An unpredictable fighter with no shred of mercy, Kid Buu is one fearsome opponent. Mixing his own abilities with those he has copied off other fighters, Arc System Works’ interpretation of Kid Buu is going to be a nightmare in battle. Unlike his portly counterpart, Kid Buu has plenty of mobility, being able to bounce round the screen and get right in his enemy’s face.
He’s a threat at the mid-range too, utilizing his stretchy limbs to either harass the opponent with long-range pokes, or grabbing them to start a combo. One of his low attacks even has his foot erupting from beneath the ground! Kid Buu also has the power to turn his foe into a candy, but this looks to be part of his light autocombo, rather than a Super.
Speaking of Supers, this trailer confirms that Assault Rain is going to be Kid Buu’s Level 1 Super, where he unleashes a volley of pink energy beams which rain down from the sky. The initial blast knocks opponents into the air, while the resulting energy beam barrage knocking them back down to the ground, or forcing you to block.
With Jump Festa coming up later this month, expect reveals for Dragon Ball FighterZ‘s final four fighters, along with a trailer for Ultimate Gohan.
Square Enix has released a brand new trailer for their upcoming Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. The trailer this time focuses on the gods, Materia and Spiritus, who drive the game’s plot.
These two gods are responsible for summoning the Final Fantasy heroes and villains we see in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT (much like Cosmos and Chaos were in previous Dissidia titles). Materia is the “Sublime Goddess of Protection,” born from the will of Cosmos from the previous games. Meanwhile, the will of Chaos was reborn as Spiritus the “Savage God of Destruction,” who is the god of magic in the reborn world.
Check out their trailer below.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT launches on PlayStation 4 on January 11 in Japan, and January 30 in Europe and North America.
“Super Street Fighter Carnival 2017” marches on! SSFC2017 is the currently-ongoing Japanese tournament series at Mikado Arcade for a wide variety of classic (and sometimes, obscure) arcade titles. If you missed the first few tournaments from SSFC2017, there’s a lot to catch up on!
Mikado’s most recent SSFC2017 challenge is one of my favorite gems: the surprisingly competitive (and fantastically busted) Kinnikuman Muscle Grand Prix 2.
Based off the wrestling-themed Manga series Kinnikuman, this AKI Corporation(now known as Syn Sophia) fighter was published by Namco and played quite differently from anything else on the market at the time. It’s a guard-button based 3D fighter with no crouching state, instead opting for high/mid/low crush states similar to Pokkén Tournament.
It also has a Rock/Paper/Scissor system between Attacks/Throws/Parries, but Parries work quite differently from you might expect: instead of guaranteeing a free hit, they simply halt your opponent’s string. That’s more important then you might think: positioning is huge in this game, because if your opponent forces you to block an attack that pushes you into the ropes, they get a guaranteed corner combo. This is important, because there’s a lot of absurd high damage and potential infinites in the game, even for seemingly low tier characters.
The most important thing to pick up while watching KMGP2 is meter-use — nearly every throw and special move in the game costs meter, and there’s three different types of meter in the game. Depending upon what meter the player chooses, they get access to a once-per-round burst that grants different effects for a limited amount of time: Custom Combos, Super Armor, or Infinite Specials.
Enjoying SSFC2017? You can follow the action by subscribing to Mikado’s official YouTube channel, or you can even try to catch Mikado Arcade when they livestream!
Tekken 7‘s DLC2 — SNK’s iconic Southtown Boss, Geese Howard — has been out for approximately five seconds. Despite that, the footage that’s already been released for Mr. Howard shows a consistent high-damage output, and strong toolset. Let’s take a look at some of the very early tech that’s been found for our favorite Goose:
Although, before we begin, I will throw a bone to anyone unable to access Geese for the moment, but wants to see his movelist. BLUELINKBR has you covered:
KURO KURO has got the goods on Geese’s on-block frame data. It’s a real mixed bag, but there’s still some surprisingly safe stuff, like F+1+2.
Geese’s wall damage is a really beautiful thing in this game. This will be a theme we return to often in this post, starting with the counter-hit low combo from RoboDuck.
It’s going to be really important to know what your wall splat options are with Geese, and Rikk has that information nice and compartmentalized for you:
You don’t necessarily have to be at the wall to start your big damage combos: as long as you can get there by the end and you have meter, you are a Reppuken away from laying on the hurt.
Neltharak Idrissil has put together a great starter combo guide for the new Geese apprentice.
Something that wasn’t quite apparent during Geese’s initial trailer was the fact that there’s several wall breaks on Geese’s stage. This, combined with Geese’s natural wall-destructive ability, makes it easy to see from 101shiki OBGM‘s video that Geese is going to enjoy having home field advantage.
Japanese player Kousuke has some early matches vs. Shudy‘s Heihachi that are absolutely worth checking out, just to see how the two Japanese players adapt to the new character.
LiangHuBBB has some early wall-carry ideas that show considerable promise.
But most importantly, famed Tekken combo video maker STL1119 seems to have already taken a shine to the SNK boss. Here’s his early exploration of Geese combos:
Hx.CYG BST|Daigo Umehara has walked a tough road this year. Having started off the season attempting to stay the course on his tried and tested Ryu play, he realized that the character nerfs were not conducive to getting the results he needed.
He thus made a difficult choice to switch to Guile. When he switches away from his most beloved character, you can tell he means business. Well, business is booming, as his Guile play has put him into Capcom Cup yet again. Now will the Beast finally claim the title he came so close to grabbing in 2015?
Booming
While Daigo’s switch to Guile may have come as a shock to many in the FGC, deep down it makes sense. If you look back to even the origins of competitive play, Guile and Ryu are classic contemporaries. Despite the difference in controls, the two characters aren’t so different, fundamentally. Both play solid footsies, both control the ground and the air very well.
Essentially, Daigo was able to take what he already does well with Ryu, and amplify that with Guile. He has always had a great zoning game, and throws fireballs well. He also has great reads and reactions, and Guile has great tools for countering jumps. But he takes some of Ryu’s difficulties, including pressure, and mitigates them. This allows Daigo to play every aspect of the game in his own terms, which gives him control of matches.
Sending People Home to be Family Men
Despite having to adapt to a new character — with his admission that he learns slowly — Daigo has not slowed down this year. It is true that he won one fewer tournament this season, three victories instead of four. It’s also true that he attended the same number of tournaments this year. However, it is his list of notable wins that suggests he is still on song.
Esports Festival Hong Kong featured wins over Gachikun, Kazunoko and NL. Abuget Cup saw him beat GO1 and Oil King. Fight Club NRW might have been his weakest win, but saw him defeating European qualifiers Phenom and Problem X. This makes him a dangerous man, beating some of the best in the Capcom Cup field.
It’s also worth noting that every single tournament win he’s posted this year has been from the winner’s bracket. It’s obvious that when Daigo is focused, there is no one that can really stand against him.
The Break Principle
I mentioned this last year in reference to Infiltration, and this is something that worried me about Daigo. After he had ensured his entry into Capcom Cup, he announced that he would pulling away from tournaments for a while. When we next saw him at a bloodthirsty bracket at Canada Cup, he finished 25th, losing to LPN and 801 Strider. Especially given that Laura can struggle to get in on Guile if executed properly, this shows that although Daigo has continued to train online, he is struggling right now.
It’s often shown that if you take a break like this, your tournament prowess could deteriorate. Despite decades of experience, it seems that Daigo waned some over the course of a couple months. This can’t be any more true in a volatile game such as Street Fighter V, where you must keep sharp or get caught off guard.
The Beast Masters
The question then becomes when Daigo loses during a full tournament schedule, who is he losing to? At TWFighter Major, he lost to Dogura and Kichipa-mu. At Japan Cup, he lost to Nemo and NL. At Battle Arena Melbourne, he lost to Marn and yet again to Dogura. He lost to Mo-joe and MenaRD at CEO.
The first three tournaments mentioned showed a glaring hole: Urien. Having struggled against both Nemo and Dogura shows this matchup to be a weakness. We haven’t had any questions answered on his capabilities in this matchup lately. But given that Dogura is currently the hot player going into Capcom Cup, should they face off in Anaheim, my money would be on Dogura.
Final Thoughts
Daigo Umehara is always capable, and his switch to Guile has put him into a good position. With the departure of NuckleDu, he is the strongest Guile in the mix.
With that said, he’s a little off his game as of late, so we’re now waiting to see whether he shows up to California with full focus. If he does, expect him to make a serious run at the tournament.
The hype for Evo’s 2018 expansion into Japan continues, as the second and third official trailers for the event have just been released. In the first video, Japanese fighting game legends Echo Fox|Tokido, Hx.CYG BST|Daigo Umehara, Mago, GodsGardenPro|Kazunoko and Evo Japan Steering Committee Chairman Kaneko “Hameko” Noriyuki speak about their experiences with the Evolution Championship Series in America, and what it means to be able to bring the event over to Japan.
In the third official trailer, we see that the three-day event will be taking place in Tokyo, with the first two days on Friday and Saturday emanating from Sunshine City in Ikebukuro, while the Sunday finals will be held in Akihabara at the Akihabara UDX. The seven-game lineup will be as follows:
Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition
Tekken 7
The King of Fighters XIV
BlazBlue: Central Fiction
Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2
ARMS
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Evo Japan 2018 takes place on January 26-28. Registration for the event will remain open for one more month — until Sunday, December 31st, 2017 — and you can find more information here. If you’d like to be a part of history and make a trip to the Land of the Rising Sun, you can head over to EVO-Japan.net for more information, and be sure to follow @EvoJapanNews and @Evo on Twitter. You can see both trailers below!
The goal of “PHASE SHIFT: Pokkén Tournament Trainer Tips” is to introduce the FGC to Pokkén Tournament DX’s meta, and examine how various skills from other games can be applied to Nintendo’s experimental Pokémon fighter.
One of the very first things you should be exposed to is Lucario’s 2Y: its range, speed, and safety form the foundation of his offense and gives us a reference point for future move discussion. This is the Ryu C.MK of Pokkén. And it’s going to be the foundation for the rest of our series to build upon, too.
For more PHASE SHIFT, be sure to subscribe to ShoryukenTube! And if you have any specific questions about Pokkén gameplay you’d like covered in a future video, let us know in the comments!
Scallywag 93 is back with some more study material for growing Tekken 7 players. Last time he shared with 10 annoying strings to learn to low parry. In a similar fashion, today we’re taking a look at 10 command grabs that you need to be mindful of, and how to deal with them.
Particularly for command grabs with more complex inputs, there are common situations and setups that you tend to see with each type of grab. There’s more to breaking grabs then just looking at the hands, although that’s important too. Recognizing your stage positioning and opponent’s habits are also critical to grab escapes, and that can only come from practice and knowledge.
Now you can see the best of the best in their most crucial battles at Evo 2017!
Evo 2017 was a bigger event than ever, and now all of the top 8 match footage from the furious fights in Las Vegas is available to view on the official Evo YouTube channel. Dive into your favorite titles below!
You’ve probably played Cuphead by now, the old-school Saturday morning cartoon platformer with that tough-as-nails-to-beat reputation. You probably also noticed certain fighting game influences within the game, and spotted some references. The designers of the game were very conscious of implementing certain reference to well known material.
In a GameSpot video, Chad and Jared Moldenhauer talk about how one stage draws on SNK art influences, with a crowd cheering on both combatants. The bosses on that stage, two frogs, are full of Street Fighter II homages. Hadoukens fly around, and you can also spot Honda’s signature move, as well as Dhalsim’s fire. The roll attack comes from Blanka, of course.
And that’s not the exhaustive list, of course. Check out some of the references in the interview video below:
Hx.CYG BST|Daigo Umehara has walked a tough road this year. Having started off the season attempting to stay the course on his tried and tested Ryu play, he realized that the character nerfs were not conducive to getting the results he needed.
The question then becomes when Daigo loses during a full tournament schedule, who is he losing to? At TWFighter Major, he lost to Dogura and Kichipa-mu. At Japan Cup, he lost to Nemo and NL. At Battle Arena Melbourne, he lost to Marn and yet again to Dogura. He lost to Mo-joe and MenaRD at CEO.