We knew that Lucas would be joining the cast of the latest Super Smash Bros. title this month, but it wasn’t until earlier this morning that we had an exact date. According to Nintendo of America, fans of the Mother 3 protagonist can look forward to picking up this returning character on June 14. This release date applies to both the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game, so there will be no waiting for either system.
Keep in mind that Lucas will not be legal for tournament play at Evolution 2015 due to the short period between his release and the tournament dates; however, in the event that Lucas does come paired with any sort of balance changes or general system changes in the form of a patch, the tournament will be using those changes.
Upon release, Lucas will run you $3.99 for an individual purchase or $4.99 if you want to unlock him on both platforms.
Vesper Arcade has done a great job with breaking down the each and every bit of Street Fighter V footage that’s been released so far, soo it’s no surprise that they’re back with another video, this time for the M. Bison trailer that was released last month.
One of the very first things that Vesper notes is the changes to the in-game lighting, comparing the bits from Charlie’s pre-fight intro shown in his own trailer and Bison’s reveal. Specifically, they note how the game is now brighter and has more detail not just on the characters, but even the background. Another graphical change they note is how EX moves now have a more pronounced yellow and red flash.
As for Bison himself, Vesper goes over alot of the changes that are shown in the trailer. He seems to have a good mix of new and existing normals, including one that looks like his Psycho Vanish from Capcom vs. SNK 2. More notable is that Bison’s crouching hard kick slide now appears to launch opponents into the air on counter-hit.
Another thing that Vesper touches on is Bison’s teleport. There’s been alot of speculation on whether the teleport shown in the trailer is a special move or if it’s his forward dash, making it similar to the dashes of some Darkstalkers characters. Vesper states that the trailer itself doesn’t seem to conclusively point to one way or another. That said, the slight dashing effect, short range, and the recovery that seems a little too fast for a teleport move seem to point towards it being his new forward dash.
Then, Vesper goes over Bison’s specials, of which he seems to have a lot. Two in particular are a projectile absorbing move that tosses out a fireball of its own and a new attack that may act as his reversal. They also go over some of the specials that are retained, such as the head stomp.
Of course, these are just a few things that are covered in the half-hour long video. Check it out and share your thoughts on M. Bison’s Street Fighter V incarnation in the comments.
After weeks of championship action, the folks over at Showdown are ready to return to their normal weekly tournament schedule with another Churning the Butter event.
Tonight, they have once again taken over Folsom Street Foundry in San Francisco, California to put on an Ultra Street Fighter IV tournament for the regional players. If you’re interested in seeing what the NorCal cats have up their sleeves, be sure to check out the stream below and show your support. You can also head on over to Twitch if you prefer to chat.
Want to check these tournaments out for yourself? Well, you’re in luck, because even if you missed out this week, Churning the Butter is held every Thursday at 8 PM PDT during ShowDown’s game night at Folsom Street Foundry.
As with most big events these days, tournaments weren’t the only thing on the schedule at the recently concluded Midwest Championships 2015. PandaxGaming put together another great set of exhibitions, the marquee matchup of which was an Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 throwdown between BE|Kane Blueriver and iG|FullSchedule.
For those who missed this set, a full replay was recently uploaded for your viewing pleasure. Check out the match below as Kane’s team of Haggar, Hulk, and Sentinel takes on Full Schedule’s Amaterasu, C. Viper, and Docter Doom and see who comes out on top.
If you plan to take part in the Tekken 7 tournament at Evo (or even just get in some casual play) and play on pad, you’ll need to be sure you have a DualShock 4 handy.
According to Mad Catz community manager Mark “MarkMan” Julio, previous models of the Sony controller will not work with the arcade boards they are lugging to Las Vegas for Evo 2015. He is expecting the developers to provide a full list of compatible controllers in the near future.
While you’ll typically see Street Fighter and Marvel players competing on arcade sticks, the Tekken community seems to include a higher number of pad warriors. It would be a shame to show up, ready to throw down, and miss your chance, so be sure you heed this warning before heading to Nevada this July.
Olympic Gaming is back with another Ultra Street Fighter IV player spotlight. This time around, NeonVerte takes center stage with some outstanding Rose play. The competition is no joke this week as NeonVerte faces off against Michael “Brolylegs” Begum’s Chun-Li and Arturo “TS|Sabin (or Yung Art, whichever you prefer)” Sanchez’ Dhalsim.
Even when the pressure is on, NeonVerte has no trouble finding openings to secure hits that lead into massive damage and close out rounds that looked all but hopeless. His match against Haelait’s Elena is a great example of this important quality.
As always, you can check out a brief text-based interview with the highlighted player in the video’s description, and be sure to check back next week for more from Olympic Gaming.
In order to fix the multitude of issues that hampered Ultra Street Fighter IV’s launch on PlayStation 4, the folks at Sony recently pushed out a patch addressing graphical oddities like disappearing fireballs, Decapre’s “shortened” teleport, and more. Unfortunately, no word was released concerning the title’s increased input latency, which caught many by surprise as this version was supposed to erase the inherent lag of its predecessor on PlayStation 3.
Despite the lack of reassurance that this issue was being looked into, it appears as if the latest update did improve the PlayStation 4 latency, if only by a little.
Display Lag, who previously the aforementioned research, and Khaos Gaming took to Ultra Street Fighter IV separately after its upgrade to ver.1.02 to see if anything had been done to reduce lag effects. While both organizations came to slightly different conclusions, their individual tests show that a very tiny adjustment has been made, one that results in just under one frame of improvement.
That being said, the overall figures shown above are still rather disheartening. Display Lag found that latency in the PlayStation 4 version of Capcom’s flagship fighter continues to clock in at around 133ms (~7.2 frames), while Khaos Gaming came to an average of 113ms (~6.8 frames) during their experiment. These numbers are a far cry from what we’ve seen of the community-standard Xbox 360, which features 85ms (~5.1 frames) of lag, and even the PlayStation 3’s relatively poor average of 107ms (~6.4 frames).
While this port was developed by third-party studio Other Ocean Interactive, Sony and Capcom have promised that they are stepping in to make sure corrections are made.
For the time being, Capcom Pro Tour events that had previously switched to PlayStation 4, namely Evo 2015 and Community Effort Orlando 2015, are free from using it during their competitions. Both have officially switched back to Xbox 360.
Ledge trumping makes returning to the stage in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U a terrifying experience. If you choose to take your time and dangle off the stage for more than a handful of frames, your opponent can easily take advantage of this by stealing the ledge, then doing something so simple as jumping and performing a back air to send you careening off into a side blast zone.
As the Beefy Smash Doods demonstrate in the video below, quick reaction times after grabbing the ledge can prevent this sort of thing from happening. Of course, some options to return to the stage once the ledge has been grabbed are safer than others, but since there are so many options, it’s important to mix things up and not become predictable.
The end segment of the video is dedicated to a method of making an up special attack proceed beyond the ledge (as opposed to snapping to it) to hit eager opponents and make them think twice about trying to go for a trump. This technique is much more difficult on some characters due to the nature of the inputs involved, and can actually result in an SD if performed incorrectly as someone like Pikachu or Sheik.
FrametrapTV is doing something special for the season finale of its Ultra Street Fighter IV weekly Street Fridays, bringing in some of the biggest names in Street Fighter to the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai. Some of the Middle East’s strongest, like Nox, Ganoon, Fruit, GTR, and Falcon Arena’s Big Bird, will be joined by Dieminion of the United States, INFILTRATION of South Korea, Latif of Saudi Arabia, and Razer’s Xian of Singapore for three days of tournaments, exhibitions, and more.
The event begins today with a 2-on-2 team tournament, followed by the singles tournament on Friday and exhibition sets on Saturday. You catch the matches as they happen below or on FrametrapTV’s Twitch channel. For more information on the event, check out Frametrap’s website.
Back in January, Alpharad debuted his “How to Play: 101″ series with a video dedicated to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U’s Villager. In it, Alpharad put a painful end to a plethora of For Glory opponents through stylish and often hilarious means. Since then, Alpharad has gone on to create 29 more videos which have drawn the attention of plenty of Smash fans and players, including top competitors like ZeRo.
Even though the series has been well-received by the community, all good things do eventually come to an end. With the release of his most recent 101 video–which you’ll find embedded below–Alpharad comes full circle with a second episode filled with pocketed projectiles, brutal bowling ball edge guards, and the same style of humor that he has come to be known for.
Alpharad has stated that he plans to continue producing videos, but will be taking a (perhaps permanent) break from Super Smash Bros. for Wii U content. If you missed some of Alpharad’s previous 101 videos, you can check out all thirty of them by heading over to his playlist.
