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These weeks fly by when you have fun. And how is it possible not to have fun when so many great fighting games exist out there with such exciting events happening regularly?
Last week, DashFight launched a new format for our news posts — we bring them all in one place, kind of a digest. Four writers describe tourneys, updates from the developers, and other interesting stuff.
Are you ready to dive into the amazing dimension of impressive combos and victorious KOs? Let’s start, then!
Topanga is one of the tensest tournaments in the world of professional Street Fighter. It happens in Japan, and this region is just filled with legendary strong players. Watching them fight for money and glory is an exceptional experience, and we had it on July 5-7 during the Final Stage of SFV Topanga Championship III.
Aсtually, the fights started a bit earlier. The Group Stage happened on June 14-20.
24 players were divided into three groups to have round-robin matches. Two top players in each group proceeded to the Finals. Those who placed third fought each other for one additional spot.
Just take a look at the names in these groups! Imagine how tough it was to become among the top 7 players.
| Group A | Group B | Group C |
| SNB | Higuchi | RB | Gachikun | Rohto | Tokido |
| Youshikibi | GyoGun | Mizuha | DNG | Itabashi Zangief |
| G8S | Pugera | FAV | Sako | HB | Kawano |
| GyoGun | Mago | Victrix | Momochi | Nishikin |
| SNB | Fujimura | GyoGun | Machabo | AZ | Kichipa-mu |
| GyoGun | Moke | RB | Bonchan | BST | Fuudo |
| DNG | Nauman | CO | Dogura | FAV | Ryuusei |
| YHC-Mochi | BST | Daigo | HL | Zabeth |
The winners of the Group Stage are:
The Final Stage of Street Fighter V Topanga Championship 3 continued for three days. The matches were broadcasted on the Japanese streaming platform Mildom.
On Day 1, Kawano was the only one who got two victories — he defeated Mizuha and Gachikun. Most of the other players got 1 win and one loss. Only Gachikun lost both his matches. Here is the Stream link (be ready for a lot of Japanese)
On Day 2, Higuchi was one with two victories, and Youshikibi lost two of his games. Higuchi and Kawano proceeded to the final day as two leaders. You can enjoy the Stream here.
Day 3 was decisive. Kawano and Higuchi were apparent favorites, but many other players were very close and also had chances to succeed. Higuchi lost to Gachikun in a very close match (9:10 is the score of games). Tokido defeated Mizuha and Itabashi Zangief to get closer to the first position. But in the very last match, Kawano managed to secure the victory by defeating Higuchi. Follow this link to enjoy the full Stream.
It’s so exciting to see how Kawano earned this victory. He finished 3rd in Group C but still made it to the Finals and demonstrated his true power. Congratulations!
Guys, what do you think about the format of the Topanga Championship Finals? Aren't there too many games in one match — First-to7 and + tiebreakers?
Evolution Championship Series, the biggest fighting games event of the year, has quite a few sections in 2021. The main tournament is planned for August 6-8 and 13-15. But the EVO Community Series are up and running right now.
July 6 was the start day for Evo 2021 Online Warm-Up events that took place in different regions and for different games. Naturally, Street Fighter V was one of the disciplines (yep, it’s a legendary game, still super great).
The official Twitch channel of Evo broadcasted tourneys in North America and Europe. So, why not enjoy those excellent fights?
YaNoob entered the Grand Final through the Losers Bracket to play against ElChakotay. After quite a slow start, he eventually found his game and won the tournament.
In the Grand Final, Garnet was on the Winners side and played against Sotolongo80. He won the match and the tourney with impressive confidence.
Evo has Warm-Up tournaments for other games, including Tekken 7 and Mortal Kombat 11.
These guys are easily among the strongest Street Fighter players in the world, and they regularly participate in weekly online tournaments Next Level Battle Circuit.
You might remember from our pilot news digest that iDom won NLBC #68, defeating Punk in the Winners Final. The fight of these US titans continues during this week’s event.
This time, iDom and Punk met in the Losers Final. iDom entered the Top 8 part through this bracket, while Punk lost to Sabin in the Winners Final. Their match was tough, so treat yourself to watching it!
Punk won 3:2 and returned to matches against Sabin in the Grand Final. He managed to get two (not very easy) victories and become the NLBC #60 champion.
We wrote about this guy and his victory at Wednesday Night Fight last week. Is this some sort of Déjà vu? But not, it's the next tourney of this weekly online series with many new matches — only the winner is the same.
ChrisCCH has a very interesting experience at WNF #26 — he met Mario and Luigi on his way to victory (are we talking about Smash here?)
Will ChrisCCH be able to win WNF next week? Might you be the one who stops him?
What about destroying your Dragon Ball FighterZ opponents with a smiley face? The winner of this week's DBFZ section of the Next Level Battle Circuit event might be practicing such a style — thanks to their nickname.
But seriously, Smileyy’s performance was totally impressive. Enjoy the matches on video!
Smileyy entered the Top 8 part through the Winners bracket and defeated NeoJudai in the Semi-Final. The Winners Final and the Grand Final were against LegendaryyPred. While their first fight was close, the Grand Final was filled with the dominance of Smileyy. They had some difficulties only in the final round after losing Bardock and almost losing Kid Buu. But then the situation changed back, and Smileyy celebrated victory.
This has been a pretty difficult week for Mortal Kombat 11 fans following the news that there will no longer any support for the game by the developers. What followed was something of a post-mortem as many saw this as the end of the game. The views ranged from mournful to angry, and there were even a couple of high-profile players who put their opinions out there. We'll get into all of that, along with some of the top results and competitions that took place over the course of the week.
As an African, any news of the FGC getting some good press always excites me. This was the case during the WePlay Ultimate Fighting League when Africa's own Justin Banda, otherwise known as Mr. 5000 was invited for the tournament. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it and he had to pull out. This wasn't great as it looked like another year where the African FGC would not get its due. But, first Capcom announced that the CPT would reach Africa (albeit only South Africa), and then, Mister Aquaman and The Kolosseum also announced a global tournament that would include two African regions— TWO! These are North & West Africa and South & East Africa. While the latter will have its top 8 tomorrow (there was an unfortunate delay), the former took place on Wednesday and it was an amazing time. There were about 30 participants and after about 5 hours of some quality MK, a winner emerged. SOLO| Hamza, a Senegalese Kabal player took the tournament with a 3-1 win against Gainany after a Grand Final reset.
We can't wait to see how South & East Africa will turn out and the top 8 already has a couple of awesome players from the region including Killjoy, Mr. 5000, and Mark the Shark
Also in view last week was the East Coast Showdown tournament for MK11. The competition was stacked with about 16 of some of the coldest Mortal Kombat 11 killers out there and there was incredible commentary from Ultra David and DarthArma. The competition was taken by Aztec whose excellent Kotal Kahn guide you can check out here. He took the tournament beating Sooneo 3-2 in the grand final.
As mentioned earlier, the biggest piece of news has been NRS' announcement ending their support for MK11. The reactions have been generally unhappy with even SonicFox going so far as to say that they would not be playing the game again unless there are a couple of major tournaments to compete in.
The feeling seems to be that lack of support for the game = death of the game. Many have pointed out that this is not the case. Maybe it's because I'm a bit older, but as someone who lived on cartridges and finished games being released once and for all, I wasn't as upset at the NRS announcement. However, It would be unfair to thrust my (ancient) ideals on a younger generation that have grown up on patches, DLC, and new content for games. I don't think Mortal Kombat 11 is dead, not as long as there are still tournaments for it. It is unfortunate that there have been very few offline tournaments for the game especially with the way everything went with the pandemic, but there have been moments of inspiration over that period of time regardless. What was your favorite MK11 moment?
Hello and welcome to What DF Happened This Week and its Tekken 7 part – Flamingo Stance. Here you can learn all the latest happenings in the King of Iron Fist Tournament world in a casual and engaging way. My name is Elizbar, and I will be your guide through the tournament results, game news, happenings in the pro-gaming side of things. I will share exciting stories, show you cool fan art and cosplay, and discuss any and every interesting topic. Osu!
This weekend isn’t only interesting for the fans of some good old football, with the UEFA Euro 2020 and CONMEBOL Copa América 2021 coming up. Tekken fans will rejoice as we have a high-profile tournament in LG UltraGear Fight Night starting on July 10th. The competition is divided into three regions: West Europe, North America East, and East Asia. So yes, sadly, we won’t be able to see Arslan Ash and the rest of the incredibly strong Pakistani region in action. But the competition promises to be fierce nonetheless.
For the European tourney, we have Fergus, DougFromParis, Shirdel, Sephiblack, BlackKazama, KiraKira, Caiper, and Super Akouma.
You can check out the bracket here:
The participants for the NA title are as follows: Anakin, Trungy, myk, Shadow 20z, Joonya_20z, Spero Gin, Pokchop, and Joey Fury.
Take a look at the brackets:
For the East Asia event, we have two more participants than in other regions, so they will play a preliminary qualifier. The participants are: Karei, Chanel, Rangchu, Take, Nobi, Gen, JeonDDing, Chikurin, JDCR, and Knee.
East Asian brackets:
The announced starting times are as follows:
Let’s get ready for some good-ass Tekken. You’ll be able to read about the results in the next week’s Flamingo Stance.
Last week, Bandai Namco Entertainment’s esports channel published the first part of the Lidia Sobieska Dev Diary, where Series Producer Michael Murray, Game Director Kohei “Nakatsu” Ikeda, and Battle Director Jun “Mishimastar” Yasuda talked about the process of choosing a martial arts to be represented in the game, how the dev team approaches the creation of the visuals and background of the character, and many more things. You can read about it and watch the video in the pilot entry of the What DF Happened This Week rubric.
Yesterday, the second part of the Lidia Sobieaska Dev Diary was published. The developers touch upon the woes and hardships of producing any new characters and share the internal steps of the gameplay creation process.
One of the biggest challenges the Tekken 7 team faces is making any new character stand out. Jun “Mishimastar” Yasuda even admits that being out of ideas is not as uncommon as one would think, and at times some additional brainstorming is required. The problem many fighting games of Tekken’s lineage and legacy have is the possibility of repetition. There are a finite number of distinct martial arts and only so many ways a human can kick or punch another human. Additional hardship is coming up with a story and background that would make sense and also fit their visual aesthetic and gameplay style. With Lidia, they had to differentiate her from Jin, another Karate practitioner.
Then arrises the issue of the character balance. The devs mention that many older characters pass through different stages of this while being brought up to their current quality. The newer fighters lack this luxury and have to fit in right from the start. Surprisingly, the biggest worry the creators have is not to make them too weak. Considering the power levels of some relatively recent additions to the roster, one would wonder if their concerns should lie on the other side of the spectrum.
Michael Murray mentioned that they’d received numerous requests to portray martial arts with more subdued movements. However, this happened to be a bad fit, as those tend not to look nearly as good in-game. Instead, they decided to focus on certain core elements of the more attractive styles like Muay Thai or Karate, even if it meant that the reproduction wouldn’t be as realistic. Lidia Sobieska is less physical and direct than Jin, as her fighting style incorporates the usage of katas. The basis for this was a real-life example called “Bunkai disassembly,” which entails the usage of kata movements to fight against the opponent.
This all was brought to life thanks to the master named Naka-sensei, a 7th dan in traditional Karate. His sharp moves and speed allowed the Tekken team to motion-capture a lot of useful material to be used in creating the animations for Lidia. It wasn’t an easy undertaking during the COVID-times, but the developers managed to get good results.
At the end of the video, it was announced that the third part of this very interesting Dev Diary will be coming soon.
Esports organization UYU has announced that a streamer, commentator, and content creator Hassan "Spag" Farooq is leaving the team.
He’s been a part of the org for four years. He clarified in his Twitter post that it was his decision to leave UYU.
DashFight team wishes all the best to both Spag and the UYU team in the future!
That’s all from me for this week! I’ll leave you with this amazing Kunimitsu art from TBS | Hanny.
Earlier this week, they announced the new model for their eighth-generation console, the Nintendo Switch OLED. As most manufacturers unveil their ninth generation, Nintendo has chosen to stay with their hardware and package for just a little bit longer.
This year, rumors were rampant about the potential release of a “Pro” version of the switch with more powerful hardware and a few packages and IO upgrades. A lot of the hype was centered on March as Online E3 was making the rounds. But the Nintendo presentation came and went, and no news emerged.
Instead, a few months later, they came out with what is arguably a better version of the switch but not precisely “Pro.” A new OLED screen promises better quality and lower power consumption, meaning longer battery life.
But the most critical part of the new OLED version for us Smash players is, without a doubt, the inclusion of a LAN ethernet port in the back of the dock. Ask any tournament organizer for their number 1 complaint of this quarantine season. They will unanimously tell you about the horrors of players showing in the lobby and immediacy having to ask them for LAN proof.
Some might say too little too late, as Local events are returning to the North American Continent, Europe, and parts of Asia. But there will always be a need for some sort of online competition, and having the flagship version of Switch move over to this new OLED version might just make the job of TOs a little bit easier. Bless their souls.
Sparg0 wins out the FPS #6 and extends his win streak to 4 with another win at the Mega Smash Mondays. This also means that Scend had his Win streak cut short by coming in second. Still a very respectable result for the Ness player. Rounding out the Top 4 were Skyjay and Kiyarash, which adds another tremendous top 4 results to their belt.
This year, Dexter takes on his 14th Top 8 finish for the Grind, with most results well into the top 4. And for this week, one of his many wins of the events. Joining him on the podium was MJ, coming second once again. Squidplumber rounded up the top 3, breaking into the Top 4 for the first time in his record for The Grind.
Rounding up our week was New Zealand’s major, the CCC. As noted last week, Aluf and Ichigo were clear favorites as they were also moving into the Smash World Tour for their region. Indeed, they set 1 and 3 at the end of the day. Ichigo stood on the top step for the first time at a major event. Splitting the pair was NZ Pichu main Bozzie.
The big event this weekend will be the second iteration of the Level Up Arena in Kansas City. With over 240 players (capped at 256) and a 1250 pot bonus, it is posing itself to be the event to watch over the weekend. Some of the prominent names involved in the competition will be Epic_Gabriel, Scend, and Goblin, among many other players looking to secure the $1000 pot bonus for Singles or the $250 for the Doubles Bracket.
Once again, finish off your week with Sakurai’s images of the week.
It seems like that’s it for now. But no worries! The next week will be the same awesome, probably even better!
To never miss the greatness of fighting games, follow DashFight on Facebook and Twitter. See you there!
This material was created with the support of our Patrons. You can support us!
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T8
MK1
SF6
Scouterz
GBVSR
Project L
SSBU
T7
DBFZ
BH
GGST
SC6
SG2E
KI
MVS
KoFXV
MBTL
SF5
MK11
