The king is dead! Long live the king!

http://combobreaker.org/

Combo Breaker FGC on Twitter

Combo Breaker Preview!

Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament was one of my favourite events of the fighting game community calendar, I covered it in blog form for the past 3 years when Adam 'Keits' Heart (UFGT director, creator of Divekick, Iron Galaxy staffer) unleashed Divekick upon the world. Sadly he retired it last year, but his 2nd in command Richard Thiher is stepping up to start Combo Breaker, Chicago's brand new major. Thiher has got some back up with a large list of people, plus Gaming Generations and CyberPower Systems!

So what will the inaugural Combo Breaker feature? Thankfully as seen in the trailer above, the mystery game tournament (featuring video games and who knows what else?) returns as well as retro game tournaments, exciting!

Recently it's been revealed that Skullgirls has been upgraded to main stage status for this event. You remember Skullgirls right? When we last heard about that game it almost made a previous EVO based off of a massive donation drive which saw it defeated by Super Smash Bros. Melee (and we've all seen how well that game has done for itself since).

Skullgirls didn't completely fade away though, it's made headlines for both its developer Lab Zero Games breaking ground in showing the average gamer just how much DLC costs to make and most recently became the 1st fighting game to make use of (friend of Giant Bomb) Naughty Dog's own John "Cowboy" Bellomy's programming wizardry to make PS3 sticks compatible with the PS4 version of the game.

Here's the reasoning from the man in charge:

• Friday & Saturday Night Character Auctions - MKX, USFIV, SSB Wii-U & UMvC3

• The LANGZONE will descend upon Combo Breaker, fresh from his week in San Francisco for Giant Bomb's Big Live LIVE Show: Live! this Wednesday Dave Lang will be bringing a full crew of Iron Galaxy staffers to show their wares and support the event.
• An all-star cast of commentators including Seth Killian!
• Capcom has given the USFIV tournament at CB 2015 ranking event status for the Capcom Pro Tour on the way to the Capcom Cup! No doubt if it's a great success this year they'll give it premier event status next year!
• Combo Breaker also has qualifying status for the Killer Instinct World Cup

Rules updates

Mortal Kombat X - Jason Voorhees is legal

Also:

In Mortal Kombat X Kung Lao has an abusable meter gain bug. Due to the abusable nature of this bug, all Kung Lao matches at Combo Breaker will be refereed. Referees are instructed to enforce a tournament wide ban on wake-up teleport in all 3 of Kung Lao’s variations, and wake-up hat toss in the non-buzzsaw variations.

If you use either of these techniques, you will be issued a warning on the spot. If you do it again, you will be disqualified from tournament play on the spot. This warning will follow you for the duration of the tournament, it is not on a per-match basis.

We apologize for the inconvenience this causes Kung Lao players, but we believe it is in the best interest of the tournament. Instead of a tournament wide ban on Kung Lao 4 days before the tournament, this ruling allows players to play their character in some capacity.

Source - http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1smaljt

Killer Instinct - Cinder is legal

Guilty Gear Xrd - will be played on the 1.1 version

Combo Breaker will be monitoring these games for game breaking glitches and such and has said that it reserves the right to change rules on a game by game basis.

Streams and schedule

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp

http://www.twitch.tv/bgcallisto

http://www.twitch.tv/gallopingghostarcade

http://www.twitch.tv/eg_jwong

News

M.Bison Street Fighter V gameplay trailer

The leader of Shadaloo and creator of Psycho Power returns! Check out his completely revamped movelist!

Ultimate Fight Final Fantasy XIV fighting game experiment looks amazing

I've always said a Final Fantasy/2D fighting game crossover would be a good idea. Swap the super bar for limit break, have the melee characters be rushdown and the ranged and mage characters be zoning, piece of cake (note: not a piece of cake at all, but lots of potential)!

This Final Fantasy XIV fighting game mock-up, without going into too much detail because spoilers, is based on a boss battle from FFXIV and has a lengthy ending Ultimate Finish that rivals MKX's cut-scenes in sheer length. Check it out!

Jason Voorhees MKX DLC dated as May 5th

We've yet to see Jason in action but his Mortal Kombat debut isn't far away. Will he release in time for EVO 2015? The answer is definitely maybe!

Kombat Pack owners will get him 1st, with non-Kombat Pack owners being able to buy him separately a week later. You can also try him before buying if you're on the fence. And there's horror themed costumes for Ermac, Reptile and Mileena too!

New Tekken 7 character - Gigas!

This new character is quite blatantly a powerhouse character, but how much will Gigas differ from Jack and Marduk? Time will tell. But what I can tell you is that there's a specific reason why he's fighting Dragunov in his debut trailer...

That's right, Gigas is a Russian designed, devil gene powered bio-monster... thing.

Also this tweet from @dochaus made me laugh

UPDATE 2: $10,000 of $100,000 going towards KI at Combo Breaker! UPDATE: $100,000 of sales going to tournament pots ($50,000 of which going to KI @ EVO 2015) / Original story: Cinder's looking pretty cool and... who's that?

May 13th UPDATE:

After successfully making $100,000 in 3 short days, $75,000 of the $100,000 has been allocated. $50,000 is going to EVO 2015's top 8, $15,000 is going to CEO 2015's top 8 and $10,000 is going to Combo Breaker's top 8. This is great news for KI players, their game is definitely keeping up with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat's continuing tournament pot increases!

April 30th UPDATE:

Original story:

Nice little monologue from Cinder that follows on the little trailer story Iron Galaxy have going on. And of course we finally get to see the big bad, Aria, who's been hinted at for a while now. Most notably season 1's secret ending

Thanks for reading and happy watching!

If you haven't gotten your fill of fighting game tournaments make sure to check out the archives for a ton of events that's been happening recently including the ESL MKX Fatal 4 tournament and North West Majors 7!

Oh yeah shit... I forgot UFGT isn't a thing anymore.

Auction tournament is one of the few times I enjoy watching Marvel, because the teams are nutty and not the same 4-5 BS teams/at least Vergil and/or Doom.

Is Cinder Spider Man? I wouldn't have expected his personality to have so much 'tude in it. I'm happy for the guys at Lab Zero that Skullgirls finally got some main stage spotlight, the amount of registrations should make things interesting. We could see a lot of new killers that we weren't aware of before.

So sad that I can't make Combo Breaker. UFGT X was so much fun! I'm definitely going to Combo Breaker 2016.

:( It'll be missed, but I'm sure Combo Breaker will do it justice!

Agreed, hoping for some Sentinel comebacks!

I haven't seen a whole lot of the DLC characters like Big Band so I'm looking forward to it.

Well at least one of us made it to a UFGT event!

Have you heard anything on the state of BBCP:Extend? I've seen a few streamers playing JP copies of it, but not a lot of news.

The recent Skullgirls news makes me think I should try playing it again, especially with a new not-Skullgirl character released.

Let's hope someone burglarising Markman's car won't impede Tekken 7 being available at Combo Breaker.

@l1ghtn1n: All they need now is a PC release...

Link to the article: http://shoryuken.com/2015/04/28/microsoft-to-provide-a-possible-50000-to-evo-2015s-killer-instinct-prize-pool-support-other-tournaments-with-community-fundraiser/

Glad for the competitive scene but, honestly, I'd rather have a PC version so I could actually play the game. Actually wait I hate the combo system so nevermind. Glad for the competitive scene.

Kind of wish they'd spread out the prize pool a bit. Dumping 50K on Evo alone seems a bit extreme for a game like KI. Especially since 1 person seems to be consistently beating everyone else at it.

I'll add the KI news to the OP and share an opinion tomorrow once the BLLSL madness has calmed down.

I have registered for ComboBreaker

Nice! Let us know how it goes, it's looking like a fun event!

I am going to take photos and mostly look at the indie stuff and play in the 24/7 arcade, I did register for the DiveKick tournament. I'll be cheering on my friends are are way more into fighting games than I.

Also want to meet Ed Boon and enter the Lang Zone.

Skullgirls for the PS4/Vita is gonna have extra stuff like a fully voiced story mode, combo trials with practical BnBs, and challenges. They are looking into adding that stuff into the PC version as DLC. Exciting stuff.

Also, from the beta I can confirm that Robo Fortune is hella Mahvel.

Put me in the group that would like a PC version of Killer Instinct. All the Season 2 characters look really fun to play.

I wish they would finally put out KI on PC. It is one of the only Xbone exclusives that I want. Played a bit at a friends place, just messed around in versus without actually looking into the mechanics, and I had a ton of fun.

Next upcoming game I am hyped for is USFIV for PS4. I swear only like 20 people in my area play on PC, and they seem to play constantly. So while I don't mind getting bodied in SF, getting bodied by the same dudes over and over gets old. The low price point of the PS4 version should bring in a decent amount of players, especially with it seeming that the PS4 will be the main fighting game system this generation. Heard on the latest Capcom Pro Talk that they are gonna be using the PS4 version at EVO this year, which gives me a ton of faith in that version.

@l1ghtn1n: Best of all is that it is all crossplay with the Sony products. You can play with PS4 and PS3 people with the Vita version. I am very surprised that Sony gave them the go-ahead for that sort of stuff.

Do you guys think I should go to EVO? MKX is the first game where I feel like it has enough depth to be worthy of me putting enough effort forth to be really good at it while simultaneously also already having a lot of innate skill at the game from previous games and just playing a lot of fighting games in general over the past few years. I was good at Injustice but let's face it Injustice was broken as fuck and a lot of being good at it was just knowing how to exploit the systems, even though I didn't play the busted characters I still was abusing the systems like everyone else. MK is just a damn solid game though problems may arise eventually. I think Sonic Fox has like a 60% chance of winning EVO and PL probably has like a 20-25% chance, I probably have as good of a chance as anyone out of the remaining 15% (which is probably like 50-60 different people or so) assuming I put an equivalent amount of work into the game. I'm sure JWong could take a month off streaming and become an absolute monster at the game but obviously that's not going to happen when he's getting 8-10k viewers every day. Realistically it's not going to fit into my schedule but an interesting thing to ponder. Would just be fun to meet all those sillies.

Edit: Breaking down the silly maths here for you if 60 people have a 15% chance cumulatively then each individual has a 0.25% chance of winning, or 1/400; there might be 800 people that play MKX at EVO so that's roughly twice as likely as just being a random entrant.

@fredchuckdave: I'll be going, not to enter anything, but just to attend. We could hang. You could body me in casuals.

@fredchuckdave: If I was in the area, or able to get there cheaply, I would totally go even without entering any tournaments. If you feel like you would do decently at a game then hey the worst thing that happens is you get blown up twice early. I would go just to watch and play casuals.

@zella: I'm in Michigan (land of the non existent FGC) so probably a reasonably expensive trip, though if I somehow managed to get top 8 that would likely compensate in terms of publicity and so on. I'm pretty sure Vegas trips can be relatively cheap if planned correctly though. Going out early would just depend on pool luck I imagine, though there's a handful of characters that I don't get much practice against that could be pretty scary.

@fredchuckdave:

If you can go, go. If it didn't cost me thousands upon thousands of euros I don't have I would go as well. MKX is a new game too so there will be plenty of people with very little experience.

Not to mention all the hype of just being there. Biggest prize pools ever for multiple games, all the international killers attending. Should be an amazing trip.

(And of course I'm still hoping for a @unastrike, @jeff and @da5id EVO2K15 team-up)

OP updated with the Community Feud Ken Lobb video!

Since there is still a decent amount of time between now and Combo Breaker I'm going to promote some other FGC/USFIV events happening in the meantime.

• First up we have KVO x TSB 2015

Where:

Osaka, Japan

When:

May 2-4, 2015

Games:

Arcana Heart 3 LOVE MAX!!!!!

AquaPazza

BlazBlue Chronophantasma

Dengeki Bunko FIGHTING CLIMAX

Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-

Killer Instinct (Side event)

Koihime†Enbu

Nurarihyon no Mago -Hyakki Ryouran Taisen- (Side event)

Persona 4 The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Ultra Street Fighter IV

Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late

Info:

A whole bunch of "anime games" are being played at this event but also some USFIV, UMVC3 and apparently even some KI.

The prizes are mostly tickets to other events. E.g. The winners of SSBWiiU, Persona 4 Ultimax, and Xrd are getting tickets to Evo2K15 and the winner of USFIV is getting a ticket to the Capcup Asia finals. This is also a CapCup qualifier event so there are points to be earned.

Quite a few top players are vying for these prizes, you will be able to see the likes of Bonchan, Kazunoko, Haitani, Tokido, Kindevu, KojiKOG, Reiketsu, KOK, Misse, Eita, Nishikin, Itabashi Zangief, Pepeday and many more.

The only problem is that since this takes place in Japan the streaming hours can be an issue. USFIV is supposed to start on Monday May 4 at 09:30 local time on the usual Capcom Fighters stream. To help everyone calculate the correct local time I have construed this handy link: http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?qm=1&lid=1853909,100,5128581,5368361&h=1853909&date=2015-5-4&sln=9.5-10

Streams, brackets and results:

http://shoryuken.com/2015/05/02/kvo-x-tsb-2015-day-1-streaming-live-from-osaka-japan/

http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2015/may/01/kvo-live-stream-ft-bonchan-kazunoko-tokido-pepeday-haitani-itabashi-zangief-kojikog-nishikin-dogura-kindevu-misse-eita-rf-kyoku-and-more/

http://www.teamstickbug.com/ksb2015/ksb2015-brackets/

• The second pre-Combo Breaker event I would like to highlight is Texas Showdown.

Where:

Houston, Texas

When:

May 8-10, 2015

Schedule:

https://txshowdown.com/Home/Schedule

Games:

Ultra Street Fighter IV

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Mortal Kombat X

Guilty Gear Xrd

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

Killer Instinct

+ free play Tekken 7

Info:

USFIV is a CapCup ranking event.

KI is a KI World Cup qualifier.

Confirmed players: Tampa Bison, 801 Strider, K-Brad, Nuckledu, Hamad, Justin Wong, Air, Brolylegs, CDjr,

~More info to come.~

Bonus:

PandaxGaming is hosting a fight card called Ultra Fight Night. Currently announced matches are:

Tampa Bison vs 801 Strider

Chaotix vs K-Brad

Air vs Brolylegs

Nuckledu vs Nashfan

Hamad vs Justin Wong

@hassun: So if CDJr is confirmed does that mean Sonicfox is confirmed?

@fredchuckdave: Haven't heard anything about him going. Saw him on Arturo Sanchez' stream yesterday though.

As for Texas Showdown, Here's an interview with Calipower himself: http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-level-up-s-alex-valle

@hassun: Valle feeling himself.

@fredchuckdave: Always.

I've been really hankering to watch that Bang the Machine documentary lately. Shame I will probably never get the opportunity.

@starvinggamer Pretty good D'Vorah on twitch.tv/torontotoptiers atm.

The USFIV tournament at KVO x TSB 2015 has been delayed until after the tournament because of technical issues.

On the bright side Capcom Fighters is now streaming the event.

Bracket: http://challonge.com/KSB2015_USF4

Edit: Due to time constraints some matches are being played off-screen. These matches are being recorded however, and will be uploaded at https://www.youtube.com/user/GameStartAsia/videos

Congratulations to Nemo for securing a place in the CPT Asia Finals and earning 128 CapCup points!

Congrats to Iron Galaxy on raising the $100,000 community fund for tournament prize money in just 3 short days!

@flstyle: Added link: http://www.microsoftstudiosblog.com/killer-instinct-community-fund-huge-announcement/

This now gives KI the same pot bonus as USFIV at Evo2K15. That's pretty damn insane considering how much tougher the competition for USFIV is.

Comparison:

Evo2K14 entrants for USFIV: 1979

Evo2K14 entrants for KI: 338

It seems like they reused a bunch of Kotal Kahn stuff for Jason. Feels pretty low-rent. That being said he seems to have fun gimmicks like super armour and returning from the dead.

I still think guest characters are terrible in general but we'll see how he plays.

It's good they promised to work on the problematic online mode and PC version though.

Major announcement concerning SoCal Regionals: http://www.levelup-series.com/socal-regionals-2015-catching-up-prelude-and-the-main-event/

Tl;dr version:

• SoCal Regionals is now planned for October 9-11, 2015 at the Ontario Convention Center.
• There will also be SoCal Regionals Prelude I and II.
• Prelude I will take place on June 6 at the UCI Student Center (where SoCal Regionals used to take place). Games: Ultra Street Fighter IV, Mortal Kombat X, Guilty Gear Xrd, and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. Player cap per game: 128.
• Prelude II has a tentative August date and the game lineup may change depending on community feedback. It will also have a player cap of 128 per game and will probably also take place at the UCI Student Center.

Also, it probably doesn't come as a surprise but Jason Voorhees is banned at Combo Breaker.

Edit: Jason is now allowed at Combo Breaker.

Jason's amazing walk/dash speed and jump height are pretty comical.

I'm so hyped for SCR in 5 months, oh man.

Sucks to hear about SCR's further delay but in the grand scheme of things it shouldn't affect its standing in the Capcom Pro Tour, that several month gap between EVO and Capcom Cup should hopefully give anyone on the fence about picking and choosing pre-EVO tourneys to attend one more big major that they won't have to miss.

Also:

Much respect for shutting down any bickering about one game vs. another. I for one am really excited to see MKX getting top billing at CB and 2nd to last at CEO too.

While the whole fighting game vs fighting game and this or that game is not a fighting game will always be completely and utterly stupid I'm not sure Rick worded it very well. They are not releasing entrant numbers and saying "because the game is new & has the registrants to deserve it" makes it sound like MKX does not actually have more entrants than USFIV. Either say it has more entrants and that's why it's the final game or say it's the final game because it's new or because fuck you that's why. Better to not be wishy-washy about it.

@flstyle: Time to add that Combo Breaker schedule to the OP.

@l1ghtn1n: Hide the anime girls! Alisa never stood a chance.

Spoilers: He's just a guest character from Bloodborne.

@l1ghtn1n: Oh sweet, it's the new Warframe.

Texas Showdown is officially a go. You can expect most of UMVC3 (including exhibition matches) and most of the air dasher/anime games today!

http://www.twitch.tv/leveluplive (UMVC3)

http://www.twitch.tv/pandaxgaming (anime/air dasher/UMVC3 exhibitions)

http://www.twitch.tv/BeastChan23 (bonus/misc stream)

Brackets: http://txshowdown.challonge.com/

@l1ghtn1n: Further proving my point that Yoshimitsu is the most overdesigned piece of garbage in fighting games.