Ian Walker

Players Want More Water At Fighting Game Tournaments

There are some things folks have come to expect from fighting game tournaments. Organizers always provide the monitors, consoles, and games necessary to compete, but the venues that these events are held in often lack access to affordable drinking water. This has long been an issue in the fighting game community, but the topic has…

Evo Japan Cuts Sexual Dead or Alive 6 Stream Short, Issues Apology

Evo Japan 2019 kicked off festivities last night in Fukuoka, ushering in a second year of the Evolution Championship Series spin-off event. The broadcast day opened with a special Dead or Alive 6 exhibition, followed by a stage show that apparently got too risqué for the Evo organizers, who later issued an apology. Dead or…

Super Smash Bros. Melee Events In Four States Ban Wobbling After Tennessee Ruling

Last week, the Super Smash Bros. Melee community in Tennessee fired the first shot in the modern wobbling war when they announced that most of the competitions in their state would ban the controversial Ice Climbers technique. Since then, tournament organizers in four more states have decided to follow suit, setting a standard for their…

A player at last weekend’s national Hokuto no Ken tournament in Japan had time to finish his drink while waiting for his opponent’s lengthy combo to end. The niche fighting game, developed by Arc System Works in 2005, has become known for its over-the-top and infinite combo-heavy competition.

Tekken player Kazuaki “BKC” Tsukagoshi passed away over the weekend, according to a recent announcement from the Namco Sugamo game center. A eulogy on community hub Avoiding the Puddle describes BKC as a pillar of Japan’s competitive Tekken scene. He was just 30 years old.

Super Smash Bros. Melee Technique Gets Fake-Banned And Then Actually Banned

Despite being old enough to get a driver’s license in much of the United States, the undying Super Smash Bros. Melee has been haunted by a controversial technique for at least a decade. Wobbling, which can only be used by the Ice Climbers, is a whimsical term for a move that is actually quite controversial…

Latin America Isn’t Getting As Screwed Over By The Capcom Pro Tour This Year

Last year, Capcom made changes to their official Street Fighter V competition, the Capcom Pro Tour, that hurt the qualifying chances of a very specific sector of the fighting game community: those who live outside competitive hubs like the United States and Japan. The adjusted points system impacted players who lacked the means to travel…

Competitors See Potential in Dragon Ball FighterZ‘s New Characters

Late last month, Dragon Ball FighterZ received its first new characters since September 2018: fan favorites Videl and Jiren (CORRECTION 10:09 am ET: This story originally misstated the release date of the previous DLC). Since the two newcomers joined the playable roster, the fighting game community has inundated social media with initial impressions, and while…

SoCal Regionals, the largest fighting game event in Southern California, will be skipping 2019 The tournament’s organizers announced the news yesterday, citing their busy schedule with other projects as the key motivation behind taking the year off. They plan to return in 2020.

The Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour Champion Is Who We Thought He Was

Last weekend’s Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour finale in Los Angeles, California, was punctuated with surprises and excitement in just about every match. But while the talent on display was some of the densest the young game has seen over its year of competition, the circuit’s most dominant player was able to walk away with…

Favorites And Dark Horses To Watch At This Weekend’s Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour Finals

This weekend, the official Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour will culminate at a grand finals event in Los Angeles, California. It’s sure to be an explosive finale, but the fireworks are actually starting on Saturday, as hundreds of players compete in a handful of last-chance qualifiers. The Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour was organized in…

A Very Angry Capcom vs. SNK 2 Competition

Over the weekend, a monthly Capcom vs. SNK 2 tournament at Japan’s Club Sega Shinjuku held a special exhibition between three established competitors. The event had brought these three players together due to the similarities in how they play the game, particularly their use of a specific fighting style that rewards characters for getting hit…

The Formerly Terrible Pichu Is Now A Tiny Ball Of Death

At first glance, Pichu doesn’t come across as a super strong Super Smash Bros. character. The diminutive Pokémon is cute as a button, sure, but its weaknesses meant it was always overshadowed by its fellow cast members in Super Smash Bros. Melee. But that all changed with the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Multiple…

Someone Made An Arcade Stick For The Virtual Boy, Of All Things

As a kid who grew up with arcades around every corner, nothing feels better to me than sitting down with a balltop joystick and several clacking buttons. But the 90s also gave birth to the universally panned Virtual Boy. Oddly enough, one determined fan has taken the time to produce a high-quality arcade stick for…

Cooperation Cup’s Brutal Format Makes It Pure Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Bliss

Cooperation Cup, a massive Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike team tournament held in Tokyo every year, stands out from the pack because of its punishing and exciting tournament format. The event got 2019 started right this past weekend with two days of fantastic competition featuring over 500 players, grouped into teams of five for a…

Arcade Culture Takes Center Stage In Netflix’s Newest Anime Offering

Over the holidays, Netflix added animated series Hi Score Girl to their streaming lineup. The anime, based on the manga of the same name by Rensuke Oshikiri, is set in Japan during the arcade boom of the 1990s. Hi Score Girl is a slice-of-life comedy focused on the budding love triangle between three childhood friends,…

An Old-School Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Throwdown Was The Best Fighting Game Event Of 2018

On the evening of December 30, a group of fighting game veterans gathered together in New York City for Battle of the Strongest, a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 exhibition featuring some of the game’s best east coast competitors. Even though it was a small show with relatively low stakes by modern standards, the tournament turned…

Dragon Ball FighterZ Has Been Mysteriously Pulled From Multiple Fighting Game Events

The future of Dragon Ball FighterZ competition is in flux. Over the last few months, several prominent fighting game events have had to pull the game from their official lineups, and no one is quite sure who’s to blame. Dragon Ball FighterZ has become one of the most popular games in the fighting game community…

Ryota “Kazunoko” Inoue took first place in four separate games while visiting CouchWarriors CrossUp in Australia last weekend. Competitors in Dragon Ball FighterZ, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, and Street Fighter V fell before the Japanese player before his reign of terror was complete.

Street Fighter V Competitors Carry An Otherwise Messy Capcom Cup

Capcom Cup wrapped up a year of Street Fighter V over the weekend with an explosive grand finals match between Japanese powerhouses Kanamori “Gachikun” Tsunehori and Hiromiki “Itabashi Zangief” Kumada. The players were incredible, but the tournament itself was a bewildering mishmash of poor scheduling and tiresome padding that unfortunately encapsulates the issues with Street…