Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

Liquid|Dabuz has released his final Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tier list for 2024. Over the course of three videos, Dabuz ranks all 86 characters in the game.

Unsurprisingly, Steve, Sonic, and Mr. Game & Watch sit at the very top of the tier list where they’ve been labeled as being “insanely overpowered.” In this day and age, it’s not uncommon to see one of these three combatants winning major tournaments.

R.O.B., Pyra & Mythra, Snake, and Kazuya sit in the tier group just below the uppermost one. According to Dabuz, these are match ups that every player needs to know and understand if they intend to be competitive.

Cloud, Wario, Olimar, Joker, Roy, Fox, Samus, Yoshi, Peach, Palutena, Min Min, Bayonetta, and Diddy Kong are also said to be quite strong. Dabuz speculates that these combatants are solo viable, but players using these characters will have to work a little harder to beat anyone ranked above them.

King K. Rool, Ganondorf, Little Mac, Dedede, Ike, Villager, Piranha Plant, and Mewtwo are said to be the overall worst characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Indeed, Dabuz has labeled this bunch as being “awful.”

Throughout his videos, Dabuz provides brief explanations that explain why he placed each character the way that he did. As the goes up the tier list, these explanations go into more depth.

Check it all out below:

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The bonus car stage in Street Fighter 2 has become an iconic moment within video games. Of course, it’s important to remember that this is actually based on the bonus game that first appeared in Final Fight.

During this bonus segment, the player (or players) has a limited amount of time to completely destroy a car for bonus points. In Final Fight specifically, the owner of the vehicle has his day completely ruined by this event.

What if the car owner was around when the player began destroying it? 81Standard has a funny video that showcases how this scene would then play out.

During what appears to be a Final Fight playthrough, Cody, Guy, and Haggar decide to start attacking a guy’s car while he sits inside of it. Upon noticing this, the guy in the car chooses to drive off.

However, the scene doesn’t end there as the car owner wants revenge for the damage dealt to his ride. As such, the three ended up getting ran over, resulting in a game over for all three of them.

In a bonus scene, the trio decides to make amends by giving the guy a free car wash. This time, the man is crying tears of happiness.

Check it all out below:

Jin, what the heck is a hamster?

Fans really enjoy reading into any posts and communications from video game developers looking for any deeper or hidden messages that are often times overblown, but then situations like this provide people seemingly enough evidence to feel vindicated that the clues were there all along.

After the recent announcement of Final Fantasy 16’s Clive Rosfield for Tekken 8, an older post of longtime Tekken Project Director Katsuhiro Harada started being put back under the microscope that most people originally wrote off as a joke or red herring.

All the way back in February of this year, Harada was asked about the remaining DLC character slots for Season 1 in Tekken 8 to which he responded.

He obviously didn’t give out the names, but what the veteran developer did do was state some rather innocuous animals.

A raccoon was coming in the Summer followed by a Koala in the Fall and then finally a hamster this Winter.

The characters actually announced for those roster additions were Lidia Sobieska, Heihachi Mishima, and Clive Rosfield.

Raccoon (Summer)
Koala (Autumn)
Hamster (Winter) https://t.co/SNemxoUAEn

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) February 20, 2024

Once Clive was unveiled earlier this month, Harada’s tweet gained attention again for those looking back and trying to find connections between the animals and fighters, which some feel they have indeed connected the dots.

But does that logic of the animals being a riddle from the Director when put under some scrutiny?

Let’s start with the more clear “connection” between the trio.

The hamster being Clive would be a direct reference to the children’s book character, Clive the Hamster.

His name and timeline do certainly match up though we still have some real doubts.

How would he even know who that is?

Clive the Hamster would be a real deep pull for a 54-year-old Japanese man to actively know about and reference, and that would give away their biggest surprise of the year if fans were able to solidly make that tie months ago.

Harada’s Tekken 8 Season 1 riddle has been solved…

– Hamster refers to a children story titled ‘Clive the hamster’ which was hinting at Clive Rosfield

– The silhouette of a Koala’s head matches Heihachi

– Raccoons are an invasive species in Poland which was hinting at Lidia pic.twitter.com/GWfyUtEhNN

— Moonsault Slayer (@VolSkimmer) December 15, 2024

None of the other two are connected to their names specifically though this supposed riddle follows different trains of thought for each.

And perhaps that’s all for a reason we’ll get into in a bit.

Next up is Heihachi, who is a koala because his hair spikes give him a similar silhouette to the Australian animal with their big furry ears.

That’s about it really unless Harada was also hinting at koalas also being bad parents and partners.

So there’s not really much more to read into than that as far as we can tell.

Finally, Lidia has probably the strangest connection of them all.

Harada allegedly used a raccoon for her because raccoons are an invasive species in Poland.

And though that may sound weird, it is apparently true that raccoons are not native to the region, and there are multiple news articles over the past few years sharing concerns of the raccoon population growing and migrating to Poland.

But just because the connection may be “factually correct” doesn’t mean that was Harada’s original intention with the post.

If these animals were meant to be sneaky hints, there is one way that could realistically come together.

That scenario being Harada did Google searches to try and find animals that could tangentially relate to their fighters.

And he went with Clive through his name and Lidia through Poland. Heihachi would require no additional research.

While it’s all possible, this is also still pretty shaky at best.

It’s just as if not even more likely Harada did this just to mess with fans and send them on a wild goose chase looking for possible connections to something he just made up.

The Director does have a history of giving fans unserious replies to those that give him outlandish or tired and repeated comments.

Just look at what happened when someone asked Harada who his favorite “Tekken milf” was.

But even if we work under the presumption that these loose connections were all incidental, that’s not going to stop people on the internet from trying to read into everything he says.

And he also knows that and will employ that against them, which is a bit impressive to do consistently for multiple languages outside of your native tongue.

Plus, he’s probably never going to drop that “Don’t ask me for ****” persona either since it’s become attached to Harada like the sunglasses.

But then Marvel stepped in and said heck no

The Marvel vs. Capcom series began life 30 years ago now, and there’s gotta be so many fascinating development stories going back and forth between the companies across the globe from each other that fans are never made aware of.

A real gold mine of information, however, was recently uncovered as a secret Marvel vs. Capcom website from all the way back in 1998 that includes a bunch of behind-the-scenes details and cut content from one of the lead developers.

As pointed out by SeventhForce, the first Marvel vs. Capcom’s soundtrack release in Japan apparently came with a link to a “Secret Web Page” that was password protected.

Although the website itself no longer exists, the pages have been preserved thanks to the Internet Archive including those found after providing the right login credentials.

There’s a bunch of interesting stuff to be found by poking around the defunct site like remixes of character themes that are still available to listen to, but that’s not why we’re here today specifically.

Instead, we’re going to be focusing on the Producer’s Essay portion of the site written by Kenji Kataoka, who is still at Capcom to this day.

…But the .AIF links aren’t! Here’s Chun’s. The intro is slightly longer than the theme in the final game, and the quality is fuzzy because again, AIF file from 26 years ago, but it’s neat to hear the slight differences compared to the final game! pic.twitter.com/sFCnIuro2R

— SeventhForce (@SeventhForce) December 18, 2024

It was of course basically all in Japanese, but we’ve got the translations thanks to our own Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor.

There Kataoka wrote quite a lot about the development of Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes and their interactions with Marvel that led to a lot of ideas not making it into the game.

He also gave the very interesting tidbit that the first MvC was actually originally going to be Marvel Super Heroes 2.

Kataoka revealed a multitude of characters and bosses that were in consideration, but at least one of them was really being worked on before being shut down.

That was Howard the Duck.

“When we were starting the development of Marvel vs. Capcom, the contract stated that the four representative characters for Marvel had to be Captain America, Spider-man, Wolverine and Hulk (meaning that these characters were essentially the faces of Marvel and were not to be excluded under any circumstance), and the contract then also included Gambit, Psylocke, The Mighty Thor, Dr. Doom, Juggernaut, Magneto and Thanos (at this time, the game was still meant to be Marvel Super Heroes 2)” wrote Kataoka in his essays.

“For character choices, popularity isn’t everything. You want normal character, power character, speed characters… Characters who can fly, bastards who shoot beams… You think about a lot of these things while picking your roster.

“So with all these things to consider, we decided our roster to be Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, The Mighty Thor, Psylocke, Venom, Jubilee, Mr. Fantastic, Howard The Duck…

“Howard the Duck is a character who’s a duck, do you all know about him? People who know know, there was a movie with Lea Thompson in the ’80s and he was the main character, that DUCK right there. Did you know that’s a Marvel character?

“And finally, for the boss we decided on Galactus, the VS series was already well-versed in gigantic bosses (At that point, we figured Onslaught would be impossible to get permission for…)

“BUT THEN, when we submitted this list to Marvel, what we got back was ‘NO!!’

“Iron Man? No. Fantastic Four? No. Venom? No way. Howard the Duck? Absolutely not… No, no way, no how, a complete STORM of rejections.”

The Producer came back to the subject of Howard in one of his following posts revealing they had initially had permission to use the duck and were actively working on him.

“So earlier in part 2 of these notes, I mentioned Howard The Duck.
He was meant to be included in a way similar to Dan where he isn’t really using any martial art and fighting as a joke character.

“Our character designer was totally on board with the idea as well and thought up a lot of fun concepts for him. Marvel also kept telling us it was OK until mid-way through.

“Then, I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden it was a ‘Nooooo!!!’ Why??? WHAT DID WE DO???

“The Marvel representative told us, ‘He has no popularity right now. He’s not cool. We want you to use characters that are more fitting as super heroes,’ etc., etc… He’s not a character we picked for that purpose, man!

“No matter how much we tried to explain the concept, if they say no then it’s NO. Our character designer at the time had fallen in love with this character concept (and put lots of fun ideas into him) and even wrote his own petition which he sent to Marvel.

“We had already half completed the character too. We tried forcing it through, but then were told that we had to talk to Disney to make sure that he wasn’t too similar to their Donald Duck character, a process which would require A LOT more time from us…

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN!?!

“Well, it was a lot of stuff like that, and we ended up giving up on him. And then we decided on Gambit, who was quite popular in the west. So it’s probably all for the best in the end.”

While it is cool to hear about all of this now, there’s also some disappointment that we’ll probably never see what Capcom had cooking up for Howard all those years ago.

This actually isn’t the first time Howard had actually been mentioned for the game either.

Former Capcom artist Katsuya Akitomo shared a series of posts back in 2020 where he talked about the pluckiest duck for a part, however, his info contradicts Kataoka a bit.

The artist wrote that Howard the Duck was rejected by MvC planner Atsushi Tomita because his comedic character pitch overlapped with Norimaro, the secret joke character in X-Men vs. Street Fighter.

138.
『MvC』では、出演候補に挙がっていたが企画の富田くんに拒否されたマーヴルキャラが２人いる。

一人はハワード・ザ・ダック。アヒルが知的生命に進化した別次元の出身で、一見可愛いのに口が悪く短気。シルエットが特徴的なのでいいかと思ったが、「お笑いキャラは憲磨呂と被る」と没。 pic.twitter.com/6205iwetOT

— ブラスコウ／秋友克也 (@sjxqr393) November 1, 2020

Since Akitomo doesn’t seem to be officially credited in Marvel vs. Capcom, it’s unclear how much first-hand knowledge he has on the situation that unfolded or perhaps he was referring to the character originally being pitched for the previous game too.

There’s also the good chance Howard was rejected on both ends by Marvel and Capcom for different reasons.

Fan discussions and speculations about Howard’s chances of appearing in an MvC entry has continued to pop up for modern titles, so there is still at least a section of players who would like to see him get some representation at some point.

More people may know the name Howard the Duck now, but he’s still not exactly a Marvel icon that’s receiving any major push outside of comics — so we’re not really sure his chances would be that good even if Marvel vs. Capcom 4 does come to pass.

Howard has at least appeared in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, so he has been around for the more general audience to see a handful of times in the cinematic universe.

We’ll also be delving more into the development secrets shared by Kataoka very soon, so stay tuned to learn more about how Marvel vs. Capcom came together — and who or what didn’t ultimately make the cut.

Contributions to this story were made by Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor. Image via Howard the Duck.

It’s now been seven months since Street Fighter 6 received any new costumes (besides those attached to the Season 2 DLC characters), and players’ stockings continue to look pretty bare in terms of content in the game outside of avatar gear.

Since Capcom has now missed out on bringing holiday and Christmas-themed outfits to SF6 for two years in a row now, some modders are taking the seasonal cheer into their own hands.

Remy2Fang is certainly in the giving spirit in particular, considering he’s released not one but three fun holiday costume mods for A.K.I., M. Bison and JP that can be used in the PC version of the fighting game now.

JP was first in line and fully embraces the Santa Claus vibes since he already has the white hair and beard but with a bit more drip than the usual gift giver.

The villain is decked out with a fancier red hat and coat like you’d expect out of the character, but that’s arguably not even the best part.

His standard cane has been replaced with a giant candy cane.

Oh, and JP’s Psycho Power phantom has antlers too.

JP Winter Holiday

Mod by me #StreetFighter6 #SF6 pic.twitter.com/G2g3pN1Dil

— Remy2FANG : Artist & Modder (@Remy2FANG) December 7, 2024

Next up on the list (and probably of the naughty variety) is M. Bison ready to share gifts, cheer and world domination to all the children.

The dictator’s new default tattered cloak has been swapped with a red and white one that’s Santa-approved, and it looks like he may be carrying around some extra gift wrapping on his arms too.

Even Bison’s horse has been dressed up like a reindeer by Remy2Fang too.

Finally, A.K.I. was the most recent one to join in with the festive spirit as Santa’s venomous little helper.

The red dress, Santa hat and long boots are really cute and cheery while also keeping that dangerous aura around her.

AKI Santa

Mod by me #StreetFighter6 #SF6 pic.twitter.com/vcB3IIP6TX

— Remy2FANG : Artist & Modder (@Remy2FANG) December 22, 2024

All three of these modded costumes look great in stills and in motion and are almost good enough to appear official too.

The only unfortunate thing is we still have no idea when outfit 4 or outfit 3 options for the Season 2 cast are coming to SF6, but at least fans are making more options themselves if you want to freshen up the visual experience of the game a bit.

There’s another big mod that recently released with the Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite & Beyond project, which increased the player count in the game by 2,000% this weekend.

You can find more information about these mods and the rest of the creator’s collection on Remy2Fang’s Nexusmods page.

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The Super Smash Bros. series has come a long way from its inception. Even though it’s been over six years since it was released, it’s still amazing to think that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has 86 playable fighters, mostly thanks to its “Everyone Is Here” theme.

Within Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, there are a number of characters that were considered and scrapped before they eventually joined up in a later entry. Of course, there are also combatants that never did quite become playable in Super Smash Bros.

Though Animal Crossing’s Villager did eventually join the fray starting in Super Smash Bros. 4, he was actually briefly considered during the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Ultimately, Sakurai decided against him as he wasn’t really “suited for battle” in a game series like Super Smash Bros.

“In fact, there was even a point where in the planning stages of the previous game, ‘Super Smash Bros. Brawl,’ I removed the Villager, the protagonist of Animal Crossing, from consideration because he wasn’t suited for battle.” — Masahiro Sakurai

“I was asked the following questions from many people: ‘I understand Megaman, but why were Villager and Wii Fit Trainer chosen?’ They’re clearly not characters suited for battle,” said Sakurai shortly after the reveal of Mega Man, Villager, and Wii Fit Trainer for Super Smash Bros. 4 (translation by Source Gaming).

“In fact, there was even a point where in the planning stages of the previous game, ‘Super Smash Bros. Brawl,’ I removed the Villager, the protagonist of Animal Crossing, from consideration because he wasn’t suited for battle. To be blunt, if I think I can do it then I can envision a concrete embodiment of the character, but if I cannot do that [then] the character cannot be made.”

Essentially, Sakurai couldn’t envision the Villager with fighting moves during Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s development. As the series evolved, Sakurai was able to return to this concept and add Animal Crossing representatives starting with the next game.

However, this actually wasn’t the only time that Sakurai scrapped a concept simply because they weren’t “suited for battle.” This is also a big part of the reason why the Mii didn’t join in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as well.

“The inclusion of Miis was considered for the previous game, ‘Super Smash Bros. Brawl,’ but after thinking about it for about 1 minute, I dismissed that idea immediately.” — Massahiro Sakurai

“The inclusion of Miis was considered for the previous game, ‘Super Smash Bros. Brawl,’ but after thinking about it for about 1 minute, I dismissed that idea immediately,” said Sakurai after the announcement of the Mii Brawler, Mii Swordfighter, and Mii Gunner for Super Smash Bros. 4.

“I didn’t want bullying incidents to occur, and I felt like Miis weren’t suited towards fighting in the first place anyway,” continued Sakurai. “And playing against them I felt would be boring because they don’t have any character. It’s a fighting game, so you’re not the only one who uses characters — you have to think about what it’s like to play against those characters as well.”

In the end, Sakurai decided to add the Mii to Super Smash Bros. 4 for a couple of reasons. For one, they had become iconic by this point due to how often they’re seen when booting up the Wii U and 3DS devices. Additionally, fans kept requesting characters that he perceived as having no chance of ever joining Super Smash Bros. (such as those that didn’t hail from video games), so Sakurai wanted a way to appease those players with the Mii.

There’s one more challenger that Sakurai apparently briefly thought about for Super Smash Bros. Brawl before concluding that they “weren’t suited for battle.” Unlike Villager and Mii, the Nintendog never manifested as a challenger on the roster.

Not much is known about how much of a consideration the Nintendog actually received. Rather than becoming a playable combatant, the Nintendog instead became an Assist Trophy that obscured the screen for all players upon being summoned.

At this point, it’s unlikely that the Nintendog will ever be added to the character select screen since we already have Duck Hunt. Though Duck Hunt primarily works as a trap based fighter with the Trick Shot and Clay Shooting specials, half (or one-third) of the challenger is actually a dog. Doglike behaviors and mannerisms are already included in the design for Duck Hunt.

Therefore, the Nintendog is not only not suited for battle, but also offers nothing unique at this point. Even in terms of melee attacks, the Duck Hunt dog receives assistance from the duck on its back, which is something that wouldn’t really make sense with the Nintendog.

Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa recently confirmed that the Switch successor is slated to be revealed sometime between now and March 31, 2025. This is important as the Super Smash Bros. series has always had an entry on every console ever since the Nintendo 64.

Coincidentally, Masahiro Sakurai revealed that he’s been working on a secret game project since April 2022. Whatever this secret game project is, it seems likely that it’s intended for the early portion of the Switch successor’s lifecycle.

Either way, Nintendo is probably going to want a new Super Smash Bros. entry on the Switch successor at some point considering that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has broken records with its 35.14 million units sold. This marks it as the best-selling entry in the Super Smash Bros. series and the third best-selling title on the Nintendo Switch after Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

When the next Super Smash Bros. does get announced, we should expect some new faces to turn up in the roster. Some of these characters could end up being scrapped concepts from previous titles. It’s already happened a number of times before.

Of course, we’re not necessarily expecting Nintendog at this point, but stranger things have happened with the Super Smash Bros. franchise. It’s clear that Sakurai does enjoy surprising fans with unexpected choices such as the Wii Fit Trainer, R.O.B., and Piranha Plant, so it’s difficult to say with absolute certainty that Nintendog won’t ever become playable.

We’ll just have to see how things play out from here with the series going forward.

It’s been over 18 years since Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was originally released on October 9, 2006. While Super Smash Bros. Ultimate certainly is impressive with its “Everyone Is Here” theme, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon actually did it first. There are a total of 63 playable characters (if you include Khameleon who was exclusive to the Wii version) in this game as a result.

In a recent video upload, FAiRWAYx goes over the perceived fate of every character in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon leading up to the moment in which Raiden changes the timeline. He’s able to do this by analyzing the opening cutscenes for both Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and Mortal Kombat 9.

First off, the developers of Mortal Kombat 9 have to be given a lot of credit for their attention to detail. During the cutscene of Mortal Kombat 9, we can see one of Nightwolf’s arrows sticking out of Sheeva, which continues the continuity of that event from the cinematic in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.

The first unfortunate fighter to die during this epic battle is Li Mei. Right as the fight begins, she is impaled by Hotaru. Needless to say, she’s apparently still impaled by Hotaru’s naginata in the scene in Mortal Kombat 9.

Later on, Kenshi is stabbed by Quan Chi in a sword duel. Quan Chi was then double crossed by Shang Tsung, who then proceeds to finish Kenshi off with a stomp to the chest. For the rest of the battle, Kenshi is seen motionless, seemingly confirming his death.

In the end, it would appear that Shao Kahn, Raiden, and Blaze were the last three by the epic battle’s conclusion. Though Shao Kahn was seen being taken by Onaga in the opening cutscene, he must’ve overpowered him, beat Blaze, and then achieved victory over Raiden.

Overall, Shao Kahn was the supreme winner in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, but this would ultimately lead to his undoing as it prompted Raiden to retcon these events. Of course, there are plenty of fighters that did not appear to have an on-screen death, resulting in FAiRWAYx speculating on what ultimately happened with a number of these fighters.

Check it all out in the video below:

And how much of his core is left intact for fans

Although much of the initial cast revealed for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves like Terry and Rock looked close to their prior iterations, SNK have been going more crazy lately with the designs of returning roster members including Mai Shiranui and Billy Kane.

That goes especially for Gato as the latest character announced for Fatal Fury’s revival this weekend, and his changes go deeper than his appearance.

Orpheus just came back to release some more great side-by-side comparison videos putting Gato’s reveal trailer next to Garou: Mark of the Wolves and The King of Fighters 15 where he most recently showed up before.

Of course the biggest thing that immediately stands out is his overall design alterations having ditched his orange martial arts garb for black and gold while growing some facial hair and changing his hair style.

And then there’s the detail that Gato fights with his eyes closed now despite not being technically blinded anymore following his Garou ending where he was injured by presumably his own father.

If you look at the brutal fighter’s actual gameplay, however, it’s clear he’s retaining much of his original style while also adding some new abilities to his repertoire.

The comparison helps confirm basically all of Gato’s original moves are back like Quaking Fang, Wind Fang, Lightning Fang, Freeze Fang and Dragon Fang though they can now be enhanced in some new ways with CotW’s REV System for additional attack options and combo follow-ups.

What’s of course most interesting, however, is what’s is totally brand new, which is potentially a lot, even if they only show a glimpse of his new kit here.

It appears Gato has access to a wholly different style than his palm strikes, rush punches and high-flying kicks that help connect him to his decision to fight blind now.

Essentially the third highlight of his trailer shows what appears to be a quick new triple strike special before things get even more intriguing.

Gato then strikes a pose and performs a strike counter on Hotaru that knocks her down.

Afterwards, he goes into a back-turned stance, which opens up so many possibilities as to what the fighter can do with it, but it seems SNK wants to keep that secret for a bit longer.

These new abilities combined with some of his changed Supers indicates Gato has perhaps undergone some character development after being instantly defeated and humbled by his father.

Instead of relying on pure force and acrobatics, Gato can use his expanded senses to counter an opponent’s strengths and strike openings he couldn’t see before.

So that should lend itself to a wider mix of offensive and defensive options in how Gato players can approach a match, and it looks like there’s still quite a bit more to learn about what else he’s learned between entries now.

You can check out Orpheus’ great comparison videos below to get a better sense of how Gato is blending together the old and the new for a different style before Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves releases on April 24, 2025 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.