Category: News

It’s been about two weeks since voting started on Summit 3, the invitational Melee event with $10,000+ prize pools and exposure for competitors. The voting period has been fierce, with debates erupting on sites like Twitter and Facebook about who should or shouldn’t be allowed into this exclusive event.

After all is said and done, the vote is finished and we have the finalists who came out on top of the voting. HTC|Mafia, The Moon, EMG|n0ne, Tempo|S2J, DNL|Duck, and CLG|PewPewU are the finalists voted into The Summit, which will be going down November 3rd-6th. These six finalists join the 10 already invited competitors to make up the final compliment of 16 Melee players.

Sources: Beyond the Summit; smash.gg;

For many folks who play fighting games at night, silenced arcade sticks are a must so that any sleeping loved ones aren’t disturbed by furious QCF motions. Most of these sticks use special silenced push buttons with padding to cut down on the noise. However, even with these, there’s one other part that causes noise in an arcade stick – the joystick itself

With most of the noise from an arcade stick lever coming from its micro switches, the best choice is to use one ditches those switches in favor of an optical sensor. One such joystick is the HORI Hayabusa Silent Optical Joystick.

Now available for the first time ever over at Arcade Shock, the Hayabusa Silent Optical is based on the proven Hayabusa arcade stick, but uses a special set of optical sensors instead of micro switches. The optical sensors help cut down on the noise while the proven Hayabusa body and low contact pivot make for a longer lasting, more durable arcade stick.

The HORI Hayabusa Silent Optical Joystick is now available over at Arcade Shock for $59.99.  Interested players however should try to get these as soon as possible as stocks are very limited.

Source: Arcade Shock

SNK has done a great job of bringing some of its classic titles to PlayStation 4.  First they brought back the Last Blade 2, then they followed that up with Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Now, they’re bringing up a trio of classic Neo-Geo fighters to Sony’s console in Japan.

The first of these, releasing on October 27 on the Japanese PlayStation Network is none other than the King of Fighters 94. KOF ’94 will be released as part of Hamster Corporation’s Arcade Archives series. This means that it will be an emulation of the original arcade game, but with support for PlayStation 4 features such as screenshot and video sharing as well as uploading scores to online leaderboards.

Following after the the King of Fighters ’94, SNK announced that they would be also be bringing Fatal Fury: the King of Fighters, and Samurai Shodown to PlayStation 4 later this year. This is addition to Neo-Geo arcade classics Metal Slug and Alpha Mission II.

Source: Famitsu via Gematsu

SSFC2016, Mikado’s multi-game tournament series, continues! Just like last time, Mikado is showing off more 2D footsie-based action, and unreleased curiosities.

If you look through Data East’s back catalog, you’ll find quite a few odd fighting gems. The best known of these, perhaps, is Fighter’s History, a fighting game series that ties in to Data East’s peculiar mascot, Karnov. Fighter’s History Dynamite is the much-improved sequel of the series, and you can learn a little more about it’s mechanics on SRK’s Wiki.

As before with “FORCE FIVE,” “Kenju” is a cancelled fighter for Sammy’s Atomiswave. The 2005 project looks a little more rough around the edges mechanically then the previous Sammy entry, but seeing Japanese players spar in uncharted territory is always a treat. Kenju appears to have been aiming for the anime market, as evidenced by heavy air dash based movement and chain combo system. [We also featured Kenju in a previous article. – Editor]

As always, you can follow along Mikado’s upload schedule on YouTube, or try to catch them live on their UStream.

Source: Mikado

As we’ve been reporting, the CFN Portal site has been frequently uploading character profiles of the Street Fighter EX characters, courtesy of the research found in the Shadaloo Activity Reports. With the entirely of the original EX1 cast covered, it’s time to move on to the first characters that debuted in EX2, starting with the third “Sibling of Destiny,” Nanase! As always, NIN returns to provide his insight–as a “Senior Officer of Shadaloo”–to Private Nakagawa in profiling these characters.

Private Nakagawa: The younger sister of the heir of Mizukami style ancient martial arts, Hokuto. She doesn’t only use ancient martial arts, but an amazing staff that can lengthen itself.

Basic Info:

Name: Nanase
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 54 kg
Blood Type: 0
Birthday: February 19th
Country of Origin: Japan
Likes: Anmitsu, Hokuto
Dislikes: Seiza [“The classic Japanese kneeling position”]

Private Nakagawa: The true sister of Kairi. Nanase doesn’t remember her brother, and is searching for her sister Hokuto, who mysteriously disappeared. She has a merry, bright and cheerful personality. Even today, we have a comment from our Senior colleague:

NIN: The collision detection of that elastic staff proved to be quite the technical problem. I struggled with the attack direction of her Kasumioroshi, [“Misty Gust from the Mountains”] too. I liked the way in which she could pierce two opponents at once with her staff in EX3.

Next, we have the son of the legendary Orochi-slaying swordsman, Hayate!

Private Nakagawa: The young man armed with a sword who hails from Kukonochi village. His father was a legendary swordsman who rid the village of the Orochi all by himself. A swordsman is an unusual character for Street Fighter.

Basic Info:

Name: Hayate
Height: 177cm
Weight: 76kg
Blood type: B
Birthday: April 5th
Home Country: Japan
Likes: Dried persimmons
Dislikes: Evil spirits

Private Nakagawa: He makes a living getting rid of mystic calamities and evil spirits. Clad in an ominous pale wave of a bluish white hadō he continues to fight every day in order to defeat the demonic people.

NIN: During development, his “Tsumuji Kagerō-Kyoku” [“Heat Haze Vortex Climax”] was called “UFO!” Since then, it is no longer seen as only a UFO, there had been a time when we couldn’t stop laughing as the system gradually came together.

That wraps up another pair of EX CFN Character Profiles. If this still hasn’t quenched your thirst for EX knowledge, you can learn about the dark pasts of Nanase’s siblings, Hokuto and Kairi, here, as well as check out the profiles of the rest of the original EX1 cast here and here. Keep your browser locked right here to Shoryuken, as we continue to bring you more CFN Portal character profiles in the future!

Source: CFN Portal; Special Thanks to Midgardsorm and bakfromon for the translations

With the upcoming dashboard update to the PlayStation 4 bringing a dedicated tournament app to the console, Sony has partnered with ESL to natively integrate ESL tournaments into their service. This means once players have linked their ESL account to their PSN ID, signing up and keeping track of tournaments is easier than ever.

With Mortal Kombat X having its home with the ESL, it will be one of the first games added to the tournaments system. The ESL will be holding almost daily Community Cups for Mortal Kombat X, with larger regional cups running on Sundays. These regional cups will have top 4s streamed on your region’s ESL Twitch channel, so expect stalwart Mortal Kombat commentators PND|Ketchup and Mustard hosting the European stream, for example.

With the ESL’s foray into Street Fighter V with events like King of the Hill and Brooklyn Beatdown, it is possible that it too will be integrated into the tournament app, allowing easy qualifier events to be run without the hassle of using separate apps to organize an online event.

Source: ESL

Off the back of his landmark third place placing at The Big House 6 earlier this month, Luminosity Gaming has signed Super Smash Bros. Melee player, Mustafa “Ice” Akcakaya to their fledgling roster. He joins Smash 4 player Yuta “Abadango” Kawamura as part of the team’s expansion into the world of fighting games, acting as the first Melee player to join Luminosity.

Known for his smooth movement, creative punish game and mastery of Fox tech skill, Ice is developing at a rapid rate as a player, despite having very few top level opponents to practice against in his hometown of Berlin. In a quote from CEO of Luminosity Gaming Steve Maida, he stated the team is “happy to support a rising talent like Mustafa. With that support, we fully anticipate he will polish his skills even further and cement himself as one of the best Melee players in the World.  I’m looking forward to cheering him on this weekend at Eclipse 2.”

On top of competing at Eclipse 2 in Norway this weekend, Ice is also in the running for Smash Summit 3 in November, fighting for one of the final spots at this invitational tournament. With this recent happy news and stellar performance at The Big House 6, I imagine Ice should sail over the line and make it safely to the Summit. You may see Ice at more US tournaments in the future anyway, as according to ESPN Esports, he is currently applying for an athletic visa thanks to this signing and plans to move to the USA if he is approved.

Sources: Luminosity Gaming; ESPN Esports

Degicia Games has been pretty active about promoting their new game Koihime Enbu, adding a pot bonus to their tournament at this year’s CEOtaku and actively getting their latest fighter in front of potential players. Koihime Enbu and Blade Arcus are two of their main projects, with the latter still receiving support, despite being released in 2014.

For the weekend, both of these games are available at large discounts. Koihime Enbu is available for 50% off, making it available for a more reasonable $19.99. Blade Arcus is discounted 35%, bringing that price down to $19.49. Check out their sale trailer below.

These discounts are in addition to the stream we reported on, that was giving away copies of the game.

Source: Degica Games

Here’s some interesting news for The King of Fighters fans who love collecting series merchandise. SNK has just announced a new, exclusive line of 15 King of Fighters themed t-shirts.

However, the kicker is that these t-shirts seemingly aren’t going to be for general sale. SNK has not given any word on how–or even if they will be–selling these in the future. Instead, these t-shirts will be given away as prizes at future KOF tournaments.

An exclusive series of 15 different KOF T-Shirts have been created, and will be distributed as prizes in future fighting game tournaments! pic.twitter.com/KopcxBtdr7

— G-Mantle (ゲーマント） (@SNKPofficial) October 20, 2016

Whether or not this means that the shirts will only be given to the top placers at a tournament, or if they’ll be giving them out to tournament attendees through some other means is unknown. If they do the former though, wearing these shirts could be a mark of pride, showing that the wearer is good enough to place high at a King of Fighters event.

Source: SNK (Twitter)