayStation 4 and PC on February 16. An additional round of downloadable characters will release periodically starting in March, with a second helping planned for sometime after that.

Source: e-Capcom via Laban

Street Fighter V is set to be the first numbered installment of the game to feature a heavy emphasis on its own story. Aside from individual character stories, the game is also set to receive a free cinematic expansion in June.

It’s that increased emphasis on story that’s the main focus of GamesBeat‘s new interview with producer Yoshinori Ono.

According to Ono, part of the bigger emphasis on story comes from feedback from the fans. They’ve recognized that a large subset of fans have been wanting to see the games give the same focus on story as the series tertiary material, such as 2014’s hit web series Assassin’s Fist.

As part of this, Ono also admits that work on the cinematic story expansion only started during the summer of 2015. This is why it’s coming as a free update in June and not at launch. That said, he says that the individual character story prologues, illustrated by legendary Capcom artist Bengus, that come at launch will lead into the main narrative.

Ono also talks about Street Fighter V’s place in the series’ chronology.  As previously revealed, Street Fighter V is supposed to bridge the gap between Street Fighter IV and III. He compares this to Star Wars, with how the release order of the movies  in that series don’t match the chronology, but more complex.

Of course, this is just part of what they talk about in the interview. You can read up on this and other topics in the full interview by following the link below.

Source: GamesBeat via NeoGAF

If you’ve been lucky enough to land beta access to Mortal Kombat X’s GGPO-inspired netcode testing, you may not be pleased with regard to the paltry handful of pugilists at your disposal.

Not to worry, though, as NetherRealm Studios recently increased the number of characters that are ready to brawl within the confines of their shiny new netcode. This list of new characters includes Kung Jin, Kung Lao, Shinnok, Cassie Cage, Kitana, Kenshi, Raiden and Kano. While still not quite the full roster, these additions will certainly bring more variety to the online competition.

If you’ve yet to signed up to participate in the beta test, it’s not too late! You can follow this link to the official registration page and begin the arduous task of inbox monitoring until the Golden Ticket to (potentially) lag-free Fatalities arrives.

Source: NetherRealm Studios