Following up on the recent announcement that Gengar will be part of the playable roster, Bandai Namco has dropped a handful of new videos for Pokkén Tournament.
The first of these is another official trailer. Showcased here are all of the previously announced cast members as well as some of the game’s mechanics.
The second video is the official trailer for Gengar. While we’ve seen this before thanks to a rip from the Niconico stream, it’s nice to be able to watch it without comments flying by.
The final video is a sample of gameplay where we can see Gardevoir, Pikachu, Suicune, Lucario, and Machamp showing off some of their moves.
Pokkén Tournament is scheduled to arrive in Japanese arcades this summer.
Back in December, My Smash Corner released a video detailing the art of jump cancel glide tossing in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. This technique allows all characters to slide forward or backward across the stage while throwing an item. Naturally, it benefits those who can spawn their own items, such as Mega Man and Diddy Kong, the most, but that doesn’t prevent, say, Ganondorf from grabbing a stray banana and gliding his way across the stage.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U player RED recently took this technique a step further with the discovery that Mega Man can amp up his glide tosses to achieve alarming speeds. This allows the boy in blue to traverse the entirety of the stage to execute surprise attacks in the blink of an eye.
To see this technique in action, check out the video below.
UltraChen TV is back with yet another broadcast of their Tuesday show. Tonight, UltraDavid and James Chen will be discussing a variety of topics, including results from Northwest Majors 7 and Double Elimination, the exciting news about Killer Instinct’s developer backing, and more.
The stream will be live in this article, but you can also visit Twitch to join the chat.
Learning to play fighting games at a competent level, like any other skill, requires a great deal of study and practice. Even those we consider naturals, such as Justin Wong, wouldn’t be where they are today without focusing on their gameplay and constantly striving to improve.
But raw practice can only take a competitor so far. More recently, we’ve seen folks like Infiltration keep track of notes on character and player matchups, checking between sets to remind themselves of specific details they may have overlooked thanks to the often chaotic nature of tournament competition. This integration of separate technology with gameplay hasn’t been a revolutionary step in the way we approach fighting games, but one piece of equipment may see some interesting applications in the near future.
Earlier this year, Danish manufacturer SteelSeries released the Sentry Eye Tracker which, as the name so aptly describes, tracks your eye movements to provide a visual representation of what you were watching while playing a game. Though the entertainment benefits are obvious with the advent of professional streaming, the replay feature can also give competitive gamers the ability to watch their matches and develop strategies around the way they ingest information.
To highlight its usefulness, 4Gamer took the Sentry for a spin, but in a way that’s sure to interest members of the fighting game community. Instead of casually applying the overlay to a random game, they tapped HORI’s Sako Naoto to give the peripheral a whirl while playing Ultra Street Fighter IV.
What resulted, as you can see in the video above, is an incredibly detailed look at how Sako approaches a competitive match from a visual standpoint. While his eyes may be drawn to any number of menu indicators during downtime, the way in which his focus shifts and stabilizes says a lot about the resolve he (and likely many other high-level players) show when entering a game, not to mention his emphasis on tracking the space between himself and the opponent.
As more and more money is poured into events and competitive gamers begin to make a decent living off their skills, the need to stay one step ahead of your contemporaries, even by a tiny margin, becomes an important part of maintaining one’s career. Communities like StarCraft and League of Legends have seen teams sequester themselves to train for months at a time, sharing knowledge and leveling up in an environment conducive to fostering their abilities much like professional football teams hold training camps for weeks before the season begins.
Keeping with the football comparison, one could logically see fighting game players using this technology to condition themselves to concentrate on specific parts of the screen much like linebackers and safeties learn to read quarterbacks, perhaps to improve how they approach the neutral game.
In any case, with $500,000 on the line at Capcom Cup 2015, a possible $50,000 heading to Killer Instinct’s prize pool at Evo 2015, and Mortal Kombat X making huge strides with ESL, the time is ripe for players to seek out technology like this and find new ways to improve their training. Unfortunately, the $200 price tag will likely put it out of reach for most of the fighting game community.
What do you think? Could this prove to be a valuable resource for fighting game players or is it just a fun novelty? Feel free to drop your opinion in the comments below.
With the release of Mortal Kombat X, the fighting game community is experiencing a rather large swell of activity as folks pick up the new game and rush to learn as much as they can before major tournaments. One of the best places to do so outside of smaller gatherings is most definitely regional weeklies, and Yomi Gaming in Atlanta, Georgia recently began providing a space for the local community to do their thing.
Dubbed Atlanta Kombat Arena, these events run tournaments for the latest NetherRealm Studios title alongside supporting games Killer Instinct, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and Injustice: Gods Among Us. Though only in their second week, they’ve already seen an amazing contingency of high-level talent take part, including KiT|Forever King, RZR|Perfect Legend, HB|Tyrant, co-organizer Pig of the Hut, Michaelangelo, and many more.
If you’re interested in checking out the action live, be sure to tune in below or head on over to Twitch to join the chat. Online brackets are being made available through Challonge if you like to follow along at home.
Although fighting game sales have seemed to dry up over the past few months, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live have once again focused their attention on our favorite genre with a number of great discounts.
From newer titles like Ultra Street Fighter IV and Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late to older releases you may have missed like Skullgirls Encore and Street Fighter x Tekken, there’s bound to be something here that will pique your interest.
You’ll find the entire round of fighter markdowns below, but be sure to visit the links at the bottom of this article for a full look at all the sales currently available.
It took two weeks, but someone finally found a couple of infinite combos in Mortal Kombat X. These strings, discovered by Xero18, are interesting not only because they are, indeed, infinite, but also their unlikely source: Kitana’s Mournful variation.
The blue-garbed assassin feels a bit out of place in a game currently dominated by characters with strong 50/50 options, as she is equipped only with a slow overhead which results in a knockdown and the slimmest selection of low-hitting attacks that can lead into combos. This forces Kitana to play a full-screen game of fan tossing in order to secure victory, which, in a game so rushdown heavy, is not an easy task to achieve. So, as a variant that’s even more out there than the other two, Mournful hasn’t attracted too much attention prior to this discovery.
While traditional infinites regularly require ridiculous timing or setups to get the hits rolling, there isn’t a whole lot of that here. Thanks to what appear to be some frame data oversights, this glaive-tossing variant has two separate options to crank out massive damage in the corner, both of which can be found in the video below.
As with any infinite combo, the damage scaling weighs heavily on these strings after only a handful of repetitions, but that shouldn’t stop players from using this tactic as a method of timer scamming their way to victory.
Does this mean that we might start seeing some Kitana players pop up to challenge the current reign of Kung Jin and Quan Chi? Only time will tell.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U players who happened to also have a 3DS version of the game registered via Club Nintendo prior to the end of March gained free access to Mewtwo on April 15. Those without both versions of the game were forced to wait in order to play this first new addition to the game’s roster.
As of today, the wait is finally over.
Mewtwo can currently be purchased for both the Wii U and 3DS versions of the latest iteration of Super Smash Bros. alone or as part of a full bundle, which also includes a handful of new Mii outfits. These bundles are available for just the Wii U or both systems at once. Here’s a quick price breakdown:
Mewtwo (Wii U) – $3.99
Mewtwo, Mii Outfits (Wii U) – $9.99
Mewtwo (Wii U/3DS) – $4.99
Mewtwo, Mii Outfits (Wii U/3DS) – $14.19
As you can see, the more you pick up, the more you save. So, if you have plans of decking out a Mii Brawler in Protoman’s getup and chucking Shotputs at opponents, be sure to grab the outfit bundle too to save some cash.
With the fighting game community continuing to grow, developers are beginning to take notice of our passion and provide some amazing support. From Capcom and Sony’s work with Ultra Street Fighter IV to Nintendo finally noticing the passion of the Smash scene, it’s never been a better time to be a fighting game fan.
In an effort to celebrate Killer Instinct’s return to Evolution and a variety of other major tournaments throughout 2015, the developers are set to provide substantial monetary backing for the game’s best players. But it’s going to take some help from the community.
Starting from Cinder’s launch on April 30, everything fans spend on content–from complete seasons to individual downloads–for two weeks will be collected in a special fighting game community fund with a maximum amount of $100,000. The first $50,000 raised will go directly towards Evo 2015, while the rest will be distributed to other events, both offline and online, throughout the year.
Additionally, Shadow Jago will be available to purchase for the first time ever, bundled with 7500 Killer Instinct Gold (the title’s in-game currency for unlockables) during the aforementioned fourteen-day period. While he’s only a skin at this point in time, the developers will turn Shadow Jago into a unique playable character should they meet the $100,000 limit.
This is another tremendous opportunity for the community to directly contribute to the prize pools of our largest tournaments, and it should be interesting to see how successful this drive becomes. We’ll be sure to keep you updated as more details emerge.
With Tekken 7 newcomer Gigas now out in arcades, many players are likely curious about how the red giant plays. Luckily for us, the folks over at Guntama Miraclein have just uploaded some great gameplay footage.
The video below shows Gigas being tested out in the game’s practice mode, allowing us to see some of his moves and strings. A number of his attacks seem to have been borrowed from Craig Marduk, with a few also hinting at inspiration from Jack and Ancient Ogre.
Feel free to check out the video below and let us know what you think.
