Category: News

You must defeat Sushi-X (at Street Fighter) to stand a chance!

It’s the 25th anniversary of the mother of all Street Fighter April Fool’s jokes–Electronic Gaming Monthly’s trick to “unlock” and fight Sheng Long in the original Street Fighter II arcade game. To celebrate, EGM’s Trickman Terry is inviting us all to attend a party at Pixel Blast Arcade in Lisle, Illinois. Creator of the Sheng Long hoax Ken Williams–formerly known in his EGM days as Sushi-X–will be in attendance to answer questions, sign pictures, and take on all challengers in Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting.

Ken Williams will also give a talk on the history of the Sheng Long joke. You can get in with the $10 admission fee for the arcade–that is, unless this is another joke…? No, surely not. Be sure to check it out at Pixel Blast Arcade, if you’re in Lisle on April 1st, at 7:00 PM!

Thanks to Trickman Terry for sharing the invitation.

Source: Trickman Terry (Facebook event)

Hong Kong-based Toy Company BigBoysToys has revealed that Zangief will be the next member in their T.N.C (The New Challenger) series of collectible Street Fighter figures. They made the announcement via a Facebook post with the caption “Zangief is coming next as our T.N.C-07!!!! You better be ready!!!”, preceding the image shown below.

You can get a better look at the T.N.C Series in our previous reports.

Source: BigBoysToys HK

A future DLC character may have been unwittingly revealed for Street Fighter V; Bill Rogers–who supplies the voice for Urien in the game–posted a tweet in the spirit of #FollowFriday, listing voice actors from the title. While the first few actors come as no shock, the final name on the list definitely raised some eyebrows.

#FF SF5 Season 2:
Akuma @RichardEpcar
Necalli @th3Engineer
Ryu @kylehebert
Kolin @RedHeadSaidProd
Guile @WillingBlam
Taylor @DaveFennoy

— Bill Rogers (@billsvoice) March 24, 2017

This could indicate that Guile’s superior Byron Taylor–who has already been speculated to be playable in Season 2–may actually be one of the characters that show up on the roster this season. Given that Kolin was speculated upon by her silhouette being found in the Season 2 teaser showcasing Akuma, it could make speculations on the rest of the cast much easier to make; if we actually got two new playable fighters based on SFV General Story characters, it would be likely most–or all–of them would also be from that mode.

However, Byron does already appear briefly in Kolin’s story mode, and may be in others to come–so he might be in the list solely for that reason, even if the other voiced characters here are all playable fighters. Seeing the firestorm that is happening across social media, Bill Rogers returned to Twitter to state plainly that this listing of Taylor’s voice actor Dave Fennoy was not intended as a leak–nor necessarily indicates anything more than story mode work.

Seriously people!?! My tweet was not a leak. Akuma story mode had Necalli and Ryu. Kolin's has appearances by Guile and Taylor.

— Bill Rogers (@billsvoice) March 25, 2017

Source: Bill Rogers (Twitter)

Paid content, or short-cutting game unlocks with money, are no strange things in mainstream video games–though it’s not something that’s a good fit for most fighting games. There’s an interesting intersection of design principles in For Honor, a quasi-MOBA/fighting game/RPG. Ubisoft recently came under fire, as a reddit user put their math skills to practical use.

bystander007 calculated exactly how much money is needed to unlock everything in the launch version of Ubisoft’s medieval fighter. Steel is the in-game currency, and among emotes, new execution types, effects, outfits, and more, it takes 91500 to unlock everything for one hero. Multiply that by twelve heroes, and you get 1,098,000.

The poster did some further calculations for how many hours a player would have to grind to get those. About 1,200 Steel a day is a fair estimate, depending on what Contracts (daily quests, but they actually become available every other day, which slows the gain) the player gets. Doing 1,200 a day equals 915 days–about two and a half years. A hardcore player could get it in about 326 days.

If you take the real money route, buying 150,000 Steel with $100 packs, it will take $732.

Ubisoft responded to this situation:

“We never had an intention for you to unlock everything in the game. For us that doesn’t really make any sense,” Damien Kieken, game director, said. “We applied RPG mechanics on top of a fighting game in a PvP environment. Let’s say in World of Warcraft, you would never try to unlock everything for all the characters. Same thing in any MOBA.”

“We forecasted that most players would play one to three characters–and that’s what we see today in our game. Most players focus on one character, one hero, and others go up to two or three heroes. All of the design is based around that. The cosmetic items… for us, are endgame content.”

It’s an interesting clash of mechanics, as the genre mix in Ubisoft’s title brings various audiences into the fray. bystander007 goes further into explaining their opinion on the matter and what Ubisoft could do about this. Read up on that on the For Honor reddit.

Which route would you take with For Honor? Do you prefer to fork over a few dollars, or are you a vehement grinder?

Sources: For Honor reddit; wccftech; GameSpot

After a lengthy period on Steam Early Access, lightning-fast platform fighter Rivals of Aether is finally officially launching on March 28th. With a meaty update coming as part of the official release, lead designer Dan Fornace and the whole Rivals of Aether team have announced what exactly will be coming as part of next Tuesday’s launch.

The main bulk of the update is the game’s single player modes, with updates to Abyss Mode and the debut of the game’s Story Mode. The Story Mode gives players an introduction to all the Rivals through traditional Arcade Mode-esque fights, while also revealing more about the mysterious Aether. From there, Abyss Mode acts as a sort of fighting game Horde mode, where you and up to three friends can work together to defeat various enemies and complete special challenge waves.

There is a meta progression system in Abyss Mode, with players leveling up their individual Rivals and gaining special Runes to power up specific moves and special attacks. Once you’ve created the ultimate Rival, you can then compete against your pals in Abyss Versus with these super-powered fighters.

As for multiplayer, the full release of RoA increases the stage count from seven to eleven stages. To account for this larger stage list, competitive play will now introduce a Super Smash Bros.-esque neutral and counterpick system, complete with two stage bans. The Rivals team will be actively listening to the community and will change the stage list, based on player feedback.

With a brand new crop of players coming in with the Steam release, there will be a general rank reset for all players. The top players from the previous leaderboard will have their names enshrined in history, but everyone will go back to 1000 ELO for launch. There are also plans for seasons on ladder, in order to shake up the ranks every three months.

To celebrate the launch, there will be a special pre-release party stream this Sunday over on the Rivals of Aether Twitch channel. The stream will begin at 3pm PDT, with special guests and run-throughs of all the new content. Controller Chaos have also partnered up with Rivals of Aether, and are now offering an exclusive line of custom controllers based of the Rivals roster. You can see four of the designs in the gallery below, and they are now available to order via the Controller Chaos website.

Rivals of Aether launches on Steam March 28th, with the Xbox One version set to exit Xbox Game Preview in about a month’s time.

Sources: Rivals of Aether; Controller Chaos

Arc System Works and Aksys Games have supplied a fresh batch of interesting tidbits about the upcoming Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2, the update to Xrd -REVELATOR-.

First up, we have confirmation of the pricepoint for the digital upgrade option. As we have reported, -REVELATOR- owners can opt to upgrade their console version to REV 2 by paying less; Aksys Games confirmed that $20 USD boosts the version by adding the two new characters–Baiken and Answer–rebalancing the cast, and providing a swath of new content.

@aksysgames Options! REV 2 upgrade will be $20. GG REV is available for less than $20 here- https://t.co/1F7OiSmJU2

— Aksys Games (@aksysgames) March 22, 2017

The Japanese Arc System Works site now includes a nice outline that gives a detailed look at user interface changes and features.

Story aficionados will be happy to hear that, other than new, individual episodes for characters like Baiken, Answer, Dizzy, Kum Kaehyun, and more, there will be additional story content coming in a later update to REV 2. For those who missed out on earlier story content, a new summary can get them back to speed.

Here’s a teaser of a revamped menu in the game. The online lobby is more green, too!

There’s also welcome improvements to Player and Ranked match modes. Players will be able to do a “FT2” with Ranked players by challenging the opponent to a rematch, and it will be possible to watch a match that was already in progress in Player Mode lobbies.

Yet another option that fans will surely welcome: it will be possible to select the older version of REV 2 (-REVELATOR- in the menu options).

We also have a rundown of gameplay modes in REV 2.

It’s nice to see so much transparency from Arc System Works as to what exactly REV 2 will improve, as fans often question whether putting money into an upgrade is worth it. Stay tuned for more news as we get closer to REV 2’s May 25th release date.

Sources: Aksys Games; GGXrd Japan site

Ahead of 2GGC: Civil War this weekend, Evil Geniuses have announced their first foray into the world of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. To herald their entry, they have signed PGR Rank 16 and one of the U.S.A.’s best Diddy Kong players, Julian “Zinoto” Carrington.

As one of the Midwest’s shining stars, Zinoto is known for his highly technical Diddy, which has earned him high placings at tournaments like Frostbite 2017, 2GGC: Midwest Mayhem Saga, CEO 2016, Smash ‘n Splash 2, and Combo Breaker 2016. He has won three of the seven Midwest Mayhem events held in his region, and works to raise up local players in his home state of Michigan.

We break into Smash Bros. for Wii U by welcoming Julian "@Zinoto" Carrington to EG! More details here: https://t.co/sQXdwiYuH7 pic.twitter.com/hNitESvDl8

— Evil Geniuses (@EvilGeniuses) March 24, 2017

His teaching is not limited to the local area however, as his Cram School series of videos hopes to teach players how to get around certain tricky character matchups. With content creation becoming an increasingly large reason for picking up players, Evil Geniuses have certainly picked a winner with Zinoto’s informative and well-researched tutorials.

In a statement announcing his addition to EG, CEO Peter “ppd” Dager said that the team are “thrilled that we have the opportunity to pick up Zinoto who I know will be an incredibly positive influence in the space.” You will be able to see Zinoto rocking the blue jersey this weekend as 2GGC: Civil War, so look out for this Diddy making waves in bracket.

Source: Evil Geniuses

[Feature image c/o Evil Geniuses]