Category: News

After years of lacking a notable presence in the west, Taito is finally ready to bring their NESiCAxLive arcade service to the United States by way of Round 1’s Puente Hills location in Southern California.

First launched in 2010, NESiCA utilizes a shared network to provide titles to arcade cabinets in game centers across Japan. Where normally cabinets would be confined to running a single game or collection determined by the distributor, Taito’s service allows arcade operators to run a vast number of titles, all of which are able to update on the fly. As you would guess, this is a godsend for the fighting game community, as board-switching has given way to online patching and all the benefits that come with it.

The current group of titles supplied by NESiCA run the gamut from relatively recent games like Ultra Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue: Chronophantasma, Persona 4 The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold (known as Persona 4 Arena Ultimax in North America), Arcana Heart 3 LOVE MAX SIX STARS!!!!!!, and King of Fighters XIII to older fare like Daemon Bride Additional Gain, King of Fighters ’98 Ultimate Match Final Edition, and Vampire Savior.

You may remember a handful of Round 1 arcades across the west coast hosting Tekken 7 location tests earlier this year, which proved fruitful for American fans who had yet to try the game themselves. In turn, this new development is surely a good sign for fans of lesser-known fighters in the United States, so let’s hope the partnership spreads.

Source: Round 1 via IPLAYWINNER

Over a decade after its release, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike competition is still going strong in Japan, and nowhere is this more apparent than Game Newton’s yearly Cooperation Cup. After wrapping up the thirteenth installment earlier this year, which broke records with over 400 individual participants, the organizers are set to return next January for yet another outing.

The 14th Cooperation Cup is scheduled for January 10, falling on the same date it started this year. While further details are scarce, the event is sure to provide some of the most exciting 3rd Strike action around throughout its team competition, with high-level players from all over Japan fighting for the championship.

If you missed out on the 13th Cooperation Cup, do yourself a favor and check out footage here. What are you looking forward to this year?

Source: Game Newton via tyokkin

After providing us with some useful ways to limit nerves in tournament settings, Evo 2015 runner-up Nage is back with another great piece, this time dedicated to analyzing losses. Much like before, TENMA has graciously translated the entire writeup to English, so let’s take a look at what this Japanese competitor had to say.

According to Nage, the most important thing to take a look at after a loss is not how to deal with difficult situations but how to prevent yourself from being put in those situations in the first place. “If you ‘overslept and got to work late,’ before thinking about ‘how to prepare faster after waking up,’ it’s better to think ‘how to avoid sleeping in,’” Nage explains with a real-world example. “You can think of what to do after sleeping in, which may calm you down a bit too.”

Nage also mentions that, instead of worrying about losing, players need to be able to recognize the improvements they’ve made, no matter how small. “Winning is great, but even if you lose again, it’s best to tell yourself, ‘I’m able to do something I couldn’t do before,’ and appreciate your own development,” he says, reiterating a key component of his previous article. “I think the mentality of ‘I’m grinding but doesn’t feel like I’m improving’ comes from the disruption of the core motivation of ‘fun’, so regardless of win/loss, being positive about your improvement is key.”

These are just two small parts of the overall article, which provides quite a few informative pieces of advice for aspiring competitors. Be sure to check out the entire piece and let us know what you think.

Sources: Nage, TENMA via Jeff Dee

With Evo over and fall quickly approaching, it’s about that time of year for the next season of TOPANGA’s Ultra Street Fighter IV round-robin competition to start up. Last Wednesday on the weekly TOPANGA TV show, it was announced that the organization will be hosting an online tournament in the near future. On this week’s show, that tournament was confirmed to be the online qualifier for B League, scheduled for Sunday, August 23.

While full details for the qualifier have yet to be revealed, the format will be similar to previous years. Entry for each qualifier is capped at 64 players. Competitors are broken into eight blocks of eight, with each block played in the in-game tournament mode using single-game format. After the block stage, matches will be best-of-three, with the finals being best-of-five. The winner will qualify for B League. Players are locked to a single character for the entirety of the qualifier.

TOPANGA director Toyota also teased some details for B League proper. While in previous years, B League consisted of 16 players, this year will have more players than ever before, with a number of them making their TOPANGA LEAGUE debut. The list of invited players will be announced on next week’s TOPANGA TV.

Look forward to more details on TOPANGA LEAGUE next week and remember to check out the qualifier on Niconico Live on August 23.

Source: TOPANGA

Thanks to the abundance of ninjas and assassins within the Mortal Kombat roster, the franchise has always had a plethora of masked fighters. While crafting actual faces under those coverings wasn’t always necessary or even prudent, the added power of recent home consoles gives developers the option to expand their game worlds more than ever before, sometimes with content very few people will see.

Such is the case with Mortal Kombat X. You may be surprised to find out that, underneath all those masks, some of your favorite fighters sport faces on par with the rest of the cast, ready to be discovered by curious fans.

Fortunately, the Mortal Kombat scene is full of such fans, prompting the arrival of an image gallery on Mortal Kombat Online that unmasks a handful of cast members. Below, you’ll get a sneak peek at what Erron Black, Jason Voorhees, Rain, Revenant Sub-Zero, Smoke, and Torr are packing under their chosen face coverings.

Be warned, some are pretty nasty!

Source: Mortal Kombat Online via GameSpot

The folks over at VG BootCamp recently went live with another installment of Smash @ Xanadu from Xanadu Games in Baltimore, Maryland. These weekly broadcasts provide a great look at the region’s Smash community, with tonight’s stream focusing entirely on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.

The stream is live below, but you can also head on over to Twitch to join the chat.

Watch live video from VGBootCamp on www.twitch.tv

Source: VG BootCamp

Although the game offers up a variety of colors already, a strange glitch was recently discovered in Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- that allows players to pick a couple of new palettes we’ve never seen in the game before.

These options give characters access to a magnificent gold color scheme, similar to those seen in fellow Arc System Works franchise BlazBlue, as well as one that turns them into a shadowy version of their former selves. Seeing as they occupy the slots of different colors, however, it’s unlikely they were meant to be found in the final game or were even implemented by the developers in the first place.

The folks who brought this to light currently have no idea how to reproduce the glitch, so check out the video below and let us know if you’ve ever experienced anything like this.

Source: ShinKensou via Hiago

The world of competitive gaming can often be a perilous place in terms of carving out a livelihood, especially when one wades into the ambiguous world of “eSports,” and we were recently provided additional proof of how shaky these sponsorships can be with today’s news of Zeveron’s dissolution.

While not a household name like Evil Geniuses or Team SoloMid, Zeveron recently made a bit of a name for themselves in the fighting game community with their signing of Ryota “Kazunoko” Inoue, considered by many to be one of the strongest players in the world today. In response to our scene’s cautious optimism, then-CEO Jeff Suddarth promised that Kazunoko had been signed to a year-long contract, which would provide a regular salary and travel to competition.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon didn’t last long. Suspicions were immediately raised about Zeveron’s future when numerous members of their Heroes of the Storm team tweeted last week that they were no longer part of the organization. One even went as far as to say the company had been dissolved entirely, a statement that Shoryuken can now confirm after speaking to sources close to the situation.

As of now, one can only assume that Kazunoko’s contract is null and void after barely a month and just one international trip. Official word is expected from Suddarth sometime in the near future, so stay tuned for more details.

With this year’s ARC REVOLUTION CUP rapidly approaching (as in, happening this weekend!), the folks behind the major event have released a full list of their participants. The team competition will see some of the best Guilty Gear and BlazBlue competitors around descend on Tokyo for a day full of exciting matches, and having their names all laid out like this makes the wait that much harder.

In addition to the American representatives–MC|GCYoshi13, TS|Lord Knight, and 2GB Combo for Guilty Gear; Nakkiel, SKD, and Lich for BlazBlue–there’s a ridiculous amount of Japanese talent looking to take the crown. Some of the more notable entries include Team Unusual, comprised of Dogura, Machaboo, and zV|Kazunoko; Ogawa, who will be backed up by Karinchu and fellow Evo 2015 top sixteen finalist Koichi; and the squad of Galileo, Kogatan, and Esuke.

Of course, this is just a smattering of the names attending this event, so be sure to check out the full lists here and here for the entire picture. Jourdal, who translated these lists, has mentioned that they may be slightly inaccurate due to players signing up under joke names, so take note.

Source: Arc System Works via Jourdal