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!