It's time once again for the 2nd longest running FGC tournament event in existence, Final Round 17! In addition to Final Round being a Capcom ProTour event (more on that before) Yoshinori Ono has tweeted Capcom's intention to announce something Ultra Street Fighter IV related at the event. With Ultra Street Fighter IV's Edition Selection announcement this is likely going to be the 5th character announcement. I hope it's not underwhelming. It's going to be underwhelming isn't it?

FR is where the Curleh Mustache Battle Royale debuted, one of the most exciting 5 v5 UMvC3 tournaments ever. CMBR2 actually took place at the end of 2013 at North East Championships, so whether the Curleh branding is attached to FR's 5v5 again this year I'm not sure.

Tekken fans! Are you sad that Tekken Tag 2 has not been picked up for EVO 2014? Well stay tuned this weekend because Final Round is the home of Tekken and will feature the best matches you're likely to see this year! Tekken will also feature a 5v5 tournament.

Schedule

Stream Links - http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky, http://www.twitch.tv/funkyp, http://www.twitch.tv/kombatnetwork

Friday, March 14, 2014 - Start Time: 2:00 PM

Curleh Mustache Battle Royal (360)

Tekken Tag 5v5 (PS3)

Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate Singles (PS3)

Street Fighter x Tekken Singles (360)

Mortal Kombat 9 Singles (360)

King of Fighters XIII Singles (PS3)

Soul Calibur V Singles (PS3)

Saturday, March 15, 2014 - Start Time: 10:00 AM

Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition v. 2012 Singles (360)

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Singles (PS3)

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Singles (360)

Injustice: Gods Among Us Singles (360)

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Singles (PS3)

Killer Instinct Singles (XB1)

Sunday, March 16, 2014 - Start Time: 11:00 AM

Top 8/16 Streaming Schedule

FunkyP:

11:00-01:00 - BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Top 8

01:00-04:00 - Killer Instinct Top 16

Team Sp00ky:

11:00-01:00 - Injustice: Gods Among Us Top 8

01:00-04:00 - Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Top 8

04:00-06:00 - Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Top 8

07:00-12:00 - Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition v. 2012 Top 16

News

Capcom announces the Capcom ProTour

Leading up to the Capcom Cup in December, Capcom will partner with Twitch, tournament events and conventions alike to form the Capcom ProTour. The ProTour will assign seeding points to specific Super Street Fighter IV: AE 2012 and eventually Ultra Street Fighter IV tournament results.

Premier refers to the tournament events that form the upper tier of FGC events such as EVO, Ranking events refers to conventions such as E3. More events and Online tournaments are said to be named in the future.

Current Premier Tier events (The winners of these events gain automatic qualification for the Capcom Cup and give out Premier ranking points with the exception of EVO) -

• Final Round (Atlanta, GA, USA) – March 14~16
• Norcal Regionals (Sacramento, CA, USA) – April 18~20
• South East Asia Majors (Singapore) – June 20~22
• Community Effort Orlando (Orlando, FL, USA) – June 27~29
• Evolution Championship Series (Las Vegas, NV, USA) – July 11~13
• The Fall Classic (Raleigh, NC, USA) – October 10~12
• Dreamhack Winter* (Jönköping, Sweden ) – November 27~30

Current Ranking Tier events -

• PAX East (Boston, MA, USA) – April 11~13
• E3 (Los Angeles, CA, USA) – June 11~12
• San Diego Comic-Con (San Diego, CA, USA) – July 24~27

Capcom is once again working hard for the community with a limited budget to give a good show, complete with sending out their own streaming team including Lord Haunts. I personally hope the November North-West England convention event PlayExpo is included again because I had a lot of fun and definitely intend on going again whether the fighting game tournaments are there or not.

Iron Galaxy announces Divekick: Addition Edition

This year Final Round takes place Mid-March whereas PAX East has slipped to April, so there's no amazing Divekick convention coverage to show you this year. But what we have in its place is a new version of Divekick, balanced, retooled and free for current owners. PS4 and XBox One owners will not have to buy two versions of Divekick because Divekick: AE is the only version of the game releasing for those consoles.

The biggest change character-wise is The Baz, who's dead.

The Baz

The Baz has essentially been removed from the game and replaced by New Baz. Think of him as a brand new character. Below, you’ll read about how The Baz transformed into New Baz.

Mighty Swing and Bazkousen have been swapped. Mighty Swing is now his normal kick button action and builds meter. Bazkousen is now his air special and costs meter.

The Baz can only use two mighty swings per jump.

Bazkousen now starts at a 40 degree angle, rotates 15% faster, and maxes out at a 105% degree angle

Baz’s Kickfactor is no longer invincible.

Kickfactor lasts the full 8-second duration and has speed bonus of 30%.

The Baz jumps higher. He also jumps farther and higher when using kickback.

Hit this link to watch the full show in which Dave Lang and Keits debuted the game. Keep an eyes out for more Divekick characters and stages to be announced for Divekick: AE!

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax gains momentum with its story reveal

A few days after the events of Persona 4 Arena a Red Fog descends upon Inaba. Mitsuru, Akihiko and Aigis have been captured and displayed on the midnight channel, which announces a new tournament. Each of the Investigation Team have imposter Shadow versions of themselves to deal with while Charlie Tunoku/Yu Narukami/Souji Seta has an enemy of his own to defeat. Plus the return of Persona 4 antagonist, Adachi!

This new enemy, Sho Minazuki, has several resemblances to Persona 4 minor characters like Old Man Daidara, the anti-shadow weapons Aigis and Labrys and Yu himself. There's also two versions of him playable, a bratty non-persona version and a cold, calculating persona version. Whether these are two different beings or a storyline change remains to be seen.

P4AU is billed as the final chapter to the Persona 4 and 3 stories, does this mean there won't be anymore Persona fighting games? Will these characters never be seen in Persona 5? I don't think either of those is likely, but they certainly won't be the main cast anymore.

Ultra Street Fighter IV Edition Selection looks amazing

If this isn't taken on as a tournament or at least used for exhibitions at events I'll be really disappointed, there's so much potential for seeing all these different versions of characters squaring off against each other. Show me how powerful Vanilla Sagat and AE Yun truly are.

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma looks beautiful

I never really paid much attention to fighting game visuals until KOF XIII took EVO 2012 by storm. Now I love watching it in HD in addition to the great matches and commentators, be it the EVO commentators or some hype gent speaking Spanish.

Now that BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma is at EVO 2014 this year I thought to at least keep up with it and see what its going to be like. You should too!

Thanks for reading

Hope to see you all tuning in to Final Round 17 this weekend!

Really excited for Final Round. Some interesting drama transpired two weeks ago at SCR on the Injustice front, so I'll be curious to see if that plays out any further this weekend.

Haven't been following the Divekick news, really, so I'm without context on The Baz's situation. Why such an overhaul?

Iron Galaxy said about The Baz:

• His lighting attacks were against the spirit of Divekick
• Baz players were unfairly beating new players
• Baz players found it too hard to win at the highest level

So now he divekicks normally and is a much better character for it.

Great writeup @flstyle. If Dark Souls doesn't arrive the 14th (and I doubt it will) I'll know exactly how to keep myself busy with some sweet Final Round streams. The Divekick AE reveal should be great fun as well.

@FLStyle The latest trailer for Final Round says that there will indeed by another Curleh Battle Royale installment.

Oh?

Anyway, the fifth character probably will be underwhelming. How could it not be after taking 8 months to announce a character that most people probably won't even be familiar with if they haven't been in a fighting game before. I'm still excited though! And maybe a little mad at myself for being excited.

Smart move by Capcom dropping that Edition Select megaton right before the 5th character is revealed.

Also the Capcom Pro Tour is an awesome idea, glad they're going through with this.

Get hype for 5th character and Persona.

If you happen to be in the UK on the weekend consider coming along to Hypespotting. I'll be there rocking it with the VS crew - & I'm sure there will be FR streams in the evenings as the events synced up last year and the same happened.

Once again solid OP FLStyle.

Oh fuck I forgot FR was this week! 0_o Thanks @flstyle!

For those interested, the teams for the Curleh Mustache Battle Royale have been revealed http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2014/mar/10/monster-lineup-curleh-mustache-battle-royale-3-friday-final-round-ft-justin-wong-chrisg-yipes-fchamp-flocker-more-predict-winning-team/

Jeez, some killers there. Team Cali and NY are particularly stacked.

Good news all around, then! Really excited for Final Round, especially with TTT2 not being at EVO this year, which means that the matches there will pretty much b the biggest fix of TTT2 tournament stuff I'm gonna get all year.

The long and short of it:

The day before Injustice's pool play had begun, a member of the Injustice community leaked an exploit one of the characters--Sinestro--could abuse to protect himself from nearly all rushdown tactics. In layman's terms--Injustice allows you to spend a single bar of meter on something called a pushblock. You would, ideally, use a pushblock if you'd been pinned into a corner and didn't have normal attacks with faster animations than your aggressor's. A pushblock not only blocks an attack, but creates a large gap of separation between the two players. Both players have the same recovery frames from a pushblock, which means the pushblocker can't get an unfair attack on the pushblockee (the original aggressor).

Sinestro, it turns out, has a character-specific trait ability that ignores this mechanic, a little floating sentry bubble that shoots up to three lasers. With his trait active, Sinestro could pushblock any non-projectile attack, any attempt at a combo or a string of melees, and fire one of his trait lasers during his opponent's (and his own) pushblock recovery frames. The laser never misses after a pushblock, and it knocked the opponent airborne, after which Sinestro's pushblock recovery frames would be expired and he could advance on his own.

Basically, if you tried to move in on Sinestro, he got a free combo. And if you ask, "why not just spam him with projectiles?" The answer is that Sinestro is one of the two best zoning characters in the game. He can out-projectile nearly everyone.

After SCR, Netherrealm responded quickly. They hotfixed the pushblock exploit behind the scenes without announcing they were doing so. But they didn't remove the exploit. Instead, the fix made any combo that follows directly from a pushblock do 0% damage.

Here's the drama: several characters had pushblock setups. That is, other characters in the game utilized pre-placed traps in conjunction with pushblocks to establish their offense. Lex Luthor, for instance, has a mine projectile that activates when his opponent steps on it. Pro-level players aren't going to fall for that, of course, so high-level Lex players preempt opponents by throwing down mines early, then pushblocking afterward, knocking enemies into the traps. This is a huge part of that character's arsenal, and he lacks other reliable offensive options.

Netherrealm's hotfix was global. Any combo that incorporates a pushblock is affected. Though they've averted a potentially game-breaking Sinestro crisis, Netherrealm inadvertently nerfed a number of characters who otherwise needed their pushblock setups to be viable on the biggest stages, against the game's better toolsets.

Final Round will be the first post-hotfix tournament for Injustice, and features a couple of players who've enjoyed high level success with some of these pushblock-reliant characters. So it remains to be seen what the ultimate ripple-effect will be on the community.

Oh, god. I've talked for way too long about this.

@historyinrust:

Thanks for summarizing that. As someone who used to play Injustice (terribly) and followed the competitive scene for a little while, I find that stuff fascinating.

@russman588: Not a problem. I'm right there with you. Not especially good at the game myself, but I am simply obsessed with it and the way it works.

@historyinrust: Ah, right! Thanks for the great summary. I only just started playing Injustice a couple of weeks ago, but I'm really getting in to it. I did watch enough of Injustice at SCR to hear them mentioning Sinestro's glitch and that they were going to allow it, but I wasn't aware of the hotfix. Not a good situation!

@historyinrust: Holy fuck, makes me glad I'm not a fan of NRS games. What an incredibly shitty thing to do to their players.

@historyinrustDaaaaamn. I'm not a fan of Injustice, but goddammit that's incredible. This is probably going to be a VERY interesting tournament for I:GAU.

@starvinggamer: Unfortunately, NRS hasn't come out to comment on the hotfix. The token idea at present is that the move was simply a stop-gap measure until something more permanent and fairly balanced could be patched in.

But, yeah. A bummer for the folks whose characters got slammed as a result of this.

@steamrickroller: You're right. Despite all this craziness in the last few weeks, Injustice is seeing a second renaissance of balance and parity. More and more players have begun to pick the game up, and player caps at major tournaments continue to make room for an ever-increasing population. And, luckily, it's not all Superman and Batman. Players are unveiling crazy tech with the more obscure characters each week. It's a blast to watch.

News of Melee joining EVO and MLG has just come out.

@fluxwavez: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH

Just...fuck yeah. I loved the Melee singles action at EVO last year, so this is absolutely fantastic news, as far as I'm concerned. ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN! :D

I was watching the esports programme Live on Three with djWHEAT earlier and they were conducting interviews/phone-ins about the Melee news.

• It seems that up until the cease and desist last year Nintendo had no idea that the competitive Smash communities for 64, Melee and Brawl existed
• Nintendo apparently now "gets it and gets the community" and have been in regular contact with EVO and MLG officials since late 2013 about their credentials and legitimacy for showcasing Melee
• Some callers/live-stream chatters were curious about how much support the Smash scene will still get once Nintendo has used EVO and MLG to advertise Smash Bros. Wii U and eventually ship it
• No-one seemed concerned about Nintendo's motivations and were simply happy for the acknowledgement of their scene and support for future tournaments

Nintendo is fine with it but I wonder how Masahiro Sakurai feels about it. I remember somewhere that he hated people that played it competitively.

What time zone are those start times for?

@alkusanagi: EST

IT'S BEGUN! :D

Curleh Mustache begins! 5v5 UMvC3 - http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

DOA5U! - http://www.twitch.tv/funkyp

The King of Fighters XIII - http://www.twitch.tv/sixfortyfive

http://www.twitch.tv/team/fgcpros is your destination for everything FGC streams

Ray Ray pls ;_;

Whoever does the promotional material for this tournament has a turgid hard on for drop shadow... gawd damn!

http://www.twitch.tv/capcomfighters - Street Fighter

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky - Tekken Tag 2

http://www.twitch.tv/sixfortyfive - BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma

UMvC3, KI, Injustice, Killer Instinct and more will be on throughout the day

http://www.twitch.tv/kombatnetwork - Injustice

So disappointed right now, god DAMN.

So many salty SF fans! As a Cammy player, I love it!

Congrats to Final Round 17, the new record holder for the most viewed non-EVO stream in fighting games, becoming the 2nd event behind EVO to break the 50k viewers barrier.

It was a damn good event. Greatly enjoyed Tekken Tag and congrats to Ryan Hart as well.

Well, due to personal shit I ended up missing most of Saturday and all of Sunday. What did I miss out on?

Oh man that finals runback with JDCR and El Negro was pretty fucking great.

The Street Fighter and Tekken Tag 2 top 16s yesterday are must watches.

Do you need to pay a Sub for Street Fighter? Could not find the archive for it on Capcom Fighters twitch page.

@dandead: Oh no, I remember that being a thing! Someone might have uploaded it to Youtube, try that I guess.

Yeah, you need a sub to watch Capcom Fighters archives, which is pretty scummy.

The Capcom Fighters archive (For SFIV) is indeed behind a paywall but you can find the top matches on YouTube if you look hard enough. The TeamSpooky stream is free and the individual matches are also on YouTube.

I very much recommend The Tekken Tag top 16 / top 8.

Good memories, FR17 was awesome!