At the PlayStation Experience, players got the chance to try an early build of Street Fighter V’s second season, including returning character Akuma. Among those players was DisplayLag’s Adeel “FourWude” Soomro, who many felt had the best Akuma at the event–something he proved by placing second in a 16-player tournament at the event, against players using their current mains.
BornFee was able to capture footage of some of FourWude’s matches at the tournament and has shared them in this video. Check it out below.
Versus fans have a treat waiting for them in March next year.
It appears that in addition to the digital reissue of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on PlayStation 4, physical copies of the game will soon be available: apparently as a GameStop-exclusive offer. Pre-orders have appeared on the US site, marked with the “only at GameStop” tag, with release dates of March 31, 2017–but those may only be placeholders at this point.
The Skullgirls community has been sticking to its strategy of showing up and making a splash at a handful of events through the year. This tactic worked great for Combo Breaker, CEOtaku, GUTS4, and most recently the European major Revolution 2016. The community is going to continue on, supporting the next event on the list: Frosty Faustings.
In response to the community’s efforts Skullgirls publisher and developers–Autumn Games and Lab Zero Games respectively–have put forth a pot bonus for Frosty Faustings.
Very excited to announce support from Autumn / Lab Zero for $1000 bonus at FF for Skullgirls! Looking forward to a hype tourney! #getfrostypic.twitter.com/1hELpwVK3M
This support of Skullgirls tournaments has been persistent for every event the community decided to focus on so far, and seeing them persist with this support so long after the game’s initial release in 2012 is a truly marvelous sight in today’s market.
There have been a lot of whispers and speculation circling Pokkén Tournament for the past 6 months, concerning the DLC characters coming to the game–at least on the arcade side. Empoleon has been expected for a long time; after being officially announced just last week, we finally get to see first hand what Empoleon the Emperor Penguin Pokémon can do.
We see it riding in on a Surf wave, gliding on ice it creates, and stunning opponents with powerful combo extenders. There’s a lot going on here, but we won’t have a chance to play Empoleon until it drops in Japanese arcades on the 15th of this month. And as always: no word yet on if these DLC characters will make their way to the Wii U.
With the announcement of Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, the FGC has been set on its head with excitement. For many, this is the title they’ve been waiting for; for others, this is exciting news, but not the news they were hoping for.
However, Capcom may not be finished with the announcements–although they may be later on in the future. Capcom has announced today online that they will be looking at reviving various dormant franchises. While Capcom declined to name any specific titles at the moment, they said that the franchises have not seen a release in recent history.
While this may not give any promises to new fighting games coming down the pipes beyond Marvel, this doesn’t inherently rule it out, either. It does stand to mention that within a year’s time, Capcom had once released Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Street Fighter X Tekken. It is possible that Capcom may have more down the line as far as fighting game announcements, but I wouldn’t expect any new announcements coming too soon.
Gootecks of Cross Counter TV was able to get a quick word from PG|Filipino Champ about his thoughts on the updates that Street Fighter V’s second season brings to Dhalsim. During his visit to Playstation Experience, the long-time ‘Sim main was seen giving the updated version of his favorite yogi a test run, and says he was also able to experience the soon-to-be-released Akuma. Champ seems satisfied with the buffs given to Dhalism, but he is a little on the fence about Akuma, who he says he can foresee being “outclassed” by Ken or Ryu despite him being an interesting character in general.
Of course you would have to play the characters to formulate the most accurate opinion, but the words of a world-class Dhalsim player are sure to have some weight.
Continuing their series on how to defeat all of the Super Smash Bros. Melee top tiers, SSBM Tutorials have set their sights on the Hero King of Altea, Marth. Known for his graceful swordplay, beating Marth means weaving around the tipper of his sword to avoid taking major damage from his aerials and his deadly forward smash.
Seeing as his forward smash is his main grounded kill move, learning to defend against this overheard sword slash is vital to defeat a Marth player. While it looks powerful, running up and shielding it is the best option, as it has a substantial amount of recovery following the slice. If you shield the hit, follow up with a wavedash out of shield to punish with your own smash.
As for his aerials, most of them can be crouch cancelled if the Marth doesn’t connect with the tipper, so abuse an enemy Marth’s poor spacing to strike back while at low percents. Marth’s aerials lack any lingering hitboxes, so if you get a read on when your opponents likes to throw out attacks, you can run in and whiff punish their aerial assault.
Sales are fairly common, especially on Steam. Getting a few bucks shaved off a purchase can be the difference between getting into the next big fighting game of your life–or not. Today we see another such sale announced, but with an interesting twist.
From December 8-18th, owners of Skullgirls on Steam are getting a 25% discount of the upcoming Nitroplus Blasterz -Heroines Infinite Duel-. Additionally, players looking forward to Nitroplus Blasterz who have yet to pick up Skullgirls are going to enjoy a 75% discount for the game, available after purchasing Nitroplus. If past sales are anything to go on, then the sale would include the base Skullgirls game, all of the DLC, and the Skullgirls Second Encore complete package.
This kind of collaborative discount is very nice to see, and nice for anyone looking to pick up one or both of these titles.
Previously, we had heard that Capcom was considering doing away with auto-qualification into Capcom Cup after the headaches attributed to the confusion in the qualification process this year. However, they seem to have backpedaled on this since the end of Capcom Cup 2016.
Niedel “Haunts” Crisan–Capcom’s digital media director–has gone public to say that Capcom is not likely to discontinue automatic qualification altogether. He did go on to state that the tournament series–which featured 70 events this year–will likely be pruned down, as many players reported being exhausted from the travel it required to maintain their places on the leaderboard.
With the recent controversy regarding the Smash Box’s provisional ban at Genesis 4, the Smash-o-sphere has flared up with discussion on whether this new type of controller should be allowed at events. Players have extolled the virtues of the Smash Box on the hand and wrist health of players, as well as it acting as the first controller specifically made for competitive Smash, while others have warned the dangerous precedent the Smash Box sets for future controller modifications which use macros and other such shortcuts to make high level techskill easier to pull off.
Hoping to set the record straight, the Smash Box’s creator and owner of HitBox, HitBox Dustin, has released his own video which aims to clarify some of the misconceptions and worries surrounding the new controller. His first major point is tackling the fear that the Smash Box will open the floodgates for drastic controller mods which completely swap button inputs and allow for certain move macros. Dustin argues that in its current prototype state, the Smash Box is a modded controller but if it is Kickstarted and made real, it will be an official third party controller which is factory made to specific build standards without mods. Every Smash Box will be the same when it comes off the production line so, unlike the Gamecube controller, there should be no variance in the quality of Control Sticks or whether it can shield drop effectively or not.
Speaking of shield drops, Dustin points out that like the notches that many players mill into the gate around their Control Sticks, the D-Pad section of the Smash Box essentially acts like those notches but it always gives you that perfect shield drop angle, as it does not rely on the inherent inconsistency of the Gamecube controller.
The main complaint, according to Dustin, seems to be a philosophical issue that the Smash Box is a fundamentally different way to play Smash compared to what has been common for the last 15 years. This is indeed true, but when playing Smash requires using controllers which are not designed for competitive play and have major inconsistencies in terms of build quality, offering a bespoke option which caters specifically to the competitive crowd seems like a great option going forward. I personally fully support the Smash Box and would like to try it out for myself, but these discussions about controller legality are important as Smash continues to grow as an esport.
