Category: News

As the year ends, most people’s thoughts start to go towards the releases of said year, and which ones are the best. One of the spaces where people can look to for this is The Game Awards, the successor to Spike’s Video Game Awards.

One of the categories that The Game Awards has is naturally for the Best Fighting Game, where players get to vote from five nominees for which game they believe deserves the award. For this year, the nominees for the award are quite varied, going beyond traditional fighting games and looking at some of the year’s more innovative titles.

The nominees are:

• Tekken 7
• Nidhogg 2
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
• ARMS
• Injustice 2

It’s interesting to note, however, that while we have more fighting game nominees this year — five up from four — there are less fighting games in the awards in total. No fighting games have been nominated for eSports Game of the Year, nor any fighting game players for eSports Player of the Year.

The Game Awards 2017 will take place at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 7, 2017.

Source: The Game Awards

Romance’s endeavors to continue to hype the The King of Fighters XIV are paying dividends as his flagship tournament — The Las Vegas Championship — is coming closer to occurring. The tournament — which is sponsored by SNK — will commence on December 2nd, and will be a destination for some of the top KOF players in the world.

As a testament to how strong the field will be, Taiwan’s ZJZ Bridget will be attendance. He has previously been known for his 4th place finish at Evo 2017, and his silver medal performance at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan this year.

#KOFXIV Vegas will be hosting world class KOF #DEC #LVC come and experience a unique KOF show https://t.co/YA3XKW84Kf pic.twitter.com/5jfQKjdfVH

— kofROMANCE (@itzRomance) November 9, 2017

Source: Romance

It finally has a name! After months of calling it the “Mysterious Fighting Game”, ARIKA have finally christened their new fighter “Fighting EX Layer” — an obvious call back to the original Fighting Layer. Not only will Fighting EX Layer be playable at PlayStation Experience, but it will have a two week PS4 beta test which starts on December 11th.

The characters playable in the demo are as follows:

• Shirase
• Kairi
• Garuda
• Skullomania
• Darun Mister
• Allen Snider

The main role of the beta test is to thoroughly test Fighting EX Layer‘s network match function, so be sure to leave your feedback if you choose to play in this beta.

As part of this announcement, ARIKA’s founder Akira Nishitani has explained the things he wants to accomplish via Fighting EX Layer‘s Gougi system — where players can unlock certain power-ups by performing specific actions in battle. Nishitani mainly wants to change the flow of your average match, by having players constantly reacting to each Gougi as it activates. You can read Nishitani-san’s full reasoning behind the Gougi system over on the PlayStation Blog.

Sources: ARIKA; PlayStation Blog

When SNK was acquired by Chinese mobile gaming company 37games, the acquisition itself was not as big of a bombshell as the future 37games envisioned for them. CEO Zheng Jianhui announced strategies to pull out of the pachislot business and focus solely on SNK’s rich IP library, likening SNK’s path to that of Marvel’s: they wanted to license their history and characters in as many mediums as possible. (In hindsight, perhaps this should have been the first clue to Geese Howard appearing in Tekken 7.)

Well, almost two years into that commitment, SNK is seeing the reward. As originally reported by gamebiz.jp, Net sales up 33.7% year over over, operating income is up 27.3%, and the final profit is 3.105 billion yen. Considering the previous year’s 558 million yen deficit, this is a remarkable turnaround for a company many may have thought was down-and-out.

Combined with the expansion of SNK’s Esports division and reports of new fighting games already in the works, SNK’s new path seems to be the right one.

Source: gamebiz.jp

Footage of your limb-severing mayhem could earn you some GUTS merchandise or Brazil-themed swag!

Blood-soaked comedy fighter GUTS launches on Steam tomorrow, November 15th. To help celebrate, the developers at Brazil-based Flux Game Studio are offering a prize in exchange for the funniest GUTS moment. The winner of their GUTS Giveaway contest will receive a Brazilian “care package” that consists of items such as a Brazilian soccer shirt, Brazilian flip-flops, GUTS merchandise, and other local goodies.

GUTS FUNNIEST MOMENT – RULES

• Submissions will be accepted from November 15th to 29th.
• You can send as many submissions as you want.
• You must use separate forms to submit different videos.
• You must include the terms GUTS and #GUTSFUN on the title, along with your own funny title.
• Gameplay submissions must be recorded during a match.
• All game modes are accepted.
• Video editing must be limited to simple cuts, text, audio and animations. Every addition should help highlight the game, its features and the player’s reaction, but not alter the game aspect.
• Submissions must have 5 seconds minimum and 3 minutes maximum.
• In case of duplicate submission, the earliest video will be considered.
• If a participant copies another person’s video, the copier and all of their entries will be automatically eliminated.
• Videos must be set as “Public.”
• The prize is exclusive for the user that submitted the video.
• There will not be a second or more prizes even if two players or more recorded the video.
• The contest results will be announced on GUTS social media by December 4th.
• Flux Game Studio reserves the right to judge the submissions according to its own terms and opinions.
• Filling this form is a must.

Check out GUTS on its Steam page.

Source: Flux Game Studio [press release]

For those who didn’t secure a spot in the Battle for the Stones finals through the various Infinity Stone tournaments, the chance to redeem yourself is nigh. Following the announcement of the dates earlier this month, Capcom have now opened registration for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite‘s Battle for the Stones online qualifiers.

As the Battle for the Stones is part of the PlayStation Experience in December, only PS4 Marvel players are eligible to compete in these online events. For those who have yet to play in an online qualifier, Level Up have produced a helpful presentation which runs you through the whole process. If you still have questions or run into any issues during the event, make sure to reach out to the tournament admins via the Level Up Discord.

If you need reminding of the qualifier dates and start times, they are as follows:

• Europe – November 18th at 10am GMT
• Latin America – November 25th at 12pm GMT
• North America – December 2nd at 6pm GMT

The Top 8 of each online qualifier will be streamed on the Battle for the Stones Twitch channel, with the winner of each event earning a trip to compete in the finals at PlayStation Experience 2017. And before you ask, you will be instantly disqualified if you try to pull a Quackbot and enter yourself using multiple PSN accounts.

Sources: smash.gg; marvelvscapcom

With another month comes yet another character reveal for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle. This time it seems that another character from Persona 4 Arena will be joining the fray.

Arc System works has teased that another Persona character will be revealed for the game during their monthly live stream this Friday, November 17. While no official confirmation on the identity of the character has been made as of yet, following the pattern of reveals seems to indicate that the new character will be Yukiko Amagi.

The prior Persona 4 Arena character reveals for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle have followed the order that they join the players party Persona 4, starting with main character Yu Narukami, followed by Yosuke Hanamura, and Chie Satonaka. Of course, this also hints that the likely P4 reveals after this one will be Kanji Tatsumi, followed by Teddie, Rise Kujikawa, and finally Naoto Shirogane.

Of course, this is all speculation for now — who knows if Arc System Works will follow this order, or toss a spanner in the works throw people off. We’ll find out this Friday, November 17, at 8:00 PM JST (3:00 AM PST / 6:00 AM EST).

Source: Arc System Works via Persona Central

As you all may know, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite has three more DLC characters for this season coming in the form of Venom, Black Widow, and Winter Soldier. Now it seems that we have our first look at Venom, as well as the completed select screen, thanks to some off-screen photos shared on Twitter.

A player who goes by the name of Darkshotgun on Twitter has tweeted off screen photos of Venom and the select screen with the three characters.

Click to view slideshow.

Darkshotgun mentions that Venom is not a big body character. In addition to this, the screenshot also confirms some alternate costumes — as Venom has an Anti-Venom skin, and Jedah has his own alternate costume.

As for the select screen, we’ve know for a while that it would be unbalanced due to having more Marvel characters than Capcom (at least for now). That said, some have pointed out that it does call back to previous 2v2 games in the series which also had similarly unbalanced select screens.

FGC detectives have since sniffed out the source of these photographs, not only confirming their legitimacy but landing a certain top-level Marvel player in some hot water. Next time you want to show off pre-release screens, make sure to cover your tracks!

Lemme know when you see it pic.twitter.com/M4ZYJOHR9p

— Invited|Higher Fix ™ (@MechaMacGyver) November 14, 2017

Sources: MechaMacGyver (Twitter); Darkshotgun (Twitter)