Catch a First Glimpse of Injustice 2’s Gameplay, Streaming Live

In just a few short minutes, the folks at NetherRealm Studios will be offering viewers a first look at Injustice 2 in action. While we’ve already seen the game’s official trailer, it leaves much to the imagination with regard to how the game will actually look–and play–once we finally get our hands on it.

We’ve embedded the stream below so you can watch the reveal in the article itself, or you can head over to Twitch to join in the chat.

Watch live video from NetherRealm on www.twitch.tv

Source: NetherRealm Studios

First Attack 2016 Trailer Offers a Look at Puerto Rico’s Largest Fighting Game Tournament

Puerto Rico’s biggest FGC major, First Attack, will be taking place September 3-4, 2016 at the Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan. This tournament will be a CPT Ranking event for Street Fighter V so it is sure to attract fierce competition from all parts of the world.

The First Attack Twitter page recently Tweeted the First Attack 2016 Official Trailer that they uploaded onto their YouTube channel, GamersGrid TV, which you can watch below. The trailer shows some exciting highlights from last year’s event as well as some of the other games on this year’s lineup, such as Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, Mortal Kombat XL and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.

For more information regarding First Attack 2016, you can visit the event’s website and Twitter page in the sources below the article.

Sources: First Attack PR, GamersGrid TV, First Attack PR Twitter

King of Fighters XIV Screenshot Reveals First Glimpse of New Character Love Heart

Atlus has recently updated their official North American site for the King of Fighters XIV with a bunch of new screenshots. While most of these are just the same shots that SNK has been sharing over Twitter, one of them is a new shot that gives a glimpse of a character that we’ve yet to see anywhere else.

The screenshot in question shows us our first glimpse of newcomer Love Heart. Hailing from the Sky Love pachi-slot game, Love Heart represents the third and final member of the Another World team alongside Nakoruru and Mui Mui.

In addition to this, the screenshot also gives a slight hint at her fighting style, showing that she wields a sort of energy blade.

You can check the screenshot in question, and a few others in the gallery below.

Click to view slideshow.

Atlus will be bringing the King of Fighters XIV to PlayStation 4 in North America on August 23.

Source: Atlus

Enzo Maccarinelli retires following first-round KO defeat

Ukrainian Dmytro Kucher (24-1, 18 KOs) stopped former world champion Enzo Maccarinelli (41-8, 33 KOs) in the first round to win the vacant European cruiserweight title on Friday night at the York Hall in London.
Welshman Maccarinelli started by landing jabs but was soon rocked by a left hook.
Kucher followed up with a series of hard shots which sent Maccarinelli to the canvas.
The 35-year-old struggled to make it to his feet and Italian referee Giuseppe Quartarone halted the fight at 2:48 of…

Massive Console 1.3 Update to Pokkén Tournament Scheduled for June 15th

Courtesy of a quick translation from Pentao via PokkenArena, we now have an English version of the huge batch of Pokkén Tournament patch notes that dropped last night. If you thought the previously announced changes for the arcade version were somewhat lacking, well, you’ll have a lot to chew on come June 15th.

While the patch notes themselves are rather extensive, here’s some examples of the most significant changes:

Charizard

  • Burst Mode: Synergy Mode time decreased.

Suicune

  • jY (Water Gun) now does less blockstun.

Pikachu

  • Pikachu’s Nuzzle now has longer recovery frames if you whiff.

Chandelure

  • Charge-Release [X] currently reduces the time you have negative statuses on you. Now it also increases the effect of negative statuses on opponents, too.

Mewtwo

  • Burst Attack: When you miss with your burst attack, your post-BA invincibility is shorter to make it easier to punish you for failing to grab your opponent.
  • All Pokémon Attacks: Drain more Synergy when used.
  • Barrier: Timing to block an opponent’s attack is slower.
  • Back Y in Field (Fire spin): Timing on canceling fire spin is now slower, must be canceled later.
  • Homing Attack: The 2nd part of the Homing Attack now has reduced hits. This makes it easier to CA the homing combo. However this nerf does not apply to Burst Mode Mewtwo X.
  • Counter Attack: Fixed the bug where inputting back + CA would sometimes cause you to lose synergy for some reason.

Shadow Mewtwo

  • Recover: Recovery time after using recover reduced.
  • Thunder: You can now combo after hitting thunder on an aerial opponent instead of slamming them with a hard knockdown.
  • Back Y in Field (Light Pillar): Increased hitstun on aerial opponents. Miracle Eye variant also receives this buff.
  • Back Step (Field): You can now cancel into an action out of Shadow Mewtwo’s field back dash sooner.
  • Counter Attack in Burst Mode as Shadow Mewtwo X: Can now combo out of Mega SMX’s counter attack in burst mode if it either criticals, or is fully charged.
  • Psywave (Vortex): Increases how much life is consumed when fully charged. Damage dealt as chip damage decreased when fully charged.
  • Earthquake: The gap between attacking and blocking after this move is increased, making it more punishable/less +.
  • j.Y in Field: Increased recovery when used. Cancel timing altered. More easily loses exchanges with enemy projectiles.
  • Homing Attack: Same nerf as Mewtwo’s. Also does not apply to Mega SMX.
  • Time in Burst Mode is reduced.

Supports:

  • Croagunk: If an opponent blocks Croagunk, Croagunk reduces their recoverable life.
  • Quagsire: Reduces the outward knockback of mud bomb, making enemies more easily trapped in it.
  • Diglett: the recovery for summoning Diglett is increased. Diglett’s base damage and damage against guards is reduced.
  • Cresselia: No longer has invincibility.

To see the full list of changes, check out the full post on PokkenArena.

It is worth nothing that the somewhat universally agreed top tiers, Mewtwo and Shadow Mewtwo, received the largest amount of nerfs. Both still seem strong, however, particularly Shadow Mewtwo, who received some interesting new combo opportunities and a better recover.

PokkenArena’s Lucario Mod Milin points out, the changes address guard breaks across the board. More importantly, perhaps, is it’s timing. He notes:

 This patch will drop on the 15th of June, a Wednesday, and also just so happens to the be the Wednesday before the weekend that St. Louis Showdown, a Pokkén Tournament Championship Series Minor Event in Illinois, and APEX, a medium to high profile tournament in New York. Both of these tournaments will each feature a great range of skill and some of the top class of Trainers in the Pokkén Tournament scene. It will be interesting to see how these competitors incorporate the changes at the highest levels, and levels of skill in between!

What do you think of the changes? Do they go far enough, or too far? What about the timing? How do you think tournaments should address the issue with the patch? Leave your comments below!

Sources: PokkenArena, Pokkén Tournament

Deep Silver Discusses Bringing King of Fighters XIV to Europe, Keeping it Close to its Roots, eSports and More

When Deep Silver announced that it was bringing The King of Fighters XIV to Europe last month, fans breathed a sigh of relief as it meant that, unlike some other games, they would be getting KoF XIV at the same time as other regions.

Deep Silver’s Production Chief, Julien En Rab, recently spoke to Gamelove about various topic regarding the latest iteration of the game.

Regarding bringing the game to Europe, En Rab confirmed that they talked directly to SNK, without going through Atlus. He also states that, alongside bringing the game at the same time as other regions, any future updates to the game will also come at the same time.

As for localization, he confirmed that all of the text–barring special move names–will be translated, but the voices will remain in Japanese.

He goes on to mention that the game is a return to the series’ roots, focusing more on fundamentals in a way that fans of KoF 98 and 2002 will find familiar, while adding in mechanics that bring in new fans. The idea is to “get back” the fans of the older games while still cultivating new blood.

As for competition and eSports, he states that SNK is coming from an arcade background and, like a lot of companies, it’s still new to this whole eSports thing. That said, he stated that SNK has allowed them to bring the game to events such as Stunfest, and the upcoming Japan Expo in Paris. However, he notes that, for them to create an international, pro-level competition, they would have to work closely with SNK.

Of course, this is just part of what En Rab talks about in the interview. Orochinagi has an english translation of the interview, with a few added questions of their own on their site.

Source: Gamelove via Orochinagi

The Daily Dot eSports Best of III Spotlights Peter “Flash” Susini’s Vega

The latest episode from The Daily Dot eSports channel invites Peter “Flash” Susini for a “Best of III.”

After a recap of the Capcom Pro Tour, recent changes in the Pro Tour rules, and the Evolution 2016 lineup, the team interviews Flash about his fighting game origins, which stemmed from playing Dance Dance Revolution competitively. They speak in depth about Flash’s gameplan and how he approaches mindgames in tournament settings.

Recently, at Combo Breaker 2016, Flash scored second place in the tournament, losing only to EG|JWong’s Karin.

Check out the full interview, as well as a duel between Flash and Danke, below.

And be sure to check out this previous episode with Xian who discusses Capcom Pro Tour rule changes.

Source: The Daily Dot eSports

New Street Fighter V Screenshots Show More Stage Transitions and Alternate Stages

As we already know, Street Fighter V’s upcoming June update will bring with it a host of features, including the long awaited cinematic story expansion and returning character Ibuki. However, it will also bring a few other things aside from these.

Dengeki Online recently ran a bunch of brand new screenshots that showcase some of the new things happening with the game’s stages. We already know that the alternate, daytime version of the Kanzuki Estate stage is coming, however the screens show alternate versions of other stages, such as Shadaloo Base, as well.

More exciting, however, is a screenshot that shows that stage transitions–currently available only on the Bustling Side Street stage–are coming to other battlegrounds as well. The screenshot in question shows a transitioned version of the City in Chaos stage.

You can check these screenshots out in the gallery below, but do take note that these screenshots are from the Story and Extra Battle modes, so we will have to wait and see if they’ll be available in regular competitive play.

Click to view slideshow.

Source: Dengeki Online

Guillermo Rigondeaux to defend world title against Jazza Dickens on July 16

WBA super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (16-0, 10 KOs) will fight British contender James “Jazza” Dickens (22-1, 7 KOs) on July 16 at the Cardiff Ice Arena in Cardiff, Wales.
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Rigondeaux, who recently had his WBA belt returned to him after initially being stripped, had been due to fight Dickens in a non-title bout in March in England but he failed to secure a visa.
Now Dickens challenges the Cuban star with the world title on the line.
Carl Frampton…

SNK Reveals the Move Lists of All 36 Characters Playable in E3 King of Fighters XIV Demo

Ahead of the mayhem down in Los Angeles next week, SNK have released the move lists for all 36 playable characters in their special E3 demo for King of Fighters XIV. This gives those lucky enough to attend this year’s E3 the time to do some research before they hit the show floor, so they can gather as much information as possible before KOF XIV is actually released.

Each move list comes as a PDF so if you are so inclined, you can download each character’s move list to have on-hand when you attend E3, ready to crush anyone who dares challenge you at the King of Fighters booth. With SNK having a presence at E3 this year, it wouldn’t be out of line to expect some news surrounding the game to surface as well.

Source: SNK Playmore