Ever since they renewed the trademark to “Killer Instinct” last year, we’ve been anxiously awaiting a real sequel to the epic fighting game franchise. At at E3 2013 in Los Angeles, Rare and Microsoft made our dreams into a reality by revealing Killer Instinct as an exclusive title for the upcoming Xbox One.

We thought that Capcom took a long time to get back into their franchises. It took 11 years after MvC2 for them to release Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and it was 9 years between the last Street Fighter III and the first Street Fighter IV. So, how long did it take them to reboot Killer Instinct? Well, Killer Instinct 2 was released in 1996 and it’s now 2013. That’s 17 very long years.

In the gameplay demo, we see the likes of Jago and Sabrewulf, but the trailer also reveals Glacius too. Chances are that most of the original cast, like Fulgore and Orchid, will also make the cut. There’s also a very good chance that some new characters will be introduced. They didn’t say much about gameplay itself, but it’ll probably be a similar “dial-a-combo” system that we saw in the original games. As far as first impressions, the graphics aren’t exactly astounding and the heavy-handedness of it reminds me of the newer Mortal Kombat engine that also underpins Injustice.

What do you think? Is the new Killer Instinct enough of a reason for you to choose the Xbox One over the PlayStation 4?

In losers was the likes of coL.FChamp, EG.PRBalrog, EG.JWong, Noel Brown, and AGE ChrisG. Ranmasama and Neo were the two sleepers who worked their way to top 3.

What stood out for me were the large number of Chris Redfields and unique “low tier teams and characters during pools. There was LLND who ran thru people with his team of Chris, Hsien Ko and Ammy and then there was KaneBlueRiver, whom I thought was going to win the tournament with his savage team of Hulk, Sentinel and Haggar. Upon seeing the number of Chris’, I knew Chris G was going to be knocked into losers by one which leads me to the AGE ChrisG vs SenorTaxi.

Probably the biggest highlight of the night was AGE ChrisG being sent to losers by SenorTaxi, a regular at “The Runback” weekly tournaments held in Super Arcade, Walnut CA streamed by Levelup. In terms of team composition SenorTaxi had the better team. Chris outzones Morrigan completely with his high durability projectile attacks and space control with grenades; with Dante covering the vertical space and negating doom missiles the matchup was completely in SenorTaxis’ favor until Astral vision was activated. As I mentioned, SenorTaxi had the better team, not characters. What’s interesting is despite his characters being med to low tier, they manage to fight the higher tiered characters of Morrigan, Dr.Doom and Vergil quite well.

Here I’d like to get into the dynamic of UMvC3 characters. In Marvel 2 near its’ end became a 8 character game with teams being composed only of top tier characters simply because characters below the tiers couldn’t compete at all with those on top. In UMvC3, this problem was fixed by the system’s high damage output, x-factor and unique character traits. Each character has their own special tools which when used and paired correctly can be extremely effective. Morrigans’ Astral vision with Hidden missiles is an example of this. It seems the lower tiered characters lack some or all of the following: damage, ease of use, movement, move, but from what I noticed they have more effective traits which justify and rounds them out as a character.

Chris Redfield has high health, high damage and high durability projectiles. When combined with great zoning and keep away options, Chris is tough to crack, however his character is rounded out by his lack of vertical space control, and limited movement. What did SenorTaxi do to fix this? He picked Jam Session to fill the last piece of his game.

Being an Iron Man player, I know his movement and hit confirms aren’t good but his damage is extremely high and has the best beam assist in the game. What’s extremely deadly a THC proton cannon. It creates a 1 frame frametrap and locks the opponent in place for large amount of time. Most players I play aren’t ready for it or don’t know about it at all and struggle to quickly find an answer.

Then there’s Hsien Ko’s gold armor hyper which LLND put to great use. Having a nearly fullscreen, invincible assist benefits any character but the state also also Hsien Ko to fight Vergil, Hulk, Frank West and many other characters. In fact gold state Hsien Ko is terrifying.

One last example I’d like to mention is KaneBlueRivers’ team. As mentioned on stream his team of Hulk, Sentinel and Haggar on paper shouldn’t work. The lack of mobility, expansion assist, susceptibility to zoning and lack of mixups means he shouldn’t able to catch or hit runaway players yet what was not mentioned enough was the high health of the team and damage. Hulk with an OTG assist can kill most of the cast and a DHC will kill any character in one hit. Kane only needs 3 hits to win a match whereas his opponents needs to waste a lot of resources and maybe go for resets to kill one of his. Knowing this Kane can take more risks without fear of losing a character and of course the armored moves help his gameplan.

I’m pointing out something that has been said many times before which I think needs to be stressed more is Marvel 3 is the importance is placed on team composition much more than single characters. Vergil is being regarded as the best character in the game and I’m seeing many players pick him up just for that fact alone. Just having Vergil on a team won’t increase your likelihood of winning if you don’t know how to play him. Vergil without X-factor or meter doesn’t function well as an anchor. Playing a team you like and know well is more likely to help you improve and win as you will know tech others don’t which in Marvel can make or break a match. I know what I’m saying is probably causing most of you to go “duh it’s common sense” but being competitive player myself, I know it’s easy to get discouraged when it seems picking a top tier is the easier way to go. In the end, it’s not the characters, it’s how you play them.

When it comes to the fighting game community, there are a few games and franchises that have remained the staple for competitive tournaments. At the recent April Duels II event by Canada Cup Gaming, for example, we saw King of Fighters XIII, Street Fighter X Tekken, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition v2012. In the eyes of many competitive fighting game fans, the Super Smash Bros series has been viewed as more of a casual game than one fit for tournaments.

Of course, those among the Smash community beg to differ. And they begged to differ so hard that Super Smash Bros. Melee on the GameCube has found itself among the games selected for EVO 2013 this summer in Las Vegas. On the surface, Smash may look frantic, but how hard could it be with just two attack buttons and a block button? You don’t even need to do QCF for specials and there is no “super” meter to concern yourself with. However, SSBM actually has a lot more depth than the average Street Fighter player may recognize and that’s why this great video from MetalMusicMan was put together to illustrate this point.

Do you know about wavedashing? Do you know the difference between tilting and smashing? What about shield pokes, ledge guarding and SHFFL-ing?

MEGATechNews lined up some exclusive interviews and put them together in a special video for our viewing pleasure. Included in the video are interviews with Canada Cup’s Troy Kirkland and Lapchi Duong; Canadian Joysticks’ Jackson Dang; professional players Justin Wong, Xian, Tokido and Chi Rithy; and Vancouver FGC pillar Meowjin.

The pro players also chime in about what they want to see in the AE2013 (AE2014?) update from Capcom.

Vancouver’s first major fighting game event has drawn to a close and it’s pretty safe to say that April Duels II, presented by Canada Cup Gaming, has been a resounding success. The early attendance numbers are in the 200-range and, according to organizer Lapchi Duong, Vancouver could very well be home to the full Canada Cup 2013 tournament later this year.

In addition to a number of local players like CCG Air (who you might know from the AirBehr series) and other notable Canadians like CCG Jozhear, the event was also attended by out-of-town pro players like Mago, Justin Wong and Xian. While it was a solid showing by many of the Canadian players, the results were completely dominated by the teams from Mad Catz and Evil Geniuses. In fact, Tokido finished in the top three for all four of the games!

King of Fighters XIII

1. MCZ Tokido (Mr. Karate, Kim/Hwa, Hwa/Iori)
2. MCZ Mago (Mr. Karate, EX Iori, Hwa)
3. DM|MCZ Xian (EX Iori, Mr. Karate, EX Kyo)
4. JurJur (EX Iori, Ryo, Shen)

Street Fighter X Tekken v2013

1. MCZ Tokido (Cammy, Nina/Dhalsim, Cody)
2. EG Ricky Ortiz (Rufus, Chun-Li)
3. MCZ Mago (Law, Nina)
4. EG Justin Wong (Hwoarang, Chun-Li)
5. EG PR Balrog (Dudley, Paul/Kazuya)
6. CCG Chi-Rithy (Rufus, Chun-Li)
7. Street11 (Xiaoyu, Lei)
8. DM|MCZ Xian (Rolento, Raven)

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

1. EG Justin Wong (Wolverine, Spencer, Frank West/Others)
2. EG PR Balrog (Wolverine, Dr. Doom, Vergil)
3. MCZ Tokido (Magneto/Nova, Dr. Doom, Vergil)
4. GDLK Bee (Spencer, Frank West, Dante)
5. SRKUW Darryn (Nova, Spencer, Hawkeye)
6. EG Ricky Ortiz (Wolverine, Wesker, Akuma)
7. DM|MCZ Xian (Magneto, Morrigan, Dr. Doom)
8. PK G.law (C. Viper, Dr. Doom, Amaterasu)

Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition v2012

1. DM|MCZ Xian (Gen)
2. EG Justin Wong (Rufus/Adon)
3. MCZ Tokido (Akuma)
4. Jayce The Ace (Viper/Akuma)
5. MCZ Mago (Fei Long)
6. CCG Chi-Rithy (Cammy)
7. EG Ricky Ortiz (Rufus)
8. EG PR Balrog (Boxer/Fei Long)

The grand finals in AE2012 have already been posted on YouTube with commentary from Gootecks.

Update: And here are a couple of videos from the top 8 of UMvC3 and the grand finals of KOF XIII.

It’s possible that some new characters could be introduced — Capcom did have that poll for our “favorite” characters a little while back and Karin seems to be a very popular choice, particularly in Japan — but we’re definitely going to see some rebalancing. Some characters will get nerfed and others will get buffed. Many people have complained that Cammy is too OP and she needs some changes to balance her out. And that’s what this video is showing.

Her backdash is too good, her EX cannon strike is too good, her quick spin knuckle had not enough risk… the list goes on. Enjoy the video.

We were invited onto the 8-Bit Studio podcast this week to talk about all things fighting games. We talk about where the fighting game community is heading, what you should look for when shopping for an arcade stick, whether it’s better to play on a pad or a stick, who are my favorite characters, and more.

Head on over to the8bitstudio.com to listen to the full 30+ minute interview.

So, after seeing how I fared against Brolylegs and his Chun-Li, I went back to Xbox Live for some more Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition Version 2012 action. The hope was that my AE2012 skills are continuing to improve, but I’ll let you be the judge after watching the two videos below.

First, my Blanka takes on the legendary Wolfkrone and his epic C. Viper. You can probably guess how that goes.

Then, here’s my Oni attempting to take down the Dictator (Bison) as controlled by MashDatDP. You can probably guess what I was doing in that match too. Mash harder!

One of the biggest take home lessons is that a crouching medium kick (MK or forward) can shrink your hit box such that your opponent’s move may whiff where it would otherwise hit. Even better, under some circumstances, you’ll get the hit instead. The same technique can apply to crouching medium punch (MP or strong) for certain characters too. It gives you some great escapes from safe jumps and other situations. For example, a crouching MK against Viper’s burn kick will cause Viper to whiff instead of giving her the hit. Pretty cool.

And there’s more to that MK button too. Peep the video and be amazed.