Category: Community

History was made, records were set, hearts were broken, and dreams came true.

We were fortunate enough to be invited to EVO and experience the Grand Finals as close as possible. We tried to capture the feel of the arena as best we could. We hope you enjoy the footage. Congratulations to all those that made it to Top 6, and to the winners, of course!

Special thank you to Mr. Mark Julio, b/k/a MarkMan, for inviting us. Special thank you to the entire EVO staff for putting on and running this incredible event. Special thank you to the FGC for making this happen, and making history – together.

A fighting game for the PlayStation with a one-hit kill system!! This is the promise made to readers of Japanese gaming magazine Dengeki back in October of 1995 with the first character art and biographies of Guilty Gear. Community translator Sol Radguy has recently published a translation of what is likely the first ever preview of Guilty Gear, showing some stark differences from what would later be known as Guilty Gear The Missing Link when it hit the PlayStation in 1998.

This depiction of the cast is both familiar and bizarrely different, juxtaposing the hand-drawn artwork associated with Guilty Gear’s aesthetics prior to Xrd with CG renders that I can only assume were in style at the time. It’s about 8 pages long, and you can read it on the Internet Archive right now. There’s also a later preview from 1996 with screenshots of a prototype build!

NEW TRANSLATION: Dengeki PlayStation Oct. 1995 – Prototype Guilty Gear: The Missing Link Article, English. The translation is after the 8 pages in Japanese.

Thank you to @Nincopyjasb for providing the original files.https://t.co/Bk1e5DlMGB pic.twitter.com/lgK7JHDD0s

— Sol 🔞 Radguy 🏳️‍⚧️ (@junkyarddogmk69) May 8, 2023

How much do you know about Advanced V.G. 2? The answer is probably not much, but you should fix that because it’s part of Combo Breaker 2023’s All In Together tournaments, and playable with rollback netcode. Today you can learn the ins and outs of the system in a comprehensive primer video released by IdolismJ in collaboration with Sleepmode, two heads of the English speaking AVG2 scene. Check that out below.

In all seriousness, this gem of the PlayStation’s fighting game catalog is easily one of the best 2D fighters on the platform, smattering wild twists on a solid layer of Street Fighter fundamentals. Join the Discord and check out the SuperCombo Wiki if you’re looking for matches and more information alike.

Community newsletter writer Arcade Press has put together a Google Map of arcades across Europe, Japan and the United States and I feel compelled to share it because I have not seen anything like it to date. Right now you’ll find it has pretty coverage of notable arcades around Tokyo and a few different choice spots along the East Coast of the United States (I personally vouch for Lost Ark Video Games!).

Of course you’re more than welcome to suggest an arcade you know about by replying to their Twitter post or sending them a DM there. They’re looking for help in compiling the International Network of Arcade Centers!

I recently sat down with combo video guru turned event director Brett to do a retrospective and interview on his new regional anime FGC event out in NorCal called Slashback. With the inaugural run in March being a bona fide success for the west coast Anime FGC, I wanted to know all the details on starting from scratch.

Brett shares a lot of insight on how to organize communities and structure your event to make the most out of grassroots budgets. Osugure was also there! You should listen to him talk about tweeting. Watch The TO Desk #12 on YouTube or get it on Spotify. Follow @SlashbackEvent for more news.

In the FGC it always goes like this: If the devs won’t add it, modders will. ArcSys community modder WistfulHopes presents a PC mod that enables frame advantage display in training mode. Getting frame data from Dustloop is well and good, but it really helps to know exactly how many frames of advantage (or disadvantage) you’re working with when experimenting with setups.

Dragon Ball FighterZ also had this handy display added in an update, so I hope ArcSys can get this to console players in the future. Grab the mod on GitHub.

Artwork inserts for arcade sticks (and leverless) are an old tradition in the FGC, but how often is your artwork useful in the middle of a set? Check out the Cheatbox Micro project, a set of free art inserts for Junkfood’s Snackbox Micro leverless that fills that empty space with useful info.

Creator Noe Perez describes their motivation as “help cheatbox users “cheat” harder”, and currently a number of variants exist for Street Fighter V, Guilty Gear Strive, a Skullgirls version for Big Band and a neutral version listing out SOCD tricks.

Perez is producing variants for Street Fighter 6 based on information from the Beta tests and Demo, with all kinds of combos and frame data cited from various sources including our own wiki! As a TO I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this kind of thing actually be banned despite its name. Very cool!

The TO desk is a show dedicated to telling the perspectives of organizers inside the FGC.

Join Coren, DJCream, Shiburizu & Tenma on a look ahead to 2022! We briefly look back at what highlighted fighting games in 2021 for each of us (including an extended rant on Concerto’s development by Shib) and recap our thoughts on the open beta tests for DNF Duel & The King of Fighters XV. What comes next? First we talk about Frosty Faustings due this coming week at the time of upload, and make some guesses on what we’re watching closely in 2022.

00:00:00 Intros
00:01:03 2021 FGC highlights
00:17:50 DNF Duel & KOFXV Open Beta Test thoughts
00:39:17 Frosty Faustings XIV
00:56:50 2022 Expectations

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Check out our hosts on this episode:

• • Coren on Twitter
  • DJCream on Twitter
  • Shiburizu on Twitter
  • Tenma on Twitter