So this is how the year ends | Set Point! January 1, 2025
As one round ends, the next one begins. The end of 2024 finished hot for the FGC. We had big tournaments and big emotions. SNK really had the spotlight these past few weeks with a whole slew of announcements and great sets. We had CEOtaku wrap up just before the holidays. And Street Fighter League US had it’s final regular season episode.
I’m NormieNick, and this is Set Point! A weekly FGC News Round up.
Let’s Rock
Street Fighter!
Street Fighter League US Week 10
Street Fighter League US ended, and it was a pretty dramatic finish.
First up was Shopify Rebellion faced Red Rooster. Sayff lost to Uriel Velorio in the Ken mirror matching making Shopify end the season with 200 points. This meant that their 4th place finished could only be secured with Bandits going 0–3 against Fighting Spirit.
FlyQuest got the 40 bomb on Cloud9. A rough way to end the season, but well deserved wins from Punk’s team.
At the end of the night was the most important match, Fighting Spirit vs. Bandits. If Fighting Spirit got the 40 bomb on Bandits, they would be eliminated and Shopify Rebellion would go to SFL US Finals. Fighting Spirit’s Oil King won over Luiman, but after Caba beat DCQ’s M.Bison, a difficult matchup for Guile, Bandits secured their place. During the team match, it was unclear this was the case so it was up to Mena and NL to save or eliminate Bandits. In a nail biting last game, last round, Mena took the W for his team and eliminating Shopify. This was THE set to watch for the night.
Final Standings
1. FlyQuest 290
2. Fighting Spirit 220
3. Cloud9 220
4. Bandits 220
5. Shopify Rebellion 200
6. Red Rooster 85
Fun fact! This is the first time in SFL there was a three way tie in points! What was crazier about it was they also had the same amount of total wins so the standings went down to amount of rounds won.
Street Fighter League Japan Playoffs
Unfortunately, the SFL Japan Playoffs were not streamed so there isn’t too much to talk about the event. It was a ticketed offline event and I really wish I had more to show y’all from it.
Good 8 Squad won Division S and Yogibo REJECT won Division F. Grand Finals are on Feburary 11th and you won’t want to miss them. Hoping for this one to be streamed!
Street Fighter 6 World Warriors
Here’s this week’s class of World Warriors that qualified for Capcom Cup
Brazil — Zangief_bolado
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Zangief_bolado has been playing since the Street Fighter V days and has been killing it this year with buffed Zangief in many Latin American online tournaments as well as fifth place at Ultimate Fighting Arena in France. This is his first Capcom Cup.
Middle East — AngryBird
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Long overdue, AngryBird finally qualifies for this year’s Capcom Cup. He and his best friend BigBird started during the Street Fighter IV era. AngryBird won the first EVO for Street Fighter 6, got second at Gamers8 later that year, and has continued to have success in the game this year getting top 8 at Evo and winning THE MIXUP to qualify for the Esports World Cup. AngryBird is known for his Ken, but also plays Cammy and Akuma.
Europe North-East- JuicyJoe
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Swedish JP player, JuicyJoe from Sweden won his regions finals. JuicyJoe began competing in the FGC with the release of Mortal Kombat X. Street Fighter 6 is his comeback post COVID. He consistently got top 8s at his World Warrior this year and his team MOUZ got 3rd place in Street Fighter League Europe. This will be JuicyJoe’s first Capcom Cup.
US-Canada West- JB
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JB, older brother to Lexx, won his spot to Capcom Cup this year over Snake Eyez. This is the first time in Capcom Cup history where two brothers have both qualified. JB is a Rashid player and started competing heavily with the release of Street Fighter V. JB was team captain this year of Cloud9 for Street Fighter League US where he lead his team to Finals. This will be his second Capcom Cup, his first was in 2019.
Europe West- S4ltyKiD
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In an upset, S4ltyKiD beat Garnet and Xerna for the Europe West Capcom Cup seat.
S4ltyKiD is a 19 year old Kimberly player from Belgium. He began having results in late Street Fighter V and this is his first Capcom Cup. If he sticks with Street Fighter, we’ll be seeing a lot more of him over the years.
SNK Championship Update!
The SNK World Championship Series Finals happened the weekend before Christmas and it was some of the best King of Fighters all year. It was the conclusion of a series of online tournaments organized by SNK China, but this finals event was offline. M’ and Birdman-Yunwu qualified by getting the top two spots. Check out my full recap of the event:
And in case you missed it, at the SWC Series Finals, Gato was announced for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves!
That same weekend was CEOtaku were we had 5 different countries represented in top 8. Shout out to Snover and Silvera being the US reps. In a tight Grand Finals reset, Colombian RocklandKyo won the SWC qualification spot over Argentinian KAISER666.
This third KOF tournament we had was BeePro Cup in Taiwan hosted by GamerBee, who’s known to be one of the best Street Fighter players in the world. While the main event was the Street Fighter Bracket with over 400 entrants, the KOF bracket was an SWC qualifier. ET won the event, but runner up was ZJZ who got his spot for SWC.
SNK announced Samurai Showdown at Frosty Faustings will be the first SWC qualifier for the game. It is a side tournament at the convention, but still cool to see! SNK also made the Casablanca Fighting Championship in Morocco an SWC qualifier for both KOF XV and SamSho.
Frosty Fausting Bracket Details
Liquipedia for Casablanca Fighting Championship
As part of the KOF 30th anniversary marketing campaign, SNK had two big announcements these past few weeks. The first was the Steam port of The King of Fighters XIII Global Match. It’s KOF XIII, but with rollback! It will not have crossplay.
The second announcement was that SNK officially created a new division called KOF Studio. This will be a team of developers and producers dedicated to SNK’s fighting game projects. They also happen to be working on the Samurai Showdown RPG coming out, but this means we should be seeing more games, support, and activities from SNK’s Fighting Game franchises.
Arc World Tour at CEOtaku!
During the Guilty Gear -Strive- we saw Jonathan Tene win another Gold event and is now tied for first in points. RedIAmNot got second and is now in top 30. Razzo who got 7th kept her 6th place position with 171 points.
For Granblue Fantasy Versus : Rising, Xerom, Elsa, Zippy, BlueSkyGuyBSG, and Aarondamac got 1st thorugh 5th respectively. Even after winning two gold events, Xerom is just shy of qualifying with 211 points. Zippy keeps their spot at 316 points along with Elsa at 293.
Arc World Tour current standings:
Lastly, Strive got a patch right after taku. You can read the patch notes here.
Round Robin!
This is where I discuss miscellaneous FGC news that didn’t quite fit in with the above.
Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite and Beyond released and this past week had it’s matcherino go up to $7000 for a pot bonus. The project has been really cool to see and I definitely recommend checking it out.
Sajam announced the dates for the Sajam Slam this month they are:
Wednesday, Jan 22 — Round Robin 1 @ 3pm PT
Friday, Jan 24 — Round Robin 2 @ 3pm PT
Sunday, Jan 26 — Tournament up to Top 2/Qualifiers @ 3pm PT
Top North American Tekken players JoeCrush and KingReyJr went head to head offline for the very first time at CEOtaku. They have frequently played each other all year long at the online TNS weeklys. You can watch their Winner’s Finals and Grand Finals matches here:
Virtua Fighter Official announced that its appearance at Frosty Faustings and EVO Japan will be a part of the VF Open Championship. No more details have been given yet about the tour.
Two legendary FGC venues are closing their doors. Brooklyn Games & Arcade in New York, and a-cho GAME in Japan. a-cho game became legendary during the beginning of the Street Fighter IV era as it was the only way many people saw the highest levels of play from the game from Japan. Brooklyn Games remains to this day one of the most popular retro arcades and has a huge KOF ’98 and Marvel 2 scenes. This is a reminder that if you have a place like this, treat them well, help them grow, and don’t judge them for adding certain kinds of machines or selling non-gaming things. It looks like Brooklyn games could possibly be saved, but it is not certain.
Brooklyn Video Games VODs
a-cho GAME VODs
Here Comes a New Challenger!
Here’s next week’s upcoming events.
World Warrior: France-Monaco Regional Finals January 5
World Warrior: Japan #5 January 5
It’s going to be pretty slow until Friday, January 17th where things will really kick back into high gear.
You Win!
Thanks again for reading. With the lull in events, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more in depth recaps and the video edition of Set Point!
https://www.youtube.com/@NormieNick
Bonus Stage
For whatever reason, BiliBili, an East Asian streaming service, had KOF cosplay and character’s featured at it’s New Year’s Eve party. It was in collaberation with Naraka: Bladepoint, but it was a really cool thing to see. You can see the clip from YeMaster here:
