The Fall Classic’s Persona 4 Arena Ultimax tournament represented one of the game’s earliest North American showings and, as such, allowed many top players to demonstrate their skills on a large stage for the fist time.
The brackets included a number of notable names, but at the end of the day it came down to two competitors: Team Spooky’s Lord Knight, who was looking to defend his reputation as America’s best competitive Persona player, and Sonic Fox of Revolution, who already has an impressive number of wins in other games under his belt.
Both players came into the last match playing two characters who weren’t included in the original roster, Lord Knight choosing Margaret and Sonic Fox rocking Marie.
If you missed out on watching this event live, FunkyP recently uploaded a great deal of archived footage. We’ve included each finals match below, but feel free to visit their official playlist for more.
Full results for this and other games at The Fall Classic 2014 can be found in our coverage hub.
It feels like just yesterday that we saw Evo 2014 wrap up in Las Vegas, but the organizers behind the largest fighting game tournament in the world are set to begin the latest round of hype-building for the next installment.
According to Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar, the first official Evo 2015 teaser will be unveiled later tonight during UltraChen TV. Much like past trailers, it was put together by the fantastic Seth Mussey.
As for what kind of details you can expect from this trailer, you’ll have enough information to start planning for your trip, specifically what weekend Evo 2015 will occupy and where it will take place. Game announcements are scheduled for the beginning of next year.
If you want to catch this premiere live, be sure to tune into UltraChen TV at 8:30 PM PDT, 11:30 PM EDT.
A quick word of warning before we move on to the bulk of this information: Some players enjoy discovering unlockable content like this on their own. If you’re still waiting to see Super Smash Bros. for Wii U’s secrets for the first time when you’ve completed the tasked required to unlock them, please give the back button on your browser a solid slap and return to the safety of the Shoryuken front page. Everyone else, scroll on down. The spoilers will begin directly below the game’s newly-released opening cinematic.
Consider yourselves warned!
If you’ve made it this far into the article, you’re likely excited to see the new, high-resolution renderings for the two more unlockable characters: Bowser Jr. and Mr. Game and Watch. Below, you’ll find a massive collection of screenshots of these two new competitors, beautifully rendered on the Wii U. If you think these fighters look good in the 3DS version, the screenshots below will almost certainly bring tears of joy to your eyes.
Check them out below and let us know what you think!
Bowser Jr.
Mr. Game and Watch
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is scheduled to hit North American shelves on November 21, with releases in Europe and Japan set for December 5 and 6, respectively.
If you’ve not taken advantage of past sale prices for Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition, now is the perfect time to get in on the action. Green Man Gaming is currently offering the title at an incredibly reasonable price of $4.99, which can be knocked down to a shockingly low $3.90 with the code below entered at checkout:
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This is the lowest price ever offered for the Ultimate Edition of the title, which comes complete with all downloadable characters and costumes. Buy a copy for yourself. Buy a copy for a friend. Buy a copy for your mail carrier or your pet’s groomer. The price may never get quite this low again and it’d be an injustice to miss this opportunity.
Super Smash Bros. occupies an interesting space in the fighting game genre when it comes to combo videos. Due to the flexibility of its engine, strings are generally done on the fly, allowing players to use their improvisational skills to adjust their attacks depending on the situation. Because of this, however, exhibitions feature combos mostly from competitive play instead of against a computer due to defensive techniques like air dodges, directional influence, and more.
With Super Smash Bros. for 3DS now in the hands of fans across the world, we’re starting to see more and more of what its cast is capable of thanks to the more ingenious members of the Smash community.
Taking inspiration from Desk, VG BootCamp mastermind Calvin “GimR” Lofton released a brand new combo showcase earlier today that focuses on Dr. Mario. Much like his precursor, Lofton focuses mostly on impractical combos in the video below, but he’s also hoping it gives other players the itch to put together their own creative combos as the competitive game continues to be fleshed out.
Earlier today, Desk’s latest series of Ultra Street Fighter IV combo videos began with Ultra Combos Red, another ridiculous look at the technology the execution master has come up with for the title during its early lifespan.
Starting with an oddly rhythmic Akuma string, Ultra Combos Red continues on to showcase destructive attack combinations that incorporate all the tight links, Red Focus applications, glitches, and, yes, Ultras that you would expect from a Desk video.
If you’re still left wanting more, stay tuned for Desk’s Ultra Combos Blue follow-up and the highly-anticipated Playing Street Fighter 2.
Team Best From Now, which you may remember from their popular video showcasing the undeniable power of Ivan Ooze in the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers fighting game, recently made a triumphant return to the YouTube scene. The first video for their new channel dropped earlier this month and focuses on the old school fighting game Survival Arts.
Survival Arts hit the arcade scene back in 1993 and features an art style akin to early entries in the Mortal Kombat series. As such, characters are represented by digitized actors which look about as realistic as you’d expect. The eight playable characters range in style from the ninja, Hiryu, to the gun-toting police officer, Gunner, who bears a striking resemblance to a popular MK character. The developers also decided to take the gore route with the game, making sure that every successful blow showers the screen in good old-fashioned red pixels.
Oh, and there’s a skull above the match timer. Metal.
The game, published by Sammy, blends its undeniably MK-inspired visuals with the controls of Street Fighter II: it features six buttons in the standard Street Fighter layout, holding back blocks, and special moves, for the most part, involve SF-style inputs.
The game itself seems to have some serious balancing issues. For example, Hiryu can jump an astonishing five additional times once airborne before returning to the ground. He also sports one of the slowest projectiles ever to make its way into a fighting game, which he can steer up and down if he so chooses. Combine these things with a completely invulnerable dash that goes through his opponent–similar to Ibuki’s in Street Fighter III–and you’ve got a rushdown/mix-up character that won’t let up until the job is done.
On the zoning side of the spectrum, Gunner can fire projectiles that, if executed with a Tiger Knee input, have almost no startup or recovery frames. Additionally, these instant-air projectiles hit for just shy of half a character’s health–move over Super Turbo Akuma.
You’ll find Team Best From Now’s video below, full of more information on this all but forgotten title as well as an overview for the in-game weapons that characters can use to beat each other silly.
If you’d like to see some matches, the guys from Team Best From Now uploaded an hour long set to give viewers an idea of how the game looks. Please note that the matches contain some NSFW language due to high levels of old school hype.
Some folks may have noticed that notable Akuma players, such as Mad Catz’ Tokido, have been using the demon’s close standing medium kick frequently for their frame trap game in Ultra Street Fighter IV. After seeing this, Javits Arias put together a quick video that shows why that may be the case.
It turns out that Akuma is actually put at +6 frames of advantage with the move on counter-hit. This allows him to output some serious damage when it does connect in certain situations, as Javits demonstrates in the video below.
Earlier this morning, Nintendo released another patch for the handheld version of Super Smash Bros. 4 that brings the title up to the same designation. Much like the previous update, which dropped right before the North American launch, this one features balance adjustments that make for “a more pleasant gaming experience.”
Players have been scrambling to figure out what, if anything, was changed in this patch. Little concrete information has been uncovered at this point in time, so stay tuned for future findings.
Note that you will need to have this update applied to your game before you are able to partake in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS’ various online modes. Instructions on how to download and install this patch can be found here.
Hakan doesn’t get a lot of big stage attention. Sure, there are players out there like Infiltration who can play most of the roster at tournament level and occasionally whip out the olive oil, but when it comes to maining the Turkish wrestler no big names come to mind.
But just because we don’t often see high-level Hakan players on streams or at major events, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. In the newest addition to their long-running Spotlight series, the folks at Olympic Gaming caught up with Xbox Live’s #1 ranked Hakan, DeadMaker of Team Ground Zero, to show off the stylish side of this slippery grappler.
In the footage provided, DeadMaker lives up to his name as he faces off against top players like Wolfkrone, Evil Geniuses’ PR Balrog, Dieminion, and more, proving that he deserves his first place standing.
If you think you’ve witnessed every trick in Hakan’s repertoire, get ready to see something new! Perhaps the most impressive bits of tech, again and again, involve the masterful use of Ultra combos–and not just the command grab, but the anti-air as well.
Olympic Gaming also did a brief interview with DeadMaker which you can find in the video’s description. He discusses his history with Street Fighter IV, his local scene in Mexico, the origin of his gamer tag, and a whole lot more.
