Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

Tekken 8 launched its big new Season 2 update this week that was meant to shake up the game and roster, which it seems like they’ve succeeded in a sense.

Bandai Namco’s flagship fighting game is currently facing a lot of criticism across the playerbase for its changes made for the second year.

On Steam in particular this week, Tekken 8’s user reviews have fallen to ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ with a staggering amount of new recommendations pouring in.

Over just the past few days, 1,654 negative reviews have poured in as opposed to just just 166 positive ones.

This is not the first time Tekken’s Steam reviews have tanked, but this new amount is staggeringly nearly double what we saw before.

Even players with over 1,000 hours in the game are now giving the thumbs down to what was presumably their fighter of choice previously.

It doesn’t stop there either with those in the competitive scene being hyper critical of the update too.

Bandai Namco previously said they were going to focus on improving defense in Season 2, but players are having a hard time figuring out where that’s supposed to be.

The problems we’re seeing a lot of players talk about is the removal or strengthening of many characters’ weaknesses, pushing them even more on the offensive than ever before.

It seems the developers took the “buff everyone” approach to Season 2, but players are feeling they went perhaps too far with that venture this time.

The increased number of plus on block attacks makes the 50/50 guessing situation more in your face than ever before.

After playing season 2, I gotta say we were so ungrateful to season 1

— Arslan Ash (@ArslanAsh95) April 1, 2025

Lars, for example, got multiple new safe moves on top of more ways to stance cancel, leading to new true mixups that players are going to have to try and defend against.

Instead of making things easier on defenders, it’s looking even more difficult across the board at least here at the start of the season.

There has been praise for improving sidestepping, but a lot of that sentiment too has been overshadowed by the amount of new homing moves that counter it.

We’re also seeing reports of glitches leading to unblockable setups or ones that can do severe amounts of damage.

I had high hopes about the game w the powercrush HE change, stepping change. Then the tekken talk showed new moves that were scary.

Labbed the game for 6 hrs and played for 3 hrs and it is the fastest, dumbest tekken gameplay i’ve ever seen. Just do random shit.

— ONi | Tone (@hidetone) April 1, 2025

At the start, it’s looking like a large number of the cast are really strong and can put up huge damage from mid-screen, which is not exactly the direction many players were hoping the game would take.

The developers have said they’re open to feedback and are already planning on reverting the controversial throw-tech chip damage, however, the complaints are probably stacking up even more than they expected.

It’ll be very interesting to see how Bamco responds to the negative reception of Season 2 of Tekken 8 out the gate and how those sentiments will evolve as players get more time with the game’s new state.

Tekken 8 Paul unblockable bug with new f1+2 changes.
Otherwise, fun changes!#T8_report @TEKKEN #t8_paul #TEKKEN8 pic.twitter.com/bZPpD9qDLG

— FALCO (@RGV_FALCO) April 1, 2025

We probably shouldn’t expect a complete overhaul of the game again any time soon, so the Tekken team finds themselves in a position that’s not too enviable at the moment.

This was the vision they had for the game moving forward for the next year, so there’s probably a lot of discussions going on at Bamco headquarters right now about what to do.

Season2 Day 1
Jack & Paul are more likely to be blocked in a rank pic.twitter.com/tueMSp1yHk

— DRX｜KNEE (@holyknee) April 1, 2025

It’s also still just the first week filled with first impressions and kneejerk reactions, so player sentiments may continue to shift in the coming weeks and months — but many don’t seem to be very happy with the current state of Tekken.

It sounds like he’s taken a student under his wing

We’re now less than a month away from the launch of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, and there’s still more of the game fans haven’t seen.

SNK appears to be teasing some sort of announcement for Fatal Fury regarding the one and only Duck King.

The company’s post on social media talks about starting a countdown to release day, and they ran into someone special in South Town with a message to the fans.

“Yo everybody! What’s up? It’s ya’ boy, Duck King! You enjoy the COTW beta? Alright. Yo, check it.

“Got a real good friend — I’ve been coaching ’em up a bit — and they’re coming to town soon, so be sure to give ’em a warm welcome, yeah? Anyway, hope to see y’all soon.”

So by the sounds of it, the man, the myth, the legend Duck King won’t be playable in the new Fatal Fury, but he perhaps has a new protege he’s taken under his wing.

The countdown to launch day begins and we’re just starting to REV IT UP!

We ran into someone out in South Town… and he’s got a few words for you.#FatalFury #CotW pic.twitter.com/3kstl5dhA0

— FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves (@FATALFURY_PR) April 2, 2025

We’ve already seen a bit of that passing of the torch with characters like Preecha and Vox Reaper plus some of the Garou cast like Kim Dong Hwan.

Duck King is one of the characters who’s been around since the beginning in Fatal Fury with his unique break dancing skills, but it’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen him in action.

The last time Duck and P-chan took to the ring was back in The King of Fighters 11, and he hasn’t been playable in his home territory since Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition over 25 years ago.

Whether or not they’re serious, Duck King has been one of the more requested fighters to make a return though it seems we’ll be getting his student instead (at least for now).

With the recent surprise reveal of soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo on the Fatal Fury roster, City of the Wolves is now up to 15 revealed fighters.

There’s going to be 17 in total at launch, so there’s still two to be announced this month — and one of them is likely the character Duck King is talking about here.

The DLC roster has already been revealed as well for Season 1 with Andy Bogard, Joe Higashi, Mr. Big and Street Fighter’s Ken and Chun-Li coming after launch.

We should be learning more about who this mystery character is in the coming days, and hopefully they have their own P-chan too.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is set to release on April 23, 2025 for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Mortal Kombat seems to be going a bit nuts with their crossover and collaborations lately.

First there was Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Raiden and Kitana joining Fortnite, but that’s not all that is going on right now with the fighting game series.

Epic Games snagged another collab with NetherRealm Studios to get Mortal Kombat into Rocket League of all things.

There’s multiple MK bundles available for a limited time in the motorized soccer game, but they aren’t exactly cheap, especially if you want all of the content.

Players can buy a Lamborghini Scorpion and Sub-Zero bundle is 2,800 credits or around $28, which apparently unlocks the car in Fortnite too.

Click images for larger versions

Scorpion’s car has animated chains on the body while the Sub-Zero car has ice blasts shooting across it.

FLAWLESS VICTORY pic.twitter.com/vskhFT5kFt

— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) March 27, 2025

The Get Over Here! goal explosion is 2,000 credits(around $20) while the Scorpion and Sub-Zero wheels are 400 credits ($4) each.

So with the bundles, you’re looking at spending $50 to get everything in the collab.

These Mortal Kombat bundles are going to be available until next Friday, April 11.

This isn’t even the only soccer x fighting game crossover we’ve seen lately with Cristiano Ronaldo joining Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves as a playable character, which is even more crazy.

Earlier today, Nintendo presented their Switch 2 Direct livestream in which they revealed details about the upcoming console and a few games from its library. It’s set to launch on June 5, 2025 for a starting price of $449.99.

During this presentation, Kirby Air Riders was revealed. This title will essentially serve as the sequel for the GameCube’s Kirby Air Ride, released back in 2003 and 2004.

Towards the end of the trailer, it was confirmed that Masahiro Sakurai will be reprising his role as the Director of Kirby Air Riders. It turns out that this was the game that Sakurai had been working on all this time.

Indeed, we learned from Sakurai that he had been working on a secret game project since April 2022. Based on this, we can conclude that Kirby Air Riders has been in development for about three years now.

According to Sakurai, he had received the request to create the proposal for Kirby Air Riders back in July 2021 while he was still juggling the development of Tekken’s Kazuya and Kingdom Hearts’ Sora as DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He apparently completed this proposal at “lightning speed.”

From this information, we were able to correctly deduce that Sakurai was developing some game for the Switch 2 as only Nintendo would’ve known just how close to completion Sakurai’s current workload was back then.

There were plenty of reasons to suspect that Sakurai could’ve been working on the next entry in the Super Smash Bros. series. It would make a lot of sense considering that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is known to be the third best-selling game on the Switch with over 35.88 million sales to date.

Looking back, Sakurai did declare that he wasn’t thinking of a Super Smash Bros. sequel shortly after completing the game proposal for the then unknown secret game project. Of course, there was always the possibility that Sakurai had to resort to giving a misleading answer for the sake of keeping his work a secret, but we now know that this didn’t end up being the case this time.

And thus, it’s been revealed that Sakurai’s secret game project is Kirby Air Riders for the Switch 2. It’s set to be released sometime this year, but other details about the game are still shrouded in mystery.

Needless to say, it’s an interesting choice to have Sakurai work on a racing game when Mario Kart World, Nintendo’s most popular racing game, for the Switch 2 is set to be a launch title. Mario Kart World will essentially be the successor to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Switch’s best-selling game.

Regardless, Kirby Air Ride for the GameCube has an interesting history. It was the last game that Masahiro Sakurai developed before leaving HAL to become a freelance developer.

Shortly after the release of Kirby Air Ride, Sakurai felt a certain pressure from the gaming industry that ultimately resulted in how he came to his decision. Rather than actually looking at what the game brought to the table, everyone was already talking about the prospects of a sequel.

Needless to say, Sakurai’s decision to leave HAL placed a great deal of uncertainty on the future of the Super Smash Bros. series with Super Smash Bros. Melee being the latest iteration at the time. Fortunately, Satoru Iwata, the President of Nintendo at the time, specifically went out of his way to enlist Sakurai’s expertise to develop Super Smash Bros. on the Wii, which we now know as Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Evidently, we’re in for a long wait until the next Super Smash Bros. entry, which will likely be on the Switch 2 at some point. It’s currently too difficult to fathom how any game in the franchise can be developed without Sakurai’s direct involvement.

Although we can’t say anything for sure with regards to the future of the Super Smash Bros. series, it’s plausible to think that Sakurai will probably begin development after he’s finished with Kirby Air Riders — though whether or not that will include DLC is currently unknown.

Ultimately, a number of years of development will be required once Sakurai is finally ready to begin the massive undertaking of following up after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. As such, we’ve got a long wait ahead of us.

Update: This story has been updated with a new trailer and additional details regarding the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Street Fighter 6’s features.

During today’s Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, it was confirmed that Capcom’s Street Fighter 6 will be getting a Nintendo Switch 2 version.

It was mentioned that the game will be out on Nintendo Switch 2’s release date which was confirmed to be June 5th, 2025.

Street Fighter 6 on Nintendo Switch 2 will feature battles through local wireless play as well as new modes exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2 version.

There will be different versions released, a standard edition as well as a “Years 1-2 Fighters Edition” which contains the eight post-launch characters from the game’s first two years.

They also showed new amiibo figures featuring Street Fighter 6’s core trio of Luke, Jamie and Kimberly that will be released alongside the new edition. It was also stated that there would be 22 amiibo cards, presumably representing each character in the roster.

You can check out an image gallery of the announcement video below.

Click images for larger versions

A full trailer was released on Street Fighter’s YouTube channel with more details after the presentation.

Noted in the description is that Nintendo Switch 2-specific modes called “Gyro Battle” and “Calorie Contest” will be available for the game, described as “party modes”.

The Nintendo Switch 2 version will feature 60 FPS gameplay and crossplay as well.

Even if you’re just playing on a single Joycon, you will be able to use Classic controls or, if you prefer, Modern of Dynamic as well.

Check out the full trailer below.

During today’s Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, one of the things highlighted was that they will continue the current Nintendo Switch system of letting you play select older games via emulation on the console.

One really good piece of news regarding that, though, is that for Online + Expansion Pack users, they’re adding games from the Nintendo GameCube to the lineup and the launch roster of titles includes one legendary fighting game.

Not only did they show that Nintendo GameCube games will be playable, but they confirmed that they’ll come with online support for up to four players in games that are compatible with them.

There will also be a new GameCube controller with a headphone jack and a voice chat button, a feature for the Nintendo Switch 2 which was heavily highlighted during the presentation.

As for the lineup of games, on Nintendo Switch 2’s launch on June 5th of this year, there will be three specific titles available for play.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and F-Zero GX, which are two true Nintendo classics, but for fighting game enthusiasts, the sole third-party represented game is actually Bandai Namco’s Soul Calibur 2.

Back in the day when Soul Calibur 2 released, it was available of the Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox and each of the consoles got one exclusive character each with Nintendo’s edition featuring Link from the Legend of Zelda series, which brought a lot of hype to the game at the time.

This will mark the first time that the GameCube edition specifically sees a re-release since its initial outing back in 2002, so if you’ve been excited to play some good old 3D fighting game Link, this will be your chance.

Other games listed to be released for the service at later dates included Super Mario Sunshine, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, Super Mario Strikers, Chibi-Robo! Plug Into Adventure!, Luigi’s Mansion and Pokémon Colosseum.

Surprisingly, there was no mention of the long-awaited re-release of Super Smash Bros. Melee, but hopefully this will arrive eventually so that maybe we can move on from having to use CRT screens at tournaments.

You can check out the trailer for the Nintendo GameCube service on Nintendo Switch 2 below.

The long-rumored unveiling of the Nintendo Switch 2 has been a subject of discussion for well over a year and back in January they finally showed us a first look at Nintendo’s upcoming console.

At the time, we were also informed that on April 2nd we’d be getting a Nintendo Direct focused entirely on the Nintendo Switch 2 and its lineup. Well, wouldn’t you know it, today happens to be April 2nd.

It won’t just be a Nintendo Direct, it’ll be a big one which isn’t too surprising considering it’ll be the big debut for their next official hardware.

Nintendo told fans via X yesterday that today’s presentation will be around 60 minutes long and it’s set to start at 6 A.M. PDT, 9 A.M. PDT, 1 P.M. UTC, 2 P.M. BST, 3 P.M. CEST and 10 P.M. JST, so in about half an hour as of this post being published.

There’s much speculation and debate on what exactly we’ll see from Nintendo at this presentation, though one of the main hopes is of course a new entry in the Super Smash Bros. franchise.

If that were indeed to pass, it’s really a tossup whether it’d be a brand new game or something akin to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which was an enhanced version of the Wii U game released for the Nintendo Switch which later received long-time additional DLC support. Given the astronomic roster of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, that could very well be a strategy for continuing the franchise on Nintendo Switch 2 without any major roster cuts.

Another area of speculation has been the impending release of Elena for Street Fighter 6, with talk about how the Nintendo Switch 2 may very well have its own port of Street Fighter 6 coming its way, and if so it’d be a great time for Capcom to show the next upcoming fighter.

Of course, there’s also lots more that’s possible we’ll see. Nintendo has other fighting game franchises they may be looking to revive such as Pokkén Tournament and ARMS, which wouldn’t be too out of the question considering Nintendo keeps many of their franchises on a once-per-console basis.

We also saw Capcom reveal a major title on a Nintendo Direct last year when they showed off the compilation title Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics for the first time.

Basically, sky’s the limit for any gaming fan with such a long presentation of new hardware and that of course goes just as well for fighting game fans specifically.

Check out the live broadcast below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUmjX7DsP8

Darkstalkers aren’t dead?

With the recent news that the Darkstalkers franchise is likely part of the Street Fighter universe, I took a look back at what the producer of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 had to say about that franchise.

There’s been quite a bit of buzz recently surrounding the Marvel vs. Capcom series, as it seems like the stars may be aligning for a new entry in the franchise, and it’s possible we can get an idea of where Capcom may be headed when it comes to roster selection and features by looking at past remarks from their development team.

Back in 2011, a little before Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was released, the game’s producer, Ryota Niitsuma, was asked about characters that he wanted in the game, but that didn’t fit or make it in.

“There’s a lot of characters you’d want to put in but for whatever reason you just can’t put in,” Niitsuma said on adding characters from Darkstalkers or Mega Man to one of the most beloved entries in the entire franchise.

“I’d like to put more Dalkstalkers characters in cause I really like the series,” Niitsuma relayed, showing that there was quite a bit of support internally at Capcom for this franchise.

We know that a new Darkstalkers game was likely in development at the company, but was cancelled.

“There’s so many Mega Man characters I’d like to put in too, but due to moves overlapping or balance issues, you can’t put them all in obviously,” Niitsuma relayed.

“On the Marvel side there was quite a lot of characters from Marvel vs. Capcom 2 that we wanted in, but Marvel had a priority on certain characters for whatever reason,” Niitsuma concluded.

As such, it appears we might be seeing quite a bit more from the Darkstalkers characters in the future, while it’s unlikely it’ll come in the form of a new game due to low sales of Darkstalkers Resurrection, released in March of 2013.

The characters who appear in Darkstalkers seem to be a solid commodity within Capcom’s walls, and often times when we start hearing repeated news about characters or the franchise they’re from, it increases their odds of popping back up.

There’s been a lot of buzz for Darkstalkers in recent times, which may point to them resurfacing in the future.

After all, Street Fighter 5’s F.A.N.G. may have been a retooled Darkstalkers character from the cancelled game.

It’s entirely possible as has been stated many times before, Darkstalkers are not dead.

This week kicked off with the hope that we’d finally get to see Elena in Street Fighter 6 proper, but instead we got a new Rival Schools Fighting Pass.

What if we do still get to have a glimpse at the last Season 2 character very soon, however?

The big Nintendo Switch 2 Direct event is slated to take place tomorrow, April 2, starting at 6 a.m. PDT.

With a runtime of 60 minutes, fans are expecting to see at least some of the games planned for the Switch 2, and there’s been a lot of speculation going around lately about Street Fighter 6 potentially being among them.

The reported specs of the new console should be more than enough to run SF6 considering it’s already on the PlayStation 4, and it would make sense for Capcom to want to hop on the bandwagon early to get their flagship fighting game on the Switch 2.

This could finally serve as the avenue to get DLSS (deep learning super sampling) into Street Fighter 6, which has long been rumored to be a feature of the Switch 2’s NVIDIA GPU.

DLSS cuts down on system resources by using AI cores to generate higher quality images at lower internal resolutions to provide a significant performance boost, and though it’s become a popular feature of many PC games, most fighters aren’t using the tech yet outside of a few examples like Mortal Kombat 1.

If SF6 does come to the Switch 2, that could very well open the door to getting DLSS and super sampling on other platforms like PC as a potentially nice upgrade to many players.

If the company has been waiting for a big event to unveil Elena to the world, there is no larger event than the Nintendo Direct likely until at least June.

Considering there’s no Elena Arrives Fighting Pass this month, that means the final second season addition is likely coming in May now.

We’ve seen new Street Fighter 6 characters pop up before on PlayStation showcases and other broadcasts like the Summer Games Fest where they revealed the Season 2 pass (including Elena last year).

That being said, however, there’s also been plenty of times when Capcom has just shown off the trailers on their own with no warning.

So even if Street Fighter shows up at the Direct, that doesn’t guarantee Elena is going to be there too.

That would explain, though, why they completely skipped out on a reveal at Capcom Cup 11 if they are saving Elena for a different event.

She may not be coming this month, but Capcom does typically share the World Tour teaser 1–2 months before the character releases in SF6 with the only real exception being M. Bison.

So we’re still expecting to see Elena sometime in April in that form, and again, the Nintendo Direct would be the biggest place to do it.

Assuming that’ll be the case, we’ll then likely get her gameplay trailer at Evo Japan 2025 or some other time around late April to early May.

Right now, we’re rating Street Fighter 6’s chances of being revealed for the Switch 2 tomorrow around a medium level and Elena showing up a fair bit lower than that.

Either way, it’s going to be very interesting to see what sort of presence fighting games have on the Switch 2 out the gate since the Switch did feature a large number of ports across its life.

We’ll be learning more very soon.

There was hope we’d finally see Elena yesterday in Street Fighter 6, but that ended up not being the case.

Capcom has now released the patch notes for Street Fighter 6’s April update containing the new Rival Schools Fighting Pass and more content.

Unsurprisingly, the new pass makes up the bulk of the new content, however, there was more added to the game.

There’s a Red Bull Kumite collaboration in SF6 now as well as more New Challenger images to choose from and a couple of new music tracks.

No character changes have been made this time around, which makes sense since a much larger update is likely coming with Elena to ring in Season 3 for SF6.

You can check out the list of patch notes below.

Fighting Ground

The following features have had additions or changes.

Battle Settings

“Comic” New Challenger Images for Dhalsim, Guile, Jamie, Zangief and JP added.

Battle Hub

The Capcom Fighter’s Gala is live!

The Battle Hub is decked out for everyone to enjoy the festivities!

Grab commemorative player titles, stickers and wallpaper from the News section.

Capcom vs. SNK 2, Star Gladiator 2 and Power Stone 2 illustrations have been added to the Club flyer backgrounds.

Red Bull Kumite Collaboration is live!

Grab commemorative player titles, stickers and emotes from the News section.

Fighting Pass

Rival Schools Gala is now available!

Battle on the sparkling Lucky Cabinets in the Battle Hub to earn double the usual amount of Kudos!

Music Player

Glorious Match (Hip Tanaka) BGM added.

Street Swing (Casey Edwards) BGM added.

Other miscellaneous issues were also fixed.

Thank you for your patience and continued support.

We hope you enjoy the update.