Coliseum

Those who watched the King of Fighters XIV’s latest trailers, may have noticed something interesting in them. Instead of the logos of SNK Playmore we’ve been seeing for quite some time now, the trailers showed only the old SNK logo, dropping the “Playmore” bit.

It turns out there’s a reason for this: SNK Playmore has announced that they are officially changing their corporate logo and will simply be known as “SNK” henceforth. In addition to this, they are bringing back the classic “The Future Is Now” corporate tagline.

Founded by Eikichi Kawasaki back in 1978, the original SNK, short for Shin Nihon Keikaku (New Japan Project) was responsible for creating a number of beloved arcade and fighting franchises, many of which made their way into the King of Fighters, before eventually going bankrupt in 2001. SNK Playmore became a reality a couple of years after Kawasaki’s subsequent company, Playmore, acquired the rights to the original SNK intellectual properties.

The change of their corporate logo back to SNK, alongside their marketing efforts for King of Fighters XIV, seem to be symbolic gestures to generate goodwill among fans by showing that the spirit of the old company is still alive.

Source: SNK, thanks to Behemothbear for the tip.

If there’s one name that’s become synonymous with streaming within the fighting game community, it’s Victor “Spooky” Fontanez. Spooky has been a pioneer in terms of live streaming fighting game community tournaments and events, and its safe to say that we wouldn’t be where we are now without him.

Now, it seems that Spooky is moving up in the world, as he has recently announced that he will be joining XSplit as a program manager for XSplit Broadcaster.

As part of this, Spooky will be spending more time in the Philippines (where XSplit’s development office is based) and Asia in general. This also means that there will be more Team Spooky broadcasts of events in the Asia Pacific region. As for current Team Spooky streams, such as the Next Level Battle Circuit, Spooky has stated that he will be backed up by other Team Spooky members during the times when he’s unable to stream himself.

Spooky will be joining other fighting game community members such as Louis “Offcast” Vigil, Yu Shen “Farpenoodle” Tan, and Kevin “Burnout Fighter” Kim who have been hired by XSplit to help them improve their software.

We here at Shoryuken wish Spooky and XSplit the best in their new relationship.

Source: Spooky, feature image courtesy of Kara “Karaface” Leung