Category: Fighting Games

Earlier this week, Arc System Works provided BlazBlue fans with an early Christmas gift by announcing a forthcoming update for Central Fiction.

While there won’t be any balance changes involved, ‘Act2’ sees the addition of the brand new Speed Star Mode, which gives players the opportunity to take part in some casual entertainment and see how many enemies they can defeat in a limited amount of time. Training will also receive a number of upgrades, including the ability to set different default characters for practice and competition as well as a reset button and more dummy options.

The most interesting addition, however, was shown off in recent screenshots from Famitsu.

Apart from the aforementioned changes, BlazBlue: Central Fiction’s ‘Act2’ update will also progress the game’s story. With a possessed Nine running amok, fellow Six Heroes warrior Trinity Glassfille is set to make an appearance herself. And while this version of Trinity has previously shown up with a unique sprite, the addition of Central Fiction-style character art has led some to posit she will become playable in the near future.

BlazBlue: Central Fiction Act2 is expected to drop towards the end of January.

Source: Famitsu via Dustloop

While we’ll likely never know exact details about Nintendo’s recent Super Smash Bros. character ballot, series director Masahiro Sakurai shared an impressive figure in his most recent Famitsu column. According to translations provided by Source Gaming, around 1.8 million legitimate votes were cast in total by fans across the globe.

With such a large number of entries, this makes Bayonetta’s appearance all the more impressive. During her initial reveal, Sakurai stated that the Umbran Witch was the most requested character that actually had a chance of appearing in the game.

As for Corrin, the latest representative of the Fire Emblem franchise, Sakurai mentioned that they were initially included as a way to promote Fire Emblem Fates overseas. “I personally felt that having too many Fire Emblem characters was a problem,” the director said, again through translations by Source Gaming, “but after talking it over with the development staff and discussing logistics, I felt certain that I could make them a fun character.”

For more details concerning Cloud Strife, Corrin, and Bayonetta’s development, follow the link below to Source Gaming’s full translation.

Source: Source Gaming via NeoGAF

Earlier this month, Bandai Namco Entertainment unveiled a special controller to be released in conjunction with Pokkén Tournament on Wii U. Modeled after the unique peripheral attached to the title’s arcade cabinets, this controller allows players the opportunity to play the Pokémon fighter the way the developers originally intended.

While only announced for Japan, we now have confirmation that the HORI-designed controller will also be available in North America. A listing for the item recently appeared on Amazon, priced at $24.99 and scheduled for release on March 18, the day Pokkén launches in Japan.

As of now, a concrete release date has yet to be set for Pokkén Tournament in North America and Europe outside of a tentative Q2 2016 window, so stay tuned for further updates.

Source: Amazon via NeoGAF

Earlier this month, Bandai Namco Entertainment unveiled a special controller to be released in conjunction with Pokkén Tournament on Wii U. Modeled after the unique peripheral attached to the title’s arcade cabinets, this controller allows players the opportunity to play the Pokémon fighter the way the developers originally intended.

While only announced for Japan, we now have confirmation that the HORI-designed controller will also be available in North America. A listing for the item recently appeared on Amazon, priced at $24.99 and scheduled for release on March 18, the day Pokkén launches in Japan.

As of now, a concrete release date has yet to be set for Pokkén Tournament in North America and Europe outside of a tentative Q2 2016 window, so stay tuned for further updates.

Source: Amazon via NeoGAF

And now, your bi-annual reminder that Tekken x Street Fighter is indeed a thing.

With the recent reveal that Akuma will be joining the Tekken 7 cast in the upcoming Fated Retribution update, many were curious if Bandai Namco Entertainment’s longstanding companion to Street Fighter x Tekken was still in development. It was easy to assume that the announcement would be followed by more Street Fighter content, but a recent interview says otherwise.

“[Tekken x Street Fighter] is still in development,” senior designer Michael Murray told Gameblog when asked about the title’s status. “It’s difficult at the moment to find a period to launch the game since Tekken 7 was released. For the moment, we are focusing on Tekken 7.”

His answer falls in line with previous statements from director Katsuhiro Harada, who mentioned that the presence of both Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V puts them in an odd position when it comes to the crossover.

Tekken x Street Fighter was first unveiled in 2010 alongside Capcom’s Street Fighter x Tekken. While the latter eventually made its way to consoles in 2012, the former has been kept tightly under wraps, with only small bits of concept art available to the public. Since then, Bandai Namco has been quiet about the project, but Harada recently mentioned that it is “pretty far” into development.

Gameblog also made a point to question Murray about which platforms Tekken x Street Fighter is being developed for, seeing as their original intentions to launch on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have been invalidated by newer hardware. While his answers remained opaque, Murray did say that the game’s development is based on PC, meaning a transition to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One shouldn’t be out of the question.

Fortunately for those looking forward to an independent title, it sounds like Tekken x Street Fighter is still very much its own entity. And thanks to Akuma’s appearance in Tekken 7, we may receive an early look at how other Street Fighter characters function in the franchise’s traditional 3D fighting engine. Stay tuned for more details, true believers!

Source: Gameblog via VersusFightingTV, translations courtesy of Almakashi