Category: Fighting Games

Growing a fighting game scene is the responsibility of each player. Not much is needed to do your part, simply showing up to events or posting online can help. The low commitment of actions like these is vital, but some members in a community take it a step further and attempt to gather a bigger crowd. In an attempt to increase their reach as a community, community leaders sometimes take unique approaches to accomplish this.

The King of Fighters community, specifically with the support of MadManCafe, is holding a survey in an attempt to gather information, targeted at increasing the range of community content and tournament organizer support. Giving a voice and hard numbers to the fan base has all sorts of useful benefits, which the folks at MMCafe are attempting to put to good use. They are raffling off free copies of KOF XIV to participants each month, to add some incentive for more people to aid in their community building.

The survey so far has over 1000 participants, with a Japanese survey netting nearly 300 and a Korean survey managing to break 100. The results of the English survey so far are detailed here, with some interesting revelations, but this isn’t the first community survey. Back in 2012, a similar survey was held by the same people, though that survey didn’t manage to break 500 entries. Even still, looking at the data from then until now is interesting. Out of the people surveyed, a majority expressed interest in casual events like locals, good commentary, and they leaned towards watching streams to learn more about their game than most other sources.

Comparing this to today’s survey, there are some interesting differences. The majority still prioritizes casual events (63%), but more players lean towards more streams (50%), more information databases (56%), and better netcode (56%) as reasons to get them excited about the game. In 2012 commentary was prioritized, but today it’s tied with combo and tech videos (59%), with streams trailing just behind (53%). The last comparison to make to the 2012 survey is on where the surveyed players are getting their content from; four years ago they prioritized streams, but today players are much more likely to look towards community sites like Dreamcancel, Orochinagi, and our very own Shoryuken for their content (81%). In this area, places players are looking for content, people are actually using Facebook as a tool a lot more (60%), in addition to the traditional streams and tech videos(54%).

These three topics aren’t the only things being polled, of course. The response to age showed that the majority of participants are between 25-34 (59%), with the combined total of players between 18 and 34 making the vast majority of players (88%). While that stat isn’t too surprising, it’s interesting to see how much crossover there is with other games. The overwhelming majority of KOF players have dabbled in Street Fighter (95%), with a good number having played Tekken (72%) and others. One of the more interesting stats is what those surveyed responded as what could entice them to show up to local events; a supportive community (54%) and casual setups (49%) are ranked the highest in what could help players turn up offline, which I think helps people turn up for a lot of communities, not just KOF.

There is a lot more data that I’m not touching on here, so be sure to thumb through the survey results yourself. It’s great to have solid data to look at for these kinds of topics, which again is linked here.

Sources: Orochinagi; Dreamcancel; Battlepage; James Alderson

Mods tend not to have a too-prominent place in the fighting game community, primarily due to most fighting games being released on a home console. Games released on PC do get fiddled with, but for consoles, Melee is probably the most modded title.

MagicScrumpy, who was the YouTuber responsible for that “Making Melee Viable” series of videos, regularly tweaks values in the game for fun. Occasionally he comes across something entertaining, and shares what he finds with the rest of us. First up, he shares a common fact about the game: that certain characters land-cancel their projectile animations and others don’t, then proceeds to show us a Melee where every character land-canceled their projectiles.

He poses the same kind of question to the cast about wall jumping, and modifies the game to allow everyone to perform this action, currently something only 8 out of 26 characters can do.

MagicScrumpy’s exploits sometimes end with nothing particularly useful learned. This last video showcases his attempts to manipulate invincibility in the game, seeing if there is anyway to trick the game in normal circumstance to prolong invincibility. He–thankfully–discovers no such tactic.

Of course, there are many, many more videos of similar content on his channel. If you enjoyed yourself, be sure to browse what else he has up.

Source: MagicScrumpy

Today is the final online ranking event for the Capcom Pro Tour 2016 season. Today’s event is for the Asia-Oceania region, open to players from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Head over to the Capcom Fighters channel for the Top 16 action.

CapcomFightersのライブビデオをwww.twitch.tvから視聴する

This weekend are the two final ranking events for the 2016 Capcom Pro Tour season, both taking place in Asia. FV Cup 2016 is the final offline ranking event and will take place in Malaysia. As one of the last chances to ranking points and qualify for the Asia-Oceania Regional Finals, a number of top players from around the region and a few from without will be in attendance, including Kazunoko, sako, Yukadon, Bonchan, Xian, Gackt Humanbomb, Saunic, Jiewa, Tse4444, Marn, MindRPG and Chuan.

Check out the stream live on BEast of the East’s Twitch channel, and follow the brackets on Challonge.

Watch live video from beastapac on www.twitch.tv

Source: Capcom Pro Tour

Frame data is one of the most important aspects of playing fighting games at a competitive level. Frames are how we read just about every aspect of a move, from how fast the move will hit, to if the opponent can punish it.

Before modern games like Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, and Skullgirls, which show the player frame data in training mode, players used to have to deduce frame data. This was done by having the opponent block, then both players jumping as soon as they’re able. The character who jumped first recovered first, which can either mean the move is plus on block or negative. Basically, being positive (your character jumping first) means your character is safe from retaliation, while being negative (your character jumping second) means you’re at a disadvantage, leaving you potentially eating a punish by your opponent.

In today’s age, there are a lot of tools for learning frame data, and YouTuber desmond_kof shows us one available using the above concept. He shows us how to use The King of Fighters XIV’s replay mode to count frames and see how safe our moves are. Feel free to test this out for your own characters at home!

Source: desmond_kof

Knowledge is power, when it comes to any fighting game. The better you know your character, and the better you know the match-up, the more likely you are to come out on top. It helps competitively, but it can also make spectating more enjoyable.

With this in mind, the folks over at SSBM Tutorials put together this detailed Fox vs. Falcon match-up video. This video covers a lot of Falcon’s options in neutral, as well as recovery and post-shield and pressure options. Study up so you can better handle any Falcons that come your way.

If you enjoyed this, SSBM Tutorials have other similar videos on their channel. There is a Falco vs. Marth guide, like the one above, but there are also more general guides about how to deal with specific characters like Shiek or Ice Climbers.

Source: SSBM Tutorials

With the recent release of Rising VeXx’s video on how Marth can use the Stun Jacket glitch in Smash 4, other dedicated Marth and Lucina mains have been digging into how this glitch actually works. Through the combined research of the Marcina Discord, YouTuber Crocketz has compiled an extensive guide which details pretty much all there is to know about the Stun Jacket.

While any character with a Marth-like counter can apply the Stun Jacket, only certain characters have moves which trigger the glitch. Bayonetta was the obvious target of VeXx’s original video, but further testing has shown that Zelda, Falco, Villager, Ike, Robin, and Zero Suit Samus have moves which trigger this glitch. There may be more moves that cause the Stun Jacket effect, so keep experimenting to see if there are more characters than this glitch works on.

It has also been discovered that by activating the Stun Jacket, you set the minimum hitlag of your next move as 16 frames, meaning your opponent has to wait until frame 17 before they can strike back. It is not a cumulative process, so any move that already causes over 16 frames of hitlag is not affected by the Stun Jacket. The Stun Jacket also activates on shield, meaning an opponent has to suffer 16 frames of shieldstun before they can drop shield and retaliate. So, the best way to use this glitch is to activate it via a jab and using the extended hitlag to confirm into true combos that were previously impossible to hit.

Source: Crocketz

If there’s one character that was hit quite hard with the nerf bat in The King of Fighters XIV’s 1.03 patch, it was K’. Considered by some to be the strongest character in the game before the patch (even more so than Nakoruru), K’ can no longer easily confirm into Ein Trigger’s Second Shell, to follow up his safe pressure for damaging combos.

For K’ players however, this represents a challenge–as it’s now harder to confirm into his juggles, even off crouching light normals. Luckily, Frionel has shared a video showing how K’ can still confirm into Second Shell for some decent juggles.

The key to getting Second Shell to combo after crouching lights is to do them faster and cancel into Ein Trigger earlier when K’ is much closer to his opponent, so that the former doesn’t whiff due to pushback. This however still only works on standing opponents. On crouching opponents, the K’ player needs to instead do crouching light kick into standing light punch to get the Second Shell launcher into juggle.

K' confirms ver.1.03 #KOFXIV #PS4share pic.twitter.com/n00UNO1QOj

— frionel@KOFXIV (@frionel26) October 19, 2016

Source: Frionel (Twitter)