Intro

Yep, this is going to be a long one, so if you're interested in

• Final Round XVI, its Curleh Mustache Battle Royale Exhibition run by VxG EMP (yeah that happened) IFC Yipes and the continuation of the East Coast Tekken Circuit then read on.
• PAX East happenings ie. Divekick, Daigo, Injustice, New Super Street Fighter IV, you'll have to scroll down a bit
• News of the biggest YouTuber of the FGC, Maximilian, you'll have to go all the way down to the bottom.

I hope blogs get Table of Contents one day, ah well, let's begin!

Final Round XVI + Curleh Mustache Battle Royale (March 29th-31st) Preview

In terms of legacy, ATL Final Round, of which this is the 16th year, is only 2nd behind EVO.

It's been a while since one of the top 5 fighting game tournaments came around and watching some of the Mad Catz action this weekend (more on that later) has me more than ready for whatever fighting games the Final Round stream by MCZ Team Spooky has to throw at me.

Final Round is not a part of Road to EVO 2013, but that's Final Round's decision.

IFC Yipes is bringing his Curleh Mustache brand of UMVC3 hype to Final Round on Friday with a Team Exhibition. Each team has 5 people and they will battle it to see who the best team in the USA is:

The East Coast Tekken Circuit continues! The winner of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 gets seeding and a free flight to East Coast Throwdown and the winner of that gets a free flight to EVO 2013. Final Round is considered the premier Tekken event, so there should be plenty of competition on display.

Schedule

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky/new

http://www.twitch.tv/funkyp/new

Friday, March 29, 2013 - Start Time: 2:00 PM

Curleh Mustache Battle Royal

Darkstalkers Resurrection Invitational

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Regional 5v5 Teams

Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition v. 2012 Singles (to Top 8)

King of Fighters XIII Singles (to Top 8)

Soul Calibur 5 Singles (will finish on Friday)

Melty Blood Actress Again: Current Code Singles (will finish on Friday)

Saturday, March 30, 2013 - Start Time: 10:00 AM

King of Fighters XIII Singles (Top 8 to End)

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Singles (to Top 8)

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Singles (to Top 8)

Street Fighter x Tekken Singles (to Top 8)

Persona 4 Arena Singles (will finish on Saturday)

Mortal Kombat 9 Singles (will finish on Saturday)

Dead or Alive 5 Singles (to Top 8)

Sunday, March 31, 2013 - Start Time: 10:00 AM

All of the following will be streamed by Team Sp00ky:

09:00-11:30 - Street Fighter x Tekken Singles Top 8

11:30-01:30 - Dead or Alive 5 Singles Top 8

01:30-04:00 - Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition v. 2012 Singles Top 8

04:00-07:00 - Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Singles Top 8

07:00-10:00 - Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Singles Top 8

PAX East Round-up

New patch for Super Street Fighter IV! I'm calling it, Revenge of the Character Specialists. No longer will players be stuck getting bodied by Akuma and Fei Long, hurray! Though I do hope they focus more on bringing the other characters up to Akuma and Fei Long's level rather than nerfing those two out of relevance forever.

One of the latest FGC members to be employed by Capcom, Peter 'Combofiend' Rosas, put out the call to users for submissions on what they think who be good changes to each character. Here's to a more balanced future.

The word of Divekick is spreading! Many people called it game of the show. While attendees were divekicking each other, Divekick also got a bit of stream time over at the Mad Catz booth.

Injustice got plenty of stream time on the Twitch TV's own Twitch channel, with Hector showing off new character Black Adam and some high-level play courtesy of MCZ TS Arturo and Nerdjosh. Hector revealed that the two had been visiting NetherRealm Studios quite regularly to help work on getting Injustice ready for tournament play. Hector now passes the reigns over to Ed Boon, who'll be showing off Injustice even more at GDC this week.

Maximilian announces Assist Me Season 3 and continues to be awesome in general

So Max continues to run his main fighting game channel over at http://www.youtube.com/miles923 and his Let's Play channel over at https://www.youtube.com/YoVideogames The main channel has passed over 100,000 subscribers and over 46 million views while his new Let's Play channel continues to grow with over 20,000 subs and 2 million views.

The Assist Me show is how I discovered Max and season 1, 2 and Retro Assist Me (one third Back to the Future parody, one third Assist Me story, one third Marvel vs. Capcom Origins tutorial) is some of the best stuff I've seen on the net.

Max almost managed to get stunt-man and voice behind classic Dante and Ken Masters, Reuben Langdon, to play Dante, which would have been pretty cool. Unfortunately the schedules apparently didn't line up.

Nevertheless I'm excited to see Dante help out Max, Doom and Wesker in whatever shenanigans they get up to.

Some of Max's Let's Plays that I've enjoyed watching the past 3 months include Devil May Cry 1, 2, 3, 4 and DmC and Metal Gear Rising. Sometimes he plays games that I haven't and check it out, sometimes he plays games that I myself have completed and just have fun with it. Make sure to sub to the two channels.

Or just watch these two videos, because they're funny-ass shit.

Thank you for reading, watching and hopefully not getting bored, see you next time and make sure to tune into Final Round this weekend!

My biggest worry about Divekick is that online play won't have the same hype that being surrounded by 70+ other people in a small booth did. Because being part of the crowd in that booth was fantastic.

There were qualifiers for Team NorCal on the FGTV stream a couple of weeks ago so that team is confirmed to be FChamp, Rog, Chris Schmidt, Neo, and CJShowStopper.

You mention Akura and Fei Long as characters in need of nerfs. From what I hear there were a few characters better than Fei. Namely Cammy and Seth.

@morbid_coffee: The Divekick pads too, we'll see what they do to try and recreate the atmosphere in the home.

@reddy1124: Thanks, I'll get that updated.

@immortalsaiyan: I do recall KBrad going on a streak with Cammy for about a month last year but I haven't seen Seth win any tournaments recently.

It sounds like Madcatz (specifically Markman) is pushing to get twitter support from fans to show the company "hey this game is big and we should make Divekick arcade sticks."

Which is kind of weird since the current ones were made by Hitbox.

Good stuff as always.

Lol @ that first Chris Hu video.. That man is so gdlk.

I'm thinking about going to SS2k13.. Just waiting to see if my money will be right..

And hoooooooooly shit, man do I hate our midwest roster..

Andre is obviously pretty damn good, and Footwurk is great.. But I hate the personality of pretty much every single person repping the midwest. -.-

They should've called [REDACTED] the Wolf-Marine, I think that would've kept the spirit of the joke better than [REDACTED] but hey what do I know.

Don't know if Team Mid-Atlantic has a shot compared to NYC and NorCal but as a shameless homer I hope they win.

Maybe people assume that they're sell under the Mad Catz brand because that's who they associate fighting game hardware in the USA.

They do seem like a team that can pull off an upset or two, you never know with these team tournaments.

As long as the lesser high-profile teams do well I'll be happy. Wolf-Marine sounds pretty good to me.

I'll say this about the Hitbox Divekick Kickpads: They lasted the entire weekend without breaking after the first two hours like every single Madcatz public use stick does at every one of these conventions

psyched for curleh mustache mainly because it will mostly likely include hype commentary. you know if matrix is gonna be there?

@casper_: Don't know, I don't see anything on his Twitter about FR, you're right about it needing hype commentary though. Ultradavid, James Chen or Ski can stick to the tournament on Saturday and Sunday, Curleh Mustache needs more hype than what they have.

The PAX East FGC panel is live on YouTube!

MAHVEL BAYBEE

On FunkyP is SSF4 singles if Marvel isn't your cup of tea.

9,000 viewers just saw the first Perfect! of the Curleh Mustache Battle Royal at Final Round Day 1

Hype!

What the hell did they do to the Twitch Video player. The new one was perfect, it filled the screen. Now they've flattened it, and put black bars at the side. Guess I'll just have to full screen it.

@thegoldencat7: Just noticed that Black bars on the side just now. Weird.

Salty tweets incoming from FChamp bitching about shit he forgets are in the game and getting blown up for it.

AGE Romance takes KOF on Day 2, I love watching KOF.

More than all of NorCal and SoCal getting bopped by Chris G.

The best Street Fighter X Tekken set I have ever seen.

Spooky - March 31st, 2013

KN|CORN Sethlololololol (Law, Kuma) wins SFxT ver.2013 against Infiltration (Rolento, Jin) in the final round of the reset bracket after the EVO and Capcom 25th champion almost made it all the way from Losers Bracket.

GGeeeeeeeeeeeee