Category: News

Announced as a mini-Christmas miracle last December, Radiant Entertainment have officially released Rising Thunder: Community Edition, so people can continue playing the popular but short-lived fighter. This special edition of Rising Thunder comes in three parts: the client, an open source server, and a special goodie package.

The client is fairly self-explanatory; it’s the latest version that was available internally at Radiant, with some updates to allow offline play and the open source server. While it has had some basic tests, there will be bugs so don’t expect everything to run smoothly when you boot it up. Radiant have also bundled in the source code for Rising Thunder‘s UI, meaning dedicated modders can poke around and make improvements if they wish.

The open source server is a much improved version of the original one, making it easier to run and tinker with. It is only basic at present, with rudimentary matchmaking and two-player lobbies. If you add more than two players, it will just crash so don’t bother. Things like ELO, accounts and a progression system aren’t there yet, but Radiant are looking into potential FightCade integration for the future.

Finally, the last part of Community Edition is a goodie pack, filled with concept art, early development videos, lore about all the pilots, acting as a potted history of Rising Thunder‘s development. Radiant have teased that they are indeed at work on something for Riot Games — possibly the long-rumored League of Legends fighting game — so don’t expect any more from the studio for a while.

To download everything, head on over to the Rising Thunder subreddit. Let’s hope this kicks off a mini-renaissance for this cult classic fighter!

Source: r/risingthunder

The Street Fighter V training resource levels up alongside Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition!

Following close on the heels of the release of Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, r/StreetFighter’s Joe Munday has completed the third edition of his excellent Street Fighter V training guidebook, Gief’s Gym! The new edition features ten additional chapters and updated information throughout to bring the book up-to-date with the current build of Street Fighter V.

The book is now available on Amazon, available in paperback, Kindle, and Paperwhite versions. Purchases of the paperback version will include a digital copy as well, once Amazon has synced up that feature. (It is currently only available digitally on Amazon.ca, the paperback version will be available in Canada in about a month.) From Amazon.com’s description:

Welcome to Gief’s Gym! This guide has been crafted and honed by the dedicated community at r/StreetFighter to help players with absolutely no experience understand and practically improve at fighting games.

Numerous players have used this guide to quickly learn and execute on the core concepts having never played a fighting game. Gief’s Gym will provide the workouts and encouragement you need to become fluent in fighting games.

While the main draw of Gief’s Gym is to help beginners get started, this new edition features content that will help intermediate and advanced players continue to improve their Street Fighter game. Check it out!

Source: Amazon

With the game’s release just a week away, anticipation for Dragon Ball FighterZ is at a fever pitch. To keep the hype going, a special pre-release show has been announced for this Monday, January 22 by HOT97’s HipHipGamer Show.

For the event, Bandai Namco will be bringing the full retail version of the game to the studio. Trying it out will be a number of top fighting game players from the area, namely LI Joe, Mynus, Apollo, TSB Blaze, and Dieminion.

With the game having been brought to a number of events — on top of the recent beta — players have had a number of chances to try the game out. However, this will be the first time the final retail version of the game will be at an event — everything we see these players do will be possible when the game hits on Friday, January 26.

Source: LI Joe (Twitter)

SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is SNK’s newest female-only fighting game for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. This colorful, light-hearted offering has garnered a sharp divide in the FGC’s reaction, perhaps unsurprisingly: many were likely hoping for a KOF XIV port to compliment the NEO GEO ports of KOF ’94-through-2000 already on the Switch. Or, at least a fighting game that seems a little more serious about its gameplay than SNK Heroines’s initial trailer lets on.

Though there isn’t much to judge SNK Heroines on at the moment, one thing is for sure: if the argument against its existence is that it seems too much like a joke, that’s because that’s the exactly the point. This spiritual successor to SNK Gals’ Fighters has actually been staring us in the face since last year’s April Fool’s Day, as pointed out by reddit user fussomoro.

To quote Fussomoro:

During last year’s April Fools, SNK created a fake release for a fake game called “Nariyuki Quest”. (…) It’s April Fool’s, that game is clearly an 8-bit RPG. We laughed. We moved on (…) Five days later, on April 6th, SNK released another image, this time it was a webcomic that seemed to explain the plot of the game  In the next 9 months, SNK continued to release the webcomic every other week.

The webcomic from this prolonged April Fools joke is actually the catalyst of SNK Heroine’s storyline:

It was silly.

It was funny.

It was not serious… until now!

Because, the very next day after the announcement of SNK Heroines TTF, they release the last chapter of the webcomic. And guess what? The webcomic is actually the prequel/setup of the game!

You can read the full fussomoro thread here. Based on the comic, he goes on to speculate exactly who will be in the game, and has further information on the full comic for those interested.

Regardless of which side of this Waifu War you’re on, it’ll be interesting to see how SNK Heroines sells on release. After all, with its announcement, it’ll be the second April-Fool’s-joke-turned-fighting-game released in 2018. I doubt we’ll ever hear directly from SNK whether they were inspired by Fighting EX Layer‘s path to advertising, but if this sort of thing becomes a trend of any sort, we can now definitively look to these games as the reason why.

Source: fussomoro

The Pride Trooper who could kill the gods enters the Xenoverse battlefield.

Android 21’s playable character announcement won’t be the only Dragon Ball news today. The seemingly all-powerful Jiren from Dragon Ball Super will be joining Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 in upcoming DLC. It will be interesting to see how the character is balanced to not be the overwhelming powerhouse he is in the show. Not much else is known about the DLC pack aside from its inclusion of the original character, Fuu, and a “new form of Goku” (which at this point is bound to be Ultra Instinct) so stick around for more information about Jiren and the upcoming DLC pack! Also, don’t forget about the Dragon Ball FighterZ connection content coming sometime soon as well!

Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. The Nintendo Switch version of the title recently surpassed 500,000 units in sales. The title has been doing so well that there is a shortage of the game in Japan, with players being told to be patient and wait until February for more units. The hype for the title will more than likely continue to grow with this new announcement!

Sources: Shonen Games; Gematsu