ARIKA devs will be stopping by Daigo’s stream at 11:00 AM JST on August 9th, both to show off their game and to hold a Q&A with viewers. If you’re in the USA, this will be on the evening of August 8th at 7:00 PM PDT. Those that don’t speak Japanese might have to hope for a translator to re-stream, but luckily the game’s great visuals transcend language.
Defend The North 2017, New York’s premiere fighting game major, has come and gone. For Tekken 7 fans that may have missed the event, Team Spooky has uploaded the top 8 matches onto their channel. The finest players in the North brought a wide and interesting character spread:
Bloodhawk (Kazumi)
EMP The Game (Law, Devil Jin, Heihachi)
FightingGM (Lee)
PepperBeef2Spicy (Leo, Law)
Brian H (Paul)
Tetyuzon (Miguel)
EMP Blood Red (Steve)
FBI (Claudio)
That’s 10 unique characters in top 8 for a 172-player major. Not bad, Tekken 7.
The challenge to the Super Smash Bros. Melee gods will take place at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.
While Red Bull has already announced their Smash Gods and Gatekeepers event — an opportunity for challengers to take on the “gods” of Super Smash Bros. Melee — they had not revealed the date and location, until now. Smash Gods and Gatekeepers will take place on September 2 & 3, 2017, at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, California.
Mortals, rejoice! It is time to answer the call. Today, Red Bull announced Red Bull Smash Gods and Gatekeepers, an all-new two-day Super Smash Bros. Melee major where fans have the opportunity to team up and compete with their favorite renowned Super Smash Bros. athletes.
To reiterate the event details from the earlier announcement: the two-day event features two formats, leading up to a final competition: a double-elimination tournament leading into Crew battles, that will culminate in “Judgement Day” — a battle captained by the Gods and Gatekeepers themselves: Cloud 9’s Joseph “Mango” Marquez, PG|Justin “Plup” McGrath, Counter Logic Gaming’s Zac “SFAT” Cordoni, VGBootCamp’s Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez, Justin “Wizzrobe” Hallett, Tempo Storm’s Jeffrey “Axe” Williamson, Echo Fox & MVG’s Jason “Mew2king” Zimmerman and Red Bull’s William “Leffen” Hjelte.
Day 1: a standard double elimination competition for participants to qualify as the Chosen: those who are ranked in the top 32 will be placed in a draft for the final 2 open slots in the Captains’ Crew. Those not chosen from the top 32 will play in a standalone Godforsaken Tournament.
Day 2: the final Judgement Day battles to see which Crew will be victorious, and crowned champions!
Season three of Ubisoft’s hack n’ slash fighter For Honor was just announced today! This season, branded “Grudge and Glory,” has officially been given a launch date of August 15th. “Grudge and Glory” introduces two new characters (the Highlander and the Gladiator), two new maps, tournament modes, re-balancing on both existing characters and maps, and new customization options.
Considering the launch date is almost immediately after the conclusion of their World Tournament Series, it seems Ubisoft is trying to deliberately maintain any momentum from this event. Whether this and the announcement of dedicated servers will be enough to revitalize For Honor remains to be seen.
Acting as a Ranking event on the Capcom Pro Tour and one of South East Asia’s biggest majors, registration for Manila Cup 2017 is now live. Held at the Power Mac Center in Makati from September 8th-10th, this year’s Manila Cup is hosting a grand total of nine tournaments with:
Street Fighter V
Tekken 7
Mortal Kombat XL
The King of Fighters XIV
Injustice 2
Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2
BlazBlue Central Fiction
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
International registration can be found over at smash.gg, while local Filipino players can register at the Play Book Gaming Lounge in Circuit Makati. With top talent from all over South East Asia coming to compete and SRK’s very own d3v helping run the tournament, Manila Cup is an event you don’t want to miss.
With issues swirling around modded controllers, mid-set coaching and ledge-grab limits, the high council of Super Smash Bros. Melee has finally met to discuss a new recommended ruleset for the game. Voted on by members of MeleeItOnMe, this new ruleset is open to amendment, so don’t expect certain elements to be set in stone.
First off, competitive Melee will continue to use NTSC or PAL version 1.02 with the use of a standard memory card. That means no using modded versions of Melee to fix dash-backs, shield-drops and Firefox angles. By extension, no hardware modifications that fix these issues can be used either, so Arduino controllers are out of the question. Shield-drop notches and cosmetic controller mods are still allowed.
One of the biggest questions going into this new ruleset was the question of the Smash Box and other box-like controllers. On a vote of four to one, the MeleeItOnMe leadership panel voted to tentatively ban controllers like the Smash Box and the B0XX, with the reason being given that “the use of a GC controller is somewhat intrinsic to what [they] consider ‘playing Melee.’” This may be subject to change — I certainly hope it will — but controllers of this type will not be allowed at tournaments that follow this ruleset.
Mid-set coaching is also banned with this rule-set and warm-up periods before games are now restricted to 30 seconds using Melee’s in-game timer. For the entire rule set, a breakdown of how the panel voted and an explanation for certain rulings, go to MeleeItOnMe’s official website. You can also find details on how to propose amendments to the ruleset on the official ruleset PDF.
Alongside the big stages, tournament stations, swag stores, and big company booths at Evo 2017 were smaller developers showcasing their games. There was plenty to choose, from Nidhogg 2, to the new ARIKA game, Omen of Sorrow, Absolver, and even some RPG games as well. Lots of good opportunities to try new products.
With my limited time, I couldn’t play all of them, so I chose to try out some games that I haven’t played before, or heard much about. Here are some of my impressions; some of these definitely have a real shot at being popular choices for fighting game events, even if just as side or party games.
This one has probably the most promise to make it into mainstream FGC. Fantasy Strike lets fighting game fundamentals take center stage, removing difficult links or special move commands. Characters have jump attacks and usually two or three types of jabs, usually an anti-air or a defensive move, throw, and super. The throw mechanic is interesting in particular. You automatically counter throws with a special “Yomi counter” as long as you’re not doing anything — it triggers a cool animation. There are still command throws in the game, which I found pretty difficult to handle, especially since one of the characters has super armor with them — the Zangief-like Garus Rook.
The characters are heavily archetype-based. You can play as Jaina — a complete zoner — with several archery attacks, and a DP that costs health to use. I really liked Setsuki, who had cross-up teleports and command grabs, and probably the longest combos in the game with a special dive. DeGrey really stood out as well. He’s a reference to Guilty Gear’s Slayer, as he has a quick step back and a Pile Bunker-like punch and kick follow-ups. He also sends his ghost to disable the opponent. The cast is packed with references to characters from other games — and they didn’t feel like rip-offs — but rather to welcome people from across the fighting game spectrum.
There’s some concern that the game is “too simple,” but the community manager assured me that this argument doesn’t hold up very well.
“A lot of people are afraid that if you reduce complexity, you reduce depth,” Richard “Leontes” Lopez, Marketing & Community Manager at Sirlin Games, told me. “They feel like it’s an affront to their identity, but it’s more about outsmarting the opponent and making decisions.”
In a category of “Fighting Game with Weirdest Rules” this would surely be the winner. The hipster coffee aficionados in Coffence duke it out between each other with coffee cups, pots, and other containers with caffeine. The goal is to not hit the opponent, but what they’re holding. Upon a successful hit, one “drop” (or “life point,” effectively) soars into the air, free for anyone to grab back into their container. So yes, the goal is to empty their pot and fill up yours.
How does one go on the “Coffence,” exactly? Well, there’s jumping and sliding, which is good for crossing-up. There is a melee swing and a special “break” attack, which is used to break defense, sort of how a throw mechanic would. The main way to play though, I feel, is to do the ranged attack, which propels your cup forward and back like a yo-yo. This gave it a bit of an ARMS feel as you try to aim and hit their cup. It’s fun to snatch flying drops of coffee like this.
It’s a mix between a stick shooter and fighting game. Props for a unique concept! Though I only tried one vs. one, up to four players can engage in Coffence.
Picture four wizards duking it out in combat to the death, wrapped in Smash-esque mechanics. The vivid colors on the stages, which vary greatly with death traps and environmental conditions, caught me a little off-guard. There’s a lot of adaptation required, depending on which stage is selected. The controls are very simple, there’s only jumping and directional attacking. Characters have hit points and various attack types. Some of them dash with their attacks, while others release small bursts of energy. But that’s not the most exciting aspect; when every round starts, there are spellbooks placed around the map. Those give access to powerful special attacks. I had fun summoning ice spikes from the wall; they can completely catch someone off-guard. There was a projectile spell, as well as a powerful summon golem spellbook.
It’s a game where you have to be clever about movement and using the stage to kill your opponents faster than they can take you out. Surprisingly, there’s also a single-player campaign that plays like a physics-based platformer.
It’s not exactly a fighting game, rather an RPG, but I feel this will find appreciation from this audience — especially from those who played PlayStation’s Valkyrie Profile. Each party member is assigned a button (triangle is for spellcasting, such as healing or offensive magic), so pressing square, X, and circle in succession automatically sends them swinging. Multiple presses lead to chains and more effective combo finishes. Timing attacks is important to stagger opponents, but so is blocking. Correct blocking requires quite the reflex and doing a perfect parry is even more rewarding. Fighting bosses truly requires learning their patterns, which aren’t always straightforward.
This game is already out on PlayStation 4, and getting it also nets a PlayStation Vita copy which features a different protagonist.
The 2.0 update to BlazBlue: Central Fiction just hit arcades in Japan (as well as cabinets around the world that use the NESICA Live system), so players are busy discovering the changes. Beyond what’s said in the patch notes, it turns out that there’s quite a lot of new things to discover. Sometimes, some very small modifications can completely alter or enable brand new tech. Here’s a sample of some of the interesting changes players found so far:
Here’s an important universal change: as stated in the BlazBlue patch notes, Exceed Accel attacks are a lot less safe now. If blocked, they are “at least -9 frames,” according to Minami. You’re also in counter-hit state.
While we’ve done a lot of coverage on Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, we haven’t really covered too much about how the game actually plays. Even though there’s a Story Demo out, it still isn’t the best place to learn about the game, and its cast.
For those interested in MvC:I’s gameplay, veteran player Olaf Redland has put together an extensive Google Doc with his notes on the game’s systems as well as how certain characters play. Regarding the game’s systems, the notes confirm things we already know — such as the return of the combo system from the games prior to MvC3, as well as a variant of MvC2’s undizzy system. In addition to this, he also notes some new things, such as a new hit state he’s calling “slam,” the new “light armor” state, as well as the new perfect pushblock system that reflects projectiles, reduces chip, and possibly also block stun. In addition to this, he also lists what is currently known about all effects of the five currently revealed Infinity Stones, with a slot reserved for the Soul Stone when it’s eventually revealed.
As for characters, he’s still completing the notes. Currently, he has extensive notes on Gamora, Morrigan, and Nemesis. These include all the move inputs for Gamora, as well as the new moves and properties for the latter two returning characters.
Olaf states that he plans to continue updating this based on people’s comments. Any other players with question should hit him up on Twitter. In the meantime, you can check out his complete notes here.
While we’ve done a lot of coverage on Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, we haven’t really covered too much about how the game actually plays. Even though there’s a Story Demo out, it still isn’t the best place to learn about the game, and its cast.
For those interested in MvC:I’s gameplay, veteran player Olaf Redland has put together an extensive Google Doc with his notes on the game’s systems as well as how certain characters play. Regarding the game’s systems, the notes confirm things we already know — such as the return of the combo system from the games prior to MvC3, as well as a variant of MvC2’s undizzy system. In addition to this, he also notes some new things, such as a new hit state he’s calling “slam,” the new “light armor” state, as well as the new perfect pushblock system that reflects projectiles, reduces chip, and possibly also block stun. In addition to this, he also lists what is currently known about all effects of the five currently revealed Infinity Stones, with a slot reserved for the Soul Stone when it’s eventually revealed.
As for characters, he’s still completing the notes. Currently, he has extensive notes on Gamora, Morrigan, and Nemesis. These include all the move inputs for Gamora, as well as the new moves and properties for the latter two returning characters.
Olaf states that he plans to continue updating this based on people’s comments. Any other players with question should hit him up on Twitter. In the meantime, you can check out his complete notes here.
