Category: News

Two fighters that get a little less spotlight get some attention from The Cool Kid93.

In Street Fighter V, Alex and Rashid both have their loyal supporters–possibly a bit more for Alex than Rashid, though. In the compilation below, you can see The Cool Kid93 take both characters through their paces in some online bouts:

While Alex is getting some buffs to toughen him up in the next balance patch, The Cool Kid93 feels that Alex has some problems that the new balancing still won’t address–such as a lack of options to follow up an EX Air Knee Smash on the ground to reward your successful anti-air, a lack of similar pressure options after a back drop, the short range of his heavy command grab, and more.

You can hear about Alex’s upcoming changes in more detail in VesperArcade’s video breakdown here. A new Air Knee Smash/Slash Elbow bug has also been found for Alex; check it out here.

Source: THE COOL KID93

While Examu is known predominately for their air-dash-heavy fighting series Arcana Heart, the small 30-person company has tried their hand at quite a few fighters since their inception in 1999. Aquapazza, Nitroplus Blasterz, and Arcana Heart’s numerous sequels all did well enough to keep this small company with big competitive dreams afloat. Every fighter that Examu has put out has survived long enough to make it to consoles, and some have dedicated-enough followings to garner major tournament play to this day.

With one notable, console-less exception.

Daemon Bride was the second franchise from Examu after their modest success with Arcana Heart. Examu’s work has an obvious style and market: their games and settings are at the intersection of cute anime and competitive Japanese arcade culture. Where Arcana Heart leaned heavily towards the cute anime side, 2009’s Daemon Bride was an attempt at being more serious, detailed, and gritty. Its projectile-focused gameplay evoked the frenzied, nuanced pace of the shmup genre, while its airdash and homing cancel mechanics still kept it spiritually close enough to Arcana Heart. Since Arc System Works’s BlazBlue had come out the year before, I can imagine Daemon Bride was an attempt to get in the ground floor of this more grown-up anime resurgence.

It didn’t work. Daemon Bride received one title update in 2011 (Daemon Bride: Additional Gain) then quietly disappeared from the market. Examu’s later works, Aquapazza and Nitroplus Blasterz, backed far away from Daemon Bride’s shmup inspiration, and returned to Examu’s cuter, less serious looking art style.

Those that still want to play it will have to make a bit of a trek over to the Japanese arcade Game a-cho. Thankfully, the good folks there have provided us with hours of recent high-level gameplay footage. Regardless of Daemon Bride‘s fate, there was something special enough there in its direction to keep some players playing, even today.

Source: GAMEacho

Bonchan plans a pilgrimage across Japan to unite their Street Fighter V competitors.

Red Bull’s Masato “Bonchan” Takahashi seeks to build a stronger Street Fighter V community in Japan, mitigating the lack of an arcade release in an FGC that still revolves around the video arcade model–and one that is becoming seemingly thin, having been pushed into online lobbies to play the current version of Street Fighter.

His plan is to travel across all of Japan’s 47 prefectures and check out each regional scene, while encouraging them to build up their own local connections. “My main goal is to inspire the young players in these regional areas to start their own offline community… While throwing an event might be an exhausting job, it’s also very rewarding, and it’s always better to have a rival or a friend to play and communicate with rather than playing alone at home online.”

Bonchan echoes a prior observation from Twith.Hx.CYG BST|Daigo Umehara: that no arcade version of Street Fighter V has made it tougher for Japanese players to train and communicate in the way they’re used to. But he has a positive outlook on the future of the game and its communities. “I’m looking forward to seeing the cultural differences in these communities, meeting new players, and exchanging ideas. My stops in Hokkaido and Nagoya have been very successful, in my opinion, so I’d like to continue this project in 2018. My goal for this year is to successfully lead this project to grow the local Japanese communities, but of course I will do my best to train hard for the Capcom Pro Tour as well.”

Read the full article and interview from Ian Walker over on Red Bull eSports.

Additionally, you can check out some footage of Bonchan’s own exclusive Nash color–awarded for victory at Genbu Cup–in action in this FT2 against Majorboy, below:

Sources: Red Bull eSports; XusesGB

We’ve been getting a steady release of content for these DLC characters after their trailers; we got gameplay vids for both Yamazaki and Whip, and now its Vanessa’s turn. While we did get to see a bit of what she can do in the combo exhibition last week, we can to see how she performs in a real match this time around. Since it’s almost time for the next DLC character to be officially announced, take in all the Vanessa you can get before the next character swoops in to steal the show!

Source: snkGame

With the conclusion of the spring season of the 2GG Championship Series for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, 2GGaming have announced summer’s season finale. Titled Nairo Saga, this event will see the world’s greatest Zero Suit Samus player fighting to see if he can defeat the Saga Curse and earn a spot at the 2GG Championships at the end of this year.

This event will be held at the usual venue: the Esports Arena in Santa Ana, California from June 10th to 11th. As with other 2GGC Sagas, top 8 placers at this event will gain circuit points to go to an eventual spot at the Championships at the end of 2017. As it currently stands, RNG|Dabuz is at the top of the table following his victory at Civil War, with TSM|ZeRo in second and FS|Fatality in third. For more information on upcoming Sagas, check out the 2GGC smash.gg page.

To chart their player’s path to his Saga, NRG Esports has also released a short trailer which chronicles Nairo’s rise to prominence in the Smash community. From his early days back in Brawl to his recent successes, the video shows clips of big moments of Nairo’s career, along with words from the man himself.

Sources: 2GGaming; smash.gg; NRG Esports