Category: Videos

Get ready for another season of great Tekken action!

Bandai Namco have officially announced the 2019 TEKKEN WORLD TOUR today with a new trailer — and some information on what will be different for this season. Expect to see some new locations as Tekken 7 competition explodes at over more than 25 tournament stops this year!

Competition will be divided into a number of different categories this year, including an all-new category for 2019:

Tournament Categories

Master+: TEKKEN World Tour’s max value tournament category will be held exclusively at the Evolution Championship Series (Evo) in Las Vegas from August 2-4, 2019 at the Mandalay Bay Resort. The Master+ tournament will award Ranking Points to players placing 1st through 49th place.

Master: Offering high-level points for top-tier competitive players throughout the world, these tournaments are the pillars from which TEKKEN World Tour will be built for 2019. Master tournament events are expected to draw international competition and will award Ranking Points to players placing 1st through 25th place.

Challenger: These regional tournaments focus on offering Ranking Point earning opportunities to locations not served by Master tournaments. Challenger tournaments award Ranking Points to players placing 1st through 13th place.

Dojo: Brand new for TEKKEN World Tour 2019 are Dojo tournaments. In an effort to promote competitive participation to TEKKEN 7 players at a more local and grassroots level, TEKKEN World Tour is establishing this new opt-in tournament category. Dojo tournaments will enable tournament organizers from around the world to apply for their tournaments to be awarded TEKKEN World Tour Ranking Points. The Ranking Points available at Dojo tournaments will scale based on tournament size. This opt-in system creates opportunities for players to compete for Ranking Points outside of Master and Challenger class events. All Dojo tournament applicants must use the TEKKEN World Tour opt-in system on smash.gg and register their tournament for consideration. Depending on the bracket size, Dojo tournaments can award Ranking Points to players placing 1st through 9th place.

Ranking Points Distribution

Points earned at TEKKEN World Tour tournaments are awarded according to a player’s tournament placements. Each placement at a TEKKEN World Tour tournament, from Master+ to Dojo, is worth a different number of Ranking Points. Players’ point aggregation will be taken from their best three results from Master+ or Master events, best three results from Challenger events, and best four results from Dojo events. At the end of the year, the top 19 players awarded the most TEKKEN World Tour Ranking Points will be invited to compete at the TEKKEN World Tour Finals. Travel and lodging considerations for invited players will be covered by TEKKEN World Tour. The TEKKEN World Tour leaderboard will be viewable on www.tekkenworldtour.com and via the TEKKEN World Tour’s league page on smash.gg.

From the official press release:

TEKKEN World Tour 2019 kicks off on April 20th, at MIXUP in Lyon, France then continues throughout the year with additional North American based stops in Georgia, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, Florida, Washington, California, and Toronto, Canada. International tour stops will include Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Australia, Dubai, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Italy, Argentina, Peru, South Africa, and more. The TEKKEN World Tour Finals will make its return to Asia in 2019 when the world’s best TEKKEN 7 players converge upon Bangkok, Thailand to determine who is the true “King of the Iron Fist Tournament” – more information will be shared at a later date. Prospective competitors can register to compete through each regional event’s registration page to begin their fight to the top of TEKKEN World Tour’s leaderboard.

“Now entering its third season, TEKKEN World Tour for 2019 is going to be bigger, reach more players with its innovative Dojo tournaments, and generate more excitement than ever!” said Eric Hartness, Vice President of Marketing at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc. “Every year, the TEKKEN World Tour has set the stage for some of the most dramatic stories to come out of the esports world and we look forward to entertaining the millions of fighting game fans around the globe with another great season of high-level competitive TEKKEN 7 play!”

“Fighting games represent the roots of esports, the early days of fans gathering in arcades and living rooms and making competitive gaming a shared community viewing experience,” said Richard Thiher, Product Manager at Twitch. “As the premier destination for esports, we are proud to carry on that tradition by bringing fans together from all around the world to watch, chat, and experience the best plays TEKKEN 7 has to offer.”

Source: Bandai Namco Entertainment [press release]

The next step in the evolution of Street Fighter V is almost here!

After being announced back in September at the Tokyo Game Show and following location tests in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka, Street Fighter V: Type Arcade — the physical arcade port of Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, running on Taitio’s Viewlix cabinets and utilizing the NESICAxLive System — will finally be released for Japanese arcades on Thursday, March 14th.

In addition to some HUD changes that see player names, titles, and rankings found above the health bar (as opposed to below, on console), the most notable difference is the implementation of a new Ranking System, exclusive to the port. Instead of utilizing the League Point system that can be currently found on the home versions, Type Arcade will make use of both Battle Points and Player Points, which should allow a user’s individual progress, tracked by a NESICA card. The official announcement trailer is below.

With Final Round 2019 also around the corner, could we see Capcom finally break their silence and unveil some new Season 4 characters to coincide with this new release? Back in the Street Fighter IV cycle we saw Yun and Yang join the SFIV cast alongside the release of Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition — and Evil Ryu and Oni further bolstered the roster as time-release characters — so there’s certainly a precedent in place for Capcom to potentially have surprises to roll out for console/PC alongside the arcade version. In the meantime, you can visit the official Street Fighter V: Type Arcade website for more information.

Source: taitochannel (YouTube)

Tekken 7 closes out Season 2 with a bang!

Last Thursday was a monumental day for Tekken 7 fans, as Julia Chang and The Walking Dead’s Negan were finally released to close out both the month of February and the game’s Season 2 character roster. Though she appears to have become a live streamer in an effort to support her deforestation efforts, Julia Chang’s charm and classic moves appear to be fully and faithfully preserved, while the leader of the Saviors brings all of the brutality — and personality — he has come to be known for over the years on the AMC series.

In addition, Version 2.20 brings with it a set of new stages, including the “Last Day On Earth,” which faithfully reproduces the Saviors hideout where the infamous Season 6 cliffhanger took place, as well as alternate versions of existing stages complete with new soundtracks. There are also some quality-of-life adjustments to the game, such as being able to finally switch characters without going to stage select, the ability to turn Rage and Counter Hits on or off during Warm-Ups, additional gallery illustrations, and new character panels for Craig Marduk and Armor King.

There have also been some minor balance adjustments to King, Yoshimitsu, Alisa, Shaheen, Josie, Gigas, Nina, Master Raven, Lee, Geese, and previous Season 2 arrivals Anna, Lei, Marduk, and Armor King, on top of some adjustments to the hit reactions of certain airborne Rage Drives, which you can see in full at the following link.

We’ve also included their gameplay trailers — that were first revealed at last month’s Evo Japan — below.

Julia and Negan can be purchased individually for $5.99 and $7.99 respectively, or as part of the Season 2 Character Pass for $29.99, which also includes the previously-released Anna Williams, Lei Wulong, Craig Marduk, and Armor King.

Sources: Bandai Namco Entertainment America (YouTube); Bandai Namco Entertainment

SNK’s bloody brawler is poised to make a big comeback.

After the initial surprise last year that SNK was reviving the Samurai Spirits franchise (Samurai Shodown here in the West), many fighting gamers forgot that the new game was even on the way until it was announced on the Evo 2019 reveal livestream that the new SamSho would be on the Evo main stage lineup. SNK shared a new teaser trailer alongside this reveal, promising a release for the game worldwide in “early summer”:

The new trailer reinforces the game as an apparent update of the original with some new flourishes — and the heavy damage that fans of Samurai Shodown‘s footsie-heavy combat looks to be intact. It would be a shame for the game to return without retaining the playstyle that makes it stand out, so it looks promising the new game won’t stray too far from the path. But we haven’t seen enough of it yet to be sure! However, we’ll get some more concrete assurance at the end of this month, because the game will be playable — for the first time — at the upcoming PAX EAST 2019.

SAMURAI SHODOWN will be playable for the first time at PAX EAST 2019!　#SNK #SAMURAISHODOWNhttps://t.co/LHIj99m7AE pic.twitter.com/8cPZafwpcz

— SNK GLOBAL (@SNKPofficial) February 27, 2019

Fighting game fans in attendance are sure in for a steel-edged treat. Can we hope for a beta announcement soon…?

Sources: snkGame; SNK GLOBAL

This is a guest blog by yogaboy from Super Turbo Revival. Be sure to check their page out for more Super Street Fighter II Turbo news!

---

Star Cup was a tournament that ran in Nagoya, Japan from 2006 to 2014, and now it’s back in 2019 for a special occasion: the 25th anniversary of its featured game, Super Street Fighter II Turbo. The exact date of the anniversary is Saturday, February 23 — although some video footage shows how the first beta versions of game actually arrived to the arcades in the USA around the end of March in 1994.

What makes Star Cup special is that it’s a singles tournament; traditionally in Japan, all of the Super Turbo majors are always team tournaments like the 3vs3 X-Mania (now renamed to X-EST) or the 5vs5 Kakerugo (formerly known as Gian Recital). Even though it’s a singles tournament, it still comes with a twist where players have to lock in which 3 different characters they are going to use beforehand. This year, they are allowing use of the same character 3 times, whereas in the past, competitors could only use the same one twice.

The last time Star Cup tournament took place was in 2014 for the 20th anniversary, and it had one of the best finals ever witnessed between the two best players in Japan, Otochun and MAO. We might see the same outcome this time as well. You can see the 2014 final here:

For the last two months, qualifiers have been running all around Japan to fill the final 16-player bracket for this Saturday. Well-known names like Mattsun, Yuuvega, and Murasaki are among those players. Details of the qualifiers:

Here are the results and videos of the qualifiers from last week plus all the details of the upcoming Star Cup tournament which starts on Friday at 7pm (PST time)https://t.co/j3vREIArSd

— STRevival (@ST_Revival) February 22, 2019

---

Star Cup begins tonight at 7:00 PM PT! Check out the ST Revival page for more details.

---

Sources: Space Shuttle (Twitter): STRevival (Twitter); Kakuge Checker [in Japanese]