Well, Capcom sure has thrown a lot in the laps of Street Fighter fans in the past week. Let’s begin with the second annual Capcom Cup, a tournament featuring 16 competitors from around the world competing in Ultra Street Fighter 4 for a prize pool of $50,000. All of the strong favorites fell out of the tournament early, including the most popular fighting game player in the world, Daigo Umehara (he has a manga created in his name for goodness’ sake). Umehara was eliminated in dramatic fashion after being baited into attempting a combo and countered by a red focus attack (an attack which allows the player to absorb an infinite number of attacks; yes, there are counters to this technique).
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnvZ6c41LE0[/youtube]
Momochi of Japan won the tournament using Ken after an uphill battle from the loser’s bracket in grand finals. He won $30,000 for achieving first place, but the winnings for next year will be much larger. Capcom announced that next year’s total prize pool for the events of the Capcom Pro Tour (which determines which players earn the right to compete in Capcom Cup) will exceed $500,000. That’s still far below the $10 million mark reached for competitive DOTA 2 players in one tournament, but the fighting game scene is moving in the right direction with its grassroots efforts.
A week prior to the Capcom Cup, a trailer for Street Fighter V was leaked. With everyone anticipating more news about the next iteration of Street Fighter, Capcom satiated the fans’ expectations with a new gameplay trailer and an on-stage demo of the game in its alpha build.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIdnJQZ_lkg[/youtube]
Needless to say, it looks awesome and there’s a lot of possibilities for new game mechanics that fans have already thoroughly analyzed. SFV has been confirmed as an exclusive for Playstation 4 and Windows PC and will feature cross-platform play. The cross-platform feature is unclear. Normally, cross-platform is between consoles of the same brand such as PS3 and PS4. Cross-platform play between a Sony console and Microsoft’s Windows would be really strange, because SFV is not coming to Xbox One, but welcome.
Last but not least Capcom announced that the next patch for Ultra Street Fighter 4 would be coming to all platforms on December 15. The patch includes nerfs and buffs across the roster and the addition of Omega mode. Characters utilized in their Omega mode are Capcom’s answer to the question, “What would happen if no one cared about making the characters fair?” Ken shoots fireballs out of his feet, Bison’s EX headstomp is an instant teleport, grapplers have uppercuts, and all kinds of madness that takes the game into new levels of insanity. I uploaded a match of myself playing in Omega mode just to give an idea of how crazy it plays.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYdZNRp3yzk[/youtube]
Bison and Abel are using overpowered, ridiculous versions of special moves, but that quick match didn’t show even half of their new abilities. I highly recommend checking the zaniness for yourself.
Please feel free to comment on Capcom’s new plans for the Street Fighter franchise below, and add Lay_Z on Steam if you want to get the business when I play seriously.
