Category: News

Having previously announced a special “Rainmaker” costume for King, based off current IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada, Bandai Namco have revealed more New Japan Pro Wrestling items for Tekken 7. If you want to represent NJPW online, there are special themed player cards, icons and even health bars for you to use when playing in Versus.

As for character customization, fighters can now wear NJPW, Bullet Club and Chaos t-shirts in battle. I wonder if Akuma will get any Kenny Omega themed customization items, based on the wrestler’s love of Street Fighter. So far, these NJPW items are confirmed just for the arcade version of Tekken 7, but I imagine they will also feature in the eventual console and PC release.

This trailer also shows off King’s special Rainmaker Rage Art, where money rains from the sky before King punches his enemy in the face. Expect lots of people fishing for this flashy finisher when Tekken 7 is available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. Bandai Namco is set to reveal Tekken 7’s release date sometime this month, so keep your eyes peeled for that all important date.

Source: tekkenchannel via FightersGeneration

Despite their nature, playing video games competitively still requires some level of physical readiness that can be affected by injury. This is especially true with games such as Super Smash Bros. Melee where a good number of the advanced techniques used by competitive players requires a fair degree of execution, especially on the GameCube Controller. With players already experiencing severe hand pain from playing normally, trying to play high-level Melee with a broken finger sounds like an impossible task.

Evolution 2016 champion Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma from Team Liquid has stated that he may not be able to compete at Genesis 4 due to a broken finger that he sustained from playing dodgeball. The injury, an X-Ray of which you can see as part of Hungrybox’s tweet below, involves his right index finger–which makes it difficult for him to perform certain inputs.

Because…it turns out my finger is actually broken from dodgeball

Digital remapping might be the only way I could play at G4 at this point pic.twitter.com/6NxX29wm0L

— Hungrybox (@LiquidHbox) January 3, 2017

In light of this, Hungrybox may only be able to compete at Genesis 4 if he was able to use a Smash Box with a remapped input to allow him to jump. This would allow him to compete with a broken finger–but with the amount of controversy surrounding the vanilla Smash Box, I doubt this button remapping would be allowed.

Whatever the outcome of this is, we here at Shoryuken wish Hungrybox a speedy recovery from his injury!

Source: Hungrybox

Street Fighter V’s launch year could generally be described as “rough,” especially when it comes to the non-competitive side of things. While the game has had a great showing at tournaments, the lackluster launch meant that it didn’t do as well in terms of early sales, especially among the less competitively-inclined.

With this in mind, it comes as a great surprise that Street Fighter V has actually made Steam’s list of top 100 selling games for 2016. The game sits in the “Bronze” tier, alongside other notable games such as DayZ, Dragonball Xenoverse 2, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, NBA 2K17, and Dishonored 2. As for what exactly Bronze entails, Valve did not release any actual sales numbers for any of the games on the list.

As stated above, Street Fighter V did have a rough launch. However, data from Steam tracking site SteamDB shows that the game has seen an increase in sales in the past month alone. While this may may be due to seasonal sales, it still shows that people are picking up the game, and that Capcom’s efforts to address the content issues may be hitting their mark.

With Capcom already working on the game’s second season of content, and possibly doing 3 more seasons after this, the future seems to be bright for Street Fighter V.

Sources: Steam; SteamDB via r/StreetFighter

What games will make the cut for Evolution’s main stage?

We know the when, we know the where–Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, July 14-16, 2017. And on January 24th, a reveal show is planned to announce what titles will be in the official Evo arena, according to Mr Wizard. If you want to petition for your favorite to be one of Evolution’s main events, now’s the time!

The Evo 2017 reveal show will be on January 24, 2017! Let me know what 7 games you think should make it! #Evo2017

— Joey Cuellar (@MrWiz) January 2, 2017

Stay locked on to Shoryuken and the Evolution page for Evo news as it happens!

Source: Joey Cuellar

As we have seen with the recent departures from Evil Geniuses, now is the time of year for esports teams to announce who they will be losing for 2017. This time, it’s Panda Global’s turn to say farewell to some of its players, with Scar, Trela and SS setting off for pastures new.

Arizona Villager main Shane “SS” Bruce was one of the inaugural members of Panda Global, being among the first players signed to the team back in 2015. As the team has grown, SS has decided to forge his own path in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, leaving the team but intending to remain a long-term friend of the group. Albert “Trela” Miliziano joined Panda Global after some fantastic performances with the World Warrior Ryu, but got off to quite the shaky start with the team. Despite at ninth place finish at Evo 2016, the life of an esports player was simply not for him and Smash lost quite a lot of its luster. Much like the traveling karate master, Trela is now on the search for his next challenge and he will hopefully return to Smash 4 in the near future.

As for Brad “Scar” Vaughan, his decision to leave PG is due to him “receiving another opportunity” from somewhere else in the world of esports. Seeing as he has had a fantastic year in Mortal Kombat X, earning third at Evo 2016 and winning SCR 2016, it’s no surprise other sponsors have been looking to sign him up. Scar is currently recovering from a serious bout of ill health, so we at Shoryuken wish him all the best in his recovery and future endeavours.

Panda Global certainly show no signs of stopping though, in either NRS or Smash. Expect them to add more players to their roster during 2017, and definitely keep an eye out for the second Smash 4 Panda Global Rankings, which are set to release just ahead of Genesis 4 in over two weeks’ time.

Source: Panda Global