As many of you are probably aware, Bandai Namco Games held special location tests earlier this month to show off their upcoming fighting game collaboration with The Pokémon Company. The title, dubbed Pokkén Tournament, brings together some of the franchise’s most popular pocket monsters to do battle, transitioning from 3D arena-style brawls to more traditional 2D showdowns over the course of each match.
These location tests featured the entire lineup revealed during the Pokkén’s showcase at Famitsu as well as two additional support characters in Frogadier and Eevee. Fortunately for fans outside of Japan, a user by the name of seadraDS captured some great footage during their time at the arcade, giving us our first look at the title out in the wild.
Pokkén Tournament is expected to land in Japanese arcades sometime this year.
Marvelo recently uploaded a team synergy video that shows how well Nova, Sentinel, and his signature Strider can play together in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Strider’s Vajra assist proves to be an excellent means for extending combos, though the real star of the show is Sentinel’s Drone assist, as it allows for Nova to keep the hits coming even after he’s activated a midscreen Super Nova. This makes for some impressive looking, efficient, and damaging corner carries.
Many of these combos remain meter neutral or only wind up costing a single bar in order to pull off, which is pretty impressive considering that they reliably push over one million damage. Check it out and let us know what you think.
VGBootCamp, arguably the largest broadcaster in the Smash scene these days, made it clear last week that they were no longer going to support the burgeoning Project M community. As a mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the title has long occupied a very weird gray area in terms of legality and, it was assumed, this move was to avoid any actions Nintendo may take in the future.
Fortunately, all is not lost. A group hailing from the University of Maryland recently stepped up to fill the space left by VGBC’s departure, giving the folks at the weekly Xanadu meetups an outlet for their competitive footage.
While these events typically took place on Tuesdays, the tournaments will now be held on Mondays in order to give the title its very own night. If you’re interested in checking out what Project M has to offer, be sure to tune in below or head on over to Twitch.
Apart from how you play, the colors you choose for your main help set you apart from the dozens of other competitors who use the same character. More and more, developers are starting to provide players with a variety of palettes to choose from, and in some cases we’re provided ways to customize cast members even more than the creators envisioned.
Hell, the results of the marquee exhibition at Apex 2015 between Leffen and Liquid’s Chillin hinged on which player would be able to use Fox’s main colors in Super Smash Bros. Melee in addition to whatever monetary rewards they had put on the table.
If you don’t want to miss out on an extra color palette in Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, today is your last day to grab a nifty black and blue pattern free of charge. While the downloadable content extends to every cast member, there is a catch in that you’ll need to have an active PlayStation Plus subscription to add these colors to your game. (Editor’s note: This article originally stated that additional characters Sin Kiske, Elphelt Valentine, and Leo Whitefang were necessary to access this content as well, but that was a mistake. We apologize for the error.)
These colors are available on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3, so be sure to follow their respective links before it’s too late.
It makes sense to be able to punish a move when it whiffs. It makes just as much sense to be able to punish a move when it’s blocked. But it doesn’t make much sense to be able to punish a move after it hits.
This isn’t the sort of thing that we see very often, but if you check out the clip below from Bafael, you’ll see that Cody can toss out a Bad Spray after being hit by Gouken’s roundhouse Tatsu and, sure enough, the aging fighter can’t block in time to keep from eating a mouthful of sand.
This isn’t the sort of thing that’s going to change the face of the matchup, but Gouken players should be wary of how they end their corner combos when facing off against the pinstriped pugilist.
Traditional fighting games rely heavily on footsies and, therefore, proper space control in order to secure victories. Games in the Super Smash Bros. series are much the same, but the constant running, stopping, jumping, and pivoting looks a lot different than the game of inches that we typically see unfold in titles like Ultra Street Fighter IV.
There’s a lot to the way movement works in Smash, so much so that going about figuring out what to do and when to do it can be downright discouraging to newcomers. To help break down how some of this plays out in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Kevin “PewPewU” Toy has created a playlist of in-depth tutorials on the subject. In the videos below, you’ll learn about Shield Stops, Run Cancels, No Impact Landing, and a lot more.
If Apex 2015 made you go out and grab a GameCube to get in on the Melee action, or dig that dusty one you already own out of the attic, be sure to check out these tutorials to help get things going as quickly as possible.
Landing an Instant Kill in Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- isn’t always the most practical option, but thanks to this video from juliodzulfigar, Sin Kiske now has several new methods to end a match with a bit of extra pizzazz.
How many methods, you ask? Seventeen.
On top of a demonstration for each kill combo, you’ll also find inputs, required positioning and meter, and anything else you might need to know regarding character specifics.
And as if getting hit by an Instant Kill isn’t demoralizing enough already, juliodzulfigar has also included a combo that leaves just enough space for Sin to toss out a taunt before carrying things to the knockout blow. It’s beautiful.
Back in 1995, Nintendo made a bold move: they cast aside the constraints of 2D and strode bravely into the foreground with their short-lived Virtual Boy system. It’s not that virtual reality was invented by Nintendo–far from it–but the company did make the mid-90s sensation affordable, and (sort of) portable. Sadly, this product only appealed to a small audience and was discontinued not even a full year later in early 1996.
Chances are that if you weren’t among the few who owned a Virtual Boy, you likely knew someone who did. I remember the day my neighbor got one: all the local kids gathered around while he unboxed it and tried different positions to sit in to get comfortable. The floor, on some pillows, on the couch, on his small desk–from which it promptly tumbled–eventually settling on the spacious kitchen table. When my turn finally came around, I was positively enthralled for all of thirty seconds before realizing that Mario’s hat and shirt should be red, but the rest of the world probably shouldn’t be.
That was the only time that I ever used the Virtual Boy and I never regretted not saving up my allowance to snag one of my own. It says a lot about the success of a cutting-edge game system if a kid who fancied himself a gamer didn’t have any interest in owning one. Maybe that’s because the game’s limited library just didn’t have the sort of options that would have made me want to pick one up.
While much of the world may have forgotten the Virtual Boy, the console still holds a small, loyal following to this day. So loyal, in fact, that members have gone so far as to produce a homebrew port of Street Fighter II for the system that barely was. While the mere creation of such a project is already a feat in itself, it turns out that the resulting game was so large that it wouldn’t fit on a normal Virtual Boy game card, so the creators not only had to code the game, but also had to build a new cartridge just to hold their work so that it could actually be played.
From what video footage shows, the extra effort was worth it, because the game looks pretty damned good. Although depicted in the expected red and black formate, the graphics are honestly impressive for the system. The backgrounds have nice 3D effects and move around based on the position of the fighters–E. Honda’s stage is an excellent example of this–the sound effects and voices are spot-on, and even the music is accurate.
Now comes what may be the most important question: how are the controls? As SpeedyInk mentions in his review of the game, they’re as tight as you’d expect in a Street Fighter title, but there is one small problem: the Virtual Boy controller doesn’t have nearly enough face buttons. Instead of extra buttons, it has a second D-Pad, which the coders mapped to throw the appropriate punches and kicks associated with the directional inputs triggered. It honestly sounds like a nightmare, but all is not lost; to help remedy the controller situation, as well as to add yet another feat to the game’s long list, the game has the ability to support a Super Nintendo pad. It’s not a stick, but it has to be better than those two D-Pads.
Those lucky enough to own copies of this gem also have a fully-realized box that mimics, in every way, the packaging that Nintendo would have shipped with products of their own in back in the day. They even included a full-color instruction manual, something that the gaming world has all but forgotten these days (but that’s a topic for another time).
So where can you get your copy? Well, you can’t. Unless you’ve got some connections within the Virtual Boy community, you’re pretty much out of luck. There hasn’t been, nor will there be, any mass distribution of this title due to various legal issues that should be expected with such a project containing copyrighted characters. This homebrew version of the game on which many of us cut our teeth was not built for profit, it was a labor of love–and one that appears to have produced something very special.
To see the game in action and to take a closer look at the instruction manual and box, check out the video below from Vectrex Roli.
Last year, Team NINJA supported the competitive Dead or Alive 5 scene with the Road to the Fall Classic, a tournament series that saw players from a handful of qualifying events earn a free trip to the final tournament at the Fall Classic 2014 and a chance to win a chunk of the $8000 prize pool. The developers plan to continue providing that support into 2015, going bigger with a new tour for the upcoming Last Round update.
With more tournaments added to the calendar, including Evolution 2015, Battle Royal 2015 features three times the number of events culminating in a grand finals tournament at Northeast Championships XVI.
Each of the events on the calendar will receive a pot bonus, but more importantly, the winners of a select number of events will have their travel expenses to the grand finals compensated by Team Ninja themselves.
Additionally, the top two placers for the remaining tournaments will also receive points towards qualifying for the main event, and the duo with the most will receive the same sponsorship package as the aforementioned outright qualifiers.
As for Northeast Championships XVI itself, Team NINJA will be providing a $3000 pot bonus to the proceedings, and the overall winner is set to receive a free pass into next year’s grand finals.
The full list of participating events can be found in the graphic below.
While it was initially only available for pre-order in the United Kingdom, those interested in picking up HORI’s Real Arcade Pro 4 Kai arcade stick in the United States can now do so as well thanks to our friends over at Arcade Shock.
As previously reported, the HORI RAP4 Kai features a revised Vewlix based casing first seen in the Real Arcade Pro Hayabusa for the Xbox One. In addition to this, it features a touchpad at the back, something no other arcade stick for the PlayStation 4 has.
Internally, the RAP4 Kai features HORI’s Hayabusa lever and Kuro buttons, the same ones used in some Taito Vewlix arcade cabinets.
Early orders for this arcade stick will be bundled with an Arcade Shock tee-shirt while supplies last. The distributors are expecting to receive these products by the end of the month.
Pricing for the RAP4 Kai is set at $149.99. Should you be looking to pre-order from Arcade Shock, be sure to head on over to Arcade Shock.
