Have you ever had difficulties opening up your opponents’ defensive options, so that you can dole out the necessary damage to win? One thing that separates the top winning players from the rest is the ability to establish proper block pressure.
While most people understand the concept of creating safe block strings, there are still some struggles with actually creating opportunities beyond this. This requires being able to create frame traps and extending block pressure to make it difficult for opponents to escape without eating damage. This tutorial, which shows the concept via Guilty Gear Xrd, gives a primer on the concept that will help you get started.
Soon you’ll be able to read about some new battles between your favorite World Warriors.
UDON Entertainment has published a vast library of Street Fighter-themed graphic novels and comics, as well as bringing over manga for English-speaking audiences, including the Daigo Umehara manga Daigo the Beast: Umehara Fighting Gamers! Next to be added to the catalog — as revealed in the last pages of Street Fighter vs. Darkstalkers issue 5 — is a hardcover novel: Street Fighter: Where Strength Lies.
Written by Takashi Yano, the book will feature cover and interior illustrations by manga artist Yusuke Murata. The synopsis:
The World Warriors take center stage in the first ever Street Fighter novel! Featuring Ryu vs. Akuma, Chun-Li vs. Elena, Guile vs. E.Honda, Sagat vs. M.Bison, and many more classic fighters colliding in their most epic encounters yet. It’s all described in Shoryuken-smashing, Sonic Boom-throwing, Psycho Power-pulsing detail! The action is only enhanced with bonus manga pages and artwork in every chapter by manga legend Yusuke Murata!
It is available to pre-order now for $19.99 USD on Amazon. It is expected to ship for November 7, 2017.
In Pokkén Tournament, your choice of support pokémon will often go a long way in determining how you play a match. For this reason alone, the Quagsire support hasn’t seen much use in tournament play: though it does massive chip damage, its slow startup and ability to be jumped out of has made it too inconsistent for most players to commit to.
Pokkén pro Double, however, has revisited this neglected support by crafting some sick setups with one of Pokkén’s main zoners, Gardevoir. The synergy these two Pokémon have makes sense: the lingering lockdown of Gardevoir’s many projectiles lock the enemy in place for Quarsire’s high chip damage.
YouTube channel Body Count Fighting recently had Injustice 2 Pro GuamoKun stop by their studios to give some valuable tips for a select set of super-characters: Superman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn.
GuamoKun spends time going over each character’s overall gameplans, combos, and strengths and weaknesses. While GuamoKun’s advice is valuable for each of the three listed Injustice 2 characters, Poison Ivy players should pay particular attention: he is one of the few mains of this villainous plant lady in the country. If you’ve been interested in Poison Ivy from afar, this is the perfect video to pick up her zoning game.
Since the early days of Tekken, Lee Chaolan’s Mist Trap has always been one of his secret weapons. As long term Lee mains who study Tekken frame data may know, it is one of the original “Just Frame” moves, an attack that has special properties if executed successfully within a narrow 1 frame window.
Still true in Tekken 7, The main benefit of Mist Trap is the hard knockdown you get from it, which puts Lee at an offensive advantage in which most situations end up with the opponent inevitably taking more damage. In their latest video, TZMurakumo demonstrates what you’ve got to do to not waste the knockdown opportunity that the Mist Trap provides by going through all the options and showing you the pros and cons of each.
Check out the Mist Trap study below, and if you’re a Lee main, be sure to check out his Tekken 7 combo breakdown.
The fifth and sixth rounds of NorCal Rivals in the fall season of Red Bull Proving Grounds took place at the beginning of August and September. Players from all over northern California gathered to compete in Street Fighter V to earn points to qualify for the region’s 3v3 team to compete at the Red Bull Proving Grounds Championship match. Whichever team wins the 3v3 tournament at the event means they and the rest of the region’s top eight players on the leaderboard will be flown out to Red Bull Battle Grounds in Boston, Massachusetts in November, to compete for the last spot to qualify for Capcom Cup 2017 in December.
The usual notable suspects such as Rommel “ROM” Macatangay, Pavo “Pavocado” Miskic, German “Ultima” Marroquin, Clean Kill’s Ted “No Respect” Sarmiento, and pH|James “Jame” Szeto were in attendance along with bigger names such as Circa’s Long “LPN” Nguyen, Miky “XSK_Samurai” Chea, and Cygames Beast’s Eduardo “PR Balrog” Perez. Needless to say, the competition was fiercer than ever in the land of northern California this time, as everyone was hungry for those precious Red Bull points.
Below are the results and replays from the two most recent NorCal Rivals events, filled with exciting matches between some of the Bay Area’s best players and some surprising upsets. With one more event left in the fall season, you can bet it’ll only get more intense come October.
Ahead of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite‘s release tomorrow, esports organization Method have brought a Marvel heavy-hitter into the fold. Joining other players like Luffy, Packz and REO, Cole “Flux” Tocci has become the latest addition to Method’s fighting game roster.
Famous for his Zero May Cry team, Flux has been a constant threat in top 8s for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, with him recently coming first at East Coast Throwdown 2017. While Marvel is the game he is most famous for, Flux is a big threat in the US BlazBlue scene too, and is currently ranked eighth in smash.gg’s Burst League.
Flux has a history with Method too, as he often competed against their raiding guild back when he was an avid World of Warcraft player. Now part of Method’s cohort, expect a whole new era of lightning loops and Dante combos in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
One of, if not the most outspoken people in fighting game development today is none other than Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada. The Tekken producer is no stranger to giving out his opinion on social media, especially when it comes to his own game.
Gaming industry site Gamasutra has gotten a chance to sit down and conduct a massive interview with Harada. The interview covers a large number of topics — almost too many to list, really. However, some of Harada’s answers do stand out. The one that may interest competitive players the most is what he says about how they changed frame data for online play. According to Harada, around a decade or so ago, not just the addition of online play — but the change to LCD based hardware itself — meant that it became harder to react to fast pokes due to the additional delay. With this in mind, they made a conscious effort to change the frame data and slow down the pokes, increasing their frames from around 8 for the fastest attack, to 10 or more in their later games.
Of course, he acknowledges that this doesn’t fix everything, and that online play is affected by the network infrastructure of a region. That said, he does state that he would like to continue to tailor the game to “absorb lag.” Though he does admit that there is a limit to how much he can do so, as it also affects the game’s tempo.
Another interesting topic he comments on is the growth of fighting games in esports. Harada states that “esports” for him is simply another term that the fighting game community is using to help communicate what they’re doing to other people. The community itself has been doing competitions and tournaments for fighting games for a long time now, long before “esports” entered into the scene.
Harada also talks about crossovers, including adding guest characters into Tekken 7. Surprisingly enough, he doesn’t really expect a large amount of players from the characters home franchises to cross over to Tekken (though admits that that does happen). It’s more about promotion and granting awareness of Tekken itself. These crossovers, he states, can create a lot of buzz around the game online. He also talks about the process of actually adding these characters into Tekken, stating that the goal is to make said characters play like they did in their home series, while still fitting into a 3D system.
Of course, this is just a small taste of what Harada talks about in the interview. Head on over to Gamasutra to read the rest of what Harada has to say.
While many of us are recovering from its closed beta, the Dragon Ball FighterZ hype train rolls on with Tokyo Games Show later this week. Along with it being playable at the show, producer Tomoko Hiroki and the team from Arc System Works will be hosting a panel on the Saturday — complete with special guest Hikaru Midorikawa, the Japanese voice actor for Android 16.
You’ll be able to watch the panel live via Bandai Namco’s 876TV channel, with it being streamed at 4:00 PM JST/12:00 AM PT. With the recent announcement of Yamcha and Tien as playable characters, it’s fair to expect a trailer showing these two fighters in action. With Android 16’s voice actor also present, we may learn more about Dragon Ball FighterZ‘s story mode, seeing as A16 and new character Android 21 feature prominently within this “what-if” scenario.
Though the closed beta may be wrapping up, Maximilian continued his character breakdowns of the original 6 Z Warriors revealed for Dragon Ball FighterZ by taking a look at the final Saiyan amongst the current playable cast, Teen Gohan.
Given that this is the teenage version of Gohan — in his Super Saiyan 2 form from when he battled Perfect Cell at the conclusion of the Cell Games — he is understandably a short character with stubby limbs, similar to Krillin and Android 18. However, he makes up for this with his massive damage output, in addition to have some unique utility that sets him apart from other cast members.
His standing medium attack lunges him forward a bit, providing him with some help in the neutral, while his ki blasts function similarly to Vegeta’s in terms of being fast, multi-hitting fireballs that come out fairly quickly.
Moving on to his specials, his Five Strike Combo is normally a lunging kick, but can be enhanced with multiple button presses to continue the side-switching assault. Though it does good damage and is a solid combo ender, it does leave Teen Gohan in an airborne state, preventing him from using any supers until he lands back on the ground. Also similarly to Vegeta, Teen Gohan possesses a Shoryuken in the form of his Dragon Flight, which will make him rise up at different angles depending on strength. However, the EX version cannot be combed off of without spending a second bar on a Vanish.
Teen Gohan’s air-only special, the Aerial Kick, resembles Chun-Li’s Lighting Legs, which provides him with a solid gap-closing tool, but he doesn’t get near the pressure of the Strongest Woman in the World due to the inability to use a super afterwards.
In terms of his super special attacks, the No Motion Kamehameha sees Gohan look to the heavens, before blasting a Kamehameha Wave upwards, in an angle similar to Iron Man’s angled Proton Cannon, which limits its usage to after wall bounces or for DHCing into another partner. However the super that should see the most use is his Level 3, the legendary Father-Son Kamehameha (that was used to completely obliterate Perfect Cell). This attack does huge damage, but if you feel the need to unleash Gohan’s full power and you have 2 meters to spare, you can hold down any button to unleash the ultimate Father-Son Kamehameha Full Power, for the hefty price of 5 meters, for one of the most damaging supers in the entire game.
Lastly, Max notes that Teen Gohan also has some unique utility an as assist. When called, he’ll unleash the light version of his Dragon Flight, providing his allies with a fully-invincible Shoryuken-style assist, which is both a fantastic mix-up tool and an incredible meterless anti-air option for fighters who might need it. This falls in line with producer Tomoko Hiroki’s comment that they want some of the physically-weaker fighters to perhaps be more valuable to a team as an assist, rather than a point character. You can see the full video below.
Next up, Max will be breaking down the villainous trio of Frieza, Perfect Cell, and Majin Buu to close out the currently-playable cast. You can see his previous breakdowns at the links below.
Dragon Ball FighterZ will be available in February 2018 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam PC, with pre-orders granting Early Access to an Open Beta to be held closer to release.
