In the mid to late ’90s — not to mention a bit of the early 2000s — there were a slew of fighting games bent on cashing in on the fighting game craze caused by Street Fighter II, Tekken, and Virtua Fighter. While some are remembered for their innovations to the genre, and others are remembered for being poorly designed, some are hardly remembered at all.
TheFightersDen chronicled some of the forgotten fighters of the past. Whether they’re good, bad or ugly, they deserve to be remembered as part of the history of the genre. How many do you remember? These might actually be worth throwing into the mix of meetups or even mystery tournaments.
Yuuki Terumi has been a rather popular character in BlazBlue: Chronophantasma and Central Fiction despite not being that powerful. In Central Fiction, he has pretty incredible Overdrive combos that can decimate an entire lifebar. In the 2.0 version, he has received some considerable improvements that push him to become a more competitive character. Whether you’re coming back to Terumi or looking to pick him up from zero, the below combo video is an excellent starting point.
Despite being mostly in Japanese, the video does provide English versions of the moves and some terms included. The presentation makes it really easy to learn the combos. Starting from Basic and Intermediate Combos, the video goes through general midscreen routes until it reaches throw combos. The latter part shows off the impressive Overdrive combos.
Hoping to bring a spotlight to Canada’s Melee community, Red Bull eSports and Last Stock Legends have released a new documentary series called “A New Level”, centered around the events of Get On My Level 2017. Acting as Canada’s most illustrious Melee major, GOML has built up quite a legacy, both for the players attending and the community hosting.
The first episode is not directly about Canada though, it is about Red Bull’s own Leffen. GOML 2016 acted as the first step in Leffen’s return to competitive Smash, following his visa issues. Focusing on his path back to the top and his relationship to the other Gods of Melee, this episode acts as a suitable coda for Red Bull’s previous documentary about Leffen.
Shifting from players to tournament organizers, A New Level’s second episode is about Joe Cribani — or Toronto Joe as he’s known in the Melee scene. Focusing on the stresses and strains of organizing a major event like GOML, this episode follows Joe as he and his team put on the best show possible.
As the final part of this documentary trilogy, A New Level’s third episode interviews three Canadian players who have left an indelible mark on the Melee world — Kirbykaze, Kage the Warrior and n0ne. Not only have these players pushed the meta for each of their respective characters, they have all defeated a God in bracket. Looking at their successes and the community that kept them going, this final part shows that Canada is not to be slept on.
Over a decade ago at the trail end of 1994, the first Tekken game hit arcades around the world. Any project that has been around that long and survived has some interesting stories from behind the scenes, and that’s the subject matter of HurtboxTV‘s latest video, “Behind the Fighter”.
There’s a variety of ground covered here: you can learn about the initial project that lead to Tekken 1‘s development (it wasn’t originally a fighting game!), and the censorship that took place when various Tekken titles traveled overseas. If you’re a fan of trivia and lore, this series is tailor made for you.
Having trouble with Eliza in Tekken 7? It’s likely you aren’t alone — much like Akuma, this vampire’s movelist forces longtime 3D fans to be aware of a new concept they may not be familiar with: special-cancelable normals!
Once you gain this awareness, though, the fog begins to clear: Eliza’s special moves are unsafe, and once you have familiarity of her movelist, exploitable. With cutcc‘s frame data guide and breakdown of her most common traps and loops, you’ll be able to force this meter-using-monster to play honestly.
Our coverage of changes in the 2.0 version of BlazBlue: Central Fiction continues with a look at Kokonoe. How did the cat scientist-magician change in the update? She doesn’t have too many changes, if you check out the BlazBlue patch notes, but there’s one that definitely stands out. Kokonoe’s Drive has her placing Gravitrons — magnets, so to speak. She can also activate them for an opposite effect: a powerful pushback on the opponent.
TempestTim presents a video, embedded below, that explains a new function in the 2.0 update. Now, while using special moves, if a Gravitron is out, the Kokonoe player can simply press D to activate it (no need to press 236D). The timing varies a little bit. She can use this in the middle of a combo or while the opponent is blocking, so it can make pressure safer.
This doesn’t work with her Astral Heat, Distortion Drives, Exceed Accel, throw, or Crush Trigger.
The video show a couple of great combo extensions and ways to bait out defensive maneuvers from the opponent.
Just like in Tekken, Pokkén Tournament uses hit spheres — giant invisible 3D spheres surrounding character models — to determine hit detection. Because of this, there’s a way for Pokkén character Machamp to exploit the hitsphere’s shape with his jump X body splash, getting larger combos then normally possible with proper positioning.
EMT Goreson demonstrates this, and other advanced tech with jump X, for Pokkén’s Machamp in his latest tech video. As a bonus, he also gives something of a public service announcement in regards to baiting and defeating Emolga — you get more anti-air invincibility with Machamp’s 8Y if you don’t have the Bulk-Up status.
Last Month’s Gamescom 2017 event in Cologne, Germany was a very newsworthy event for the upcoming collaborative title between Bandai Namco Entertainment and Arc System Works, Dragon Ball FighterZ. In addition to receiving character reveal trailers for new challengers Krillin, Piccolo, Android 16, Android 18, and the Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan forms of Goku and Vegeta, we were also given a release date of February 2018 and the opening of sign-ups for the closed beta test.
Perhaps lost in all of the great news and excitement, however, was the ESL tournament at Gamescom, pitting 64 Z-Warriors against each other in a first-to-one, single-elimination bracket, in order to determine who had the highest power level currently at this early pre-release stage. Commentated by international fighting game community veterans GXC|Damascus and Ryan Hart the event provided us with over four hours of great DBFZ action — which you can now relieve, or catch for the very first time, due to a recently-uploaded live recording on the Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe YouTube channel. You can catch all the crazy anime action for yourself below:
Dragon Ball FighterZ will be released in February 2018 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam PC, with both standard and CollectorZ editions.
Mai Natsume is one of the newest BlazBlue: Central Fiction characters. A “quick bruiser” of sorts, she can get in the opponent’s face very fast and assault them with spear attacks that chain in a unique way. If you’re sticking with Mai in the 2.0 version, you might want to check out the video below to learn how to beef up your midscreen confirms.
Yoshi SF demonstrates a new route that’s possible in this version of the game. The execution involves some microdashing, so it might take some practice to learn, but the payoff seems good. Like most of her combos, they carry to the corner very well. One important thing to recognize, however, is which characters this works on. It seems to fit the majority of the cast overall, so it’s not that niche of a confirm, however, pay attention to the video, since it does list which hurtboxes are problematic.
If you want to have a text of this route and whom it works on, check out this pastebin link. But if you’re hungry for more videos, make sure to take a look at Yoshi SF’s YouTube channel, which frequently uploads a lot of BlazBlue footage.
Our Tekken Training series, Electric Wind God Vids, continues with a basic examination of “stepping” in Tekken 7. This video covers the different types of step, when to step, and why.
As many of you are 2D players stepping into 3D for the first time, this will hopefully give you a basic understand of when you can, and cannot, step in Tekken. This is a very quick and dirty explanation of the concept as it relates to Tekken: for a more broad explanation as it relates to the 3D genre itself, I wrote a much longer piece that you can check out here.
For more TEKKEN TRAINING, be sure to subscribe to ShoryukenTube! And if you have any specific questions about Tekken gameplay you’d like covered in a future video, let us know in the comments!
