Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

With 40 years worth of manga and anime narrative, Bandai Namco has no shortage of Easter egg and reference potential when to the brand new Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero. YouTuber Kadazee has already found 14 hidden details peppered throughout the Sparking Zero experience, some of which are quite surprising.

Alternate Ultimate animations, incongruent abilities, varying effects on moves based on what an opponent is wearing, and other such details are just waiting to be discovered. That said, perhaps our favorite of the bunch is also the most naughty.

It was during his bout with Vegito that Majin Buu (while technically in Super Buu form) flipped the bird to his opponent. This duel was particularly taunt-filled, actually, as Vegito proved quick with the one-liners, and Buu at this point had a double dose of pre-teen sass thanks to his absorbing of both Goten and Trunks.

It’s not all that uncommon for characters to flip one another off in Dragon Ball bouts, though such gestures were often edited out when the show was on more family-friendly mediums. I don’t recall seeing Super Buu flip Vegito the bird when watching as a child, but that’s probably because I was watching on Toonami.

In any case, Buu is capable of offering an “F-U” in Sparking Zero, and it’s not all that hard to get him to do. Simply land his Super Kamehameha wave and pay close attention to the character during the resolution. He’ll quickly perform a bras d’honneur gesture reminiscent of his taunt from the source material.

Unlike in the source material, Buu does not raise his middle finger in Sparking Zero, but the message is still sent loud and clear.

This is just one of 14 hidden details that Kadazee covers. Others include how only certain characters can break through inanimate objects while flying about on the battlefield, what happens when you use the Solar Flare technique on characters wearing sunglasses, what happens when you charge up underwater and plenty more.

Regardless of how you slice it, Capcom erred on the side of offense in their design of Street Fighter 5. The game got better with time, to be sure, but so much of the flow favored the aggressor in ways both obvious and not.

One particular mechanic evolved into what the wider community might call an abomination in Street Fighter 5, but was refined and close to perfected in Street Fighter 6. Broski covers this mechanic in his latest video, showing just how important and powerful fairly minute tweaks can be.

The apparent offensive initiative that characterized so much of SF5 was not bad, in and of itself, but the execution and implementation of these novel ideas into a very sensitive balance system was lacking. Keep in mind, after all, that developers are not only tasked with making fighting games feel fair, they also have to feel fun.

It’s been routine in many fighting games for many years now to see counter hit bonuses that come into play when a character is stuffed during the start up frames of any attack. Said bonus usually make your opponent reel from a hit for just a bit longer, making combos that are otherwise impossible possible.

Capcom took this even further in Street Fighter 5 by introducing a buffed up version of counter hit: Crush Counter. Crush Counters were hard hits that caused characters to reel back, and would only occur when certain heavy attacks landed as counter hits.

Crush Counters weren’t the first heavy hits that caused character to reel back, but they were so powerful and prominent in Street Fighter 5 they widely defined the gameplay.

In their efforts to tune up offense and tune down defense, Capcom added Crush Counter potential to the recovery of certain moves (essentially those that could be used as invincible wake up reversals).

In the game’s second season developers took invincibility away from wake up reversals save for on the EX versions, making defense more costly on top of already being more risky than ever before.

As a result, the Crush Counter mechanic became even more prominent and powerful in SF5. Pepper in the fact that players could wield a lot of this power despite a sloppy, non-honed approach, and you had a player base who was widely not happy.

Broski recounts this brief history of Crush Counters in SF5 so that he can talk to the change Capcom has made with this mechanic in Street Fighter 6. Broski (along with many others) are extremely happy with Street Fighter 6’s Punish Counters despite the fact that they look awfully similar to Crush Counters on paper.

Get the full story via the full video below, and let us know in the comments if you think Punish Counters have righted the wrongs of Crush Counters, or if Street Fighter still has some growing to do when it comes to this mechanic.

Bandai Namco has been going through a trying time with Tekken 8 as fan focus has been less on gameplay and more on surrounding controversial happenings. The game’s running review scores on Steam began high but have been dropping over the nine months Tekken 8 has been in the wild, and in a few instances these drops have looked like concerted efforts from dissatisfied fans.

Just last week the game fell into “Mostly Negative” territory under the recent reviews category and fell to “Mixed” in the overall reviews category, but now sits as “Mixed” and “Mostly Positive,” respectively, as Steam has apparently removed nearly 1,500 negative recent reviews.

When we reported on Tekken 8’s plummeting Steam scores last Wednesday, October 9, it had 25,408 “overall” reviews, but as of the morning of Wednesday, October 16, that number has been reduced by 1,482 to 23,926. Similarly the 1,902 “recent” reviews from last week have dropped by 1,085 to just 817.

The latter page does feature an asterisk that leads to the following addendum:

What exactly does Steam mean by “off topic review activity?” This appears to be a response to “review bombing,” a situation wherein fans flood a title with negative reviews in a wide expression of disapproval. Platforms like Steam would normally do this if they felt scores were negatively inflated and thus not a proper representation of how the general public’s true feelings.

This isn’t the first time the Tekken 8 Steam reviews appear to have been review bombed as they plummeted to Mostly Negative back in April following some audience disapproval surrounding the Tekken Shop and DLC practices.

More recently fans expressed frustration at the fact that Heihachi’s new Genmaji Temple stage is not included in any bundles and must be purchased for $4.99, even by those who bought the most expensive versions of the game with DLC included.

Fans found themselves widely at odds with Bandai Namco again earlier this month when Chinese player Essence|XCC was disqualified from an event in ninth place despite being allowed to enter and following an exciting and surprisingly strong bracket run.

Given how these instances characterize the current landscape, and knowing the internet, the table does seem set for review bombing practices. Still, manipulation of review scores (from either side) reduces their validity in the eyes of the public and leaves us with an increasingly moot metric.

Tekken 8 has seen both highs and lows on its roller coaster of a first year thus far, but clearly still has some work to do to win over enough opinions to remain in a positive public light.

Jinx has been one of the revealed characters for 2XKO since the game was initially known as “Project L.” Though we’ve seen some snippets of her gameplay, we haven’t had the chance to see much of Jinx in 2XKO.

Earlier today, it was announced by Riot Games that the developers will be showing off Jinx’s updated look in 2XKO on November 11, 2024. Needless to say, we were treated to a sneak peek at the new and improved Jinx.

Right off the bat, we get a glimpse of Jinx’s intro animation that has her prepping her impressive arsenal of weapons. Indeed, Jinx, unsurprisingly, appears to be of the zoning archetype in this fighting game.

Following this, Jinx then begins blasting Ekko with her minigun (that she calls “Pow-Pow”). Unlike previous footage featuring Jinx, she ends up angling the weapon as she fires it, which causes her opponent to be lifted into the air.

While airborne, Jinx is shown firing rockets horizontally. What’s interesting is that, upon hitting Ekko, Jinx is able to combo into a second aerial projectile while advancing.

There also appears to be an alternate version of the air rocket that has her firing the projectile at an angle. Needless to say, approaching experienced Jinx players will likely prove difficult with all her zoning tools that are available.

Check it all out below:

Mark your calendars for November 11! pic.twitter.com/CsfAy84yYi

— 2XKO INTEL (@2XKOintel) October 16, 2024

Though Street Fighter 3 wasn’t quite as successful as its predecessor, BST|Daigo and Justin Wong’s match together at Evo 2004 is an event that’s even famous among non-fighting game fans. Though Justin Wong was poised to take the match, Daigo Umehara made an epic comeback through a series of parries and a punish.

Needless to say, “Evo Moment 37,” as it’s been referred to ever since, has become an iconic moment that has arguably changed the landscape of fighting games. Even Justin Wong himself acknowledges the impact it had.

Of course, the act of parrying Chun-Li’s super art in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike is said to be more difficult than it looks. In fact, you pretty much have to be prepared to parry before the super flash animation due to the raw speed of the attack.

However, it seems that ChikoPS2 was able to recreate Evo Moment 37 not once, but twice in a single round. Rather than playing as Ken, ChikoPS2 was using Dudley in this match up.

The first instance of this happening, Chun-Li attempted to overwhelm ChikoPS2 and get out of the corner. This ultimately resulted in ChikoPS2 parrying all 17 hits of the sequence, with him then following up with a 16-hit combo.

Still stuck in the corner with a huge life deficit, the Chun-Li player attempted the sequence again in hopes that the first time was just a fluke. Unfortunately for them, ChikoPS2’s ability to recreate Evo Moment 37 was just as on point as the first instance.

Check it all out below:

EVO MOMENT #37 X2#evomoment #parry #daigo #justinwong #sf3 #StreetFighter #noparrynolife #streetfighter3 pic.twitter.com/6Bumvpf8Mb

— 3SCL | ChikoPS2 (@ChikoPs2) October 14, 2024

After early leaks from data mining and the old bait and switch, it looks like Deception Mileena is finally officially available in Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns.

The game’s premium shop items have rotated once again and have added the highly sought after Mortal Kombat: Deception skin for the ferocious sai-wielding ninja. Here’s a look at all of this new skin’s color palettes.

The story of Deception Mileena in Mortal Kombat 1 goes like this.

Several weeks before the alternate costume was revealed in an official capacity, data miners and modders found it within the game’s files and modded access to it so that players could use it.

As it drew closer to being unveiled for real, data miners also reported that the costume would be hitting the store that coming week, and sure enough the official Mortal Kombat Twitter account provided the first official glimpse of Deception Mileena in a short trailer that was actually meant to advertise another costume coming to the game in Mortal Kombat 9 Smoke.

That tweet revealing the Smoke costume noted that he wouldn’t be arriving alone, and though they didn’t mention Mileena at all, showing her in gameplay footage against MK9 Smoke seemed to imply that her costume was also going to be released.

Well, last week came and MK9 Smoke hit the in-game store, but Deception Mileena was nowhere to be found. Fans were clamoring for it and it never came, but thankfully now a week later the costume is here.

Mortal Kombat: Deception, which released 20 years ago on October 4, 2004, was the third in the main series 3D Mortal Kombat titles. In it, Mileena wore a top with long, flowing sleeves, a billowy face mask, and her hair up in a ponytail.

The new Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns version recreates this look nicely, and it comes equipped with six different colors to choose from.

You can purchase Mortal Kombat: Deception Mileena in Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns as a premium item in the in-game shop right now for 500 Dragon Krystals ($4.99 USD). The bundle you get includes the skin, six colors for it, and a new gear item for Mileena.

Click images for larger versions

Terry Bogard recently became a playable character in Street Fighter 6. Leading up to his release, it seemed like Terry was an obvious candidate for top tier status, but actual initial impressions have apparently come up short.

The FGC Place has recently uploaded videos featuring FAV|Sako playing as Terry. Notably, Sako is known for having some of the best execution in the fighting game community. Therefore, it’s possible he might be able to demonstrate something new about Terry during his matches.

During the first video, Sako finds himself going up against Konatsu, the third highest ranked Dhalsim on the online leaderboards. Just like Ryu, Terry seems to struggle in this match up as he pretty much just has to bulldoze his way in against Dhalsim’s long-reaching normals.

Though Dhalsim isn’t viewed as a particularly strong character in Street Fighter 6 right now, Konatsu has been ranked as a Legend. Regardless, Sako is able to pull off some daring juggles during this match up.

With the next video, Sako ends up taking on Chihiro’s Cammy. As such, this ends up functioning as a more traditional Street Fighter match up.

Indeed, the player with the better whiff punishes typically won here. Of course, Cammy has become such a strong character in recent times, so it isn’t necessarily going to be easy for Sako.

Check it all out below:

At least on the PS4 side for Marvel since there is no PS5 version

Marvel vs. Capcom took a bit of a break, but now that it’s back in some form, the people seem to be here for it.

PlayStation recently released their top game download rankings for September 2024 that looked pretty good for the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection and maybe not as good for Mortal Kombat 1.

We previously reported that August 2024 was apparently the weakest performance in terms of fighting game sales in over a year, however, last month did include some bright spots.

According to the PlayStation Blog, the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection came in third place overall on the PlayStation 4 download charts in North America.

That is hopefully a very good sign for the new compilation though it was still beaten out by a few older games in Minecraft and The Crew 2 (and MvC didn’t rank on Europe’s top 20 chart at all).

We do also have to point out that this only technically includes PS4 games since the MvC collection does not have a native PlayStation 5 version.

Capcom hasn’t given any official indication as to how Marvel’s return has performed in its first month on the market, but it’ll also get another boost when the physical edition releases on PS4 and Nintendo Switch on November 22.

Besides the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, none of Capcom’s other fighting game compilations have managed to cross the 1 million sales mark.

But if any other ones are going to do it, Marvel vs. Capcom would be the most likely.

Another piece of interest lies in the PS5 top 20 chart for September, or to be more precise, what isn’t there.

Mortal Kombat 1 was a pretty consistent inclusion on there for most months since its launch last September, but it couldn’t come back for the game’s anniversary.

That is somewhat surprising considering the big Khaos Reigns expansion also just released towards the end of last month, however, even that wasn’t enough to boost it back on the chart.

The level of competition in that top 20 does look mostly steep at least.

And MK1 not managing to chart with Khaos Reigns may not be all too indicitive of much in the longrun either considering Mortal Kombat 11 also did not come back to the PlayStation ranks for the Aftermath expansion launch either.

The Circana / NPD Group’s total video game sales charts for September should provide a much better picture as to how Marvel vs. Capcom and Mortal Kombat really performed in the United States in the coming weeks — though we can certainly hope they’ll at least make an appearance.

It finally happened. Masahiro Sakurai has released the final scheduled video of his YouTube channel. Towards the beginning of the program, Sakurai tells fans to look forward to the special finale episode in the very near future.

Throughout the sequence, Sakurai highlights how the other developers assigned to a project are just as important as the director or producer of said project. “Just because someone’s a director, producer, or some kind of leader, that doesn’t mean it’s their job to bark orders at the rest of the team,” declared Sakurai.

Instead, Sakurai insists that the leader of the project must aim to make requests of the developers with the goal in mind of guiding the title to the finish line. Overall, it seems that Sakurai considers the roles of every type of developer to be equally important.

These statements come across as being very humble for Sakurai as he’s acted as the director or some sort of leader for Kirby’s Dream Land, Kirby’s Adventure, Kirby Super Star, Super Smash Bros., Super Smash Bros. Melee, Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, Kirby Air Ride, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Super Smash Bros. 4, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate throughout his career.

“While they are in a position to ask for things as they guide a title towards the finish line, they’re no higher up than anyone else,” continued Sakurai. “On the contrary, the people who provide ideas and proposals are powerless without others helping them out!”

Sakurai notes that, while it may seem like directors are giving instructions that travel downward towards the rest of the team, the reality is that they’re making requests from the bottom up to the developers that will be doing the actual work.

As such, Sakurai is adamant about the importance of treating every “team member” with politeness and respect. He makes it a point to address them formally, even if they’re young, new hires.

Needless to say, this ends up being quite the subject for Sakurai to end his video series on. Of course, it’s also not surprising to hear just how humble Sakurai is considering he once declared that he would weather any hardship if it resulted in more people playing his games.

This is no empty statement coming from Sakurai as he once worked 13 months straight without a single day off during the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Needless to say, by the end of that development process, he ended up being hospitalized due to overworking himself.

Regardless, the timing of the conclusion of this video series seems rather interesting. Indeed, Sakurai has already declared that he’s still creating games for the time being. With this in mind, it seems likely that Sakurai will be focusing on whatever game he might be creating now that his YouTube channel has been mostly wrapped up.

In the past, there has been a new Super Smash Bros. entry on every mainline Nintendo console. Earlier this year, Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed the existence of the Switch successor.

As it turns out, the Switch successor is slated to be announced before the end of this fiscal year, prior to April 1, 2025. Rumors suggest that the Switch successor effectively acts as a far more powerful upgrade over the Switch.

Meanwhile, Bandai Namco’s Studio 2 & Studio S, the development studios for Super Smash Bros. 4 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, have recently filled positions for an action game played from a “side-view. Considering that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has sold over 34.66 million units worldwide at this point, the idea of Sakurai and Nintendo choosing to work with Bandai Namco once again is one that makes a lot of sense.

Curiously, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was also recently updated to version 13.0.3. Though this patch only had a single patch note detailing a change to how the Global Smash Power ranking system worked, the fact that the game is being updated at all by this stage of the game’s life has huge implications for the future of the series.

Ultimately though, it seems that Sakurai is probably going to go quiet for a while with his YouTube channel project wrapping up. If he really is working on the next entry of the Super Smash Bros. series, then it means that we should hear from him again some day. We’ll just have to wait and see what comes from all of this.

Darkstalkers being in the works over a decade ago changes perspectives on a lot of things

Update: Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama has responded to our original story, which can be found below.

Besides Street Fighter, Capcom has a multitude of original fighting game properties that have lied dormant for years outside of collections, and the biggest of those would be Darkstalkers.

Fans have been clamoring for a full sequel featuring the Night Warriors for well over a decade, and it now seems that a new Darkstalkers title was actually once in development at Capcom.

Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama recently shared a few very interesting posts on his X / Twitter account that may shake up what we thought we knew about the development timeline of Capcom’s fighting games.

Nakayama reminisces about working on Otoranger, a mobile rhythm game released in Japan, which closed down 10 years ago in October 2014.

But what he had to say afterwards was much more surprising.

“Yesterday (October 14th) was the 10-year anniversary of Otoranger ending its service,” wrote Nakayama as translated by our own Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor. “It was a game and a development team I had a lot of love for.

“You can listen to its music in Street Fighter 6 as well, so if you feel like it, please give it a listen.

“I came back because I was able to work on fighting games (not SF *bat emoji*) but development was stopped and we were reformed to become the Otoranger team.

“I worked with Golden Bomber at TGS and through collaborations and @junjunmjgirly told me ‘I love Street Fighter so please give me a job!’ A lot of things connected with each other and led to where we are now. Thank you very much.”

格ゲー作れるから（SFじゃない）と出戻りしたけど開発ストップになり合流したのがオトレンチームでした。TGSやコラボでゴールデンボンバーさんとご一緒したり歌広場さん@junjunmjgirly に「SF大好きなんで仕事下さい！」と言われていたり色々今に繋がってるなと思いますありがとうございます

— TAKA-nakayama (@takaNakayama) October 15, 2024

He doesn’t outright say the game was Darkstalkers, but it certainly is heavily implied since bats are iconic to the horror fighting game known as Vampire in Japan.

This is seemingly the first time anyone at Capcom has given real indication that a new Darkstalkers was being worked on at some point in the modern era.

In response to our original story, Nakayama had this to say:

“That’s a bit of a different story. Maybe someday I’ll be able to talk about it.”

So it sounds like he’s not outright denying that he worked on Darkstalkers in some regard, but there’s obviously a lot more context missing that he can’t discuss.

ちょっと話が違うんだよな。いつか話せる時が来るでしょう。

— TAKA-nakayama (@takaNakayama) October 16, 2024

Former Street Fighter Producer Yoshinori Ono was famously a big proponent for the franchise featuring Morrigan, Felicia, Demitri, Jedah and other memorable characters, stating he was still “striving hard to attain” the greenlight on a new project back in 2016.

After leaving Capcom in 2020, Ono lamented that he could never resurrect Darkstalkers himself, but was looking forward to the day where his former subordinates could make it happen.

Now knowing that a Darkstalkers game potentially was being worked on before being canned puts all of that talk in a very different perspective now.

Nakayama did work at Capcom in the early 2000’s on Devil May Cry 2 and the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5 game but left to design other titles like Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia and Kirby: Mass Attack.

Considering Otoranger released in 2013, that would point to this apparent Darkstalkers project likely getting canceled by at most 2012.

This lines up pretty well with Nakayama’s work history and timeline of when he rejoined Capcom.

And it could indicate Darkstalkers entered development around 2010 if the future Street Fighter Director was there from the beginning of the project though it’s impossible to know for sure at the moment.

It would have been around this same timeframe in 2011 when UDON Entertainment approached Capcom for a Darkstalkers HD Remix proposal like they had done for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but were “turned down without much feedback.”

That timeline would also put Darkstalkers in the works around the same time as Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter X Tekken, so the company was already very busy with fighting games at that time.

With that packed of a lineup and lowering sales from one new fighting game release to the next over a short period, it would make sense that Capcom would pull the reigns back on sending out another title to support at a time when the company was starting to face some financial troubles.

From around that point in 2013, Capcom would have also shifted their focus over to developing the first iterations of Street Fighter 5.

This revelation also changes up what the fighting game community believed about the future of Vampire because this all would have happened before the release of Darkstalkers Resurrection in 2013.

It was widely believed Resurrection was a “Capcom Test” to see if there was enough interest to support a new Darkstalkers should it meet the company’s expectations.

But if this altered timeline is correct, the new Darkstalkers would have already been worked on and canned by that time.

Ono and his team could have still potentially tried to use Resurrection’s performance as a means to revive the project with the whole “Darkstalkers are NOT Dead” teaser from New York Comic-Con 2012, but that collection did perform up to the company’s expectations for sales.

The Producer also asked fans at the panel to raise their hands holding up money if they wanted a new Darkstalkers.

Perhaps the most wild implication of them all, however, is that NYCC footage given this new context.

That teaser featured new 3D renders of Lord Raptor and Demitri in motion with an artstyle similar to that of Street Fighter X Tekken’s cinematics.

We always assumed it was made for just that, a teaser, but maybe the video was once indicative of something else.

While Darkstalkers characters have continued to feature prominently in Marvel vs. Capcom, Street Fighter 5 costumes, and the first Capcom Fighting Collection, the Night Warriors have not gotten a new chance to shine by themselves in a very long time.

Capcom did just recently bring them back again in Street Fighter 6 for the Halloween / Darkstalkers Fighting Pass as well as special costume colors that were only available for a limited time.

They also ran a poll asking SF6 players about their favorite Darkstalkers character, so maybe the results of that will come into play someday to determine a roster if Capcom does ever give Morrigan and crew their own game in the future.

Contributions to this story were made by Steven ‘DreamKing23’ Chavez and Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor.