Enter the mind of Supernoon in this video interview.
If you didn’t watch the Dragon Ball FighterZ tournament at the NorCal Regionals, you missed an amazing moment in fighting games. While it came as no shock to some that GO1 and Moke squared off in the Grand Finals, the run back with Chris G and Supernoon provided more than enough excitement for the crowd.
Fresh off his 3rd place finish during the event, Supernoon sat down with BornFree to talk about his history with fighting games — which reaches back to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 — how his name came from a typographical error, and how he feels about the balance of Dragon Ball FighterZ at this point.
Alongside the reveal of Hayate and Sanane last week, ARIKA president Akira Nishitani also mentioned that a new mode would be coming to Fighting EX Layer. Now, we know what that mode is: Expert Mode.
A recent video post by ARIKA’s Ichiro Mihara shows off how Expert Mode works. Veterans may remember Expert Mode from the Street Fighter EX games, where it’s analogous to the trial modes in other fighting games.
Players pick a fighter and then try to complete one of a number challenges for that character. These challenges are ranked according to difficulty, with the video example showing off C, D, and E rank listing for trials — though we assume that we’ll get A and B rank ones in the final game.
SNK has revealed the final character in their second batch of DLC fighters for The King of Fighters XIV. Joining Oswald, Heidern, and Najd is none other than fan-favorite Blue Mary.
Introduced in Fatal Fury 3 Road to the Final Victory, private investigator turned freelancer “Blue” Mary Ryan made her King of Fighters debut in KoF ’97, having been hired by a “mysterious benefactor” who ironically turned out to be Geese Howard, eternal rival of her close friend (and speculated love interest) Terry Bogard.
Part of what makes Mary such a popular character is her unique moveset, a form of Combat Sambo that involves a combination of fast strikes and takedowns — not something often associated with a female character.
On the PlayStation Blog, KoF XIV producer Yasuyuki Oda shared some insight on developing Blue Mary’s moveset, stating that “Blue Mary has always been a challenge to design as a result of how complex her grapple moves are to animate.” He continues by sharing how he actually had to get physical during her development back in the ’90s. “At one point, one of the designers working on Blue Mary, Youichiro Soeda, actually used me as a training dummy to show off some of the attacks he had in mind to the rest of the team. Just watching this new trailer of hers, I think I can feel my neck hurt a bit…”
You can check out this trailer — and some screenshots of her in action — below.
The balancing act between authenticity and efficiency.
The prince of Final Fantasy XV has been mostly well-received by players in Tekken 7. Whether it’s his ease of use or just the visceral thrill of punishing whiffs from full screen, Noctis seems to have made the translation from RPG to the fighting game genre better than predicted. (Having the game’s easiest and most consistent Death Fist punishment tool certainly doesn’t hurt, either.)
Unfortunately, one RPG element didn’t make the translation over to fighting games so smoothly — his damage. More specifically, the FFXV hit-spark introduced with Noctis’s release.
Bandai Namco had the best intentions when it made this hit-spark. This equipable damage-effect modifier shows the exact value of the damage dealt every time you hit an opponent, just like in Final Fantasy. They even went the extra mile made it give a “9999” value when you win the round with Noctis’s Rage Art — an obvious nod to Final Fantasy‘s maxed-out attacks.
Unfortunately, it’s not the idea that’s the problem, but the implementation. Instead of just displaying the “9999” number for laughs, Bandai Namco actually made the last hit of Noctis’ Rage Art do 9999 damage, in the event that the last hit would have killed anyway. This wouldn’t be a problem normally, but now that Tekken has three-meter using characters (Eliza, Geese, Akuma), this essentially means Noctis can’t win a round with a Rage Art without giving these characters full super meter! Whoops.
You could make the argument that this is a balancing tool for these match-ups, since Noctis’s teleporting f+2 effectively negates projectiles. This argument holds exactly as much water as how much you believe linear fireballs are the central part of these characters’ neutral game in the sidestep-heavy world of Tekken. The simpler explanation is that Bandai Namco just didn’t keep this in mind when it designed the critical hit nod — at the time of this writing, there’s been no word from Bandai Namco on how intentional this side effect is.
In the meantime, if you’re playing Noctis, it’s probably advisable to not combo into Rage Art in these match-ups. Thank god your Rage Drive is good, huh?
Mikado Arcade is known as the home of competitive Japanese FGC play for a dizzying amount of classic titles. While most of these take place in the signature Mikado tournament series Street Fighter Carnival, that’s not all there is to the legendary arcade. An example of this is the extremely dedicated group of players that make up the Marvel Super Heroes scene in Mikado.
For those unfamiliar with MSH, a large part of the mental game (and mechanics) are built around its Infinity Gem system. This system allows players to enjoy new mechanics and buffs, which you can read further about at the SRK Wiki.
There’s a lot of history and hype around the MSH tournaments at Mikado Arcade. If you want to know more about the history of this MSH tournament, be sure to read our on-site reporting from previous Marvel tournaments!
It’s been well-known for decades that you don’t want to mess with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, lest you end up shell shocked! The cast of Injustice 2 now has to learn this the hard way, with the quartet having made their way into the game via DLC.
With the popularity of the characters, you knew that combo videos exploring their capabilities were inevitable. This one focuses on Raphael, the bad boy of the group. And his combo capabilities prove that. With ambiguous cross-up setups, great interactable usage, and amazing midscreen combo abilities, you’ll see more than enough turtle power in this video.
It’s been well-known for decades that you don’t want to mess with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, lest you end up shell shocked! The cast of Injustice 2 now has to learn this the hard way, with the quartet having made their way into the game via DLC.
With the popularity of the characters, you knew that combo videos exploring their capabilities were inevitable. This one focuses on Raphael, the bad boy of the group. And his combo capabilities prove that. With ambiguous cross-up setups, great interactable usage, and amazing midscreen combo abilities, you’ll see more than enough turtle power in this video.
It seems like almost every game has secrets hidden away in its files. This has been made more clear in the age of widespread data-mining, and the practice of hiding unused assets and Easter eggs is as old as the video game genre itself.
Take, for example, the curious case of Mortal Kombat II‘s “Shawn Attacks”.
Hidden in the Audit Menu of Mortal Kombat II‘s arcade board is a strange option called “Shawn Attack”. However, once you start uncovering some of the unused assets in MKII (for example, an incredibly out of place World Wrestling Federation logo), you start to paint a picture of Midway’s future and possible scrapped ideas for MKII.
One of the most praised parts of Dragon Ball FighterZ has been the implementation of the Dramatic Finish sequences that are triggered when certain conditions are met, depending on match-ending blows between certain characters on certain stages. Specific combinations trigger special pre and post-match cutscenes that re-enact some of the most famous and iconic scenes from the original manga and anime, using the in-game models! Though a myriad of these were already in the base game, the addition of new DLC characters Bardock and Broly has brought four new ones to enjoy, as both of the Legendary Super Saiyan’s defeats at the hands of Super Saiyan Goku and Adult Gohan in Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan and Second Coming are recreated nearly shot-for-shot.
Meanwhile, we can also remember Bardock’s death and the destruction of Planet Vegeta at Frieza’s hands (only in his Final Form this time), as well as a Reverse Dramatic Finish that sees Bardock channel his rage and Saiyan pride into a Super Saiyan transformation to dispatch of the Emperor of the Universe.
IKevinX has returned once again to compare and document all of the references these scenes make to their source material — which you can see below, along with his reference video for the base game’s Finishes.
Which Dramatic Finish is your favorite? Feel free to tell us in the comments below. You can also find links to IKevinX’s previous coverage below:
NorCal Regionals 2018 has come and gone, and with its closing we have a new set of top tier Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition memories highlighted by Capcom Fighters.
Predictably, Tokido was a central star for more than few of these moments — as you would expect from the eventual tournament winner. But NCR 2018 was a tournament of champions tested, controversies, and close calls. Check out the video above to see just a few of the absurd comebacks and tournament-defining matches that made NCR2018 so great.
