Dictator wins an SFIV major and Goro partially wins an MKX major. Good times.

With the way Tampa Bison is playing, we might even get 2 Dictator wins today! He is up against Guile in winners finals of course, so it won't be easy.

Hm maybe I'll start trying to play MK online again now that my internet isn't garbage, get bodied by everyone who has been playing nonstop since release. Try to do a bunch of Scorpion combos that no longer work. Lose free to every Predator/Tremor since I have no idea wtf they do.

Just knowing there won't be any major patches for a long time makes me so much more interested in the game. But nah, still got a lot of MGSV to play.

EDIT: Man, Jwong on commentary makes Twitch chat 1000% worse when Ricki is playing o_O

@starvinggamer: Hard to blame it on him since he's known her for such a long time when she identified as he. Twitch chat just being awful. Justin and K-Brad were great together during Marvel. I hope K-brad joins him soon again although Justin and Spooky is fine as well.

As for MKX, I don't think that game will ever run well on my current PC so I've let it go for now. I just hope SFV will work.

@hassun: Do they have any plans to fix that mess? I'd like to play it on the PC sometime (when everyone else has moved on).

@thunderslash: They worked on it and they improved it for some people but I'm not one of the lucky ones. I have an uncommon GPU setup (2 AMD GPUs) so you might have more luck if you have an Nvidia card or a more recent single card AMD setup.

Multiple stages are still just near-unplayable for me. Sky Temple, Kuatan Jungle, Destroyed City 2, Emperor's Courtyard when the statue falls in the bg and Jinsei Chamber 2 all cause medium to major slowdown.

@hassun: Snake Eyez is likely going to be 10th on the Capcup points list, meanwhile Nuckledu fails to make top 8.

@fredchuckdave: Very likely indeed. He now has 344 points.
Knuckledu has been in a slump for a while now although his 230+ points are probably enough already. Just like Dieminion's 228.

There are 9 more guaranteed spots to be earned (with the possibility of some of them being scrapped if the top 4 is already qualified).
There are also 5520 more points to be earned in 6 ranking events and 7 premier events (276 points per ranking event and 552 points for each premier event).

http://j.mp/1FGQKU4

• 2 more premier events and 2 more ranking events in North America.
• 1 premier event in South America.
• 2 more premier events (1 of them not offering CPT points) and 3 more ranking events in Europe.
• 1 premier event in the Middle East.
• 3 more premier events (1 of them not offering CPT points and only being open to Qualifier tournament winners) and 2 more ranking events (1 of them not offering CPT points) in East Asia.

Man my twitch died the second time Snake protected the Russian skies and I couldn't get it back but I guess he won? Good shit, especially since he was going to ERyu for the matchup recently. So hype for capcup.

@starvinggamer: Yarr he looked really solid and has been the closest to beating Infiltration lately. So just need Strider to take out Momochi and Daigo and we're good.

@fredchuckdave: Big Bird actually beat Infiltration in Dubai more recently. You can argue Infiltration might not have been as serious since it wasn't a CPT event but still. Big Bird is no joke.

In fact, they had played twice (1 & 2) before at Street Fridays (man that was a great tournament) so Infiltration's character choice definitely wasn't him just screwing around.

@hassun: I saw that match, I meant US players but fair enough. Big Bird is legit, so are various other Middle Eastern players; they just rarely show up anywhere else. Definitely need Damascus for commentary though.

Dieminion is the true Dubaigo.

I have to admit I'm surprised we're getting a KoF XIV considering the recent disappointing SNK Playmore news. Can't say I'm convinced by graphical style though.

IT CAN BE GOOD RIGHT? RIGHT???? #deaded

Man seriously I love throwing shade at NRS animators but KoFXIV looks super duper baaaaaad. Like, a real CG TV show from the early 2000s sort of vibe.

It reminds me of Maximum Impact and that is not a good thing.

I'm hoping this is just really early pre-alpha footage, but SNK does not have the best track record with polygonal fighting games.

As lackluster as the Maximum Impact games were, their most recent 3D fighter was even worse. Remember Samurai Shodown Sen?

Yeah...also the motion from the brief footage that we've seen from that teaser looks really stilted in comparison.

I was reading Facebook comments on it (which in hindsight I shouldn't have) and a few comments mentioned the fact that they're going the GG Xrd route and while I get what they were trying to say, in my head I was just thinking "THIS GAME'S ART STYLE HAS NOTHING ON XRD". Xrd looks fucking gorgeous and I thought the comparison was shitty. I tried to go down the comments if anybody was going to bring up Maximum Impact (which I probably shouldn't have done either) but nobody did. To be fair, I was reading it on a page that reports on fighting game news (not SRK or EventHubs) and not the official SNK Playmore page.

@barrabas said:

I was looking at footage of it just to refresh my memory and then the first word that came to mind when I saw the polygonal models was "unfinished". For KOFXIV though it was "outdated".

To be fair, I'm guessing budget had a lot to do with why the game doesn't look as good as we think it should be. I mean Rising Thunder in comparison looks heck of a lot better than what we've seen so far. I know we should wait for more footage before giving a verdict but what they've shown so far isn't inspiring a lot of confidence.

It's gonna be free to play isn't it...

SNK's graphical budget for KOF14 is looking pretty tight. If I had not been known that it was official, I would've thought that it was a fan-made game on the Unity3D engine. I hope it turns up better than it looks right now though.

I can't believe I was just un-hyped by a KoF 14 trailer...

Could be Karin. I dunno. I'm done guessing after Rashid was "Obviously Cody"

@viciousbearmauling: The most logical thing to say coming from SFIV would obviously be Dudley. But of course it's not Dudley, just as it wasn't Cody the previous time. Not a fan of that corkscrew blow effect either way, always thought it looked pretty stupid. Dictator does makes the opponent do that sideways spin as well on his grapple.

Karin's SFA3 move set does not really have any moves that would have this effect on an opponent. This seems like an extremely hard blow (blasting the opponent to the other end of the stage). Karin is more graceful with aikido-like throws. Then again it's probably a critical art and I have to say that the critical arts they have shown so far haven't really impressed me visually compared to the SFIV Ultras.

Mad Catz has detailed their plans for TGS (not just the CPT premier event).

Take a look: http://madcatz.com/join-mad-catz-tokyo-game-show-2015/

I.D.G.A.F about your peripheral lineup, MadCatz. Why can't you ever have PS4 sticks in stock?

K-Brad and Snake Eyez enjoying their Japanese experience!

Fair trade off I think so we're not watching long-ass Ultra animations all the time, especially since Critical Arts are so much easier to land. That said, I'm a big fan of Mika's (of course) and there's a real savage glee to Birdie's that tickles me the right way.

@starvinggamer: They don't have to be especially long to look better though, they just have to look great.

Let's not ignore that R. Mika's ridiculous tag team hot dogging critical art is not that short either. It's a good 7-8 seconds by my estimate. Granted, that's quite a bit shorter than Oni's insane (but imo pretty cool) Ultra 2 which clocks in at 11-12 ish seconds but about the same length as Zangief's Ultimate Atomic Buster. Minus a few exceptions I think the length of the SFV critical arts and the length of the SFIV Ultra Combos will be quite similar.

As for being easier to land, I think them not having their own bar will most likely make them a lot less common than SFIV ultra combos. (To this day I still do not understand why SFIV ultra combos are that powerful and the supers are much weaker.)

@hassun: Because they're harder to land for most characters? Like, typically you're looking at spending 2EX meters just to confirm into Ultra in SFIV. Outside of random Ultra in which case they're totally serving their role as comeback mechanic. Yeah, I dunno, much rather have the V system.

I really hope they run with some other styles than 'white looking blonde character' because man it's starting to look a bit suspect.

Well damn with Karin being announced I guess that means my hopes of Alex being in vanilla SFV are done for. Also am I wrong or are all non-SF4 returning characters from the Alpha series only? Hopefully they will do a SF3 Character "Season" or whatever cause I would love to use Alex, Dudley and Hugo in the SFV mechanics. How many character are we left with at this point? 2 new characters and 2 classics?

Well awesome it looks likely none of my SF4 mains will be in the game at launch at this point. Looking like I am leaning Mika and Necalli with the current cast.

@zella:Birdie is technically from SFI although his SFV design is a fatter, uglier version of his Alpha design.

@starvinggamer: I dunno, at least someone in the match always having guaranteed bar for the ultra (due to losing a lot of hp) makes it seem like there is always a good chance of seeing an ultra every round. Not so much with supers (then again I haven't played SFV and the eventual metre gain could be so great you always have plenty of it to go around).

Dat ojou-sama life.

@hassun: ...and Karin is in, thus confirming Siliconera's leaks absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt. Let the record forever show that I called it.

:P

But seriously, I guess now I might get to find out what all the fuss over Karin is about. (What did she actually do back in the Alpha games, by-the-by?)

@fnrslvr: Didn't they say Urien was in as well?

I wrote a (very simple) description of Karin's style/moves in StarvingGamer's character thread: http://www.giantbomb.com/street-fighter-v/3030-48320/forums/another-fight-is-coming-your-way-karin-joins-cast--1782565/?page=1#js-message-14

Meanwhile, Bonchan is on some Dragon Ball AF type of shit:

@hassun: yeah, Urien and Alex. I guess maybe "classic characters" could mean characters from a numbered SF game, and "characters we haven't seen in a while" could mean Alpha?

But also I was completely taking the piss. I'd have nfi what's going on, I'm just taking my pseudo-prediction of Karin and running with it. :P

Also, I saw your summary in the other thread, thanks.

@fnrslvr: I don't think it's very logical to call Alex or Urien classic characters. I would assume that means more SFII than anything else.

In other news, it appears Necalli now has charge moves.

@l1ghtn1n: Yeah the Capcom Fighting Network is definitely the most interesting news here. I really hope they pull that off, it could become an invaluable tool.

@l1ghtn1n: Going back to your earlier post, I totally want to see a good zoner in SFV as well. I'm starting to feel worried about the amount of rushdown and 50/50 mixups the game will have and everyone having ways to downright nullify projectiles is worrying me as well. I want as many playstyles as possible to be completely valid.

I know we're not exactly alone in this either.

The Defend the North (CPT ranking event) trailer goes hard on a certain recent blowup.

Meanwhile Ars Technica did a neat video on Next Level Arcade: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/video-gaming-in-the-trenches-with-the-true-believers-at-next-level/

And there is also a new GGXrd Revelator trailer fresh off the TGS press:

The CFN seemed pretty impressive when I first heard about it, but on reflection I really doubt the kind of stats it'll provide are going to be all that meaningful. I mean, yeah, if you mash jab 100 times or do 20 DPs per match on average, then you're probably doing something wrong, and having that data available (and maybe little advice snippets to tell you to stop doing those things so much) could help.

I think the dream would be to have a statistical breakdown of your decisions in specific situations, to the point where they could provide your mixed strategy, i.e. tell you what you distribution over all options for a given situation in a matchup is (e.g. for wakeup your mixed strategy might say that you happen to sit and block 40% of the time, DP 50%, throw 5%, and 5% whatever other garbage) which you could then compare to a Nash equilibrium prepared by your favourite matchup analytics website, and say, "gee, these guys think my DP frequency is way too high, oh and my average lifeswing is a lot lower than they say the expected lifeswing is, I should probably reign in my bad habits". On the surface it seems like this is probably some way off of ever becoming a reality, but on the other hand, KI's Shadows is probably this stuff under the hood, in which case they have freaking AI replicating your behaviour based on it, so the only part nobody has done yet is expose the data in a good UI and run it through game-theoretic tools and whatnot, which is all very well-charted stuff. So iuno, I can dream, I guess?

@starvinggamer: @hassun: The invasion boss this week is Rain, which I'd be shocked if he wasn't one of the DLC characters considering the amount of effort that got put into his graphics:

@fredchuckdave:I think it's pretty much impossible that Baraka, Rain and Sindel are not going to become playable characters at some point in MKX. Not interested in any of them though.

@l1ghtn1n: Jebailey knows his audience well.

Worth noting that at CEOtaku Sp00ky himself will have that Melty Blood money match with Japan's King of Poverty games himself, GO1. They will reportedly be playing for at least $1000.

P.S.
If anyone is wondering why I haven't put up more detailed Dreamhack London and TGS tournament info, it's because we're going to get a new thread courtesy of @flstyle.

@hassun: New thread? And we were so close to 1000 posts, alas.

@l1ghtn1n: I voted for Yuina just because I think it sounds the prettiest but Shiyo is so fucking spot-on for a dumb naming thing anime would do so I'm glad that's winning.

@fredchuckdave: FLstyle has had some PC troubles recently so his thread is probably going to have to wait until Sunday. That means I'm going to start posting the FGC events for this weekend in this thread and he can handle the ones which start after this weekend.

While you wait, Kotaku has posted the second episode of their Compete series about people performing amazing feats in fighting games. If you missed the first episode (featuring RB | Kayane and Tetris Grandmastery) you can watch it here.

Overlaying that footage of Justin celebrating after beating another player (Raoh I think?) and that player shrugging him off on top of Seth talking about Daigo being angry kind of gives the wrong impression though. Bit of a bummer.

Here's a random thing