We are heading into the end of the year with lots of FGC events coming up, read on for:
Events - Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Grand Finals, Curleh Mustache 5 (EVENT COMPLETED), North East Championship (EVENT COMPLETED)
Results - Atlus Fighting Championships, Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena community vs. GameFAQs Persona 4 Arena community
News - R.I.P. Southtown Arcade, Reverge Labs lays off Skullgirls team - Skullgirls team goes indie, Next Level Arcade Documentary
Also check out - IGN's IPL picks up Street Fighter - Can the FGC become eSports?
Event Previews
Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Grand Finals - San Francisco - December 8th
Featuring Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (Version 2012), Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Online Edition and Street Fighter X Tekken.
Remember hearing about the $500,000 tournament series that Capcom announced earlier in the year? Well that's been going on since July and the last one in Telford, England will be December 1st. With any luck Capcom will put together a new trailer after that with the full list of players and I can replace the one you see above with that.
Only the winners (and runner ups in some cases) qualify for this tournament, which is how it'll be completed in a day instead of three like EVO. With qualifying tournaments all around the globe you can be guaranteed that the best players in the world will be at the finals. $125,000 of the $500,000 has been reserved for the finals which means there's plenty of money to play for.
The black sheep of the list of games on show is most definitely Street Fighter X Tekken, but Capcom has that base covered too.
The Street Fighter X Tekken winner will be handed the keys to an all-new custom designed Scion FR-S Sports Coupe. Capcom has partnered with Scion, Five Axis and Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), to create a one-of-a-kind Street Fighter-themed sports car, complete with video entertainment hardware from SCEA and a modified exterior from Five Axis including a custom FIVE:AD aero kit, spoiler, wheels, as well as many more premiere components from leading automotive aftermarket companies.
Apparently there'll be an all-new announcement at the event too, but with Darkstalkers Resurrection and Street Fighter X Tekken Version. 2013 already announced, what is this new secret?
Stream Link - http://www.twitch.tv/capcomfighters (Stream is live 24/7 replaying the qualifiers as the case was with EVO)
More Info - http://www.capcom-unity.com/haunts/blog/2012/11/16/sf25th-grand-finals-location-and-event-details
Qualifiers below
Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition v2012
EG|Ricky Ortiz (Rufus)
Happy Medicine (M. Bison)
BT|Dieminion (Guile)
Wolfkrone (C. Viper)
WW|Infiltration (Akuma)
AvM|GamerBee (Adon)
MCZ|Tokido (Akuma)
GR|Breno Fighters (Cammy)
MCZ|Daigo Umehara (Ryu)
RZR|Fuudo (Fei Long)
AGE|Snake Eyez (Zangief)
EG|Justin Wong (Rufus)
Problem X (Seth)
Alioune (Cammy)
MCZ|Mago (Fei Long)
EG|Momochi (Akuma, Cody)
Street Fighter X Tekken
EG|Justin Wong (Rufus, Chun-Li)
EG|Ricky Ortiz (Rufus, Chun-Li)
ER|Tatsu (Vega, Xiaoyu)
UYG|NuckleDu (Guile, Zangief)
WW|Infiltration (Rolento, Ryu)
TH|Poongko (Kazuya, Ryu)
AvM|GamerBee (Julia, Jack-X)
GR|Breno Fighters (Ryu, Chun-Li)
MCZ|Tokido (Dhalsim, Cody)
Yukimura (Ryu, Kazuya)
Sethlolol (Law, Kuma)
Combofiend (Julia, Marduk)
Alioune (Jack-X, Lili)
Fuzzy (Cammy, Rolento)
EG|Momochi (Rufus, Cody)
Kingstonn (Ryu, Rolento)
Street Fighter 3 Third Strike Online Edition
EG|Justin Wong (Chun-Li)
Nica KO (Yang)
BOC (Urien)
MCZ|Tokido (Chun-Li)
MOV (Chun-Li)
Mester (Yun)
Gunfight (Dudley)
EG|Momochi (Urien, Yun)
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix
Afro Legends (Balrog)
Damdai (Ryu, Dhalsim)
WW|Laugh (Sagat)
MCZ|Tokido (Vega)
John Choi (Ryu, Sagat)
ShotosAllDay (Ryu, Zangief)
Aero Rockman (Guile, M. Bison, Dee Jay)
Fuzzy (Ryu, Cammy)
Curleh Mustache 5 - New York - November 24th
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is the game of choice for the invitation-only tournament created by the man who popularised the terms Curleh Mustache and Mango Sentinel, IFC Yipes. Yipes himself has been winning some major tournaments as of late, the former MvC2 EVO world champion doing some good work with a strong Nova, Spencer, Doctor Strange team.
Much like the SF25th Finals, only top talents will be competing at this event for one day only. Make sure to check it out!
Stream link - http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky
More Info - http://www.brokentier.com/blogs/news/6699846-curleh-mustache-vol-5-east-coast-edition
NorthEast Championship (NEC XIII) - Philadelphia - December 1st / 2nd
The more traditional event of the three, NEC is an open-entry event for all the popular games with multiple streams spanning a weekend.
NEC XIII is the first stop on on the East Coast Tekken TAG Tournament 2 circuit (which I think is a brilliant idea by the way):
The rules to this tournament circuit are simple. If you win the TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT 2 tournament at Northeast Championships 13 in Philadelphia, then you will be awarded a plane ticket to FINAL ROUND XVI. If you win FINAL ROUND XVI, you will be flown to East Coast Throwdown 5. If you win ECT5, you will be flown to Evolution in Vegas. If you’re local to any of these tournaments that you’ve won a trip to, we will pay for your hotel room instead of the flight. The four of us from Big E Gaming, FINAL ROUND, and East Coast Throwdown want to make sure TTT2 is the most memorable TEKKEN for you guys yet, and what better way than to fly you around the country to represent your home turf?!
So potentially one person, providing he/she wins TTT2 at NEC, Final Round and East Coast Throwdown could go to two of these events for free and then EVO 2013 for free. The odds that one person manages to pull it off are slim, but I'm looking forward to seeing the winners of these events competing at the next one, undoubtedly with a bullseye on their chest.
Check out all the sponsors and prize pool money bonuses too, NEC is shaping up to be a good watch.
Stream Links -
STREAM: (Main) --http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky
2nd Stream--Tekken/SCV and more Jaxel:http://www.twitch.tv/8wayrun
3rd Stream--All around Bifuteki: www.twitch.tv/Bifuteki.com
4th Stream Smash(Brawl and Melee)-- Calvin-VGBootCamp and Mark-Clash http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp and http://www.twitch.tv/clashtournament
5th Stream P4A/BB/GG - Alan: http://www.twitch.tv/St1ckBuG
More Info - http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/dec-1-2012-northeast-championship-nec-xiii-dec-1st-2nd-in-philadelphia-pa.167658/ & http://bigegaming.com/?p=303
Results
Atlus Fighting Championships
Atlus teamed up with Mad Catz and the live-streaming services of Level|Up Series on the 17th to have the Atlus Fighting Championships, showcasing The King of Fighters XIII and Persona 4 Arena. Level|Up has uploaded the Persona 4 Arena tournament, hopefully they'll upload the KOFXIII tournament too.
Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena Community vs. GameFAQs Persona 4 Arena Community
I confess that I didn't touch the Atlus Fighting Championships stream for the entirety of the GB vs. GameFAQs P4A tournament, personal investment to see Giant Bomb players do well and all that.
- Both GB and GameFAQs will form a team. These teams will be formed of exactly 12 people, not more. If one of the websites has less people than 12 signing up, then we'll have to adjust to the lower limit. For example, if GB has 12 people willing to sign up but GameFAQs only has 9, then 3 people will need to be cut from the GB team so that the teams are balanced.
- The order of the participants in a team will be pre-determined before everything starts and matches will work like a standard, single elimination team tournament. For example: GBTM1 (Giant Bomb Team Member 1) vs. GFTM1 (GameFAQs Team Member 1). If GBTM1 wins, then the matchup will be GBTM1 vs. GFTM2 and so on. A team loses when all of their members are eliminated.
- All matches will be best 2 out of 3 rounds for 99 seconds each round. Winner will be best 2 out of 3 matches. This isn't double elimination or anything, so when a member is eliminated, they're gone FOREVER.
- A player that loses a match is allowed to switch characters, however a player who wins must choose the same character as his previous match.
- If a player drops during a round, it is up to the opposing team to decide if they get a rematch or not.
- We'll probably all be paying attention to this stuff, but save replays if, for some weird reason, players decide to have their match in a private lobby.
There are other videos with the entire tournament but TheFakePsychic's streams are always my preferred method of watching Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena content.
The tournament was very close with each side having players enjoying large win streaks but eventually it came down to the final two players for each team (staged!), it was exciting stuff and I tip my hat to and all the GB P4A players for making it one of the best sub-communities on Giant Bomb.
News
R.I.P. Southtown Arcade
Another arcade with ties to the Fighting Game Community has bitten the dust unfortunately. Southtown Arcade, known for its affiliation with FGC stream and website IPLAYWINNER (including the Frame Trap show), has announced its closure, citing a bunch of reasons why it must close.
Due to a number of circumstances, Southtown Arcade’s last day of operation at its current location will be Sunday, November 25th, 2012. We’re really sorry for the sudden nature of this announcement, but we were hoping that we would be able to resolve a number of outstanding issues in order to continue normal business operations, and, unfortunately, our optimism did not bear fruit.
Check out the full statement here - http://www.southtownarcade.com/
IPLAYWINNER will continue to run events at a new as of yet unannounced venue.
Reverge Labs lays off Skullgirls team - Skullgirls team goes indie
The release of Skullgirls came and went and not much was heard about it after that. The game, while having some good ideas, had trouble with an initially small community getting smaller instead of larger, not being picked up by EVO for EVO 2012 and no patch to the game's post-release issues after Reverge Labs laid off the entire Skullgirls staff in June before a patch was completed and released.
But now it will see the light of day:
Welcome to Lab Zero Games.
Forward-thinking and retro-minded, Lab Zero Games is an independent game development studio founded by the original team that brought you Skullgirls. Lab Zero intends to continue its critically-acclaimed work on Skullgirls as well as leverage its unique design and artistic sensibilities to develop new games.
As many of our fans know, Skullgirls had more than its fair share of difficulties getting to market, but thus far none have been quite this dire: last June, the entire Skullgirls team was laid off from Reverge Labs.
To try to prevent such calamities from befalling us, our games, or our fans again, the Skullgirls team decided to form its own studio.
Autumn Games, the publisher and owner of the Skullgirls property, is fully behind the new studio and will continue to work with us in the future on all Skullgirls-related endeavors, such as the just-released patch, more merchandise and a few other things we can’t quite announce yet.
Next Level Arcade Documentary
Living in the UK, I have the dubious distinction of having never watched an episode of the West Coast's main fighting game weekly Wednesday Night Fights (Starts at 4AM my time or something crazy like that). But the East Coast's main fighting game weekly, Big Two, streamed by none other than Team Spooky and features many favourites like Aquasilk and Chris Hu, I can.
Check out what goes on at Next Level Arcade on a typical Big Two evening courtesy of owner Henry Cen.
And that about does it for this FGC event/news blog thingy. I'll be updating it as appropriate in the coming weeks. I leave you in the capable hands of Chris Hu as he teaches you some English. Shout out to for pointing me in the direction of NEC.
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