Ian Walker

There are already so many versions of Goku in Dragon Ball FighterZ, what’s one more? Gematsu reports that Ultra Instinct Goku will be joining the fighting game as its next downloadable character. More information is expected during the World Tour finals next month.

Tekken-Style Health Bars Make Watching Taekwondo So Much Better

Martial arts competitions can be a little confusing to the untrained eye. The scoring systems simply favor landed hits, no matter how slight or imperceptible. During a recent exhibition, the Korea Taekwondo Association demonstrated a brand new piece of technology designed to make the sport more spectator-friendly, essentially turning competition into a real-world fighting game.…

An unofficial fix has been developed for Street Fighter V’s terrible attempt at rollback netcode. The game has been plagued by a poor online experience since its launch in 2016, but this third-party workaround apparently works wonders for PC users. Take note, Capcom.

Nintendo’s President Explains Its Reluctance To Fund Smash Bros. Tournament Prizes

During a recent interview with Japanese business journal Nikkei, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was asked a variety of questions concerning the publisher’s future, one of which concerned Nintendo’s support for Super Smash Bros. competitions, in particular its reluctance to support Smash tournaments with prize money. “Esports, in which players compete on stage for prize money…

Borderlands 3‘s First Major Expansion Reminds Me How Much I Missed Handsome Jack

Moxxi’s Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, the first of four major DLC expansions planned for Borderlands 3, is an odd duck with regard to the way it’s made me reconsider the game’s main campaign. While I very much enjoyed Borderlands 3 and believe this is a fun and necessary continuation of its looter-shooter adventure, the…

The Year In Fighting Game Championships

Fighting games have never been as big or monetarily supported as they were in 2019. Every major fighting game franchise had a developer-backed tour leading into a major championship, many featuring some of the largest prize pools of all time. But if it’s never been easier to make a career out of playing fighting games,…

Capcom Cup Sucked

Last year, it was my belief that Capcom Cup was saved by the incredible performances of its finalists, a group of 32 talented Street Fighter V competitors whose skills outshone the myriad issues I had with the event’s organization and scheduling. But not even the incredible stories of Capcom Cup 2019 could wipe away the…

Mortal Kombat 11 will receive “krossplay” between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as part of an upcoming patch. This makes the NetherRealm Studios-developed release the first fighter to bridge the gap between the two consoles. More details can be found here

New Tekken 7 Character’s Dog Sidekick Is Good And Pure

After previously being revealed at Evo back in August, Tekken 7 newcomer Leroy Smith is finally playable via an update released earlier in the week. This elderly Wing Chun master proved popular in the fighting game community before release thanks to his unique mixture of American and Chinese fashion, but now that he’s available, folks…

Surprise Character Pick Helps Japan Take Home First Tekken World Tour Championship

Over the weekend, the Tekken World Tour finals played out in Bangkok, Thailand, bringing together some of the best Tekken 7 competitors in the world to fight for the year-end championship. While 2019 was filled with surprise performances from players outside of more visible regions like South Korea and Japan, it was players from those…

A Tekken Legend’s Visit To Pakistan Is Met With Both Cheers And Drama

Over the last year, Pakistan’s fighting game community has risen from relative obscurity to a place of prominence thanks to a handful of its players winning major Tekken 7 tournaments on the world stage. The country has garnered so much attention, in fact, that South Korean veteran Jae-Min “Knee” Bae traveled there last week to…

How Fighting Game Developers Can Improve Online Play

Netcode, the set of technical protocols that determine online play in video games, is especially important in fighting games. Decisions are often split-second, with just a few frames determining whether or not a punish lands or a combo finishes the job. Netcode is often the main concern of competitive players looking for their next game.…

Smash Player Develops Hand-Warming GameCube Controller

The unwieldy GameCube pad is ubiquitous in Super Smash Bros. competition. Smash players have long been improving the controller through mods, the latest of which is an internal hand-warming mechanism that gets fingers nice and toasty after periods of inactivity. The hand-warming GameCube controller is the invention of Morne, a Super Smash Bros. Melee player…

As A Kid, Legendary Street Fighter Player Daigo Umehara Got Beat Up For Being Too Good

When he was 13 years old, Street Fighter champion Daigo Umehara once beat an adult at a fighting game so badly that the man beat him up in the arcade, repeatedly punching him in the face, Umehara said during a speech given last year at the NHK Culture Center in Tokyo. The encounter left the…

How To Best Use Terry In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Super Smash Bros. isn’t known for having a lot in common with traditional fighting games like Street Fighter and King of Fighters, but the latest installment has introduced a number of complicated mechanics by way of its third-party guest characters. The latest of these characters, Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard, can make use of a particularly…

YouTuber’s Lifetime Fortnite Ban Opens Conversation About Fair Punishments For Cheating

Jarvis Khattri, a YouTube content creator for the esports organization FaZe Clan, received a lifetime ban from Fortnite earlier this week after releasing a video of him cheating in the mega-popular battle royale shooter. This has since given way to discussion about the severity of the punishment and whether content creators whose livelihoods depend on…

Players who own Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] will be able to upgrade to Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] for free when the game lands on PlayStation 4 next year The announcement mentions that there will still be some DLC charges involved, but the balance changes won’t require any additional purchases.

The Internet Reacts To Mai Shiranui’s No-Show In Smash

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate received a huge dose of SNK today with the release of Fatal Fury protagonist Terry Bogard as a playable character, a King of Fighters-themed stage featuring cameos from characters like Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami, and 50 new pieces of music from the studio’s extensive history. One popular fighter that won’t…

New Apex Legends Bug Lets Players Attack Each Other Before Matches

The latest Apex Legends update dropped today, bringing with it balance adjustments, limited-time duos matches, and the long-awaited Firing Range practice mode. But sometimes we have to take the good with the bad, which in this instance means dealing with the arrival of a bug that gives players the ability to attack and even knock…

Indivisible Creative Director On Making A Party-Based RPG That Feels Like A Fighting Game

After four years in development, Indivisible arrived last month, bringing the combo-heavy combat of certain old-school RPGs into the modern age. It garnered praise across the gaming world, but it soon became clear that there were a few issues holding it back from true greatness, some of which are still waiting to be addressed. Kotaku…