What DF Happened This Week? #2

With the FGC slowly getting back to its feet after a crippling year, many events are picking up, which means keeping on top of everything could be a tad difficult. Understandably, it might take a while longer to have offline tournaments on the scale of years past, but there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel. 

Here at DashFight, we've curated the best news content, the hypest tournaments (both completed and upcoming), and all the good stuff you'd want to know about. 

So, without further ado, let's find out what DF happened this week!

Mortal Kombat 11: Kombat Korner by Femi Famutimi

I think we're all coming around to the fact that there is an expiry date on Mortal Kombat 11, and for those who don't know how to handle it, they have run into the arms of another lover— GG Strive. But, this doesn't mean stuff isn't going on in the world of Mortal Kombat 11 as there are still tournaments taking place, starting with...

Mortal Kombat 11 EVO 2021 Online Warm-Up

Evo 2021 is less than a month away! I don't know about you, but the hype is beginning to get to me and we got a taste of how awesome things could be when the tournament kicks off with the Online Warm-Up series. These were a series of tournaments used as a tester for the main event next month. They covered every top title to be represented and the Mortal Kombat tournaments were particularly fun. For MK, the finals for both Europe and North America took place over the week and we were privy to some heart-pounding action. 

Europe

Europe has always been a fertile ground for some of Mortal Kombat's most influential players. The European finals of the Evo Warm-Up saw 8 absolute beasts duke it out for the top place. It eventually went to RIZE| Murko, whose excellent Scorpion was too much for MKJavier and now we can expect that he will stake his claim for a shot at the biggest honor within the fighting game community. If you would like to know more about Murko, and his fascinating reason for using Scorpion, you can check out DashFight's interview with him here. 

North America

Over on the other side of the world, The Evo Warm-Up saw HijinxFGC take the W over MK veteran, Tweedy. 

Upcoming Tournaments

While the excitement was rife for the Evo Warm-Ups, there are a couple of big tournaments on the way that should get people super excited. 

EU v ME 5v5

First, as announced by Darth Conflictus, there will be a 5v5 tournament between a European all-star team versus the Middle East. Europe will have the likes of Murko and Arnkratos, while the Middle East will be able to call on Tekken Master. It takes place on the 26th of July and promises to be fun.

DreamHack Beyond

DreamHack returns with DreamHack Beyond, a festival of gaming that will feature several FG titles, including Skullgirls, Virtua Fighter, and Mortal Kombat 11. The MK11 event will take place on the 30th of July and promises to be an exciting time. 

CEO path to Pro

As announced by MF$layer on Twitter, this is a series of MK11 tournaments that will take place over 10 weeks and will build up all the way to CEO which is later this year. Over the next 10 weeks, starting from tomorrow, players will gain points by ranking in the tournaments and the players with the most points will make it to the finals. Once there, the grand finalists will have their flight costs to CEO covered and even stand a chance of making it into the brackets. 

Kommunity News

Probably the biggest piece of news to hit the kommunity in the last couple of hours is the fact that Panda have decided to part ways with their players representing the following games:

• Mortal Kombat
• Smash 64
• Pokemon
• Card Games
• Rivals of Aether
• Soul Calibur

In a statement released on their website, the esports company explained that they had to make this decision to get into new games and continue innovating within the space. While they are still keeping their Punk for Street Fighter, it is lights out for Hayatei and he released a statement on his Twitter account confirming that he is no longer with Panda

We wish Hayatei all the best moving forward.

Elsewhere,  the main story seems to surround the MK11 servers which aren't being very nice to people. This has not been received well by most fans who are still smarting from the news that NRS has ceased support for the game. 

Hopefully, the situation is resolved. MK11 might be coming to an end, but that doesn't mean it can't still provide us with some amazing memories. 

Well, that's it from me this week, until next time.

Tekken 7: Flamingo Stance by Elizbar Ramazashvili

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!

LG UltraGear Fight Night

Last weekend, football paid its debt to Messi and Argentina, Italians broke English hearts while Englishmen broke everything around them, and we witnessed some good-ass Tekken at LG UltraGear Fight Night. Here’s a quick recap of everything that happened (you can read the full version of this material by Alex Samonov).

In the battle for the European crown, Sephiblack made a run through the upper bracket, defeating Shirdel, Blackkazama, and DougFromParis on his way. The latter made a surge through the lower bracket and eventually reached the Grand Final, where he took down Sephiblack in the first bout, resetting the bracket. However, it wasn’t enough, as the German’s pressure with Miguel was too much for the Frenchman’s Steve Fox to bear.

The highlight of the East Asian tourney was Chanel’s run from the preliminary round all the way to the Winners Final. There, however, he was stopped by the one and only Chikurin, who defeated Rangchu and Knee earlier. Chanel didn’t give up – he won the lower bracket bout against Gen and made it into the Grand Final, only to be defeated by Chikurin again.

North America East also had some fun in store. Anakin was probably the biggest name going into this tourney, but he was defeated in the second round by Shadow 20z, who overcame myk_JUMP in his first match. Shadow 20z then went on to face his older brother Joonya_20z three times in a row. The first bout was in Winners Final, which ended in favor of the younger brother. Joonya_20z then managed to best Anakin in the lower bracket and make it into the Grand Final and even forced the bracket to reset. But ultimately, his Eliza was defeated by Shadow’s Zafina, and the younger sibling took all the glory.

I asked Marquis “Shadow 20z” Jordan a couple of questions after his victory.

Me: You blazed through the upper bracket, defeating myk_JUMP, Anakin, and your brother on your way to the final. Did you expect to do as well as you did?

Shadow 20z: I did expect to do well In the tournament. I practiced very hard and did lots of studying on all of the players.

Me: Joonya made it to the final, too. And his Eliza made you work, didn't she? He forced a bracket reset, but you eventually won. How does it usually go between you two?

Shadow 20z: Joonya did make me work very hard. I usually have the upper hand against him, but he is my older brother and we train together a lot, as well as coach each other, so I did expect him to be a difficult opponent.

Me: Do you have any set goals this year, or do you take it each tournament at a time?

Shadow 20z: With COVID-19 still being a thing, my goals are to just do my best in these online tournaments. I want to stay as sharp as possible for when offline events come back.

Me: Thank you so much, and good luck in the future!

Shadow 20z: Thank you too!

With the level of play he showcased at this event, Shadow 20z could be a really strong contender for whichever offline Tekken 7 event comes first.

TEKKEN Online Challenge: Tayan CUP #1

TEKKEN Online Challenge started picking up steam, and one of the biggest and flashiest tournaments last week was Tayan CUP #1 for East Asia. Among the sixty-four registered competitors, there were players such as Chikurin, NOROMA, Rangchu, Gen, Nobi, and many other familiar faces.

One of the favorites, Chikurin, had to bow out in the fourth round of the Losers Bracket after two losses against TaiHeiYo and G. Nobi, who managed to lose in the very first match of the Winners Bracket, also got eliminated alongside Chikurin – he lost versus youjin_boy.

One of the favorites who didn’t falter was Rangchu. The highlight of the whole tournament was his slugfest against AO in three consecutive matches: Winners Final and two bouts in the Grand Final.

Top-6 standings in the event were as follows:

1. Rangchu

2. AO

3. PINYA

4. Gen

5. NOROMA

6. TaiHeiYo

Evo 2021 Showcase

As we all know, because of the COVID-enforced circumstances, this year’s Evo will be held as a regional online event. However, the team behind the most prestigious fighting games festival had an ace up its sleeve. Everyone should mark their calendars for November 27-28, as the winners of the regional Evo Online events will be invited to Las Vegas to compete in the all-expenses-paid offline event called Evo 2021 Showcase. UFC APEX arena complex will host the tournament. The total prize pool will be a hefty $125,000, with $25,000 per game. Speaking of those, here’s the list of the titles:

• Guilty Gear -Strive-

• Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate

• Skullgirls 2nd Encore

• Street Fighter V: Champion Edition

• Tekken 7

Evo is back, and we’re so ready for it!

Lidia Sobieska Dev Diary Part 3

For the past two weeks, Bandai Namco Entertainment’s esports channel has published two parts 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, the challenges associated with the creation of new fighters, and many more things. I have covered this in the previous edition of What DF Happened This Week?

Yesterday, they published the third and final part of the dev diary. In this video, the developers talk about the challenges they had to overcome when designing the DLCs in general, and not only the character creation.

Michael Murray revealed that when Tekken 7 was initially released four years ago, the team only intended to make only one season of post-launch downloadable content, as the Games as a Service model wasn’t quite popular in the industry yet. But the game’s major popularity, as well as the creation of the Tekken World Tour, made it necessary to create more content to keep the players from getting bored. Post-launch content for any game, in general, makes it easier to maintain it, as these DLCs pay for the upkeep cost and the tweak and balance work. In the case of Tekken 7, they helped implement such additional features as My Replays and Tips and also made it possible to improve the netcode.

The development process wasn’t easy on the team, but they pushed through four seasons, and Kohei “Nakatsu” Ikeda even added that they’re ready to continue working on it.

Harada’s Bar with Seiji Aoki

Back in the pilot edition of What DF Happened This Week? I featured an episode from Harada’s Bar where he invited Virtua Fighter's producer Seiji Aoki. In the video published this weekend the meeting finally took place.

For the majority of the first part, sly Harada is trying to make Aoki say just how many copies of the newest Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Edition were downloaded worldwide. His efforts, however, bear no fruit, as Aoki doesn’t crack. That said, he does reveal that the number exceeded the internal expectations quite a bit. Apparently, the countries where the game is most popular, are the US, UK, Germany, Brazil, and France.

Later Harada said, that if he was in charge at Sega, he would have definitely given VF a real shot. To this Aoki responded that there were internal talks about the possibility of a reboot of the franchise, but those are always risky and difficult.

We, like Harada himself, would very much love to see another successful fighting game franchise get revived and reach new heights. Good luck to Seiji Aoki and the whole VF team!

DashFight Tekken 7 Characters Guide Contest

You might have heard that DashFight has started a Character Guide Contest for Tekken 7. If you feel like you can provide some useful information about the fighters, feel free to create a guide for them, follow the instructions in this material, and have a chance to win a $50 Steam Gift card!

Tekken 7 Family Quiz

You’ve seen all these FAMILY memes, right? They were everywhere. Some were funnier than the others, but I decided to make a serious Tekken lore test and package it within this meme format. Lo and behold…

How Well Do You Know Tekken Families? Devil Gene is strong, but not as strong as the FAMILY!

Fanart

That’s all for this week’s Flamingo Stance! I leave you with this thematically appropriate fanart from TBS | Hanny.

SBBU: The Master Hand's Papers by Adico

Even Spongebob Has rollback Now, Nintendo.

Taking the Smash world by storm this week was the announcement of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl from developers Ludosity and Fair Play Labs. If the former sounds familiar, that might be because Ludosity are the people responsible for the indie platform fighter Slap City, which was praised at the time of its release back in 2018 for its wacky roster of unique characters.

Though the game was not a commercial blockbuster, it seemed to have paved the way for the dev team to embark on a pretty exciting project. A licensed Nickelodeon game with rollback of all things! There is no set release date yet, but according to the trailer, it should be coming to all current and next-gen consoles sometime in the Fall of this year.

Though, of course, if you frequent smash groups, you already knew of the existence of the game. For a solid three days, the core content of a subreddit like r/smashbrosultimate was nothing but memes about the game. Quite a few were even clever.

The actual topic of conversation was that rollback is being embraced by developers at a rapid rate, and Nintendo seems to be falling behind significantly. Not just in the fact that Super Smash Bros Ultimate has no rollback netcode, but in the more egregious problem of the system being unable to use it all together.

As said by developer Ludosity, the game will support rollback on all the platforms that support the protocol. As far as we know, the Nintendo Switch does not, which means that the multiplayer experience of players in the console will be different from that of Playstation and Xbox owners.

Event Roundup

Level Up Arena

Coming in first for the Level up Arena this past weekend was Scend, winning 3-1 over Epic_Gabriel. Scend made his way through the lower bracket after round 4 of the top 32 when Mega Man main ToffeeCG knocked the eventual winner off his feet with 3-0. Indeed, a must-watch series for fans.

There was an opportunity for a rematch later in the top 8, but SKITTLES!!, Young Link main would take the match 3-1 and later face Scend on a close 3-2 series, the closest for the Ness main in the bracket.

Epic_Gabriel had forged a pretty dominant run with plenty of sweeps and only a handful of losses on his end of the bracket right up until Goblin showed up. The two traded sets until the 2-2 count with one stock each where Epic Gabriel ran Goblin off to well over 100%, and as Goblin mounted a comeback getting R.O.B from 6% to 80%, a mistake on the ledge cost him the set. Though at 160%, it was a matter of time for Goblin to lose it.

Goblin would go on to lose 3-0 to Scend in the lower finals. But he would return the favor a bit later on in the doubles bracket, where he and Epic Gabriel brought down the singles champ Scend and Fizz Khalifa after losing to them in the Winner finals.

Upcoming Tournaments

Summit 11

Not a lot on the Ultimate side of things for this weekend, but if you want to watch some old-school Melee play, there is, of course, the consistently brilliant Summit. 

In its eleventh edition, the event will have the sixteen best players in the scene come together to celebrate the esport and its community of dedicated fans. With a whopping prize pool of $144392, it will be an incredibly tense weekend for the competitors with the largest prize pool of any Melee event in its history.

Sakurai’s Pictures of the Week

Editor's Highlights

Street Fighter V

Topanga Championship III 

The Topanga Championship concluded earlier in the week, and the winner was Kawano. The promising Japanese pro is one of the hottest players in the FGC, evidenced by his performance at the RedBull Kumite. Kawano's win was remarkable as he was competing with the likes of Tokido, Higuchi, and Gachikun. His awesome win has netted him a cool 2.5 million yen, which is a decent chunk of money whichever way you cut it. We were able to catch up with the winner and ask a few questions that he was gracious enough to answer. 

Are you happy to get this victory?

I was really happy that day, but I’m already thinking about the next match. Now that the League has finished, I can play other characters, so I’m excited.

How does it feel to make it from 3rd place in a group to the champion title?

Looking back, I think it was really tough. I don’t even want to watch my matches. And I realize matches against Menat are an issue for me.

Who was your toughest opponent?

Of course, it’s Tokido. I spent the most time training for a matchup against Urien, but in the end, I still lost. Before the tournament, my friend Joybin said something like, “you’ll win the league, but I feel like you’ll lose to Tokido.” 

At what next big event can we enjoy your games?

I’m not sure about the schedule, but I’ll definitely play better in future competitions. 

You can watch all the action here.