KOFXIII MATCHVIDS FROM ALEX'S ARCADE

Watch some of the best KOF players in the US play XIII on the new cab at Alex's Arcade in Socal! Courtesy of Kane317.

Click to read more ...

ALL ABOARD THE CINDERELLA EXPRESS: NORCAL AH3 CASUALS THIS SATURDAY

Arcana Heart 3 has dropped and the Norcal scene is already off to a strong start! This Saturday marks the second annual Cinderella Express bi-weekly, which you can watch live on the IPW stream!

For those who are interested in Arcana Heart 3, the following links should prove to be helpful:

• Arcana Heart 3 Wiki on Mizuumi
• The Norcal thread on HomingCancel
• Cinderella Express on Youtube
• Cinderella Express on Ustream (bookmark for when we can't stream on IPW's channel)

In addition, watch this godlike video by woofycakes on how to play AH3.

Click to read more ...

TRANSLATED CHANGELIST FOR KOF98UM: FINAL EDITION

The latest issue of Arcadia features a changelist for each returning character in The King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match Final Edition, which is set to hit Japanese arcades this Winter using Taito's NESICA Live service. KOF98UMFE is an update to 2008's The King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match, which added new characters to the roster of the original KOF98 (including the 96 Boss Team) as well as the new Ultimate mode, which allowed players to mix and match subsystems from the traditional Advanced and Extra modes from KOF98.

Thanks to BurningKyo at SRK for the translation!

1UP INTERVIEW WITH VIRTUA FIGHTER CREATOR YU SUZUKI

James Mielke from 1UP.com sits down with Virtua Fighter creator Yu Suzuki. They talk about where the industry is going these days and what will the future hold for us.

This is actually the first part of a multi-part interview, so keep your eyes out for the entries to come in what is sure to be a revealing dialogue with one of the most celebrated names in video games. Word on a console port of VF5: Final Showdown? Perhaps even an entirely new arcade board and Virtua Fighter 6? Shenmue 3? 

Working as a game developer in Japan has its perks. The first and most obvious one is you get to make video games. The second less obvious perk is pretty much all of your connections are with other game developers. This played a major factor in scoring this interview.

Click to read more ...

ARCADIA 124 - VF5FS SYSTEM CHANGES

Big thanks goes to noodalls from VFDC for translating! 

Changes to the Movement System
The risk and return for DM have both increased. And, because of the changes in the throw system mentioned later, the previous staple of fighting ETE is now much less important.

The risk of a failed evade is now much greater
The big change to the evade system in VF5FS is that if during a failed evade you're hit by a circular move, it will be considered as a counter hit. The precise conditions are that the direction you evaded in and the move's circular direction must be the same. Because of that, if you delay and then punish an opponent's failed evade with a move, it will be counter as a normal hit; only circular moves in the same direction as the opponent's evade direction will counter as counter hit. You could say that the need to watch your opponent's feet has become even more important. If you think about it the opposite way, moves such as Brad's half circular have received a boost.

On the other hand, there aren't any specifc changes to OM, so you can use it in the same way as you did in the last VF.

For moves that have no guaranteed punishment, after guarding if you read their evade ...

... you can hit their failed evade with a counter hit. 1.5x the damage!

Click to read more ...

WHY YOU SO GODLIKE

Anyone still play Super Turbo? No? Well, enjoy anyways.

Money shot is at 3:29.

And for those of you unfamiliar with ARG's work, let's just say he's been places.

PRE-SBO GUILTY GEAR ACCENT CORE TIER LIST

Here's the latest GGAC tier list from Arcadia.

S: Eddie, Testament
A: Millia
B: May, Potemkin, Jam, Slayer
C: Sol, Ky, Chipp, Faust, Baiken, Axl, Anji, Venom, Dizzy, I-No, Zappa, Robo Ky, ABA, Order Sol
D: Johnny, Bridget

Seeing as last year's SBO came down to a team of Testament/Millia/Venom vs Johnny/Bridget/Zappa, it will be interesting to see what happens this year. How this game constantly evolves and yet manages to remain as balanced as ever is one of the reasons I love it so much. Four more years!

Here's the first match from last year's finals, for reference.

Source: Dustloop

Daisuke Ishiwatari and Toshimichi Mori at Fanime

The man himself, Daisuke Ishiwatari, is a guest of honor at Fanime 2010! Oh, and some Mori guy too.

If you wanna get him to sign your HRAP, your supa kawaii Bridget costume or even if you're just big enough of a dick to ask the man for a money match, you shouldn't miss out on this!

Small excerpt from Fanime.com:

FanimeCon, Aksys Games, and Arc System Works are proud to announce video game creators Daisuke Ishiwatari and Toshimichi Mori as Guests of Honor at FanimeCon 2010.

Daisuke Ishiwatari is famous for creating the Guilty Gear video game series. While he denies having created the game single-handedly, his extensive work on the series includes an eclectic assortment of talents.

Toshimichi Mori also has many talents. He not only directed and produced the BlazBlue video game series but also designed the characters and wrote the scenarios.

More info on Daisuke at Wikipedia.

Source: DustLoop

NEW GUILTY GEAR COMBO VIDEOS

This month has been an active one for the Guilty Gear community, as we've seen two new, incredibly hype combo videos come out.

This one is probably my new favorite Sol Badguy combo video, done by the infamous combo video master Testu. Titled "Sheer Heart Attack", it is one of the few Guilty Gear combo videos that actually features music from Queen; creator Daisuke Ishiwatari's favorite band.

This next one is an I-no combo video, but it's a bit different from most Accent Core I-no combo videos because it features combos that are both useful and actually possible to do!

HIGH LEVEL JAPANESE PLAY... IN MARVEL?

The entire world is backwards. SBO is an iteration behind Evo in SF4, Evo has dropped 3S for Melty Blood, and I guess Marvel is the game to play at A-cho these days!

 I'll only embed one video to save your system resources, but if you want to see more just go to the Youtube channel GAMEacho. 

WANT VF5R ON CONSOLE? LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!

The position of the international VF community is one of uncertainty. Sega's neglect of it's worldwide fanbase has let the game's community lose prominence in the fighting game community at large and as a result, the game has faded from a once-prominent force in the international fighting game community to an obscurity.

If you are a fan of VF (or a fan of fighting games, really), it is in your best interest to let Sega know that we want to play VF5R.

How do you do this?

From the front page of VFDC:

A well known and respected VFer in Japan, Kamaage, was invited to meet with SEGA on the 28th January 2010. Leading up to this meeting, Kamaage approached VFDC with an opportunity to express our desire to have Virtua Fighter 5R ported to console directly to SEGA. He suggested we put together a document that explained a little about VFDC along with personalised messages from players in the community. If the document could reach 100 or so pages, then surely SEGA would be impressed, or so Kamaage thought!

After his meeting, Kamaage informed us that while the document was impressive, it simply wasn't enough. Kamaage now has another opportunity to pass our document to SEGA, but it must have more impact, at least 5x more!

The new target is 500 pages!

How You Can Help!
Simply post a reply leaving a message expressing your desire to play VF5R on console. Feel free to share your VF playing history, why you like the game, etc. To lend weight to your message, please leave your real name, and your location along with your post.

BLAZBLUE: CONTINUUM SHIFT MEGA-UPDATE

BBCS has been out for a little over a month now and the game is already starting to evolve past the Day 1 discoveries, so I figured now would be a good time to review the system changes from BBCT as well as speculate on the game's roster balance and potential to grow.

First, the system changes from CT:

• Bursts are entirely different now. No longer reactable like they were in CT and they no longer cut your defense or deplete your barrier meter. You get two bursts stocked at the start of the match, and you're able to use one in the first round; if you win the first round, you stay with the one burst you have (if you used your burst, you don't get one in the next round) and likewise if you lose the first round, your second burst is unlocked (even if you used your burst in the first round).
• Offensive bursts no longer Guard Crush, they now launch the opponent. Unlike the Guard Crush off of offensive bursts in CT, it allows you to kill your opponent with a combo started from a burst.
• Guard Primer system replaces Guard Libra system from CT. Certain moves take off whole Guard Primers on guard, while others take off fractions. Characters like Tager and Hakumen have many Guard Primers, while characters like Carl and Taokaka only have a few. Losing all Guard Primers results in a Guard Crush.
• Barrier Guard + Throw break option select has been nerfed. In CT you had 13 frames (some sources say up to 17!) to input 1/4 A+B+C but in CS you now only have 5 frames and the window for Throw Reject Misses has been increased as well.
• Barrier Jump has been removed, meaning you can no longer input 7 A+B and jump while Barrier Guarding. This helps a lot for the ground mixup game, as throws can still be jumped out of (more on that later).
• Instant blocking in the air now requires you to be Barrier guarding at the same time. This is a change that has stirred some controversy, but there's actually a good reason why they implemented it. Put simply; you always have your barrier meter now that bursts don't deplete it. In order to give players more incentive to both use barrier meter and keep it stocked, they had to do something to make using it a conflicting judgement call. While people may have to get used to it (as it is a rather uncommon mechanic), I think in the long run it'll promote more thinking on defense than had it not been implemented.
• New Fatal Counter system is a new counter hit system that gives certain moves 2 extra frames of untechable time as well as all moves in the combo that follow, allowing for combos that wouldn't be possible on a normal counter hit.
• Damage has, for the most part, been significantly nerfed across the board.

All of the changes listed above I think are good. That being said, there's still problems I have with the game. Most notably:

• Jump startup is still too fast. 4 frames of jump startup makes ground throws (which start up in 7 frames) a risky mixup tool. Of course, people jumping out of throws (and some overheads, too) can be baited, but to me it feels like a forced transition from the ground to air game that ends up being a detriment, since you're forcing the player on offense to guess rather than the player on defense. My ideal solution would be to make ground throws start up quicker than jumps (though not 0 frame), but I guess slowing down jump startup would work as well (though that may cause problems for characters that have to Tiger Knee moves). Still, the majority of BlazBlue is the zoning game, so perhaps this is ArcSys' way of making sure we don't just rush down all the time.

Click to read more ...

BLAZBLUE - HAKUMEN MATCHUP ANALYSIS

Now that BlazBlue has been out for just over a year now, it's safe to say that the current tier lists and matchup statistics are representative of the game's roster balance. While there's no doubting that the top 3 in BlazBlue do have a significant advantage over most of the cast (they essentially make the bottom 3), that's not to say it's impossible to win (most of) those matchups.

Today we'll be looking at two of Hakumen's matchups with videos from the latest Ko-hatsu tournament.

First we'll tackle Nu- a very hard match for Hakumen to win, but if he can stay patient and play a good defense, he has a fairly high chance of winning. Here's Tenchi, a very strong Hakumen player, fighting a Nu.

Although the final outcome of this match was all but expected, both players exemplify what this matchup is all about from both sides. Hakumen needs to primarily stay on defense by carefully advancing towards Nu by double/super jumping and instant blocking as much as he can (not just so he can build meter, but so he can punish anything Nu might throw out that will become unsafe with the added frame advantage from instant blocking). For Nu, although Hakumen is relatively easy to keep away, once he does get in it's hard to escape. Not to mention he'll almost always have enough meter to optimize his damage, so you have to be quick in deciding when to burst. Overall, both players played extrodanarily well, and had Tenchi not dropped the combo in the last round he probably could have won if he had kept up his defense.

Next up is Tager, with Tenchi playing Hakumen again and Galileo playing Tager. This is a very peculiar matchup because Hakumen and Tager are often trying to get within a similiar range to land their hits and both of them spend lots of time turtling to build meter (for Tager, this is referring to his Spark Volt meter). What this often leads to is a sort of tug of war, with the player having the meter needed to mount an offense at an advantage.

Again, Tenchi loses, but still shows how this matchup should be played. Very bold use of Hotaru (j.214B, basically an aerial uppercut) to punish Tager's Collider attempts while magnetized and very good mixups as well show just how tricky Hakumen can be. Note how at 2:20, Hakumen dashes to avoid getting hit by Tager's 720. This is not due to any throw invincibility (or any kind of invincibility) on Hakumen's dash, but because his dash makes him momentarily airborne, effectively making him unthrowable (though just for the duration of his airborne state). And although not pertaining to Hakumen, the 720 setup at 3:14 was pretty baller.

I'll try to keep these video analyses a regular thing around here (doubly so when BBCS drops). If you have any questions about these matchvids or BB in general, leave them in the comments and I'll do my best to address them.

CUT2 LIVE STREAM @ TOPTIERGAMING

Tomorrrow, CUT2 (Californa Unification Tournament) will be streamed at Top Tier Gaming on Justin.tv. BlazBlue is sure to be streamed, while Guilty Gear is still a maybe at this point.

You can watch the stream tomorrow around 6 PM PST for BlazBlue. If Guilty Gear is going to be streamed, that will be shown around 1 PM PST. Casuals for those games and possibly others (MBAA, HnK, etc) will start streaming at 9AM PST.

What is CUT? (from the first post of the thread on Dustloop)

California is a pretty big state, and people from the north don't have opportunities to get together with the southern players very often. That's why those of us in San Luis Obispo, in the middle of the two, would like to host a tournament that maybe both sides could attend. Hence the name, California Unification Tournament 2, since this will be our second time hosting!