After nearly a year of absolutely fierce competition, the weekend of Capcom Cup 2017 is finally almost upon us. For three action-packed days, we’ll be able to witness the 32 strongest Street Fighter V players in the world today battle it out in a double-elimination tournament to crown a new Street Fighter V World Champion.
Capcom’s Esports Social Media Manager, Michael Martin, posted on the PlayStation Blog outlining all the key details that fans, attendees, and competitors will need to know to get in on all of the action this weekend in Anaheim, California.
Beginning on Friday, December 8th, the Last Chance Qualifier will be held. This open tournament will decided the final spot in the Capcom Cup bracket, as the victor will enter as the 32nd seed, and will face off with the top seed, Panda Global’s Punk, in the opening round. If you’ll be heading out to California and would like to take your shot, registration for the open tournament will be $40 on-site, but you’d better be quick before the 256-player cap is reached (101 spots remain open, as of this writing).
Admission is free to spectators for the first two days at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel, but a PlayStation Experience badge will be required for admission into the Sunday finals at the Anaheim Convention Center. The festivities will run from 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM PT on Friday and Saturday, before the finals day lasts from 2:00 PM – 8:00 PM PT.
The funds from the 2017 Capcom Pro Tour DLC have been tallied up, and will be adding over $120,000 to the base $250,000 prize pool, allowing these World Warriors to compete for over $370,000, and the chance to have their name permanently engraved on the Capcom Cup trophy — which remains on display at the Capcom USA offices.
If you can’t be there in person, you can still enjoy all three days of the action, including some “special announcements,” at twitch.tv/capcomfighters. You can see the official trailer for Capcom Cup 2017 below, and don’t forget to check out our ongoing Capcom Cup Player Analysis seriesfor more info on the competitors, as well as the planned brackets.
Hot off the heels of announcing a two-week open beta test for PlayStation 4, ARIKA recently posted an extremely brief teaser hinting at another new challenger for their upcoming title, Fighting EX Layer. In the 11-second clip, we see what looks to be a redesigned Blair Dame, now sporting an outfit looking more like combat fatigues — as opposed to her usual white attire — though she can only be seen briefly from the back, before the proclamation appears: “She will surely come back.”
Originally appearing in the original Street Fighter EX as a secret character, she would later return in the March 1997 update, Street Fighter EX Plus — though she would fail to feature in later games in the series, and would not be seen again until the ARIKA-developed Fighting Layer, published by Namco, in December 1998.
Earlier this year, she received a CFN Portal profile, along with the other EX characters, providing her with a connection to SF’s Karin Kanzuki — as she and Dame are both members of the “Worldwide Young Ladies Club,” in addition to sharing a similar posh upbringing and competitive stubbornness. You can see it here — and can catch the quick teaser below.
Are you excited to see Blair Dame return in the upcoming Fighting EX Layer? If so, feel free to share them in the comments below.
Fighting EX Layer will be released on PlayStation 4 sometime in 2018.
Just in time for Saint Nicholas’ Day, PQube and Digital Crafter are bringing Santa Claus to Fight of Gods. Kris Kringle is Fight of Gods‘ second free character, with more to come in the future.
Acting as the modern face of Christmas, Santa Claus comes to fight with a sack full of festive weaponry to beat up all those naughty gods and goddesses. Along with slapping his foes up with giant candy canes and Christmas trees, Santa’s Super has him jumping in his sleigh and charging straight into his opponent. Forget grandma, looks like Moses is going to get run over by a reindeer this Christmas.
Along with coal and exploding presents, Santa’s sack does contain one secret gift — but we’ll go on the naughty list if we tell you outright. Santa’s elves have told us that players can get this gift by doing something special on the character select screen, so start experimenting once the Santa patch goes live.
And of course, Santa’s addition means players can have Jesus and Father Christmas fighting it out to discover the true meaning of Christmas — playing fighting games with friends. To that end, Fight of Gods is 33% off on Steam until December 20th, making it a perfect Secret Santa gift for someone this holiday season.
After Ed Boon’s usual round of teasing on Twitter, NetherRealm Studios have released the official intro trailer for the shape-shifting superhero, Atom. A world-renowned physicist and a master of his quantum bio-belt, Ryan Choi can shrink down to deliver a subatomic smack down.
The quantum bio-belt allows Atom to change his size at will, with players able to shift between normal size, half size and atomic size. In half size, Atom stands at the height of a crouching character while in atomic size, he is just a speck of blue light running along the bottom of the screen. While he can dodge most attacks in his miniature form, Atom’s offense becomes quite restricted, so don’t be too frightened when you see a tiny blue dot leaping at you.
Atom does have access to a ray-gun alongside his bio-belt, giving him some wild projectiles. Besides a basic energy bolt, his ray-gun can freeze opponents in place, while briefly changing the size of their hitbox. Atom can also place traps on the floor via his special red and blue chemical vials. One vial drop creates a chemical puddle, with a second vial drop causing the puddle to react as a specific trap. You can mix and match vial drops to create different traps, so experiment to see which reaction is the most deadly.
For those who can’t wait to irritate their opponents with his subatomic shenanigans, the Atom joins the Injustice 2 roster on December 12th for Early Access players.
“Super Street Fighter Carnival 2017” marches on! SSFC2017 is the currently-ongoing Japanese tournament series at Mikado Arcade for a wide variety of classic (and sometimes, obscure) arcade titles. If you missed the first few tournaments from SSFC2017, there’s a lot to catch up on!
Mikado Arcade is down for any arcade classic, so perhaps it’s no surprise Windjammers made it in to SSFC2017’s lineup. But make no mistake, Windjammers is still a popular side game for the FGC anywhere in the world, with a tournament scene in France just celebrating its five year anniversary.
Enjoying SSFC2017? You can follow the action by subscribing to Mikado’s official YouTube channel, or you can even try to catch Mikado Arcade when they livestream!
Arman “Phenom” Hanjani was far and away Europe’s best player in 2016. While known in the region for a while, he was able to let the whole world know his strength with a huge string of top 8s on his way to a ninth-place finish at Capcom Cup.
2017 has been another very strong year for Bx3|Phenom, as he has once again found his way to the biggest event of the year. Will 2017 be the year that he finds his place at the top of the heap?
Unleashing His Final Form
Last year, the Norwegian was the most consistent Necalli on the circuit. He was also one of the most disrespectful — one of the kindest ways to describe his play style. That hasn’t changed. He continues to play a very aggressive game, also putting players into situations where they’re scared to push buttons. He is great at setting up throw loops, but has also become better at making them think he’ll do so. This allows him to scare them into jumping so that he’ll get anti-airs, inevitably scaring them into bigger risks in trying to escape his pressure.
He’s also able to maintain momentum. Like Haitani, he isn’t scared to avoid using V-Trigger. Last year saw him ride V-Trigger for all it’s worth, but with the changing meta, he has now been milking Necalli’s strong V-Reversal as well. As far as well-rounded Necallis go, it’s currently a dead heat between Phenom and Haitani. Capcom Cup could well prove the difference.
Hot on the Trail
One thing that Phenom has done is stay strong within the standings. Currently he is still ranked within the top 15 of the SRK Rankings, but beyond that, his tournament results speak well for his abilities. In ten events, he finished in the top 8 six times, with one being a win in Germany in a field that featured fellow Capcom Cup finalists Problem X and Big Bird. Off the CPT circuit, he also finished third in a stacked bracket at Northern Arena Knockout, fourth in China’s LAN Story Cup, and won yet another event in France, which featured Problem X falling short of victory. He also finished just shy of toppling Punk’s dominance at ELEAGUE.
When you look even deeper in his results, only one event in 2017 that he has played in has seen him finish outside of top 16 — and that was Evo, where he just narrowly missed out. If you want to talk about results, Phenom has them in spades.
Wins are Key
The one thing that you could even say about Phenom in 2016 against Phenom in 2017, is that he had more wins in the previous year — two instead of one. That could almost be negligible if you don’t consider that one of his wins was in a Premier event, and the only event he won in 2017 on the tour was a Ranking event. This could simply be that he traveled more last year and saw a better chance at results. Remember that Phenom wasn’t necessarily projected to win DreamHack Summer last year when he did. This means that people had far less initiative to actually research his play prior to the event, and thus weren’t as prepared for what he was bringing to the table.
It’s quite possible that Phenom’s fame has been a thorn in his side this season, with more people prepared when they know that he’s there. This may be why he performed well against Japanese players in Japan and throughout all of 2016, but falters now. He has struggled against the likes of Momochi and Yukadon, with Nemo, Kazunoko, and Haitani also taking victories over him. Given that so many of these players are names he’ll have to prepare for in Anaheim, he’ll need to have made adjustments prior to arriving this week.
Final Thoughts
I never really count Phenom out. He has the work ethic to make the adjustments, and he always seems to come through when it matters. Whether he has the mettle to win or not is unseen, but it would be a disservice to him to count him out of at least a top 16 performance.
New V-Triggers got a little bit of air time in Capcom-Unity’s Arcade Mode showcase.
Capcom-Unity took to Twitch yesterday to highlight the features of the upcoming Arcade Mode in Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition. It didn’t take long for the interface and layout to be shown; as what most viewers wanted to see were the new mechanics and V-Triggers in the upcoming build of the game, the rest of the stream turned to demonstrating those — well, at least a little. It was pretty clear that the stream was somewhat limited on what they were allowed to show off for us.
In this video, VesperArcade summarizes what was covered in the stream, and discusses what we were able to see of the new gameplay aspects and V-Triggers:
YogaFlame24 clipped the highlights from the stream for your viewing convenience; they basically boil down to seeing some of the new V-Triggers in action. While we saw Ibuki’s giant shuriken and Ryu’s crumpling parry in the initial trailer, this time we we got some glimpses of Chun-Li’s Kikosho and Birdie’s new can-flipping interaction.
This past weekend saw the first installment of the BlazBlue: Central Fiction Cup onlinetournament, held by ESL North America for PlayStation 4. With many warriors coming from far and wide (digitally, at least) for a chance at claiming the Azure, things would eventually boil down to the final eight Chosen fighters.
Here is the top 8 action, freshly uploaded by the official streamer: longtime Arc System Works content creator Koefficient, with commentary by ESL’s MiniMatt and ZakOneStar.
First Round matches feature, in Winners, Hitoshyura (Lambda-11) vs. Jyuuken (Carl Clover) and Kazen (Susanoo, Jubei) vs. FlyingCraine (Susanoo, Valkenhayn R. Hellsing). In Losers, it’s UnsafeOnHit (Naoto Kurogane, Susanoo) vs. SuperKawaiiWeeb (Hibiki Kohaku) and NarNar (Arakune) vs. NouaNova (Jin Kisaragi). You can catch the full series of matches, as well as Koefficient’s announcement video about the Cup, below.
This is certainly a fantastic opportunity to build momentum for the BlazBlue community in North America, especially with BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle set to be released next year. Will you become one of the Entitled and participate in the continued turning of the Wheel of Fate? Let us know in the comments section!
Has Capcom finally nerfed a much-reviled corner tactic in Street Fighter V?
Throw loops: the much-dreaded — and much-hated, at least on the receiving end — tactic has long been a point of contention in Street Fighter V. However: in yesterday’s Capcom-Unity livestream (intended to demonstrate the structure of the upcoming Arcade Mode in Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition), viewers caught a glimpse of a corner interaction that suggests throw loops may be a thing of the past.
The stream was running on the demonstration build that’s bound for PSX this weekend. When Ken threw Ryu into the corner in this new build, the pushback was clearly increased to move Ken into further range than the current build. In the video below, NurseLee compares the stream footage against Ken’s current corner-throw pushback:
While no official word has been given on this change (and I wouldn’t expect Capcom to provide those details until they’re ready to release full patch notes for SFVAE), it appears to be clearly intended to hamper repeated throw attempts in the corner. We also don’t know if this tweak is universal to the cast, or just for Ken! This may not represent the final build that hits retail as Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, so stay tuned for more updates as we learn more.
Liquid|NuckleDu was easily one of the favorites going into Capcom Cup 2107, due to his consistency on the Capcom Pro Tour this season. However, the 2016 champion has bowed out (for reasons that are currently not publicly known) — this blew the door wide open, as last year’s runner up EG|Ricki Ortiz steps in to fill his slot.
Not much has been seen of Ricki this year. How will she stack up in this year’s competition?
Character Crisis
After being one of the strongest Chun-Lis in the world last year, Ricki found herself struggling in 2017 after the changes to the character in Season 2. After Ricki finished outside of top 32 at Final Round XX, she expressed her concerns with the character’s viability in an interview with Red Bull, later going as far to say that she would look into learning Cammy if she continued to feel unconfident with Chun.
While we saw glimpses of her Cammy at ELEAGUE and Toryuken, the character never really took hold, and she continued to gut it out with Chun. But the lack of confidence was obviously still there, as we saw her fall out early in far more events than her status at the end of 2016 would allude to.
One thing that you can remark on was the nerfs to Chun-Li’s instant air legs, a tool that Ricki was notably adept at using. Ricki and Humanbomb both used this tool well in 2016, and while Humanbomb adjusted to the changes, Ricki saw herself get punished often for her usage of it. But probably the most-damning of nerfs was to her standing light kick — her best anti-air by a long shot. While Ricki has had experience with Chun-Li — and her bevy of situational anti-airs — in Street Fighter IV, the changes to standing light kick made players lean even more on situational anti-airs than ever before. What was worse was that these situational anti-airs were far less reliable than ever. When you look at it this way, it’s no wonder Ricki’s confidence waned: she really was at a loss for how to play this character, and yet couldn’t find anyone that fit her playstyle.
The Tale of the Tape
While we saw far less of Ricki than we have in previous years, what we did was enough to make people worry about her coming in to Anaheim this weekend. In the entirety of the CPT this year, she didn’t make a single top 8 in ten attempts. When she finished just on the cusp at DreamHack Austin, she offered a glimmer of hope that she would return to her former glory, but the rest of the year turned out to be a wash.
With many lower echelon placings, she further saw a lot of confidence drop at Toryuken, where she was eliminated in pools by two Toronto locals: VastEnd and L.E.S. While anyone who has followed Toronto players would know that there’s no shame in losing to these two — VastEnd would later upstage Punk at Canada Cup, while L.E.S. would go on to take a laundry list of names such as Justin Wong — for Ricki, it further set a slide in her confidence. This was a confidence level already shattered by posting a 0-7 record at ELEAGUE, in a pool that featured a Julio Fuentes bouncing back from injury.
Silence
After Defend the North, we saw Ricki take a break. While a break typically looks bad, for her, it seemed necessary. Whether she was dealing with personal issues or trying to work out the holes in her game, it was needed. While the season was at that point becoming a wash for her, time would tell how she would bounce back.
We got our answer at Canada Cup, where she was able to find her way out of pools, but narrowly finished outside of top 16. As bleak as this would look for someone who finished second last year at Capcom Cup, for her — given her struggles on the tour this season — it totally looks like the breath of fresh air she needed.
However, her losses in Toronto came at the hands of Problem X — one player poised to be a major problem at Capcom Cup — and NL, who just narrowly finished outside of the event.
Final Thoughts
As much as I’d like to find a reason to put faith in Ricki to be another hope for America to take it all again, it’s really hard to. She may have worked some things out recently that would put her in a better spot come Anaheim, but it’s really hard to know until we actually see her in action. But facing facts, she didn’t even come close to earning this spot into the event: if this were to go by points, it would have gone to the #31-ranked NL, not the #84-ranked Ricki Ortiz. Further, you can’t discount what these strings of losses can do to you mentally, when you know what you’re usually capable of.
Between her character and her results this year, I would be surprised to find her going anything but 0-2 in this event. Anything can happen, so she could easily surprise me. But hopefully Season 3 gives her a new lease on life in the game, and she shows her true mettle in 2018.
While we saw glimpses of her Cammy at ELEAGUE and Toryuken, the character never really took hold, and she continued to gut it out with Chun. But the lack of confidence was obviously still there, as we saw her fall out early in far more events than her status at the end of 2016 would allude to.