Category: Fighting Games

UK Player UM Tyrant has the face of a broken man in the clip below, and it’s hard to blame him. Here, he’s going through a frame-by-frame replay of a match he just had, tried to figure out how M. Bison landed in Zangief’s arms from the opposite end of the stage.

Though he’s completely silent, you can likely hear him thinking “How? HOW?” as he watches the replay. Though we have tools like Dantarion’s BoxDox to see hitboxes, it can still be hard to believe this happened once you see the moves themselves.

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What’s likely happening is that the bottom of EX Borscht Dynamite is grabbing the very top corner of Bison’s limb’s hurtbox. How the situation ended up with the ‘Gief player doing EX SPD from that far out is anyone’s guess, but it’s the only reasonable explanation for this bizarre looking grab. EX Borscht Dynamite’s hitbox was clearly made that big to make it easy to combo and anti-air with, but one can’t imagine that Capcom intended an interaction quite like this.

Sources: UM Tyrant, BoxDox

Over the weekend, a tournament in Japan concluded after a two-month series of qualifiers. Braver’s Revel 2017 found competition across Japanese regions to bring them all together to a national stage. As the bouts are over, we have footage of matches leading up to the top 8 as well as Grand Finals, for those who missed it live.

First up, here’s a series of matches before top 8:

Next up, here are the final parts of the event:

It’s definitely worth it to see the hype conclusion to this fighting series in BlazBlue: Central Fiction. For a breakdown on who was qualifying, refer to our previous Braver’s Revel post.

Source: Jourdal; original footage streamed on Nesica Twitch

After covering the changes Capcom will be making to Street Fighter V’s system mechanics in the upcoming April update, VesperArcade now turns his attention to dissecting the individual character changes for all characters to-be-altered, starting with Alex.

After some eyebrow-raising nerfs in the initial Season 2 patch, the “Awakened Talent” will finally be seeing some buffs in the near future.

One of the first changes coming to Alex, and this is a pretty big one, buff-wise, is that they’re increasing Alex’s health from 1000 to 1025. Now at first, you might not think this is a big deal, it’s just 25 more health, but it is actually a pretty big deal. For one, a lot of characters are getting their health nerfed, and another thing is that Alex is already a character with high stun, he’s got 1050 stun, so now he’s going have high health and high stun. Not even Birdie has high stun, so Alex is going to be even beefier than him. Another thing to consider is that Alex is the only character in the game with a 2-bar V-Trigger and over 1000 health, so he’ll definitely be in a healthy condition when he gets his V-Trigger, since it costs so little and he builds it so much from his Crush Counters.

In closing, Vesper gives his final thoughts about Alex’s upcoming changes.

So my final verdict on Alex, on this patch alone, is that he’s overall buffed. I’m pretty sure you guys can agree with the reverts, but the question is, is Season 1 Alex better than future Season 2 April Alex? The original Alex was just slightly better. The biggest thing Alex will be getting in April is the HP buff. He’s going to have high health, high stun that’s going to allow him to take a lot more risks getting in, and it’s going to be scary because he only has a 2-bar V-Trigger… He’ll also have a faster and better V-Skill, which benefits from the high HP as well, which is great, so Alex doesn’t always have to go in and he can build V-Gauge if the opponent is trying to play keepaway with him. Also, Alex’s Lariat links into St.MP, which is a huge damage buff to Alex that makes his combos much more scary and rewarding. The deal-breaker I’d say is that Alex’s biggest problem is his anti-air options. He kind of has that Karin vibe, where he has to use meter to reliably AA. I can’t say buff his jab or Lariat or make his Cr. HP faster, but I think they should just increase the hitbox on it. I still feel like this trades a lot for how slow it is. As long as you did this fast enough, it should win as an anti-air.

You can see the full video below. What do you all think of Alex’s upcoming April changes? Do you think he’ll be better than his Season 1 incarnation? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: VesperArcade

No matter where you are in the world, Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge (known in North America as Super Street Fighter II Turbo), continues to be an entertaining draw. World-famous Mikado Arcade knows this, and ran an event for it’s high-level players to slug it out in.

It may not be the craziest thing Mikado has run a tournament for (for those wondering, please take a gander at their past tournament series!), but that doesn’t make the action any less exciting. Please enjoy some classic footsies to start your week off right!

Source: Mikado

While single-character combo videos are certainly the more traditional type, many creators like to show-off their mastery of multiple cast members. Meru does just that, unifying members of BlazBlue: Central Fiction with eerily thematic combos.

Strike=The=Bloodedge manages to make nearly every character in it look like Bang. As they dance around the screen in heavy-movement choreographies, they follow the training dummies in dizzying patterns. It’s good to see cast newcomers Mai and Susanoo show off what they got, as they are the newest characters in the game. We also see some wild patterns from Naoto, Es, Hibiki, and Ragna the Bloodedge.

This combo video definitely emphasizes flair over practicality, but it’s definitely worth watching, even if just for inspiration. For some character-specific ones, view this Jin Kisaragi BBCF combo video and Es combo movie.

Source: 偽〆(める)

Continuing his series of matchup guides for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Zinoto has turned his attention to the psychic Pokémon Mewtwo. With strong true combos, a great projectile to camp with, the best air dodge in the game and his odd jump trajectory, Mewtwo can be quite the roadblock for many players. By breaking down his neutral game, his advantage and disadvantage state, this episode of Cram School should help those who are struggling to defeat the psychic cat.

Seeing as Mewtwo is a pseudo-floaty character, Zinoto suggests that your combos should be focused around keeping Mewtwo in the air, rather than going for the most damage. He uses the analogy of passing a beach ball around; your goal is not to spike the beach ball, but to keep it in the air for as long as possible. As Mewtwo’s neutral can be so frustrating to deal with, thanks to Shadow Ball and down tilt, you need to maximize the character’s disadvantage state by continuing juggles whenever possible.

The Mewtwo player will most likely spam air dodge once in the air, so your goal should be punishing their landings rather than pursuing them relentlessly. Remember the beach ball and knock them back into the skies.

Source: Zinoto