UFGT9 Preview (May 23-26) DIVEKICK comes home! Injustice goes to EVO ahead of Skullgirls and FGC News!
By FLStyle 166 Comments
Well that was a pretty crazy 12 months.
BREAKING! Thursday Night Pre-show!
At 8pm (CST), the fun begins as staff and special guests are invited to witness the UFGT9 Pre-Game Show. What mysterious type of show will this be? You’ll have to tune into the LevelUp live stream to find out, but I assure you its going to be totally boss. If you want to participate in the Pre-Game show, you can sign up at the Check In area.
Confirmed for the Thursday pre-show is:
- The unveiling of Divekick's Final Boss
- A Divekick money match including Dave Lang!
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Links
http://www.twitch.tv/leveluplive
http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp
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When I did my Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament 8 preview in May 2012, barely anyone had heard of Divekick, it was merely a prototype of a fun fighting game community parody that was a joke to most, fun to the few who had played it and undoubtedly crazy to all who had laid eyes on it.
Now it's an indie darling, the toast of PAX East, a very real upcoming PS3, Vita and PC release and the one fighting game most likely to break the wall down for gamers who have neither the time or interest to learn complex combos in current games.
This specific pre-release build of Divekick that will played in the UFGT9 tournament this weekend will feature 11 characters, one of which is Stream, who's existence was revealed Monday night (May 20th) on the http://www.twitch.tv/irongalaxy channel.
Stream will join Dive, Dr. Shoals, Jefailey, Kick, Kung Pao, MarkMan, Mr. N, Redacted, The Baz and Uncle Sensei.
Of course, this being UFGT, a Road to EVO season event (sponsored by Mad Catz and Atlus), that means that all your favourite games and players will be there too, all competing for 1st place, EVO seeding points and glass trophies (not to mention the return of the always fun to watch Mystery Game Touranment). This includes the latest and last addition to the EVO line-up this year, Injustice: Gods Among Us. Off the back of a strong start to its tournament scene life, Injustice has been added as the 9th game by the EVO organisers. This is great for the growing Injustice players, not so great for the 2nd place game from the EVO 8th game breast cancer donation drive, Skullgirls.
Skullgirls itself has been in the media recently for its indiegogo campaign to raise funds for DLC characters, making itself $828,000 with an initial $150,000 goal. Following criticism for its perceived steep goal, Skullgirls was covered by Giant Bomb's own @patrickklepek who interviewed Seth Killian and Dave Lang, asking just how much does DLC cost to make?
So it's clear that Skullgirls has an extremely supportive community unto itself, it's just that these people are apparently not tournaments goers. Skullgirls never really got going and has never had the support in tournaments like Injustice has (or the backing of Ed Boon's NetherRealm Studios and its parent company Warner Bros. either).
NOTE: The current plan regarding Grand Finals at EVO 2013 is to have 2 GFs on the Friday night, 2 on the Saturday night and 5 GFs running all day Sunday, any changes and indeed which games will be on which nights will be featured on future blogs when more information becomes available.
Check out these community panels that will be at UFGT9 (off-stream) and uploaded to YouTube in the coming weeks:
Other awesome links, videos and comments fun times
Why the fighting game community hates the word eSports - by Andrew Groen for Penny Arcade
In 2005 MLG and EVO put on a joint event in Las Vegas that could have been a great way to begin the merging process. Unfortunately, EVO was allocated only a small corner of the event space despite their attendees reportedly outnumbering MLG attendees 4:1. EVO's fans were so irate that they walked over to the Halo matches and booed the players.
Leagues like MLG and the World Cyber Games developed a bad reputation for never listening to the hardcore fans. When MLG finally decided to feature fighting games again after the 2005 debacle they chose Tekken 6, a game Cannon says was already on “its last legs competitively.” The WCG pulled something similar in 2005 when they chose Dead or Alive Ultimate as their only fighting game, a game with virtually zero community interest.
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“We evolved differently, and then we sort of clashed together with Street Fighter IV, and it was just culture shock on both sides.”
Love this article, neutral, well researched and features Tom Cannon, Mike Ross and Rod "Slasher" Breslau. The 1st of 2 quality articles by Andrew Groen.
Why gamers in Asia are the world's best eSport athletes - by Andrew Groen for PC World
"Ultimately, [Capcom’s USA branch] is subservient to Capcom Japan, and they don’t really understand,” said Gutierrez. “There’s a difference in culture. The major difference in the way that it’s evolved [in America as opposed to Japan] is that in Japan they can’t really play for money."
This one is a more general competitive gaming article, but still features a lot of fighting game tournament history and features Gootecks.
Chris G and the PS3
Thanks for reading, in June I'll have a blog for CEO 2013 and in July for EVO 2013. Make sure to check out the archives of this past weekend's East Coast Throwdown which had one of the best First to 15 matches I've seen between New York's TS Fooblat (Hulk, Haggar, Wesker) vs. Santiago, Chile's KaneBlueriver (Hulk, Haggar, Sentinel).
166 Comments