Hitting the Streets of South Town Set Point! — October 2, 2024
What a week to start a blog about Fighting Game News. There is so much to cover!
The biggest things this week were Tokyo Game Show (TGS), Red Bull Golden Letters, and lots of World Warriors. We may not have a week like this until everyone’s World Tour events start wrapping up at the end of Quarter 1 next year.
Let’s get to it.
Feel free to skip around. Use ctrl-f to find your favorite games.
SNK at Tokyo Game Show
SNK made their presence known at TGS this year with a big reveal. Just as Terry and Mai are joining the Street Fighter 6 cast, Ken and Chun-li will be heading to South Town as the first two DLC characters for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. These characters were picked because of their past relationships in the Capcom vs. SNK cross-over games.
If you preordered the Special Edition of City of the Wolves, you will get Ken and Mai for free.
City of the Wolves has eleven base roster characters revealed and now the first two of the DLC. There are still six more characters to be announced as well as the three DLC characters. Who do you think they will be?
At TGS, Mai was a playable character for the first time in a new build of the game. While it isn’t linked on SNK’s main site, you can find her official move list here. It’ is notable that she now has a dp, Hana Arashi.
While there was no gameplay for Vice and Mature in King of Fighters XV, SNK did announce a balance patch to come out along side their release. Unfortunately, there is still not a specific release date yet, other than the window being December this year.
SNK also announced that Samurai Spirits (Samurai Showdown in the west) will be a featured game at the SNK World Championships. Details have yet to be announced of how players can qualify for Samurai Spirits. The SNK World Championships will take place in early 2025.
You can watch an English dub of SNK’s Tokyo Game Show presentation here.
Guilty Gear’s Making Me Dizzy
Guilty Gear -strive- also had news to share at TGS this weekend.
A timeline was released for the Season 4 content:
- Dizzy and the next Major Balance Patch will release on October 31st
- The second 3v3 mode beta test will begin on November 8th
- Venom will release in Early 2025
- Unica, the new character featured in Guilty Gear’s upcoming Anime series will be released Spring 2025
- Guilty Gear’s first guest character, Lucy, from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, will be released Summer 2025
Chipp will unleash his true ninja with “Tightrope” as a new special move in the upcoming major balance patch.
You can watch a detailed breakdown of Guilty Gear’s Tokyo Game Show news in English here.
It’s likely we’ll have more patches as the year goes on. So stay tuned for more!
Other ArcSys News
Arc World Tour Finals 2024 will be at held in Los Angeles, California on March 21st-23rd. You can buy tickets through Shrine Auditorium’s website.
Under Night In-Birth II got a minor patch this week. You can read the patch notes here.
Hunter×Hunter Nen×Impact is now delayed until 2025. This is so that the developers can take more time to implement rollback netcode and continue improving the game. Nen×Impact also recently announced an active tag mechanic.
Tekken: The King Returns
Heihachi Mishima returns from the dead into Tekken 8. Coming along with him is new story content, training mode options, and a balance patch. A new stage, Genmaji Temple, has been released as well. It is a paid DLC outside of the Character Year 1 Pass. Fortunately, the stage is a similar size to others in Tekken so there is no gameplay adjustments needed if players choose to won this stage or not.
Following the release, Katsuhiro Harada made a statement regarding confusion surrounding the stage’s release. Hopefully going forward the Tekken community can get more clarity on DLC releases.
Heihachi is now available for Early Access and comes out for everyone else this Thursday, October 3rd.
Speaking of Kings, KWANGDONG FREECS’ ULSAN wins Red Bull’s Golden Letters invitational. This is ULSAN’s fourth major win since the Esports World Cup in August. Kaneandtrench took out Evo Champion Arslan Ashe during top 8. AK had an amazing loser’s run, getting a Golden Letters winning set in loser’s semifinals, taking out Kaneandtrench, then defeating Ulsan’s teammate CBM making it to Grand Finals. AK only lost to Ulsan in this bracket, so it will be an event once the two Tekken pros get the chance to play again.
Street Fighter League and World Warrior Results
Capcom officially released the dates of the Street Fighter League: World Championship and Capcom Cup 11. The event will be held March 5–9. This time competitors will be able to complete their solo Capcom Cup runs before having to play their SFL finals matches.
In week 5 of Street Fighter League Japan, Good 8 continues to lead Division S with 130 points. For Division F, things are getting a little spicy. CAG OSAKA, Yogibo REJECT, and Hiroshima TEAM iXA are now all tied with 135 points. We are still in the middle of the season so anything can happen.
You can find results for SFL Japan here. Note that the site is only in Japanese and you will need to translate it through a browser extension.
There were five World Warrior brackets held this past week in Brazil, Central America West, South Africa, Europe West, and Europe North/East.
NotPedro won the BR Kumite in Brazil and tying with Zangief_bolado for 3rd. 2Game | JUNINHO-RAS remains leading the Super Region with a 130 point lead and in second Shodown | NamikazeExTM with 120.
PRZ | ARMA wins LATAM FIST — World Warrior Central America West, continuing his dominance in the league.
For the Get Washed World Warrior for South Africa, Illusion’s MarkTheShark takes the bracket and brings himself up to second place for the region. GoliathGaming | JabhiM still remains in the lead with 140 pints even though they were absent for the event.
For Saltmine League Europe West World Warrior, current top player Takamura got beat by Rass in Winners Quarter Final and lost again to Xerna placing 5th. SYG | Garnet took the whole bracket and is now beating Takamura for first with 5 points totaling 165.
Everyone’s favorite Ken downplayer, Phenom “had to pick bison” feeling sick yet still winning Saltmine League’s North/East World Warrior. Phenom pretty much guarantees himself a spot on winners side for the Super Region’s finals with 180 points.
You can find all the current standings for World Warrior here.
Capcom: Better Late Than Never
Capcom finally released Marvel Fighting Collection’s patch notes from the update on September 20th. Essentially, the “Juggernaut Glitch” is back and the now default in ranked. For offline and casual play, the glitch can be turned on or off in the settings.
Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama and Producer Shuhei Matsumoto made an appearance at SNK’s Tokyo Game Show presentation to announce Ken and Chun-li in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Both companies seemed to be committed to a continued partnership. The Capcom vs. SNK games will be a part of Capcom Fighting Collection 2 next year and fans are hoping to see Capcom vs. SNK 3 at some point.
In Other News
Here’s some of the things that didn’t really fit into the rest of the themes this last week.
The Portland Retro Gaming Festival took place this past weekend featuring some of the biggest Classic Tetris and Dr. Mario tournaments in the US. The event also hosted some Fighting Game brackets.
Tetris official announced a new Tetris: The Grand Master coming out 2025. The Grand Master series (TGM) is one of the hardest versions of Tetris, with only several people who beat it’s latest iteration, Tetris The Grand Master 3 Terror Instinct. The announcement tweet stated it’s “designed to help train you into the ultimate Tetris pro,” but let’s just hope it gets a US release for consoles and PC with a competitively viable versus mode.
Rivals of Aether II will be a part of Steam Next Fest this month and will be offering a free demo.
Moist’s Kola wins Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at the second Luminosity Back 2 School invitational.
After almost two years of down-backing, Core-A Gaming finally releases a new video called “Every Fighting Game Type Explained”. In it he explains every fighting game type! I personally recommend it to get a better knowledge and understanding of the Fighting Game Community as a whole and some of its history.
Gerald who runs Core-A Gaming issued a statement regarding the use of AI in the video.
Yo, MenaRD in a money match? With Justin Wong! In Street Fighter…IV? The two appeared with commentator Tasty Steve in a promotional video for Playtation Esports. While the video has some banter and hot takes, at the beginning, Justin Wong says he’ll put “one thousand dollars on the line” if MenaRD could beat him in Street Fighter IV and ten thousand dollars in Street Fighter III Third Strike. Mena seemed eager to take on the challenge in the video and tweeted shortly afterword asking for Chun-li match up advice in English and in Japanese. Justin Wong responded with some laughs, as I think we all did. This could be just promoting the video, but it would definitely be cool to see.
Here Come’s a New Challenger!
Events and news coming up next week:
- SNK Championship Series Week 4 October 3
- Street Fighter League Japan Division S October 4
- Thaiger Uppercut 2024 October 4–6
- Dreamhack Atlanta October 4–6
- Roundhouse 2024 October 4–6
- Drowning Pools 2024 October 5
- World Warrior Japan 4 October 5–6
- Twitch Rivals Marvel vs. Capcom 2 October 6
- IMPACT Series 6 — World Warrior Spain/Portugal October 6
- Street Fighter League Japan Division F October 8
- Frosty Faustings Registration Opens October 9
See Liquipedia for more.
You Win!
Thanks for reading or skimming my post! I hope you found it helpful, or just skipped the parts that weren’t. If you made it this far, please subscribe to this blog for next week’s Set Point! FGC news round up.
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ggs
