Capcom Cup 2014!

Hello and welcome to my final fighting game tournament event blog of 2014! We've enjoyed another year of quality fighting game tournament matches and now is the final big event, the Capcom Cup! Our own Jason Oestreicher will be at the event!

What is the Capcom Cup?

Capcom USA have teamed up with the biggest fighting game tournament events of the fighting game community to stream each Ultra Street Fighter IV tournament via their official channel and to hand out qualifying spots and seeding points (AKA The Capcom Pro Tour) to a 16-man tournament, ran by Capcom which will take place this Saturday. These events included but were not limited to:

• 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
• VSFighting 4 (Birmingham, UK) – August 23~24
• The Fall Classic (Raleigh, NC, USA) – October 10~12
• Taito Arcade Nationals (Singles) (Tokyo, Japan) – October 11
• Capcom Pro Tour Asia Series: Finals (Singapore) – October 25~26
• Dreamhack Winter (Jönköping, Sweden ) – November 27~30

As well as traditional video game events like E3 and PAX.

Who are the 16 competitors?

USA players -

• Eduardo Perez – EG|PR Balrog - Balrog (Boxer)
• Darryl Lewis – SnakeEyez - Zangief
• Justin Wong – EG|Justin Wong - Rufus
• Ricky Ortiz – EG|Ricky Ortiz - Rufus
• Du Dang – NuckleDu - Guile

Japan players -

• Daigo Umehara – MCZ|Daigo - Evil Ryu
• Masato Takahashi – Bonchan - Sagat
• Keita Ai – RZR|Fuudo - Fei Long
• Yusuke Momochi – EG|Momochi - Ken
• Hiroshi Nishikido – Nishikin - Blanka

Rest of the world -

• Ryan Hart – DIG|Prodigal Son (UK) - Sagat
• Seonwoo Lee – Infiltration (South Korea) - Akuma
• Olivier Hay – MD|Luffy (France) - Rose
• Valentin Petit – GL|Valmaster (France) - Chun-Li
• Kun Xian Ho – RZR|Xian (Singapore) - Gen
• Eric Moreira Silva – CNB|ChuChu (Brazil) - Sakura

Who is fighting who in the 1st round?

• MD|Luffy vs Nishikin
• EG|PR Balrog vs EG|Ricky Ortiz
• SnakeEyez vs EG|Momochi
• DIG|Prodigal Son vs CRS|NuckleDu
• Bonchan vs RZR|Fuudo
• Infiltration vs CNB|ChuChu
• RZR|Xian vs GL|Valmaster
• EG|Justin Wong vs MCZ|Daigo Umehara

That's right, Justin vs. Daigo in the 1st round, that's the level of competition we're talking about here folks!

Where and when can I watch this?

http://www.twitch.tv/capcomfighters - maybe even a certain video game website's chat?

This Saturday, December 13th. Live from The Warfield, San Francisco.

Schedule All times PST (What time is that for me?)

Capcom Cup has also been confirmed as the site of the first ever Street Fighter V match, viewable by people watching the event.

News

Street Fighter V analysis

So by now you know that Street Fighter V was leaked and then officially confirmed this weekend!

Maximilian provides the deepest analysis yet about the trailer we've seen:

• No OTGs (yet)? - You may have heard the term OTG (off the ground, seen commonly in UMvC3) on this week's bombcast, when Jason was talking about attacks by Chun-Li. But as explained by Max in his analysis, it looks less like an OTG attack, hitting an otherwise grounded opponent back in the air, and more like the original aerial attack by Chun-Li had Street Fighter X Tekken style ground bounce properties, allowing for an extra attack once Chun-Li landed.
• Elemental power-ups - I should've figured this one out myself! I was so fixated on the idea of Ryu using the Denjin Hadoken, not his regular Shinku Hadoken, as setting the time-line of Street Fighter V (after SFIV but before SFIII), I missed that it was part of an electrical power up. So had he not been powered up, he may still have done a Shinku Hadoken. Max's speculation regarding Chun-Li's water power up also seems like a good guess.

These power-ups giving characters access to multiple fireballs or extra properties like Ryu guard crushing Chun-Li seems like what the Street Fighter team may have been experimenting with in USFIV with the Omega Mode DLC. If I had to guess I'd also suggest that this is Street Fighter team's continuing efforts to create a system not unlike Street Fighter X Tekken's much debated Gems system. Hopefully this power-up system will be better received than the gems.

I look forward to getting more news as it arrives this weekend!

No platform-exclusive characters in MKX

In an interview with NetherRealm's Shaun Himmerick, he confirmed that there would be no platform-exclusives in MKX as Kratos was for the PS3 in the previous MK game. This may speak to NetherRealm's efforts to improve their standing in fighting game community tournaments, as Ed Boon himself learned on Twitter following MK 2011/9's release that Kratos was banned from tournaments. What it likely doesn't speak to is guest characters in general, as it's been known that out of the 4 DLC characters Kenshi, Rain, Skarlet and Freddy Krueger, Freddy was bought the most, so the Predator, an Alien or the Terminator as DLC shouldn't be ruled out just yet.

Tekken 7 looks awfully pretty, but people don't like the newly revealed character very much

Tekken 7 test events continue to happen in Japan, testing the new ultra combo-style system, changes to existing characters and getting to gripes with débutantes Claudio and Katarina but another recently unveiled character, Lucky Chloe, didn't go down that well with American Tekken fans.

The response to Chloe was so poor that Katsuhiro Harada addressed it on Twitter saying that he'll just hold her back from the American release and make her exclusive to the Asian and Europe releases of Tekken 7. From a series that has fighting robots, bears, pandas, kangaroos, dinosaurs, people with demonic powers and an old man who lacks the ability to stand up she doesn't bother me as much as she seems to bother so many others.

The Game Awards 2014 - Best Fighting Game

Always interesting to see is the mainstream perspective of fighting games. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U took the award for best fighting game in a category that didn't even include the all but announced Evo 2015 main stage tournament game, Guilty Gear Xrd.

Northeast Championship 15 results

This past weekend was the 15th annual NEC ran by Big E Gaming. Hit this Shoryuken link for a list of games and winners and be sure to check each respective Twitch channel's YouTube page for uploads of the best matches.

Thanks for reading!

That about does it from me, see you next year for Evo 2015 news and more tournaments! Follow me on the Twitter!