Another week, another avalanche of strange and powerful tech in the world of Bandai Namco’s juggernaut 3D fighter, Tekken 7.
Do you have a tech trap developed for your character yet? Because it seems like a lot of people are starting to figure out consistent ways to exploit wall techs in this game… For example, check out this insane crossup with Heihachi from ncea. Normally when you see a crossup it involves the overlapping hitbox of forward jump 4’s, but ncea has found new ways to exploit waking up hitboxes.
Cute Tricks wants you to know that frame data isn’t everything. Eddy players can bait out WS+4 happy players with max-range DF+4. Footsies!
But if you do think frame traps are everything, Nurse Lee would like to point you towards Katarina.
Leonid Vdovichenko found that tech trap situations make Xiaoyu’s RDS U+1 to hit on a later frame, allowing her to combo into AOP 2,1.
If you ever wondered why the Japanese tier lists consistently put Claudio so low despite his amazing hopkick, this punishment guide from Proper Tech might open your eyes.
Byakko shows off some 3rd Strike-esque parry punishes with this Jin Kazama combo video.
omgitsnewton shows that you still need to be careful when teching off the wall. This back-turned tech roll stuff is starting to get pretty scary — is there a character that can’t exploit this?
HelloMrBrahms has a ridiculous wall carry combo for Eliza to show off. It looks like you’re gonna hit the opposite wall no matter where you are.
Lastly, if you’re still struggling with combos for Ling, Kazuya, Lili or Akuma, rooflemonger has continued his excellent beginner combos series for those characters:
Did we miss anything? If you find any cool tech in Tekken, let us know!
Ever dreamed of a romantic, post-tournament beach walk with TO Alex Jebailey after a victory? Your sweetest dreams are slowly coming to fruition. After seven years at the Wyndham Resort, Community Effort Orlando is moving to a different spot for 2018.
It’s not just the beach that’s an attraction next year; the event will be hosted at a 200,000 square feet Ocean Center with an arena for the final matches. Rooms will be available this November at the Hilton Daytona Beach Resort. Check out the view in the trailer below:
If you’d like to view the full CEO 2018 announcement as it happened, check out the video below:
Read up on our CEO 2017 results to catch up on the tournament action from this past weekend.
Ahead of his launch next week, Iron Galaxy have released two videos to show off Killer Instinct‘s cybernetic archer Eagle. This matches show off Eagle’s specials as well as his main mechanic, his quiver of arrows. Unlike Arbiter who cannot reload his Carbine, Eagle can pick up his arrows by simply walking over them. As a result, expect Eagle players to be rolling and jumping around the screen, constantly picking up his projectiles.
He has a stock of twelve arrows, with his standard arrow shot working a lot like Green Arrow in Injustice 2. Eagle can move around when he has notched an arrow, with it charging up with spirit power the longer it is held. His throws have him using up an arrow, while his purple arrow ender does not have him expending any ammo. It looks like he cannot run out of arrows, with his quiver always refilling to one should Eagle ever use them all. We’ll no doubt get a better explanation of all of Eagle’s specials and normals in the upcoming patch 3.8 video, coming this Friday.
His robot eagle companion works like one of ARIA’s assists, with Eagle able to call it in to swoop at the enemy and stop incoming projectiles, let out a sonic screech or dive-bomb the floor to knock your opponent back. One special shows the robot flying off-stage and returning back to Eagle’s side, presumably picking up any arrows that are on the other side of the stage.
Dan’s world is turned upside down in an epic clash between cosmic powers… and civic property bylaws.
Last night, Saikyo Ryu Online has released the first episode of a new fan series featuring the adventures (or more accurately, misadventures) of that master of Saikyo-ryu, Dan Hibiki! After a deadly confrontation and an out-of-this-world experience in the Antarctic, Dan finds his return to his Hong Kong dojo full of unhappy surprises. Does Dan have any idea what powers he’s meddling with? What will he do without help from his friends? Has he actually ever paid rent? Watch the full first episode (and a preview of episode two) below!
With ten episodes of The Fighter’s Dojo now under his belt, Genex|Frabisaur has decided to dive into the world of Tekken 7 for his next project: Marshall’s Dojo!
With many new players, including himself, looking to join the King of Iron Fist Tournament 7, this series should serve as a great springboard to anyone looking to learn the game — providing a look at a relatively new player learning the ropes from a veteran player with over a decade of experience. Enlisting the help of top Tekken player Dominique “AceUnlimited” McCowin, the two provide insight into the mentality of character choice in the 3D fighter, along with details of the stage select screen and its various icons, which contain crucial information for any player.
Next, they move on to the concepts of utilizing the “Core 4” tools of Tekken: jabs, launchers, throws, and strings, as Ace teaches the nuances of the Tekken’s poking game and how to properly utilize the game’s primary pokes and jabs in your pressure and offense. However, he strongly advises against falling into patterns that could result in you being launch-punished for big damage, as opposed to perhaps being a “go-to” or “guaranteed option,” for players in other games. You can see the full video, with training mode demonstrations, below!
For more information, you can reach out to AceUnlimited on Facebook, or, as always, hit up Frabisaur on Twitter or catch his stream at http://www.twitch.tv/frabisaur, where he will be hosting weekly episodes of Tekken Live very soon. Frabisaur also compiled more great resources to help you along your Tekken journey in the video description, so be sure to take a look.
The second episode, focusing on throwing specifically, is also already available to view:
It’s an understatement at this point to say that Alex Valle has been around. Having been competitive in the FGC long before the competitive landscape we see today — or even the label of “FGC” existed — the man is a legend in every game he has picked up.
In this interview with BornFree at E3, Valle opened up about a lot, including his competitive history within the genre. They talk about his humble origins within Street Fighter, which involved getting destroyed early on in the game to learn that he needed to improve. They also discussed his 1998 encounter with a then-unknown in the West Daigo Umehara in Street Fighter Alpha 3 — an exhibition in which Valle now believes he wouldn’t have won, due to Daigo’s adaptability.
They also discuss the future of fighting games, in which Valle talks about Street Fighter V, and his hope that the Super Street Fighter V rumors are true. He also discusses his impressions of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, stating that the graphics need to improve but the gameplay is fun, and has a great level of depth to it.
While the Guilty Gear scene has been growing in terms of the number of sponsored players, there are still many “undiscovered” — or unclaimed — talented warriors playing REV 2. One of those, named daymendou, has become notorious for his excellent Slayer, especially since triumphing at Anime Ascension earlier this year. daymendou continued to place high at many tournaments, including at Combo Breaker 2017, where SRK took the time to learn more about him.
We discuss why daymendou decided to play Slayer, what distinguishes him from many other competitors, and whether he ever thought about being sponsored by an esports team.
Luke “Woocash” Siuty: Could you briefly introduce yourself?
daymendou:My name is Peter, and my tag is “daymendou,” and I play Slayer in Guilty Gear Xrd. I live in Northern California, that’s my scene. We’re kind of the smaller and younger scenes compared to a lot of other GG ones maybe. I guess for the past six months or so, NorCal has been doing pretty well.
Woocash: What’s your fighting game resume?
daymendou:I actually haven’t played fighting games that much before. It was never really a thing that I would spend my free time on. I didn’t have a PlayStation or go to an arcade when I was younger. When Xrd -SIGN- came out, I got a PS4, so that’s when I started playing games competitively.
Woocash: What made you do that?
daymendou:I always liked watching fighting games, and Guilty Gear is one of my favorites for sure. When Xrd was announced, I just remembered the trailer, so cool. At the time, I had not really been watching or paying attention to Guilty Gear. But that trailer sort of just sparked something within me. I said: maybe this time, I’ll decide to start playing other people. I used to just play the computer.
Woocash: Why did you gravitate to Slayer?
daymendou:Since I was starting at fighting games, I wanted a character that was easy to play. Well, “supposedly,” he’s easy to play. He’s kind of easy execution, especially his combos in Xrd. So that was one major factor. Another major factor was the launch trailer for Xrd. When I started watching a bunch of Accent Core +R on Goldenrody. I really liked watching Slayer. Before, when I just played casually, I used Sol, but watching those videos I thought Slayer looked really cool to play.
Woocash: If Slayer wasn’t in the game, who do you think you would play in REV 2?
daymendou:It’s hard to say, really. I never thought about this. I do play a couple of characters on the side, but I wouldn’t say I would main them if Slayer wasn’t in. Our NorCal Slayer, the old-man Slayer, went to Sol in Xrd. Xrd Sol has more combo flexibility. For me, I wouldn’t play Sol. I can’t do DP inputs very well. So it had to be someone without a DP or without a heavy reliance on it. It could be Leo, to be honest.
Woocash: Tell us a little about your matches today.
daymendou: It was Kizzie Kay first, then dotNova. Lost to Bears, lost to Dogura. This morning, even though Kizzie Kay was first, I was preparing for dotNova in the room. Jack-O’ is a really underplayed character, for whatever reason. I haven’t played against her in so long. The day before, when I played dotNova in casuals, it was getting worse and worse the more we played. I felt like if I wanted to make it to Winners Finals, I really had to be able to beat dotNova. Kizzie Kay, we ended up playing on finals day. The other thing is, Sin is a new character. The way he plays the game, you don’t have to do too much to remember how to play against him, at least to me. I had beaten Kizzie Kay every time we met in tournament, so I wasn’t that worried. Me versus Kizzie Kay was my first match in the top 16.
Combo Breaker did everything up to top 16 on one day, then top 8. If you have such a long break between tournament games, you really need to spend your first tournament match wisely. Not just warming up for that game, but thinking about how to get ready to play in the tournament again. When I played Kizzie, I almost 2-0’d him, but I had some pretty bad input drops, and he managed to take a game back. I did end up beating him, so I kind of have to watch my inputs more.
Woocash: What about versus Xcel| BjornSonOfBear? You’ve beaten him before in Grand Finals.
daymendou: I’ve beaten him sometimes… It’s very strange how we do against each other. Even though we play each other at locals, there is kind of a thing where whether I play him before the tournament matters. If I get to play him before the tournament, I generally beat him really easily. If not, I lose to him. Today, I was thinking, well last week, we just had a local. I had to go home early, because I had to go home for finals, so we couldn’t play casuals after. I lost to him really badly in Grand Finals in that tournament. I think that I wasn’t surprised that I lost. If you watched it, I would get him very close to death, and then I would make a bad decision on pressure, and he would just start running things back and kill me. I wasn’t too surprised about that.
Woocash: Have you ever thought about whether you want to be sponsored? Would you like to?
daymendou:I’ve thought about the issue a lot of times before. I was actually given an offer after Anime Ascension, but I turned it down, because I didn’t feel ready for it, more or less. For Guilty Gear, it would be good to have more sponsored players. We are one of those fighting games where money is kind of small compared to all the others. Exposure is small too, so it would be good to have that outside support.
Woocash: Why weren’t you ready back then?
daymendou:I think even right now, I don’t feel ready. There is sort of a responsibility and a weight on your shoulders when you do carry that sponsor name. You are expected to perform well not only by your sponsor but the community and yourself. Personally, I didn’t actually start traveling to tournaments until this year. A lot of the times, it didn’t work out. I only went to Evo last year and NEC this past December. I don’t feel like I can travel that much, it’s just too tiring to me. For tournaments, you have to prepare as well. You’re not just traveling, preparing and playing the game is even more tiring. I don’t have the stamina to do it once a month or even once every two months, which is what I’ve been doing sort of recently.
Woocash: Any tips for people who are looking to start playing Guilty Gear?
daymendou:If you want to start playing Guilty Gear, the first thing I would do is, well, play the game of course. I think a lot of people worry about picking characters, and there is a lot of minute information you need to worry about in Guilty Gear. I wouldn’t worry about the big things, I would just worry about playing your character in the beginning. If you do want to be able to compete, you’re going to have to learn a lot of things, but if you’re just starting out, you should at least make sure you’re having fun with the game. As long as you keep playing and thinking about it, you should get better.
Woocash: Any other advice?
daymendou:If you’re plateauing and struggling to get better, I think it’s very important to learn to deal with the tournament setting. That’s extremely important. I think my main advantage is, I don’t feel that I’m actually that much better than other people, I keep things very well together in tournaments. I can stay focused, I don’t get tilted from single errors or mistakes that I think happened. You have to accept that you won’t always be right because it is a fighting game, there’s a lot of guessing on both sides. You can’t let one big error just ruin your thinking process. You have to stay sharp when you’re playing.
In case you missed them, check out our interviews with PG|SKD and Fable|KidViper from Combo Breaker 2017!
Rarely has a fighting game with as little build-up to E3 as Dragon Ball FighterZwowed the the floor (and the world!) so thoroughly. The more cynical among us might think this is because of the nostalgia factor — Arc System Works has married Dragon Ball’s art style beautifully with their Guilty Gear Xrd cell shading. Visuals are all well and good, but we’re FGC. What about the game play?
That’s why I find Joe “LI Joe” Ciaramelli’s first impression of the game so interesting. Joe is a renowned Street Fighter tournament specialist who didn’t grow up with the anime adaptation of Drgaon Ball Z. He is exactly the sort of person most likely to shrug at a cut-scene of two Super Saiyans screaming at each other — and yet, here we are: like nearly everyone else that got to play the game, Joe walked away impressed with the gameplay. He has some concerns about the similarity of gameplay of the six currently-available characters, but also notes: “It’s a tech demo at E3 … If it fleshes out, I think it’ll be a damn good game.”
Before there was Next Level Arcade or NLBC, New York City’s fighting game community was harbored in the city’s arcades. Even as American arcades dwindled and Street Fighter II cabinets disappeared from stores, Manhattan’s Chinatown Fair remained a hub for the city’s gamers, and a landmark for the East Coast’s most impressive fighting game talent. In their film The Lost Arcade director Kurt Vincent and writer Irene Chin explore the elements that helped Chinatown Fair foster its unique community and the competitive spirit that led to the creation of Next Level.
Frequently referred to as “New York City’s last great arcade,” Chinatown Fair’s history predates video games altogether: it first opened in 1944, and eventually became a video arcade during the ’70s. The Lost Arcade focuses on how the arcade became an essential crossroads for New York City’s gamers under the ownership of Pakistani immigrant Sam Palmer, who purchased the business in 1982.
“I wanted to create a film that would capture the spirit that hit me the first time I walked through those doors,” Vincent said in a statement about the film. “There was a melting pot of a community that congregated there, where all walks of life came together and shared one common interest: video games. It was a microcosm of what New York was all about.”
Palmer began investing in fighting games at the advice of Henry Cen, his employee and business partner. In a time before “FGC” was a common term, Chinatown Fair gave many their first exposure to high-level fighting game play. The Lost Arcade captures the arcade’s weekend crowds for Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike — late night tournaments would keep the arcade open past 2:00 AM.
The arcade served as a proving ground for a generation of New York City fighting game players: Justin Wong, Chris G, Sanford Kelly and Arturo Sanchez were just some of the faces among the fierce competition. Cen even made sure console titles like Super Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 made their way to the arcade.
Chinatown Fair prior to its 2011 closing
The Lost Arcade captures Chinatown Fair’s fall and rebirth, as rising costs pushed Palmer out of business in 2011. Cen opened Next Level shortly thereafter as a refuge for the city’s fighting game players. The film shows the Brooklyn venue flourish from an empty canvas to a vibrant competitive space while a new owner eventually re-opened Chinatown Fair, without fighting games, a year later. The Lost Arcade contrasts the rise of Next Level with the community’s attempts to adjust to a very different Chinatown Fair.
Through the eyes of Palmer, Cen and Akuma Hotaru, a Next Level and Chinatown Fair employee, The Lost Arcade relates of how the spirit of community can transform the simplest of spaces into something more.
“It had its own language, its own quirks, these vibes that attracted like-minded kids to a place that may have been a safe haven even from their own home,” Vincent said of the arcade. “You talk to these patrons, and they just want to share their stories and history of the Chinatown Fair to keep it alive. They’re detailing accounts of meeting a best friend, getting into fights, a first kiss and meeting the love of their life.”
The Lost Arcade is available on most digital platforms including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Steam, Vimeo, VHX, Vudu, Microsoft and Sony video services, Comcast Infinity and Direct TV. For more information visit arcademovie.com
Just because the game isn’t out yet doesn’t mean that players aren’t trying to figure out advanced tactics for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, via its Story Demo. Shoultz, who discovered the super jump directional influence “short hop,” has now come back with a new video showing of some option selects that are present in the demo build.
These option selects stem from the fact that advancing guard (or push blocking) can now be done using any combination of two buttons, unlike previous games where it was usually just the punch buttons. This leads to all sorts of interesting situations where — at the very least — players can option select between advancing guard, or an attack.
Additionally, as with any game with 1 button throws, using hard punch in the input allows for a throw tech, adding that into the mix, allowing for an option select between advancing guard, throw tech, and a combo starter — or even a launcher.
Other variants include ones that use the switch button, which allow for option selecting between a throw tech and a tag, as well as the Infinity Stone button alongside a regular advancing guard input, adding the stone’s Infinity Surge into the mix. There’s also one using the “easy hyper” option, though it’s of dubious value considering that these can — and likely will — be turned off for competitive play.
All in all, Shoultz estimates that there are at least 20 possible option select scenarios, especially if you add jumping into the mix, with possibly more in the future. Now, whether or not these will make it into the final game is unknown — although these kinds of option selects, especially those involving throw techs, are the kind that are difficult to remove from any fighting game.
In the meantime, check out Shoultz’ video below, and head on over to r/MvCI for a more detailed write-up.
