Coliseum

Not one to be left out of the pro circuit trend which is taking over fighting games, SNK has released more details about the King of Fighters XIV World Championships which are set to take place early in 2017. With their new esports initiative, SNK is planning to sponsor more tournaments to become part of the qualifying stages of the KOF World Championship, so more and more players can get a chance to win Antonov’s shiny championship belt and be crowned the actual King of Fighters.

While more tournaments are slowly being added to this early 2017 season, this new information mainly revolves around the final two tournaments that will end the World Championships. This penultimate stage will be the “Four Kings” Tournament held in Tokyo on February 18th, 2017. 16 top players will be invited to compete, either by gaining ranking points from qualifiers or being specially selected by SNK, until only four finalists remain.

These “Four Kings” will then be invited to Beijing to compete in the Championship Finals in mid-March, where they will compete for the title of King of Fighters, as well as some “gorgeous prizes,” according to SNK. SNK will be providing accommodation and flights to anyone who makes it to either the Four Kings Tournament or the Championship Finals so get entering those qualifier event to win that all-expenses paid trip.

More details can be found on SNK’s official site and keep an eye on SNK’s Twitter, as they regularly announce new tournaments which are acting as KOF XIV World Championship qualifiers.

Source: SNK

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Limited-edition red, white, and blue variants of the HORI Real Arcade Pro 4 Kai–now in stock and available.

HORI’s Real Arcade Pro 4 Kai is a robust and certainly popular fight stick–its relatively low cost makes it an easy go-to stick for new world warriors. As we previewed back in September, HORI now offers new “Colored Series” variants on the RAP4 Kai, available in red, white, and blue models, as you can see in the gallery below.

They feature HORI’s Hayabusa joystick and matte Hayabusa pushbuttons, and are compatible with the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3–and PC via X-Input.

These are now in stock at Arcade Shock, available for $149.99 with same-day shipping. You can get one in time for a fellow fighter on your holiday gift list if you place an order before December 17th. Arcade Shock is also currently offering a flat shipping rate of $14.95 on fight sticks to continental U.S. addresses.

The big draw of the Colored Series is modding of course, since you get three new color schemes to work around! Arcade Shock themselves created this Street Fighter-themed mod using the blue RAP4 Kai and the Street Fighter “chibi” character pushbuttons:

Source: Arcade Shock