FFM Rumble 9 is one of three Capcom Pro Tour Ranking Tournaments taking place this Memorial Day weekend. It is the fourth of 14 qualifier events for Capcom Pro Tour Europe and it is taking place at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt, Germany. FFM-Rumble 9 is a Street Fighter V Capcom Pro Tour 2016 ranking tournament so in addition to Germany’s best SFV players, you can expect to see strong European players like BX3.TP-Link|Phenom, PxP.KIG|ProblemX, RB|Luffy, Valmaster, Perilous|Packz, etc. attending to try and and earn ranking points and qualify for the European regional finals. In addition to Street Fighter V, UMvC3 and GGXrd Revelator will be main tournament games at FFM-Rumble 9.
The full Japanese version of Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- launched earlier this week, and while a demo version of the game has been available–even outside of Japan–for a good while now, the full game does include content not present in the demo. Two notable pieces of such content are console-exclusive characters Kum Haehyun and Raven.
If you’ve recently found yourself in possession of a Japanese version of the full launch title, but don’t speak the language, navigating the menus may prove to be a larger task than learning the ins and outs of the characters themselves. Luckily, Kurushii recently shared a full translation of the menus from Japanese to English to help get everyone started.
Before you hit the lab to figure out these new characters, be sure to give the document a look.
While BlazBlue: Central Fiction has had plenty of time to make a name for itself in Japan, audiences outside of the country have been left wondering when the game would finally make its way to North America. In a recent post on the official PlayStation Blog, we learned that the title is headed west later this year.
The console version of the game is set to ship with over thirty characters and sixty stages spanning standard Story, Arcade, and VS Modes, as well as the more nuanced Grim of Abyss, Score Attack and Speed Star Modes.
According to Gematsu, Aksys Games revealed a short list of additional features during their MomoCon panel. These features are as follows:
Revamped user interface: completely redesigned and more intuitive.
Brand new story: a massive single-palyer experience.
New battle systems: “Exceed Accel” and “Active Flow.”
Five new characters: Hibiki=Kohaku (technical-type), Naoto (aggressive standard-type), and more.
New levels and level variations.
“Alliance Mode” team construction mode.
“Item Shop Mode” where you use currency earned in-game to buy loot.
“Speed Star Mode” where you try to defeat CPU opponents within a specified time limit.
While no exact date has been announced, we do know that this latest entry in the long-running BlazBlue series will be making its way to North American PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 systems by the end of 2016.
The Japanese version of Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- just came out, and although we’ve had access to a demo version for over a month, players around the world quickly got to work on the two new console-exclusive characters.
Kum Haehyun is an unusual character for the anime game, since she doesn’t utilize the gatling system for chaining normals like other characters do. The robot, actually controlled by a Korean heiress from the inside, has links and many chargeable moves, as well as a controllable projectile. It wouldn’t be an ArcSys character without some deeper tech under the surface, and short clips quickly began surfacing on Twitter.
In an unfortunate turn of events–relayed through the Combo Breaker Twitter account–Killer Instinct players may have to play their games on the latest patch, complete with all of the balance changes which the public have not had a chance to experiment with yet. According to the Combo Breaker Twitter and tournament organizer Rick “TheHadou” Thiher, this complication was supposedly meant to be avoided through the use of offline boxes and accounts, but they do not seem to have worked, as characters cannot be loaded properly on the unpatched systems.
This issue is still developing, so the Combo Breaker setups may still be salvaged. If not, players better bone up on all of the patch 3.1.5 details, which you can read about here.
Gargos will of course be banned over the weekend, and we hope that this issue is sorted before the tournament begins.
The most recent patch for Killer Instinct Season 3 went live just a short while ago, and with it came a plethora of bug fixes and balance changes as well as the game’s newest character, Gargos. Those who have purchased the Ultra Edition of the game can currently take the winged monstrosity into battle.
Some of the changes to the game include a 10% damage nerf to Glacius’ ranged Auto Doubles, the removal of Thunder’s hard knockdown from Light Sammamish, Kim Wu’s Dragon stocks now refill during hitstun while in Instinct Mode, and Orchid’s air throw can (finally) be broken. There are, of course, many more changes, which you can give a look for yourself in the complete patch notes below.
If you’re looking to learn more about Gargos, you can find (nearly) anything you could possibly want to know about him here.
Killer Instinct Season 3 ver. 3.1.5 Patch Notes
Brand New Features!
Added New Character – Gargos
Default Costume
Accessories (3 Sets)
Color Variations (9 Colors)
Retro Costume
Accessories (3 Sets)
Color Variations (7 Colors)
Combo Assist Support
Added ability to make a Gargos Shadow in Shadow Lab
General Bug Fixes
Fixed a crash that would occasionally occur when signing out of a profile on the Main Menu
Fixed a softlock that would sometimes occur when the player simultaneously pressed A and B on “Save Shadow Data”
Fixed an issue where watching a replay of a Shadow Survival or Survival match would cause Current Health at the end of the replay to carry over into a new Survival match
Fixed an issue in Training Mode where Mira would remain invisible when the player reset her position while she was in mist form during her Ultra Combo
Fixed an issue where some of Retro Mira’s VFX would be missing in a mirror match
Fixed an issue where you would briefly see Mira’s scythe below her during her Aerial Counter Breaker
Fixed some accessory lighting issues with Aganos, Sabrewulf, and Kim Wu on Forbidden Archive
System Changes:
Fixed a bug causing the attacker in a throw tech situation (the one who initiated the throw) to not be pushed back by the throw tech, resulting in closer-than-expected positioning, especially noticeable in the corner.
Glacius:
Lowered damage of Ranged Auto Doubles by ~10% (This change was to make them more in line with Gargos’ ranged auto doubles, which also deal less damage than his close auto doubles. Because of the way Combo Breakers work in S3, it makes more sense to us to give Glacius players a choice between maintaining range for less damage, or transitioning his combo into a close ranged one for full damage, rather than just doing the same thing all the time. Glacius’ keep away abilities and damage are pretty outstanding in Season 3, so this small damage adjustment shouldn’t hurt him too much.)
Thunder:
Light Sammamish no longer causes a hard knockdown. (This change was to put the invincible reversal version of Sammamish in line with other invincible reversals. We feel that he should not be getting great mixups after landing this.)
Orchid:
Her Air Throw is now breakable in combos as if it were a normal hit. You break it using LP+LK, but Orchid can also counter break you for trying, so be careful! (This lead to a lot of unbreakable damage for the last 2 years of play. Now that we’ve developed tech to allow air grabs and anti-air grabs that don’t end combos to be breakable within the combo system for Gargos, we’ve added this tech to Orchid to bring her more in line. Orchid players still have her new air target combos that continue juggles to mix in with her air throw combos to keep opponents guessing and lock them out.)
TJ Combo:
Advantage Ender now occurs much quicker to make followup mixups much more surprising as they flow with the speed of TJ’s Combos. (While the setups after Advantage Ender can be pretty good, both players do have quite a lot of time to think about them due to the speed of the old version of this animation. The new version is much snappier and keeps TJ flowing like he should. We think TJ players will like this change and we expect to see the Advantage Ender a bit more often as a result.)
Aganos:
Fixed an issue that caused damage to Aganos’ walls if he performed a Ground Bounce or Recapture on his opponent.
Fixed a bug causing an inconsistency in the recovery time of Ruin after hitting an armored character.
Aria:
Fixed a bug causing her Level 1 Explosive Arc ender to whiff Mira at very close range.
Shadow Jago:
Various changes to Jumping Heavy Punch
Fixed a bug causing Jumping HP to hit only 2 times instead of the intended 3 (he flips 3 times).
Reduced the attackbox size on Jumping HP so they reach above him less and cover less space overall.
Increase the vulnerable box size during Jumping HP to make this move easier to anti air.
Reduced the blockstun inflicted by Jumping HP by 12 frames, leaving Shadow Jago roughly even with his opponent on landing when this move is blocked. (These changes should go a long way into making use of this move less thoughtless, and encourage Shago players to use jumping attacks with less coverage if they want to maintain frame advantage when landing. This is still a powerful jumping attack, however.)
Kim Wu:
Kim has a few buffs below. We notice that when most players ask for buffs, their suggestions are to simply remove a character’s weaknesses. This solution doesn’t work. Instead, we’ve chosen to tweak a few things that should enhance Kim’s strengths. Read on.
When returning enemy projectiles with Firecracker, different strengths will now send Dragon Cannons at different angles.
Light Firecracker returns a horizontal Dragon Cannon, just like before.
Medium Firecracker returns a 30 degree up angled Dragon Cannon.
Heavy Firecracker returns a 60 degree up angled Dragon Cannon.
Shadow Firecracker returns 3 Dragon Cannons, one at each angle. (The team felt it was a bit too easy to simply jump over the Dragon Cannons being returned by Kim, so we added angle options to make it far less predictable.)
Increased walk speed by 15% (Kim is a ground based, footsie heavy character, but we felt she should use just a little better walk speed to really find success with this gameplan.)
Her forward dash now finishes in 17 frames (down from 22 frames) (This should also help with the overall ground positioning and mobility needed to be a very successful footsie style character.)
When the Dragon Counter (Parry) is successful and the resulting explosion hits the opponent;
It now causes a hard knockdown vs airborne opponents
It deals 20 damage to the opponent
It builds some shadow meter for both Kim Wu and her opponent (We wanted to increase the reward for a success parry slightly, and feel these changes should help. Anti-air parry, in particular, should now be a fairly powerful option.)
Removed the restriction preventing Dragon Stocks from refilling during Instinct if Kim was in a reaction or knocked down. (This was a holdover from a previous instinct ability we tried on Kim during development. Since that is not in the game, it doesn’t make sense to prevent Dragon generation while being hit anymore, and we aren’t sure why we left it there in the first place. This should give Kim players a much more predictable number of Dragons during Instinct.)
Fixed a bug causing her vulnerable boxes to change size when using rapid fire Standing Light Punch
Tusk:
Tusk’s Deflects now reset the combo state so that the followup hit can deal the same damage as the non-Deflect version of the move, but not add any potential damage to the opponent. (We noted this change was coming in the 3.1 patch notes, but here it is! Deflect versions of Tusk’s moves no longer leave any potential damage behind on the opponent. While Tusk’s raw damage is untouched, and this change technically makes his Deflected moves hit harder than they did in 3.1, the combo after will not start at an increased ender level.)
Arbiter:
Moved the first active frame of Crouching Gun Butt back one frame (used to hit on 12, now it hits on 13). Added 2 additional frames of active time onto the end of Crouching Gun Butt, making it active for 1 frame longer over all. (This change helps with the change below to prevent this Heavy Command normal from being used as a Medium manual, while also making it a slightly better anti air when used early.)
Moved the Manual Cancel window on Medium Linker Truth Seeker (qcf+P) from frame 29 to 31 to prevent Crouching Gun Butt (Heavy) from being used as a Medium Manual.
Moved the Manual Cancel window on Medium Mercy’s Demise (qcb+P) from frame 30 to frame 28 to ensure that Crouching Medium Punch was able to connect as a manual here.
Rash:
Fixed an issue preventing players from canceling Battlemaniacs Beat Em Up combos into Ultra.
Mira:
Fixed a bug causing her Lv4 Reaping Ender to fan a Kick Burnout.
Fixed a bug that could cause some auto doubles to whiff after long distance QCB+HP recaptures.
Fixed a bug causing the post-superflash portions of her Shadow Moves to autocorrect unexpectedly.
Fixed a bug that allowed her to land a Heavy manual off of a Medium Reaping Linker.
Fixed a bug preventing Mira from canceling openers into Doubles, Linkers, Enders, or Ultras if her opponent was hit by her projectiles during the move.
Fixed a bug causing her crouching LK to be -5 on block instead of -3 like the chained crouching LKs are.
In an announcement which promptly crashed CEO’s official website, Nintendo of America officially revealed via Twitter that they will be supporting CEO 2016 in its running of tournaments for both Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Now, support for Wii U Smash is all but expected from Nintendo, but this is one of the rare occasions where Nintendo is openly supporting the Melee community at a tournament.
Nintendo has not shied away from assisting with the running of Smash tournaments, being an official sponsor for Genesis 3 earlier in the year and also helping save Apex 2015 when that tournament collapsed in on itself. I imagine this partnership will take the form of providing additional Wii U and maybe GameCube setups for both tournaments, but who knows what else could be in store? The Twitterverse has already exploded with several people claiming this is the coming of Melee HD, and seeing as CEO is post-E3 where Nintendo is not showing anything else of beside Zelda, maybe CEO could be the perfect place to debut such a title.
Major fighting game tournaments are often the best times to pick up a new arcade stick thanks to the discounts that manufacturers and vendors sometimes give during the event. This weekend’s Combo Breaker tournament is no exception.
Interested parties can simply order online via Paradise Arcade’s website and they can pick up the stick at their booth at Combo Breaker.
In addition to these, those who order the above sticks can also avail of the 10% discount on some of Paradise Arcade’s specialist products, such as their own OBS-MX line that allows you to use Cherry MX switches on Sanwa buttons and a range of multi-console converters and PCBs from Brook.
A free, playable demo of the most recent JoJo-inspired game was made available with this week’s PlayStation Store update.
For anyone who is not a big fan of the manga and anime series, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, it is completely understandable to overlook the upcoming fighting game releasing on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, but for those faithful to the series, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven is a godsend.
On top of being an entertaining brawler, the game is loaded to the brim with fan service. JoJo enthusiasts will be treated with all the style and action that the series is known for. The game also has its own unique story that was made under the supervision of series creator, Hirohiko Araki.
Within the game, players are engaged in intense two-on-two battles while using the environment to their advantage. Characters are able to interact with one another with tag team combinations and special attacks, known as “Dual Combos” and “Dual Heat Attacks” respectively. Additionally, certain characters are given unique dialogue depending on who is paired with whom.
The main attraction to the demo is Story Mode. It includes a couple of cutscenes and a few fights to give players an idea of the pace and direction of the game. It also shows off a brief exploration section. These sections will be at a much larger scale within the full game, spanning cities, castles, and alternate dimensions.
There is also a Free Battle Mode which allows players to test out the game’s mechanics even more. There are only four characters available but the official website promises that the final product will have over 50 characters spanning all eight of the JoJo storylines.
After playing through the entirety of the demo, I found myself instantly hungry for more. From only watching the trailers, I was more interested in the story instead of the actual gameplay. But after experiencing the combat mechanics firsthand, I became much more enthusiastic about the battle system, which is fantastic because this is a fighting game after all!
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven is developed by CyberConnect2 and published by Bandai Namco. The game released late last year in Japan, but will be receiving a North American release on June 28, 2016, and a European release on July 1, 2016.
A free, playable demo of the most recent JoJo-inspired game was made available with this week’s PlayStation Store update.
For anyone who is not a big fan of the manga and anime series, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, it is completely understandable to overlook the upcoming fighting game releasing on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, but for those faithful to the series, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven is a godsend.
On top of being an entertaining brawler, the game is loaded to the brim with fan service. JoJo enthusiasts will be treated with all the style and action that the series is known for. The game also has its own unique story that was made under the supervision of series creator, Hirohiko Araki.
Within the game, players are engaged in intense two-on-two battles while using the environment to their advantage. Characters are able to interact with one another with tag team combinations and special attacks, known as “Dual Combos” and “Dual Heat Attacks” respectively. Additionally, certain characters are given unique dialogue depending on who is paired with whom.
The main attraction to the demo is Story Mode. It includes a couple of cutscenes and a few fights to give players an idea of the pace and direction of the game. It also shows off a brief exploration section. These sections will be at a much larger scale within the full game, spanning cities, castles, and alternate dimensions.
There is also a Free Battle Mode which allows players to test out the game’s mechanics even more. There are only four characters available but the official website promises that the final product will have over 50 characters spanning all eight of the JoJo storylines.
After playing through the entirety of the demo, I found myself instantly hungry for more. From only watching the trailers, I was more interested in the story instead of the actual gameplay. But after experiencing the combat mechanics firsthand, I became much more enthusiastic about the battle system, which is fantastic because this is a fighting game after all!
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven is developed by CyberConnect2 and published by Bandai Namco. The game released late last year in Japan, but will be receiving a North American release on June 28, 2016, and a European release on July 1, 2016.
