Category: News

After nearly a year of absolutely fierce competition, the weekend of Capcom Cup 2017 is finally almost upon us. For three action-packed days, we’ll be able to witness the 32 strongest Street Fighter V players in the world today battle it out in a double-elimination tournament to crown a new Street Fighter V World Champion.

Capcom’s Esports Social Media Manager, Michael Martin, posted on the PlayStation Blog outlining all the key details that fans, attendees, and competitors will need to know to get in on all of the action this weekend in Anaheim, California.

Beginning on Friday, December 8th, the Last Chance Qualifier will be held. This open tournament will decided the final spot in the Capcom Cup bracket, as the victor will enter as the 32nd seed, and will face off with the top seed, Panda Global’s Punk, in the opening round. If you’ll be heading out to California and would like to take your shot, registration for the open tournament will be $40 on-site, but you’d better be quick before the 256-player cap is reached (101 spots remain open, as of this writing).

Admission is free to spectators for the first two days at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel, but a PlayStation Experience badge will be required for admission into the Sunday finals at the Anaheim Convention Center. The festivities will run from 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM PT on Friday and Saturday, before the finals day lasts from 2:00 PM – 8:00 PM PT.

The funds from the 2017 Capcom Pro Tour DLC have been tallied up, and will be adding over $120,000 to the base $250,000 prize pool, allowing these World Warriors to compete for over $370,000, and the chance to have their name permanently engraved on the Capcom Cup trophy — which remains on display at the Capcom USA offices.

If you can’t be there in person, you can still enjoy all three days of the action, including some “special announcements,” at twitch.tv/capcomfighters. You can see the official trailer for Capcom Cup 2017 below, and don’t forget to check out our ongoing Capcom Cup Player Analysis series for more info on the competitors, as well as the planned brackets.

Sources: PlayStation Blog; Capcom Fighters

Hot off the heels of announcing a two-week open beta test for PlayStation 4, ARIKA recently posted an extremely brief teaser hinting at another new challenger for their upcoming title, Fighting EX Layer. In the 11-second clip, we see what looks to be a redesigned Blair Dame, now sporting an outfit looking more like combat fatigues — as opposed to her usual white attire — though she can only be seen briefly from the back, before the proclamation appears: “She will surely come back.”

Originally appearing in the original Street Fighter EX as a secret character, she would later return in the March 1997 update, Street Fighter EX Plus — though she would fail to feature in later games in the series, and would not be seen again until the ARIKA-developed Fighting Layer, published by Namco, in December 1998.

Earlier this year, she received a CFN Portal profile, along with the other EX characters, providing her with a connection to SF’s Karin Kanzuki — as she and Dame are both members of the “Worldwide Young Ladies Club,” in addition to sharing a similar posh upbringing and competitive stubbornness. You can see it here — and can catch the quick teaser below.

Are you excited to see Blair Dame return in the upcoming Fighting EX Layer? If so, feel free to share them in the comments below.

Fighting EX Layer will be released on PlayStation 4 sometime in 2018.

Source: arika

Just in time for Saint Nicholas’ Day, PQube and Digital Crafter are bringing Santa Claus to Fight of Gods. Kris Kringle is Fight of Gods‘ second free character, with more to come in the future.

Acting as the modern face of Christmas, Santa Claus comes to fight with a sack full of festive weaponry to beat up all those naughty gods and goddesses. Along with slapping his foes up with giant candy canes and Christmas trees, Santa’s Super has him jumping in his sleigh and charging straight into his opponent. Forget grandma, looks like Moses is going to get run over by a reindeer this Christmas.

Along with coal and exploding presents, Santa’s sack does contain one secret gift — but we’ll go on the naughty list if we tell you outright. Santa’s elves have told us that players can get this gift by doing something special on the character select screen, so start experimenting once the Santa patch goes live.

And of course, Santa’s addition means players can have Jesus and Father Christmas fighting it out to discover the true meaning of Christmas — playing fighting games with friends. To that end, Fight of Gods is 33% off on Steam until December 20th, making it a perfect Secret Santa gift for someone this holiday season.

Source: PQube

After Ed Boon’s usual round of teasing on Twitter, NetherRealm Studios have released the official intro trailer for the shape-shifting superhero, Atom. A world-renowned physicist and a master of his quantum bio-belt, Ryan Choi can shrink down to deliver a subatomic smack down.

The quantum bio-belt allows Atom to change his size at will, with players able to shift between normal size, half size and atomic size. In half size, Atom stands at the height of a crouching character while in atomic size, he is just a speck of blue light running along the bottom of the screen. While he can dodge most attacks in his miniature form, Atom’s offense becomes quite restricted, so don’t be too frightened when you see a tiny blue dot leaping at you.

Atom does have access to a ray-gun alongside his bio-belt, giving him some wild projectiles. Besides a basic energy bolt, his ray-gun can freeze opponents in place, while briefly changing the size of their hitbox. Atom can also place traps on the floor via his special red and blue chemical vials. One vial drop creates a chemical puddle, with a second vial drop causing the puddle to react as a specific trap. You can mix and match vial drops to create different traps, so experiment to see which reaction is the most deadly.

For those who can’t wait to irritate their opponents with his subatomic shenanigans, the Atom joins the Injustice 2 roster on December 12th for Early Access players.

Source: Injustice

“Super Street Fighter Carnival 2017” marches on! SSFC2017 is the currently-ongoing Japanese tournament series at Mikado Arcade for a wide variety of classic (and sometimes, obscure) arcade titles. If you missed the first few tournaments from SSFC2017, there’s a lot to catch up on!

Today’s game is the sports game adopted by the FGC, Windjammers (known as Flying Power Disc in Japan). Despite not being a fighting game, this insane thing had a chance at being at Evo earlier this year, and likely won’t go away anytime soon thanks to its recent PlayStation 4 port.

Mikado Arcade is down for any arcade classic, so perhaps it’s no surprise Windjammers made it in to SSFC2017’s lineup. But make no mistake, Windjammers is still a popular side game for the FGC anywhere in the world, with a tournament scene in France just celebrating its five year anniversary.

Enjoying SSFC2017? You can follow the action by subscribing to Mikado’s official YouTube channel, or you can even try to catch Mikado Arcade when they livestream!

Source: Mikado

New V-Triggers got a little bit of air time in Capcom-Unity’s Arcade Mode showcase.

Capcom-Unity took to Twitch yesterday to highlight the features of the upcoming Arcade Mode in Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition. It didn’t take long for the interface and layout to be shown; as what most viewers wanted to see were the new mechanics and V-Triggers in the upcoming build of the game, the rest of the stream turned to demonstrating those — well, at least a little. It was pretty clear that the stream was somewhat limited on what they were allowed to show off for us.

In this video, VesperArcade summarizes what was covered in the stream, and discusses what we were able to see of the new gameplay aspects and V-Triggers:

YogaFlame24 clipped the highlights from the stream for your viewing convenience; they basically boil down to seeing some of the new V-Triggers in action. While we saw Ibuki’s giant shuriken and Ryu’s crumpling parry in the initial trailer, this time we we got some glimpses of Chun-Li’s Kikosho and Birdie’s new can-flipping interaction.

NurseLee also clipped a section and ran a visual comparison of the increased pushback from Ken’s corner throw.

Sources: VesperArcade, YogaFlame24

This past weekend saw the first installment of the  BlazBlue: Central Fiction Cup online tournament, held by ESL North America for PlayStation 4. With many warriors coming from far and wide (digitally, at least) for a chance at claiming the Azure, things would eventually boil down to the final eight Chosen fighters.

Here is the top 8 action, freshly uploaded by the official streamer: longtime Arc System Works content creator Koefficient, with commentary by ESL’s MiniMatt and ZakOneStar.

First Round matches feature, in Winners, Hitoshyura (Lambda-11) vs. Jyuuken (Carl Clover) and Kazen (Susanoo, Jubei) vs. FlyingCraine (Susanoo, Valkenhayn R. Hellsing). In Losers, it’s UnsafeOnHit (Naoto Kurogane, Susanoo) vs. SuperKawaiiWeeb (Hibiki Kohaku) and NarNar (Arakune) vs. NouaNova (Jin Kisaragi). You can catch the full series of matches, as well as Koefficient’s announcement video about the Cup, below.

The next tournament will be taking place on Sunday, December 10th, at 20:00 UTC, and will be streamed at twitch.tv/koefficient63. If you’re interested in signing up, you can find all the information at play.eslgaming.com/blazblue/north-America.

This is certainly a fantastic opportunity to build momentum for the BlazBlue community in North America, especially with BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle set to be released next year. Will you become one of the Entitled and participate in the continued turning of the Wheel of Fate? Let us know in the comments section!

Source: Koefficient

Has Capcom finally nerfed a much-reviled corner tactic in Street Fighter V?

Throw loops: the much-dreaded — and much-hated, at least on the receiving end — tactic has long been a point of contention in Street Fighter V. However: in yesterday’s Capcom-Unity livestream (intended to demonstrate the structure of the upcoming Arcade Mode in Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition), viewers caught a glimpse of a corner interaction that suggests throw loops may be a thing of the past.

The stream was running on the demonstration build that’s bound for PSX this weekend. When Ken threw Ryu into the corner in this new build, the pushback was clearly increased to move Ken into further range than the current build. In the video below, NurseLee compares the stream footage against Ken’s current corner-throw pushback:

While no official word has been given on this change (and I wouldn’t expect Capcom to provide those details until they’re ready to release full patch notes for SFVAE), it appears to be clearly intended to hamper repeated throw attempts in the corner. We also don’t know if this tweak is universal to the cast, or just for Ken! This may not represent the final build that hits retail as Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, so stay tuned for more updates as we learn more.

Source: NurseLee

With the PlayStation 4 release of Dissisia Finaal Fantasy NT just a month and a bit away, Square Enix is starting to ramp up promotion for the game. As part of this, they’ve just released the opening cinematic for the game.

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT‘s opening cinematic does its best to showcase the game’s premise. It introduces the game’s basic setup, with the gods Materia and Spiritus summoning Final Fantasy heroes and villains who then face off against each other. Along the way, we see classic confrontations: such as Cloud taking on Sephiroth, as well as some unexpected team-ups from characters from different-numbered installments of this storied franchise.

Check out the cinematic below:

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT launches on PlayStation 4 on January 11 in Japan, and January 30 in the West.

Source: Square Enix