This week’s installment of Next Level Battle Circuit is now streaming live courtesy of Team Spooky’s Arturo Sanchez. As always, the event is being broadcast from its namesake, Next Level Arcade, in New York City. Tonight, they’ll be running Ultra Street Fighter IV, featuring some of the best players on the east coast.
If you would like to check out these weekly tournaments, be sure to head on over to Next Level Arcade and take part every Wednesday. The address has been included below.
4013 8th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11232
The stream is currently live below, but you can also visit Twitch to join the chat. The full bracket will be made available through Challonge.
BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Ver.2.0 is now just a day away! Yesterday, Arc System Works and Famitsu revealed a few major changes for half of the cast, and now we have a look at how the other half will change in tomorrow’s update.
In addition to primary adjustments for the existing cast, you’ll also find a break down of a new guard cancel Overdrive system and basic guides for newcomers Lambda-11 and Celica A. Mercury, all with helpful video demonstrations.
There’s a ton of information to digest here, so feel free to get started and let us know what you think of BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Ver.2.0 so far.
Change List Introduction Part 4 (Makoto, Valkenhayn, Platinum, Relius)
Makoto
D Attacks Lv2 and LvG now special cancellable.
When Jump 2+C hits, Makoto bounces upward.
Space Counter (Parrying) properties changed, now a strike with a guard point attached.
Valkenhayn
König Wolf and Eisen Wolf now have a C version.
Himmel Wolf is now special cancellable on a successful throw, as normal throws are.
While in wolf form, König Wolf is now usable.
Platinum
Magical Cat and Magical Frying Pan are now cancellable.
3+C to D Attacks Revolver Action route added, floats the opponent higher on hit making it easier to follow
During Overdrive, Miracle Jeanne’s NEXT item will also be a powered up item.
Relius
New move Id Sign added.
Ignis can now be used in pincer attack mix-ups.
During Overdrive, all of Ignis’s special moves are now strengthened.
Change List Introduction Part 5 (Amane, Bullet, Azrael, Nu, Mu, Izayoi)
Amane
Spiral Gauge Lv1 and Lv2’s decrease speed is now slower, Lv3’s decrease speed is now faster.
D Attacks are now special cancellable on guard as well.
Ninpu Sengeki: “Hariken” properties changed, when placing the Drill Amane’s foot section now has an attack hitbox.
Bullet
D Attacks are now special cancellable.
Can now brake during Miquelet Capture.
Charged Flint Shooter now works with the Heat Up levels.
Azrael
The latter half of 6+B is now jump and special cancellable.
When absorbing a projectile with Growler Field, can cancel into Phalanx Cannon.
Valiant Charge now works with more moves.
Leopard Launcher hit effect changed.
Nu-13-
D Attacks are now projectile Lv2 immediately after the summon.
D Attacks can now be followed-up freely up to four times (three times when airborne).
Projectile special moves now have D charge versions in addition to the C follow-ups.
During Gravity Seed, can cancel with normal attacks and special moves; certain special attacks can be cancelled with Gravity Seed on hit.
Mu-12-
6+B sped up, first hit can be blocked crouching.
D attack projectile fire timing is slower, projectile travel distance is shorter.
Cancel timing when setting D attacks is earlier, can cancel with C attacks when setting.
During Overdrive, bits no longer automatically fire, when Overdrive ends set bits remain.
Izayoi
Aegis Blade now invincible.
Strike Fall can now be followed up with Mirage Thruster and Valkyrie Astrea.
Slaver Trans-AM can now be used with 1 Zero-Type Gauge stock, the greater the amount consumed the longer it continues.
Change List Introduction Part 6 (Kagura, Terumi, Kokonoe)
Kagura
B Ryubakusen (Dragon Spirit) properties changed, the farther the distance the greater the number of hits.
Ryujinshou (Dragon’s Ascent) now has two types, a B version and a C versions.
Stance-only special moves can now be cancelled into Crush Trigger, Overdrive and Ryuha Gakuenjin (Supreme Dragon’s Inferno).
Terumi
Jump D → Jump 2+D Revolver Action route added.
Jakyou Messenga (Gleaming Fang) hit effect changed.
Jagaku’s (Snakebite) recovery on whiff shortened.
Kokonoe
Graviton changed from a gauge to stocks, when setting one stock is consumed.
Using Activate consumes one Graviton stock, Activate can now be charged.
Armament No02 “Broken Bunker Assault Ver2.21″ first hit now Rapid Cancellable on hit.
Armament No01 “Super Dreadnought Exterminator Golden Tager” chargeable time extended.
Guard Cancel Overdrive Activation
In BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Ver.2.0, you can activate Overdrive while blocking. The activation motion is quite long, but the invincibility continues until the end of the motion. The Overdrive length is half of a normal Overdrive. Characters with improved Overdrives might see some effectiveness from even random activations, but if you want to master this technique, you’ll need to know your character match-ups. It’s certainly a system with some depth, so look for counterattack points and best your rival!
Punish Examples Using Guard Cancel Activation Overdrive
With Tager: Interrupt Ragna’s Stand B → Stand C with Overdrive → Genesic Emerald Tager Buster
Punishing by activating Overdrive immediately before a large attack, using Ragna’s Stand C as an example. You can also punish with normal attacks with fast start-up times.
With Litchi: Interrupt Kokonoe’s Armament No03 “Absolute Zero Ver4.32″ with Overdrive → All Terminals
Activating Overdrive on guard against attacks with long overall motions, like multiple hit attacks. By releasing an invincible move immediately after the Overdrive activation motion ends, you can interrupt multi-hit attacks. However, if the opponent has 50% Heat Gauge, they can follow with a Rapid Cancel in reaction to the Overdrive activation, so be cautious.
With Hazama: Interrupt Rachel’s Stand C, C → Tempest Dahlia with Overdrive → Eternal Coils of the Dragon Serpent
Placing risk on continuing offense with projectiles. Activate Overdrive and aim for a punish at points where you would be forced into a continuous blockstring. When Rachel is low on Silpheed Gauge, she uses Tempest Dahlia to attempt to regenerate her gauge. However, because the projectiles can’t be Rapid Cancelled if on whiff, you can punish with an invincible move with long range.
Λ -No.11- (Lambda-11) Basic Guide
Lambda can fight from both long and close range, using D attacks to limit the opponent’s movements from long range and using her forward charging Act Parcer Zwei in combos. She has placement projectiles, and can close distance by creating them in safe situations. Her Drive ability Sword Summoner Kai summons projectiles with the D Button. Combining direction inputs with the D button changes the attack direction. If a D attack hits, a second hit of Sword Summoner is automatically summoned, making hit confirms simple. In addition, each D attack can only be used once in a single Revolver Action. Stand D → 6D → Stand D is an impossible attack, but if you use a jump cancel for example to break the Revolver Action, you can use the same D attack in a single combo.
Principal Moves
Lambda’s foundation is long range fighting. Using all of her D attacks, to keep the opponent from simply cornering her. Use her projectiles based on the opponent’s movements and score damage.
Sword Summoner Kai
Stand D is a forward attack and is the main poke. 6D attacks at a slight diagonally upward angle and prevents jumps. Crouch D is an anti-air attack with a sharp vertical aim. 4D is an overhead attack from behind and over the opponent’s head. For Sword Summoner Kai’s jump versions, Jump D attacks diagonally upward, Jump 6D attacks long range and diagonally downward and Jump 2D attacks sharply downward. If you use her air D attacks after a backdash and before landing, her attacks will have little recovery, convenient for creating space.
6A
An anti-air attack with invincible around the head area. The untechable time is long, making it useful in combos.
6B
An overhead attack that floats the opponent. Used together with her Crouch B low attack, this is her primary weapon for penetrating the opponent’s guard at close range. On hit, follow with Crouch D.
Act Parcer Zwei: Blade
Used as a mid-screen ground combo ender and for continuing combos in the corner. It’s also valuable for beating the opponent’s abare after they block a D attack.
Sickle Storm
A projectile the constrains the opponent for a long time on block. If you make them block the attack you can dash and then break their guard. Use the move after a D attacks is blocked, stopping the opponent’s feet.
Combos
Crouch A → Crouch B → 3C → Act Parcer Zwei: Blade
A combo starting from an A attack. It creates distance and downs the opponent, allowing Lambda to return to long range.
6B → Crouch D → Jump Cancel → 2D → D → Double Jump → 2D → D → Calamity Sword
A combo starting from an overhead. After the Crouch D, based on the opponent’s height you can include 6D in the air D attacks, raising the damage.
Crouch B → 3C → Act Parcer Zwei: Blade → Crouch B → 6A → 6C → Act Parcer: Cavalier → Exiga Nail → Crouch D → Jump Cancel 2D → 6D → D → Crescent Saber
A corner combo starting from a low attack. In the corner you can follow your attack after 3C → Act Parcer Zwei: Blade. You switch out the “Crouch B → 3C” with the overhead starter “6B → delay Crouch B” as well.
Exiga Nail (Counter-hit) → Act Parcer Zwei: Cavalier → Stand C → 6C → Exiga Nail → Dash 6A → Stand C → Crouch D → Act Parcer Zwei: Blade.
A combo starting from an Exiga Nail counter-hit near the corner. If Exiga Nail lands as a counter-hit on a grounded opponent, you can combo into Act Parcer Zwei: Cavalier for a high return. If at mid-screen, you can follow the Cavalier with Dash 6A.
Lambda Fundamental Combos Video
Celica A. Mercury Basic Guide
Celica from the console version’s Story Mode now appears as a playable character! She’s her usual cheerful self even when fighting, with cute actions. She appears together with Ex Machina: Minerva, but since the two characters are not operated separately, she’s easy to use. She a full selection of special moves, including projectiles, invincible anti-air moves, forward charging attacks, overhead attacks and sudden air drop moves, making her an ideal character for players who want to play BlazBlue for the first time.
Celica’s unique Drive ability are combination attacks with Minerva using the D button and directional inputs. Stating from D, 6D, 2D or Jump D, she can use up to two follow-ups: a joining move and a finishing move. She can’t cancel the combinations into special moves, but she can use different joining moves and finishing moves by using directional inputs and no matter the order it will combo. Her finishing moves are 6D, which has high damage and invincibility; 6D, which in the corner you can follow for more damage; and 2D, an overhead that downs the opponent. If her D attack is blocked switch between stopping after the second hit and releasing the difficult to punish finishing move 6D.
Principal Moves
Celica doesn’t have any sort of placement projectiles, so her fundamental attack plan is attacking herself. Grasp her normal attack and special attack properties, watch the opponent, wait for an opening and strike.
Stand B
An attack with long reach, making it easier to connect with the opponent. If you buffer Stand B into 3C, on hit you can easily combo with her D attacks.
6B
An anti-air attack with invincibility around the head area. It slams the opponent downward on air hit, and if connect with Crouch C you can land a combo.
Lance Quiche
A forward charging move that’s difficult to punish on block. You can close distance with the opponent from long range in a single go.
Hache Rotil
An uppercut attack that has invincibility shortly after inputting the move. The move can be charged, and while holding the button the invincibility continues. Used as a poke, you can watch the opponent’s actions, determine your aim and attack.
Casque Veloute
A Distortion Drive with long invincibility time. It’s a forward charging move and is quite valuable as a counterattack.
Combos
Crouch A → Crouch B → 3C → 2D → 6D → 6D
A combo starting from an A Attack. If far from the opponent when 3D chits, change the 2D to 6D.
Throw → Lance Quiche (full charge) → Dash Stand B → 6B → Crouch C → Jump Cancel → B → C → Pic Confit
A combo starting from a throw to beat the opponent’s guard. The backfire portion of Lance Quiche has light damage proration, upping the damage.
Stand B → Crouch B → 5C (4 hits) → 3C → 2D → 6D → 6D → Stand B → Stand C (1 hit) → 3C → 2D → D → 2D
A corner combo. 3C → 2D is a vital combo part for transitioning into an air combo at both mid-screen and in the corner, so you want to be able to use it right away. The final 2D downs the opponent, so go for okizeme.
Crouch B → 3C → Overdrive → 3C → 2D → 6D → Lance Quiche (full charge) → D → D → 6D → Casque Veloute
A combo incorporating Overdrive. At 30% or below vitality you can complete the full combo. During Overdrive D attacks are special cancellable. Using the light proration Lance Quiche backfire and powered up Overdrive lets you land big damage.
Another week means another round of Xbox Live sales, and over the next few days fighting game fans have a handful of deals to look forward to from NetherRealm Studios.
Injustice: Gods Among Us, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, and Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection have all been marked down by various amounts, allowing fans to pad their backlog while they wait for Mortal Kombat X to drop next year. Season passes for additional Injustice and Mortal Kombat content (kontent?) have also seen temporary price decreases.
You’ll find the full lineup of discounted items and their adjusted prices below.
The road to character mastery is long. Things start simple enough with figuring out which buttons do what, how to put those buttons together to score notable damage, and how to go about safely committing to the button sequences without losing half of your health due to drops or poor decision making. However, what comes afterward, like frame traps and resets, separates the particularly good players from the decent players.
Below, you’ll find a video from MaskedNobleman7 that covers the advanced side of what Vega brings to battle in Ultra Street Fighter IV. The first half of the reel is dedicated to frame traps, with varying gaps to allow errant buttons of different speeds just enough room to be stuffed. Afterward, the video goes on to demonstrate some particularly dirty resets and ways to score a cross-up Ultra.
Should you find yourself at a standstill in your Vega training, this tutorial may be your ticket to higher levels of play.
While Evolution’s integration with Guidebook over the past few years has provided players numerous resources to remind them of their pool assignments and starting times, the continued placement of responsibility on competitors themselves still results in a number of bracket issues, both high-profile and under-the-radar, whenever a new event rolls around. Thankfully, one programmer has taken it upon himself to give tournament organizers a useful tool to alleviate this friction.
Working in conjunction with Google’s Chrome web browser and bracket generator Challonge, Joseph “JoeQuery” McCullough’s extension allows organizers to attach a cell phone number to each tournament entrant, which they can then use to remind players of upcoming matches, give them a heads-up when they are on deck at their station, and more.
McCullough provides a more in-depth look at what this extension is capable of in the demonstration below.
While it lacks detailed instructions at this point in time, you can grab McCullough’s tool and try it out for yourself here. He mentions having used it to great success at a recent tournament in his local area, and hopes Challonge incorporates functionality like this in the near future to help everyone who uses their service.
Owners of the North American localization of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax have only very recently found themselves able to purchase access to Margaret, the game’s third downloadable character. Luckily, community members have already stepped forward to help out newcomers to the fighter.
This Velvet Room assistant isn’t the most conventional fighter, especially when considering her access to multiple Personae and the forward momentum tied to many of her normal attacks. Luckily, Team Spooky’s Steve “Lord Knight” Barthelemy has had his hands on the character for a little while and aims to help ease hopeful Margaret players into the character with the tutorial below.
In his video, Lord Knight stresses the importance of neutral game control for Margaret to secure victory before moving on to to proper normal use. He also shows off some standard combos that can be confirmed into from multiple openers.
It’s with heavy hearts we report that Japanese voice actor Iemasa Kayumi has passed away, tragic news that was revealed this morning by Takeshi Yamanaka of Arc System Works and 81 Produce president Michiyoshi Minamisawa. This event reportedly occurred on September 30 while he was undergoing medical treatment.
While Kayumi was perhaps best known for his work as Guilty Gear’s Slayer, a role he reprised in the franchise’s most recent installment Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, he also provided his talents in a variety of video game and anime roles, including Street Fighter EX’s Shadowgeist, Mr. Big in the Art of Fighting animated series, One Piece’s Nefertari Cobra, James Black in Case Closed, Dragon Ball Z: The Legendary Super Saiyan’s Paragus, and many more.
The longtime voice artist also dubbed live-action movies, regularly taking on roles for actors such as Frank Sinatra, Sir Christopher Lee, James Stewart, and Sir Ian McKellan.
Our hearts go out to Kayuma’s family and friends during this trying time. May he rest in peace.
Back in September, Sony announced that Arc System Works’ upcoming Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- will be included in a trio of PlayStation 4 games that will receive limited demos later this month. Starting on October 15, PlayStation Plus subscribers in Japan will be able to try this highly-anticipated title for themselves for two weeks, after which the preview will end.
While few details were provided as to what it will include, 4Gamer recently got their hands on some new information about what will be waiting for players when they download the demo. According to Siliconera, this limited version of Xrd will allow solo play only with Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske, specifically in the arcade (set to Beginner) and tutorial modes.
Arc System Works has left it up to publishers in other regions as to whether or not this demo will appear outside of Japan, so stay tuned for word on that front.
Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- is scheduled to launch for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in Japan on December 4, with a North American release planned for sometime this holiday season.
UltraChen TV is back with yet another broadcast, and a whole new slate of topics to discuss. Tonight, UltraDavid and James Chen will be discussing Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, Tekken 7, The Big House 4, PandaxGaming’s latest online tournament, and more.
If you’re interested in this topic, be sure to tune in and check the show out. The stream will be live in this article, but you can also visit Twitch to join the chat.
We know LiangHuBBB best for their long-running series “Funny & Cool Moments,” where they bring out the sillier side of fighting games through footage of various bugs and glitches. While that series is the standout for the YouTuber, they have also put together plenty of tutorials over the years, among those are a couple revolving around Injustice: Gods Among Us’ Deathstroke.
The footage below is the third such tutorial, which focuses on the more advanced tactics available. The video covers some things that you’d expect from a character guide, like which moves put Deathstroke at disadvantage and when not to throw those moves–or, in some cases, how to use those moves to bait opponents into poor decisions–as well as some more nuanced applications of his buttons, like using his forward 3 to set up side swaps with opponents and get out of the corner.
If you’re a new Deathstroke player or even if you have been popping caps in the Injustice community since the game’s release, this tutorial is sure to teach you a few things.
