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!