This Week in Fighting Games: More Tekken 8 & SF6 Gameplay Trailers

New Tekken 8 Trailers

Bandai Namco just keep pumping out these character trailers for Tekken 8! Right after King we got Lars Alexandersson, Jack-8 and just breaking Jun Kazama in quick succession!

Lars is looking more handsome and shonen, Jack is looking like an absolute beast, though judging from the amount of moves he’s pilfered from Gigas we do have to wonder if the red giant is coming back or not. With how high fidelity and detailed all these character models are, surely there’s going to be a reduction from Tekken 7’s massive character roster, along with the inevitable newcomers. Finally, Jun is absolutely beautiful whilst also using some moves from Unknown. Michael Murray also hinted that she might have some kind of unique healing mechanic, and it’s great to see the Tekken devs really embracing how different these characters are from a gameplay perspective.

All these character trailers are inevitably leading up to the closed alpha test at EVO Japan in just a few days. We’ll be there on the scene at EVO Japan to report what we can get!

Brawlhalla's Next Legend

Thea the Speedster was introduced as the next character to join Brawlhalla’s roster. Some details about this fresh addition to the roster are Thea’s weapons, the Battle Boots and Rocket Lance. It’s a pretty interesting combination. Only one other character has the Boots, as this weapon has been introduced with the previous Legend, Tezca. And we haven’t seen a new Lance Legend for quite a while — Vector was the last one. Another super feature is that Thea can speed up to x10. You can see more info about her in the Brawlhalla Dev stream.

Brawlhalla Spring Championship 1v1

More on Brawlhalla, the Spring Championship 1v1 tournaments took place over the weekend.

Asmodie won in Australia, Himwy in SEA, Godly in Europe, Wesley in South America and luna in North America. Congratulations to all the winners!

New Street Fighter 6 Gameplay

Capcom continues to share footage from the upcoming Street Fighter 6 generously. This time, the developers have published a match between newcomer Lily vs. one the original 8, E. Honda. In particular, I love how creative Honda's Level 3 Super Art is, which creates a ring of fire around the opponent akin to a sumo ring, after which he tosses them out for massive damage. It was also great to see Lily taking a note or two from her old man with the Tomahawk Buster command grab. 

Luminosity Gaming Signs Smash Bros Superstars

Some fantastic news for Smash fans as two of the top players in the game, MkLeo and Tweek, were announced as Luminosity Gaming players last night. This comes hot on the heels of a period of real pain for the Smash Ultimate community as they were rocked with scandals, dwindling support, and a continued lack of nurturing from Nintendo. Despite this, they remain one of the biggest gaming communities out there.

Smash Ultimate Summit 6

It was a bittersweet day for the community though, when Smash Ultimate Summit 6 marked the final summit for the BTS production team. Industry woes aside, the competition was fierce, and coming into the top 16, it was clear that we were going to be treated to an amazing day of SSBU. After a tumultuous event full of exciting matches, in the end, Acola beat Tweek to take home the gold.

MultiVersus Open Beta Ends

In MultiVersus, it was announced that the open beta would close on June 25, 2023, and the game will launch sometime in the beginning of 2024. We were also promised new content, features, modes & more when it returns. Attached to their blog post was a lengthy FAQ detailing how the process of the shutdown will go.

Black Dahlia Releases

And finally, in Skullgirls, the gun-toting DLC character Black Dahlia releases this week. 

That is all for this week's major news. Feel free dive deep into each of these or any of our other stories this week.