Rising Up: Essential Street Fighter V matchup knowledge — Birdie

I think the biggest two factors separating the beginners from intermediate players are having a plan going into a match, and understanding your opponents’ options. Further, I see a lot of players, beginners and experienced players alike, moving incorrectly and losing potential punishes on certain characters. So I’ve decided to try a series of videos where I talk about the essential strengths and weaknesses of each character, and how to play against them. I believe that Street Fighter–and fighting games in general–are dramatically more fun and interesting when both players are playing at a high level, so I want to ensure every player is only losing to their opponent and not to the matchup. My first video is on Birdie, as I think he’s quite commonly played, yet fairly poorly understood.

In this video I talk about Birdie’s anti-air options, anti-fireball options, reversal options, and unsafe attacks. The information I demonstrate here is very important but somewhat rudimentary. I encourage anyone who watches to contribute some of their own anti-Birdie matchup knowledge in the video’s comments section. I have no set order planned to make these videos, and I’ll happily pick my next character based on demand, so I also encourage you to tell me which characters or which special moves give you the most trouble. I’ll prioritize what characters I’ll cover next based on the feedback I get.

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Get a taste of the new music tracks coming to The King of Fighters XIV

The King of Fighters XIV’s upcoming version 2.0 update is going to bring with it new stages and DLC characters; however, it seems that that SNK has a bit more in store for series fans, as they will also be adding in some classic music tracks to the game.

SNK has recently shared a new trailer showcasing samples of these classic music tracks. For those wondering what the tracks are, these are A Kiss for Geese, Cyber Edit (from Art of Fighting 2, which likely means it’ll play when Geese and Ryo face off), Pasta (from Fatal Fury 2), as well as Billy Kane’s theme London March.

Source: SNK, via r/KOF

GINX Esports TV show “The Bridge” interviews Gootecks; talks ELEAGUE, Cross Counter, and more

Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez sat down with the hosts of “The Bridge”–a GINX Esports TV show, based out of the United Kingdom–to talk about his ELEAGUE experience. The 20-minute interview is dense with information, covering topics from his start in the FGC to his present-day appearances. (And I do mean appearances, in every sense of the word.)

Gootecks goes into his humble beginnings as a video maker for Family Fun Arcade, producing podcasts and tournament videos for his local Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike scene. It’s a stark difference from the heart of the interview: his sudden and surprising appearance on TBS’s ELEAGUE. Gootecks seems well aware of his place among the ELEAGUE cast, and even comments on how this was an opportunity to stand out from the pros. He also gives his hot take on who expects to see in top 8, and what he expects of the show’s production going forward.

Source: King Jae

Double’s Braixen brings her entire squad in this support combo compilation for Pokkén Tournament

One of the primary reasons for Braixen’s status as a top tier character in Pokkén Tournament: her ability to both charge her supports faster than other characters, and then cancel into those supports. These unique abilities coupled with some high level techniques such as Flame Charge Cancel, Sunny Dash, and others give her a terrifying list of powerful, flexible options for every situation. Pokkén player Double has decided to take the arduous task of compiling all of these options into video, one support set at a time.

Both sets show why Braixen’s support cancel ability is so strong–Emolga’s speed debuff is now a threat off any connected hit, and with a fast-charging Snivy, she has both anti-air and constant ground pressure available. The fact that Braixen can also convert into, and out of, the high-damage Lapras is downright silly, but perhaps is more trivia then tournament-worthy. Double has also provided an overlay showing the inputs of the combos. Those that have wanted to get the most efficient Enhanced Sunny Day setups, but are having trouble with the input will find this visual reference quite useful.

Source: Double_FGC

Stun your opponents with Tung Fu Rue’s Holy Fist in The King of Fighters XIV

If you’re willing to put the work into it, The King of Fighters XIV’s Hakkyokuseiken master can pump out massive damage and stun. YouTuber playergodaines just made that work easier for all aspiring Kung Fu practitioners with his comprehensive Tung Combo Tutorial.

Practically, learning Air Senpuu Ken (QCB+P) and the loops off of it lead to a large part of the Max Mode damage Tung can dish out. Nowhere is this more clear then in the King of Dinosaurs matchup, where he can dump his meter for a 100% guaranteed stun off of a jump-in.

Source: playergodaines

Part of Capcom’s internal anatomy guide for designing character sprites is now available on the CFN Portal

Following a popular talk at this year’s GDC which discussed the art direction for Street Fighter V, Capcom have released part of their internal anatomy guide for everyone to read. Called “Anatomy: a strange guide for artists,” this document was designed during the height of the pixel art era, showing artists at Capcom the most important areas to exaggerate when creating character sprites.

The portion of the guide mainly focus on the male body, showing artists how to draw and animate characters. Focusing on specific body parts like the arms, shoulders and legs, the document shows how artists can elongate, shorten or otherwise exaggerate these body parts to create art which is both informative and cool to look at. While it is all in Japanese, the very existence of this guide shows just how much care went into designing character sprites for games like Darkstalkers and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Even though Capcom has left sprite art behind, the document is still used to teach new artists about Capcom’s “house style” when it comes to animating characters. The guide was actually created around the time of the Street Fighter Alpha series, and the first Darkstalkers game, explaining why Demitri is on the cover. Several famous Capcom artists collaborated on the guide, with Akiman acting as the editor.

The whole GDC talk is a must-watch if you’re interested in character and art design for fighting games, as it tracks Capcom’s process in refining Street Fighter V’s character art. It also touches on how Capcom’s artists would carefully exaggerate certain elements of character anatomy–a length of an arm, size of a muscle, the curvature of a spine–in order to present as much information to the player as quickly as possible.

Sources: CFN Portal via Madman’s Cafe; GDC Vault

Tomorrow’s Injustice 2 Watchtower stream: Bane, Captain Cold, & The Flash; New Shattered Alliances trailer Thursday

Following the release of Catwoman’s gameplay trailer yesterday, NetherRealm Studios’ Ed Boon has revealed more Injustice 2 news on Twitter. First, part 4 of the “Shattered Alliances” trailer series, focusing on the Society, will be released on Thursday. Also, the next Watchtower live stream will be held tomorrow–April 5th–featuring character breakdowns for the recently revealed Captain Cold, Bane and The Flash, from whom we haven’t seen any gameplay since he was first revealed in the game’s announcement trailer.

You can see the Tweets below, and, as usual, the stream will begin at 3:00 PM CST (1:00 PM PDT) on https://www.twitch.tv/netherrealm.

Sources: Noobde (Twitter); InjusticeGame (Twitter) via Test Your Might

The King of Fighters XIV community completes collection of KOF player survey data

About half a year ago, some members of the King of Fighters community started mobilizing a large-scale survey to compile data on their players. This data collection is as of now complete, with the organizer of the survey posting their findings on Twitter.

The linked document contains strategies for raising awareness and broadening the playerbase of KOF, as well as solid numbers about crossover with other games, how long players have been playing, whether players are interested in attending their first event, and what would attract them to actually making it to their local scenes to play. This information should be interesting for everyone–but it’ll be particularly helpful for anyone wanting to grow the KOF scene.

Source: James Alderson

Yahoo! Esports unveils Smash Rivalries, a Super Smash Bros. Melee invitational between East and West Coast

Hoping to put to rest one of Melee’s longest-running feuds, Yahoo! Esports has announced a special 16-player invitational, titled Smash Rivalries. Ever since the early days of Melee back in the mid 2000s, there has been a fierce rivalry between the East and West Coast. Bringing together players from both sides of the USA, this invitational should hopefully end a beef which has been raging for nearly 15 years.

This event will run this coming weekend from April 8th-9th, with a main 8v8 crew battle, alongside a doubles and singles bracket. The teams are as follows:

East Coast

Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma
Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman
James “Swedish Delight” Liu
Justin “Wizzrobe” Hallett
James “Duck” Ma
Ryan “The Moon” Coker-Welch
Sami “DruggedFox” Muhanna
Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez

West Coast

Joseph “Mango” Marquez
Zachary “SFAT” Cordoni
Weston “Westballz” Dennis
Jeffrey “Axe” Williamson
Dajuan “Shroomed” McDaniel
Kevin “PewPewU” Toy
Johnny “s2j” Kim
Joey “Lucky” Aldama

The commentators for this tournament are well versed in this long standing rivalry, with veteran commentators Wynton “Prog” Smith, D’Ron “D1” Maingrette,  Brandon “HomeMadeWaffles” Collier, Phil DeBerry and Kris “Toph” Aldenderfer lending their voices to the proceedings. All the action will be streamed live from the Yahoo! Esports Twitch channel, with games kicking off at 12:00 PM PST on April 8th.

Source: Yahoo! Esports

Clutch reads, unseeable mixups, and more: ELEAGUE’s top 5 Street Fighter V Invitational preliminaries moments

When you put some of the game’s top players together in a round robin tournament, there are definitely going to be some highlight-worthy moments. Such was the case with week one of ELEAGUE’s inaugural Street Fighter V Invitational. Taking a page out of the Capcom Pro Tour’s playbook, ELEAGUE has compiled a video featuring the five moments they thought were the very best from the preliminaries.

The moments below feature some amazing plays and reads from some of the top players at the event. This includes some expected ones–such as Razer’s Xian’s pulling off some amazing mixups with Ibuki, or Evil Geniuses’s Justin Wong pulling out an amazing comeback–as well as some that caught us off guard, such as Echo Fox’s Julio Fuentes reversing the flow of a match with a well-timed series of jabs, or Ryan Hart scouting RB|Luffy’s attempt to jump out and catching it with Urien’s Dominant Crush.

Source: ELEAGUE