Everyone has a fighting chance
Microsoft has energized the gaming world today with its announcement of Project xCloud, a new service “where you are empowered to play the games you want, with the people you want, whenever you want, wherever you are, and on any device of your choosing”. In concrete terms, that means, you can play, for instance, Sea of Thieves on XBox One, PC or on your phone.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and to help in the fight against this deadly disease (that affects thousands of people in the United States) Esports Arena Oakland along with the PandoraHouse team will be holding a tournament event this Sunday in northern California. This event will be hosting casuals and tournaments for Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Tekken 7.
The tournaments are free to enter, with 100% of the venue fee and raffle ticket proceeds benefiting the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Also 25% of the proceeds from the booths and artists at the event will go to the foundation as well. On top of all of that, there will be extra prizes awarded to the the first and second place players of each game, and even more prizes for the two games with the most entrants. Registration and additional info for this event can be found by clicking on the links in the tweets and sources below.
Combat for a Cause is coming up soon!
This Sunday, October 7th, we'll be partnering with @ThePandoraHouse to help support #NBCAM!
$10 Flat Fee = Casuals + Tournament play. And it ALL goes toward charity!
Register at: https://t.co/5XgmBKTt25
More Info: https://t.co/f9wM3Dfni0 pic.twitter.com/xuVVlrfF9k— Esports Arena Oakland (@ESAOakland) October 4, 2018
There will be a Combo Queens meetup at this event with snacks and gaming setups. Here’s the announcement tweet by Rose Sylvestre:
Proud to announce that there will be an official @ComboQueens meetup at Combat for a Cause with snacks & setups!
Corresponding w/ #BreastCancerResearch, we aim to showcase some of our local female talents during this event
Register here: https://t.co/BrhQgPhEkN pic.twitter.com/8q0tTRzgbp
— Rose
#WNFOAKLAND (@embersandroses) September 27, 2018
Combat for a Cause: Breast Cancer Edition 2018 will be streamed live this Sunday at 11:00 AM on ThePandoraHouse’s Twitch channel. If you live in the Bay Area and happen to be a fighting game fan, come over to hang out, play, and meet some amazing people while contributing towards a good cause.
Sources: ESA Oakland (Twitter); ThePandoraHouse (Twitter); smash.gg; Combat for a Cause (Facebook)
PandoraHouse’s Ultra Street Fighter IV League Crowns a New Northern California Champion
Fantasy Strike developer Dave Sirlin took to YouTube to break down the mode, which acts quite differently from online matchmaking modes in other fighting games. Rather than setting up two players against each other for stand-alone matches, Fantasy Strike’s online environment acts much like a tournament, which Sirlin feels is “more exciting.” The tournaments will be eight-person competitions, with brackets that are made “on the fly” — without the need for an immediate opponent to face off against.
Familiar to fighting game players is the game’s ranking system, which places players in leagues of Bronze through Master. Fighters will engage with other players within their rank in tournaments, which will be three out of five games — meaning that players who win a total of three games will take the tournament. The mode utilizes Fantasy Strike’s Team Battle system, as well, allowing players to use a total of three characters against their opponents.
The tournaments’ point system works in a system of rewards and demerits. Players earn a star for every win, and lose a star for each game they lose. However, Diamond ranked players will not earn a star for taking the first round in a tournament — but they will lose a star for losing, though. Additionally, Master ranked players will have the star system thrown to the wind, and must face other Master league players without the reward of earning stars at all. While simplistic, the Fantasy Strike ranked experience makes sure to provide ample challenges for players looking to rise above the competition.
With this ranked system comes a slew of other updates to Fantasy Strike, including improvements to the game’s Training Mode, enhanced animations, and frame advantage indicators. Characters’ movements have been kicked up a notch: fighters now have a harder time throwing heavy opponents like Rook, while previously, they would fling him off without a hitch. In addition, new frame advantage indicators now give players data with every hit, delivering them visual cues as to their character’s recovery status. The color and size of sparks reveal if a player is plus or minus on a certain move in-game, giving an approximate indication as to how many frames they are ahead or behind.
Other visual and sound improvements were also made to the title, including features like characters’ eyes flashing purple when their super meter is full. Fantasy Strike is nearly a new game, now — and its online ranking system is ripe for the taking!
Source: Fantasy Strike
Fantasy Strike receives new update, reports a successful showing at Evo 2018
Fantasy Strike was going to feature a loot box reward system
As previously reported, the arcade port of Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition will have its first location test this weekend. As part of this, Taito (who run the NESiCAxLive network that the game uses) has released some additional details about the location test.
For those in Japan looking to try the game out, Taito has revealed the arcades participating in the location test. They are as follows:
In addition to these, they’ve also released a list of which arcade sticks are confirmed to work with the game’s USB functionality. These are the Razer Panthera, the HORI Real Arcade Pro series, and the HORI Fighting Edge Blade. That said, they state that some other gamepads may also work with the game.
Source: Taito
Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition will finally hit arcades in Japan in 2019
Koei Tecmo announced the next characters to join the Dead or Alive 6 roster are none other than the superstar wrestling family Tina and Bass Armstrong and the MMA knockout Mila. The characters are showcased in a new trailer highlighting the three fighters’ relationships and fighting styles. Tina and Bass have joined together to create their own wrestling organization, and Mila trains to best her fighting idol.
You can also check out the newest stage to join the over the top action pantheon, the wrestling ring titled, THE MUSCLE. Be careful near the edge of the ring unless you want to risk taking heavy damage, otherwise, use it to your advantage and take in the cheers of the crowd!
Dead or Alive 6 keeps looking better and better with each new character and stage announcement. This brings the announced roster to 19 including the pre-order bonus, Nyotengu, and the Deluxe Edition bonus Phase-4. If the opinion that there will be 25 characters in the title’s starting roster turns out to be accurate, it appears we are in the final stretch for additions before launch.
Dead or Alive 6 releases on February 15, 2019, on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Who hasn’t been announced yet that you hope makes the cut? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Koei Tecmo
Prolific and well-regarded fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson has written that he would be willing to give his “Mistorn” IP to CD Projekt Red for free. Sanderson wrote that he would “love to do something with CDPR. They’ve made by far the best book-to-video game adaptations ever”.
Prolific and well-regarded fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson has written that he would be willing to give his “Mistborn” IP to CD Projekt Red for free. Sanderson wrote that he would “love to do something with CDPR. They’ve made by far the best book-to-video game adaptations ever”.
Voting has opened for the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards, hosted by GamesRadar. Offering potential accolades to games of all genres from 2018 (and before, and even beyond), you can vote for your own picks now, until October 25 — and a few fighting games have turned up on their list this year.
Street Fighter V received a nomination for “eSports Game of the Year”, but it wasn’t alone: Dragon Ball FighterZ also shares the honor, along with two additional nominations for “Best Visual Design” and “Best Competitive Game”. Capcom also received a nomination for “Studio of the Year” on the merit of Monster Hunter World, and to top it all off, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate makes an appearance on their nominations for “Most Wanted Game” for upcoming titles.
You can show your own love for your favorite games by heading over to GamesRadar and voting. The results of the voting will be livestreamed on November 16th.
Source: GamesRadar
VesperArcade offers some insight into Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition’s new Dojo mode
Nintendo teams up with ELEAGUE to televise the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Invitational
Thanks to V-Jump we already knew Yugi Moto was joining the roster of Bandai Namco’s Shonen Jump-themed arena fighter JUMP FORCE, and that he was bringing some powerful friends along; now we’ve got his official reveal trailer, too. From the Bandai Namco press release:
The new trailer highlights the recently announced Yugi Muto from the long-running popular Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Fighting along the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge, Yugi can summon powerful allies such as Dark Magician, Dark Magician Girl, and Slifer the Sky Dragon to help him defeat his foes.
Sources: Bandai Namco Entertainment America; Bandai Namco [press release]
As you may already know, Fighting EX Layer is getting a PC port. This port is, of course, getting the graphics options expected of a modern PC game. And ARIKA’s Ichiro Mihara has shared screenshots comparing the differences between the game’s graphical presets.
Based on Mihara’s tweet, Fighting EX Layer on PC has three graphics presets: “Low”, “Mid”, and “Epic”. You can check these out in the gallery below.
In addition to these presets, players will also be able to adjust the game’s rendering scale, shadowing, anti-aliasing, and post processing.
Source: Ichiro Mihara
ARIKA opens up on the development of Fighting EX Layer for Steam and arcades