From CT to Chile | Set Point! October 16, 2024
East Coast Throwdown was the biggest event this weekend. Dragon Ball Fighterz World Tour power events wrapped up for the year. And we had two Arc World Tour Events for Guilty Gear and Granblue Fantasy Versus plus two SNK World Championship Qualifiers.
Lots to cover. Let’s Rock
Viva Brasil! — Brazil Game Show
The FGC in Brazil not only regained access to twitter this week, they also got to see a ton of games at Brazil Game Show, Latin America’s biggest gaming convention.
The biggest news coming out of the show was Genthru for HUNTERxHUNTER NENxIMPACT and a Portuguese language update for Guilty Gear -strive-. You can see the full showcase here.
It was also announced the language update will be included on release for the Nintendo Switch port of Strive coming out next year.
This is huge for the global FGC as Brazil is the 7th largest population in the world and has an active community especially for older and retro games.
East Coast Throwdown 2024
Street Fighter 6, a real throwdown:
React to this, 43 year old Itabashi Zangief wins his first Street Fighter 6 Major at East Coast Throwdown. East Coast Throwdown had not one but two grapplers in Grand Finals. Itabashi and iDom’s Manon were the top two players in the bracket. According to incross (@crossknockout), this is Itabshi’s “biggest win since the second Topanga Championship in 2020.” Itabashi’s last appearance at Capcom Cup was in 2018 getting second to gachikun.
Runner-up, iDom had an insane run on loser’s side after losing to Prophet in pools. iDom won a total of 14 sets to make it to Grand Finals, which is a huge achievement.
Two of the world’s best Rashid player’s, Dual Kevin and Big Bird, got 3rd and 4th respectively. Nephew got 5th place for the second year in a row, followed by Booce in 5th as well.
Booce this year has been terrorizing World Warrior US-Canada East and is at the top of the rankings for the region. This is Booce’s best performance in an offline event in Street Fighter 6 so far.
Rounding out top-8 is Caba and Daigo.
There were some crazy upset just in round 1 pools. IReflexx took down Evo 4th place Ending Walker with Ken. Literally the next game on stream, Young_matt_teen defeats Evo Champion AngryBird in the Ken mirror match. And offstream Problem X losses to commentator Marine with her Manon.
This kinda of drama is why I love offline events.
Daigo’s Beast Cup
Team Beast wins Daigo’s Beast Cup. Team Beast included Caba, Daigo, and Luiman20, a Dhalsim from the Dominican Republic.
You can watch the VOD from the event here.
Guilty Gear -strive- Gold Event
Flyquest wins another week in a row. Nitro and Razzo got first and second respectively in Guilty Gear -strive-. Nitro takes the bracket, but is already qualified for Guilty Gear -strive- at the Arc World Tour Finals this year.
Granblue Fantasy Versus : Rising Gold Event
After a a nail-biting Loser’s Finals and Grand Finals reset beating Xerom. Xerom only lost one game going into Grand Finals. GucciBluntWrap made it all the way to losers finals after getting beat by Zane in top 32, losing to Zane again to get third.
Dragonball FighterZ World Tour Event
In the final 2024–2025 power event of the year, New York’s own Muffin takes the dub and qualifies themselves for the Dragonball FighterZ World Tour Finals next year.
Runner-up Hikari came up through losers, beat ScrubDaddyLee in the runback, won against Axeice in a tight 3–2 set, and gets the silver to also qualify for finals.
Anime FGC News put together a great graphic of the World Tour Qualifiers and who will be battling it out for the last two spots in the Last Chance Qualifier.
King of Fighters XV SNK World Championship 2025 Qualifier
Juan KOF takes the bracket over Yurikov in a very clean grand finals to qualify for the SNK World Championship 2025. This is Juan KOF’s first major win this year after winning First Attack in Puerto Rico in 2023
The rest of the standings and games for East Coast Throwdown 2024 can be viewed here.
First Attack 2024
During this past weekend, we also had First Attack, Puerto Rico’s biggest Esports event. This is First Attack’s 11th year and it is a Arc World Tour Gold Event for Guilty Gear -strive- and Granblue Fantasy Versus : Rising.
For Guilty Gear -strive- Jonathan Tene with essentially a perfect bracket.He lost no games. While it was a smaller bracket it is still an achievement
For GBVSR, Zippy takes home gold followed by BlueSkyGuy and Kojicoco. Zippy has been killing it this year as it is his first playing Granblue from Guilty Gear -srive- winning Frosty Faustings, Combo Breaker, and getting 2nd at CEO.
See the rest of the First Attack Results here.
Blazing Strike Uppercuts to Launch and more Indie Updates
Blazing Strike, an indie fighting game heavily influenced by Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike and Garou: Mark of the Wolves, had a few announcements this week.
The first was two DLC characters will be added to the game for free after launch. The first is Antonio Calavera, a dual-pistol wielding Latin-inspired fighter.
The other announcement was that crossplay and spectator mode will be coming out by the end of the year. This is a huge for the health of a fighting game and great to see. The game will launch with a rollback netcode and along with crossplay, it’ll provide, hopefully, a great online experience. Spectator Mode might seem like no big deal to a casual player, but it is vital for online tournaments in order to stream the top players and commentate.
A free demo was released for Rivals of Aether II, a platform fighter. The demo ends on Monday, October 21st before the game releases Wednesday the 23rd.
Knock Off: The Battle for Imagination launched it’s first gameplay trailer and Kickstarter. Knock Off is a 2D fighter in the vein of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat featuring characters inspired by toys from the 80s and 90s. The team behind it is trying to raise $250,000 USD to launch the game on Steam with rollback netcode.
Iron Saga VS, a robot 2D fighting game, came out Tuesday October 15th. It has a free demo on Steam.
Mortal Kombat 1 Ups
The patch notes for Mortal Kombat 1’s October Update were released this week. The update was mostly bug fixes and continued visual improvements to the Nintendo Switch version.
Not only that, since Tuesday, October 15, you can now individually purchase Sektor, Cyrax, and Noob Saibot separate from the Khaos Reigns expansion. This is a huge financial relief for competitors and especially tournament organizers who previously had to pay $49.99 for the whole package. Each character is $7.99 with all three totaling to $23.97 pre-tax.
COUNTER — FGC Ban Updates
This week, Paragon banned UMISHO from their online Guilty Gear -strive- tournaments for six months. Paragon argued that UMISHO violated the Arc World Tour Code of Conduct. This ban came out a series of events following allegations of RedIAmNot by twitter user @Bnnu_y and UMISHO.
Bandai Namco Esports officially apologized last Wednesday for disqualifying Chinese Player XCC at Thaiger Uppercut. Bandai stated they will try to get in contact with XCC to pay for his travel and accommodation expenses for the Tekken World Tour Last Chance Qualifier.
SNK World Championship Series and more Qualifiers
Daybreak wins the King of Fighters XV Championship Series Week 5.
Week 5 VOD + Bracket Standings
Lauyagami from Brazil qualifies for the SNK World Championship through winning FIGHT FOR GLORY in Chile. It was a one day event just for KOF. TOP 8 VOD https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2274160604?t=05h41m54s
Other news
Frosty Faustings Hotel Bookings open up today!
If you are ages 13–18, you are eligible for FREE Street Fighter 6 coaching with Saint Cola! This is a really cool opportunity you should check out. Sign up here by Friday October 18th.
Rage of Dragons NEO, a remaster of the SNK 2v2 tag fighter from 2002, released a demo for the game on Steam. You can snag it for free here.
Announcement announcement: Granblue Fantasy Versus newest DLC character, Vikala will get their new gameplay trailer tomorrow, October 17th.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero came out to everyone on Friday 10/11 and had a massive launch. Event Hubs reported that the game had a Steam peak of 122,554 players and is second to the Multi-Versus “beta” from 2022. Players like Diaphone have been grinding the game and we should expect the arena fighter to show up at tier 1 and tier 2 events in the near future.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate got a bug patch this week.
Multi-Versus announced it’s next character, Nubia from Wonder Woman. She released on Tuesday, October 15th along with a patch.
The full list of games for Tetris Forever were released this week. See the details on Gematsu.
SilverRupee, itzlvix, Abbs, Attik, hyper, Urameshi, victory, and InuM qualify for the CECC EsportsU East Region Qualifiers. You can follow CFGC through Capcom Fighters and see the Week 6 VOD here.
Street Fighter League US returns today October 16th! See Capcom Fighters on YouTube or on Twitch
Here comes a new challenger!
This week’s upcoming events
- SNK World Championship Series Week 6 October 17
- Capcom Pro Tour 2024 Super Premier Singapore October 18–20 | For the offline event, both first and second place will be eligible for Capcom Cup 11. 1st prize is $10,000 and 2nd is $3,000.
- EsportsU CECC West Region Qualifiers for Street Fighter 6 October 19
- Street Fighter League Japan returns on October 22.
- Rivals of Aether II launches on Wednesday October 23.
YOU WIN
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Bonus Stage
This video from Capcom eSports official just made me so happy. I don’t understand Japanese, but I love the cosplay from these two!
ggs
