Category: News

With Super Smash Con briefly resurrecting Super Smash Bros. Brawl for its regular legacy tournament, CLASH Tournaments are attempting to bring the game back into the limelight with a dedicated Brawl event later this year. Titled Revival of Brawl, this two day event in Philadelphia from November 26-27th will show spectators the game which spawned so many of Super Smash Bros.for Wii U’s greats. Nairo, ANTi, Ally, Dabuz, ZeRo–these are just some of the players that were forged in the fires of Brawl and this tournament will act as a glance back in time, to an era that many current Smash players may have missed out on.

The tournament will be divided up into three major events; Singles, Doubles and a special Mid-Tier event. Singles will have Meta Knight and Ice Climbers legal so everyone can be reminded of the terror they inflicted upon the masses. Doubles will have double Meta Knight banned to allow for more diverse teams while the Mid-Tier event will allow the lower end of the cast to shine–without the fear of Meta Knights, Snakes and Ice Climbers dominating the bracket. A full legal character list for Mid Tiers will be revealed in due course over on the official Revival of Brawl website, as well as details on which old school Brawl players and commentators are attending.

With Smash 64 staging a grand comeback over the past few years, this tournament may signal a small rebirth for Brawl by enticing new players to pick up this game, which is so influential on the current state of Smash. If you are at all interested in this grand Smash history lesson, follow the Revival of Brawl Twitter page and keep your eyes peeled for its smash.gg page for details on registration in the near future.

Sources: Revival of Brawl; CLASH Tournaments

Virtua Fighter is one of the most respected fighting game franchises; even in the West, where its popularity doesn’t match that of other games, the series is still highly respected for its technical depth. Despite this, we haven’t really seen anything new regarding the Virtua Fighter franchise for a long time–outside of character guest-appearances in other games.

That said, it seems that Sega may still have some plans for franchise in the future. According to Trademarkia, the company has recently renewed the trademark for Virtua Fighter.

Now, take note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that a new Virtua Fighter game is coming–companies renew their trademarks all the time, if just to protect them. But it does show that Sega retains enough interest in the franchise to hold on to their trademark for it.

Source: Trademarkia via VFDC

In addition to filming at the event and hosting his panel at Super Smash Con this weekend, Travis “Samox” Beauchamp–director of the Super Smash Bros. Melee documentary “The Smash Brothers”–has provided us an excerpt from his follow-up project “Metagame”. The clip is now available to view through his Twitter feed, or directly on YouTube at East Point Pictures.

The excerpt opens with discussion of 2008’s Pound 3 event, thought by some to be the “last big Melee tournament” due to Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s release (how wrong they were!), and showcases Mango’s fierce battle through Pound 3’s Losers bracket.

Thanks for all the love! Here's the Metagame Excerpt so you can enjoy at your leisure – https://t.co/fsYN5Wjm5T

— Travis Beauchamp (@_samox_) August 13, 2016

Sources: Travis Beauchamp (Twitter); EastPointPictures

Throughout it’s development, one of the biggest questions players had about the King of Fighters XIV was how good its online play would turn out–its predecessor had pretty poor play online on consoles, and many players were worried that the new game would suffer the same–especially with SNK being rather quiet on the subject.

Well, it seems that players’ worries may be unfounded. Reports from players obtaining early copies of the game (from retailers breaking the street date) seem to indicate that the King of Fighters XIV’s online experience is great.

Specifically, CEO head organizer Alex Jebailey made the following statements regarding the his experiences with KOFXIV’s netcode on Twitter.

Huge leap ahead of KOF13's online. Will share more on all the online modes close to release. This online will make KOF players happy imo.

— Alex Jebailey (@CEOJebailey) August 11, 2016

This is great news for King of Fighters fans. If the online play continues to hold up on launch day–with the larger influx of players–this should allow KOFXIV to grow its player base beyond those looking to play the game offline at tournaments and events.

Source: Alex Jebailey (Twitter)

With regular top 8 placements at big European tournaments including this summer’s PPT and BEAST 6 back in January, David “Sodrek” Radobenko has been signed as Team Prismatic’s latest Super Smash Bros. for Wii U player. He joins fellow German player cvye under Team Prismatic’s banner, and is also acting as Germany’s representative at the Rio eGames event, going up against international threats like Canada’s Ally, Mexico’s MK Leo and the UK’s J Miller.

While Sodrek is mainly known for his lightning fast Fox, Sodrek has a Link and Shulk in his back pocket whenever the time seems right to call upon a blonde-haired swordsman. You can see Sodrek’s Link in action in the montage below for DMG Alliance, of which he is also a member. As Europe gradually levels up in skill to hopefully rival that of the USA and Japan, hopefully more European players will be considered for big teams and organizations interested in getting into the Smash scene.

Sources: Team Prismatic; DMG Alliance

Reports of retailers breaking the August 23, 2016 street date for the release of The King of Fighters XIV have been popping up on Twitter; several users have posted pictures of their pre-embargo copy, while others express their frustration with having to continue waiting for their preorder copy to arrive on the legitimate street date. While KOFXIV’s publisher Atlus has no direct means to enforce retailers to honor the street date, they have released the following statement encouraging players to hold off spreading any spoilers about the game until the official release date has arrived.

IMPORTANT NOTICE from @SNKPofficial regarding “KOF XIV”. For more detailed information see below. #KOF14 #KOFXIV pic.twitter.com/tU6lZpaaAA

— Atlus U.S.A., Inc. (@AtlusUSA) August 12, 2016

Based on further clarifications on Twitter, Atlus extends this request to streaming regular gameplay footage, as well as parts of the story mode.

The full background stories of each of the game’s teams also recently went live on SNK’s official site.

Source: Atlus U.S.A. (Twitter)

Bad news if you were hoping to visit the Pokkén Tournament event at 2016’s Pokémon World Championships as a spectator–the Pokémon Company has announced that the venue will be closed to everyone who is not a competitor over the weekend. In fact, entry isn’t even guaranteed for family members of the competitors–even if they’ve been invited!

This has been met with an uproar, especially because the timing of the announcement is so close to when the event is set to take place. The World Championships are a popular event, and some people have traveled halfway around the world just to attend as a spectator.

Here are some of the reactions:

Here at SRK we’ve previously covered some of the problems with other national Pokkén events, in light of which, this news is especially disappointing to see.

And the worst part of all? There won’t even be a special Pokemon GO event for worlds.

Source: The Pokémon Company

Good news for those who have yet to shell out for a shiny new stick or pad: SNK has confirmed that King of Fighters XIV will receive a day one patch adding PS3 legacy controller support. This means that all you dedicated King of Fighters XIII players can continue to fight the good fight on your battle-hardened controllers, without the need to put down potentially hundreds of dollars for a brand new stick.

This patch will also apply to the King of Fighters XIV demo which is currently available on PSN, so those on the fence about this new edition of KOF can test out the input latency on their legacy controller before buying the full game. As with Street Fighter V, it is probable players will need to have a DualShock 4 connected to their PS4 in order for their legacy controller to be recognized, but that is not yet confirmed.

It remains to be seen whether legacy controllers will be allowed for KOF tournament play. Big tournaments like Evo have previously banned their usage due to the inconvenience of connecting and disconnecting for games like Street Fighter V, and discrepancies in input latancy, so this addition may only really benefit casual players and online warriors.

Source: SNK Official

 

NetherRealm’s Ed Boon isn’t shy about using Twitter polls as a way to hint about possible characters for Injustice 2. His latest one, however, seems to be the most direct confirmation of a character yet.

In his latest Twitter poll, Ed Boon only mentions one specific character: the Red Hood. The poll itself only asks whether or not fans would prefer him to be the Joker or Jason Todd.

Which Red Hood do you think should be in Injustice 2?

— Ed Boon (@noobde) August 11, 2016

For those not familiar with the the Red Hood mantle, this was originally the moniker usedby the man who would later become the Joker–before his fateful dive into a vat of chemicals that finally transformed him into Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime. The first Injustice game referenced this by giving the Joker a Red Hood alternate outfit.

In addition to this, the Red Hood moniker was used by resurrected a former Robin: Jason Todd, who became an anti-hero of sorts, stopping crime in his own violent crusade to get back at those who wronged him in the past.

Take note that this isn’t outright confirmation that the Red Hood will be in Injustice 2. That said, these Twitter polls are a good indication of who Ed Boon and NetherRealm are considering for Injustice 2.

Source: Ed Boon

Hot on the heels of their most recent team trailer, SNK has made an update to their official King of Fighters XIV website. They’ve now added all the prologue stories for all 16 teams participating in the latest King of Fighters tournament.

With this update, fans can now learn the back stories of all of these teams: this includes those of newcomers such as Team South America (qualifiers from a KOF spinoff tournament in Brazil) as well as the recently featured Another World Team (travelling across dimensions searching for an evil power). Additionally, they also clue us in to the state of the KOF world in general, and the timeline changes that happened after the last game.

The King of Fighters XIV’s official launch is only a couple of weeks away. With this, players can start getting more acquainted with the teams and characters that they might want to pick up when it hits PlayStation 4.

Source: SNK