Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

What promised to be an exciting week for two different reasons, Street Fighter 6 got a balance update patch and 10 Capcom Pro Tour World Warrior Finals were scheduled to play out, has been characterized by chaos as said update patch (which rolled out on Sunday, December 2) brought with it a game-breaking bug.

Capcom has already postponed the two World Warrior Finals that were slated for Wednesday evening, and in the early hours of Thursday morning announced via X that they’ll be rolling back the problematic change so that competition can resume.

The issue, which was quickly discovered by the player base and shared on social media thereafter, sees one player lose the ability to buffer inputs as they wake up after being knocked down following a Perfect Parry sequence.

This makes for an immense and unintended advantage for the aggressor in such situations, and results in a rapid reduction of Street Fighter 6 competitive viability.

The good news is that the culprit is easily identifiable as one particular, global change from Sunday’s patch deals directly with character abilities in the immediate aftermath of a successful Perfect Parry.

Capcom has announced they plan to isolate this change and roll it back as a quick fix for the current situation. The rest of the many alterations will stay in place, the WWF events can run their courses, and developers can roll out a perfected update once they figure out the new issue.

While Wednesday’s United States/Canada West and Brazil finals were postponed, this proposed fix may allow for the eight additional regional final events scheduled for December 7 and 8 to play out as planned.

Here’s Capcom’s original X post:

#SF6 Known Issue

We are aware of a bug that prevents the buffer input from working on the player’s wake-up when they are knocked down after a Perfect Parry. This was due to the universal adjustment of the Perfect Parry in the update on December 2.

In order to address this…

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) December 5, 2024

If you’d like to see the progress of all World Warrior Finals on this year’s Pro Tour you can do so by checking out our results story that’s being updated as new results roll in.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero started out as a new fighting title that generated a lot of hype leading up to its early October release. It received a lot of praise at launch and for a brief window after, but it didn’t take too long for the warts to begin showing.

Fast forward to just last week where the two finalists for the Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero French online qualifier were disqualified from competing after using “exploits” in the game that also happen to be completely practical and the strongest techniques in the current competitive meta. Needless to say, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is in need of changes, and here are some ways to fix it.

Fighting game content creator and Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero commentator Tyrant_UK recently put together a video that offers several different ideas on how to fix the game in its current state. He walks us through five improvements that could help make the game more stable and a better competitive experience overall.

Right out of the gate, Tyrant discusses the Z-Counter mechanic that ultimately results in “vanish wars.” To put it simply, players are able to vanish and reappear behind their opponent, and this not only effectively evades oncoming attacks, but makes it so that players can repeat this over and over again dodging the attacks that are meant to punish each vanish.

Tyrant suggests that Z-Counters get toned down as they are just too strong right now. A cooldown system for using these vanishes could help them not be abused so frequently, or the mechanic could be made more punishable if it becomes overused to prevent the flow of matches being slowed to a crawl as competitors continue to play on the defensive.

Number 3 on this list, by Tyrant’s own admittance, probably should be at the top of the heap for fixes that need to happen. This issue is none other than the constant running away that plagued the France qualifiers and lead to both finalists being disqualified.

As it stands currently, players can constantly fly away from their opponent making it nearly impossible to actually hit them. What’s worse, certain characters like Dr. Gero and Android 19 do not spend any ki energy to perform these maneuvers, which means they can do it forever and run out the clock.

This style of play is currently favored by the game mechanics, and in turn, it ends up being the strongest tactic to use in competitive play.

Tyrant recommends that the effectiveness of these tactics be reduced down starting with making Dr. Gero and Android 19 actually spend ki when doing them, or the introduction of a time-based mechanic that has notable negative effects if a player runs away for too long could help prevent it from being the main focus in gameplay.

You can check out the full video below for more ways Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero could (and should) be fixed.

Mortal Kombat 1 has received a stealthy and quick update that targets a recent issue that sprung up with the addition of latest DLC character Ghostface. The slasher film icon was released to quite a bit of good reception before that ultimately ended up tainted by the discovery of some devastating, inescapable set ups.

The community found numerous ways to put their opponents into what are essentially touch of death, infinite combo loops that used Ghostface’s knife throw cancel in Assassin mode at their core. As of right now, the entire ability to cancel out of Ghostface’s knife throw has been temporarily removed from the game.

Some players started noticing something was up earlier today when they were in training mode with Ghostface and couldn’t seem to get the knife cancels to work. This lead to a handful of folks hitting social media to report that they couldn’t do it and they couldn’t figure out why.

The official Mortal Kombat 1 Twitter account has since released a tweet that announces the temporary removal of this ability. In the tweet, the developers note that the knife throw cancel can lead to infinite combos and that it has been disabled for the time being while they further investigate the issue.

“We have issued a temporary change that has removed Ghostface’s ability to knife throw cancel while we look further into this issue that can lead into an infinite kombo,” wrote the official Mortal Kombat 1 Twitter account. “The cancel will be returning soon in an upcoming patch. #MK1”

We have issued a temporary change that has removed Ghostface’s ability to knife throw cancel while we look further into this issue that can lead into an infinite kombo.

The cancel will be returning soon in an upcoming patch. #MK1

— Mortal Kombat 1 (@MortalKombat) December 5, 2024

Footage of the change in action has been shared by several fans on Twitter already. This footage from iScream demonstrates that even though the cancel inputs still appear in the command list, Ghostface physically can no longer do them at this time and will eventually always throw the knife instead.

STEALTH FIX

So it appears they’ve put out a stealth patch to fix Ghostface’s infinite in the assassin variations.

You can no longer dash cancel his Knife toss. Instead he will throw the knife regardless. #MK1

(Credit to @YavedGaming for making me aware) pic.twitter.com/TDPiIigmO9

— iScream (@iScreamFGC) December 5, 2024

This is an interesting tactic we’ve seen a handful of times now from fighting games that live underneath the Warner Bros. Games umbrella.

It isn’t common to see something completely taken out of a game while it’s being worked on and fixed, but we have seen this several times now from MultiVersus where most notoriously the Iron Giant was removed completely from the game’s roster for being too broken before being added back after fixing.

Ultimately, though, this should hopefully work out for the better as Ghostface’s infinite combos were already starting to cause problems. The technique was so strong, in fact, that the character was already seeing tournament bans so that players wouldn’t exploit the unintentional ability.

Fatal Fury kicked off way back in 1991 amid the birth and boom of the fighting game genre, and like its Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter peers, rolled out significant updates and subsequent entries for the better part of the next decade. Then things came to a screeching halt.

SNK produced Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves in late 1999, and though the franchise would remain both remembered and beloved, Mark of the Wolves appeared to be the end. Here, a quarter century later, SNK has announced Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves for 2026, and long time producer Yasuyuki Oda has opened up in a developer interview with GamesIndustry.biz about the 25 year gap.

It was not for lack of desire that the main Fatal Fury franchise took such a long hiatus, as SNK has been busy with other ventures like the closely-tied King of Fighters series.

“I wanted to develop [a new Fatal Fury game] earlier but we got tied up with other projects,” starts Oda to Gameindustry. “However, bringing back Fatal Fury was always in the cards and it was just a matter of finding the right timing.”

“After multiple successful games utilizing other SNK IPs, it was the most natural next choice, as it was always one of the cornerstones of the company. It’s just purely coincidental that it’s been over 25 years since the last release,” he explained.

Another complicating factor naturally occurred as a result of the prolonged stretch between releases as the development team at SNK evolved over over the years. When it came time to actually tackle City of the Wolves, Oda had a mix of new and veteran developers on his team.

Getting younger and fresher minds to work and communicate effectively with older and more established ones is never an easy task, but Oda and the dev team were ultimately successful in connecting the parties and creating an efficient working atmosphere.

“A lot of time was spent bridging that gap,” he continues. “During that process, both sides learned a lot from each other which was a very interesting experience in general,” finished Oda.

Street Fighter’s Ken and Chun-Li were revealed as guest CotW DLC characters

There’s a good bit more to the interview as Oda also discusses a critical difference between Fatal Fury and sister franchise King of Fighters, a bit of the character selection process for City of the Wolves, and ensuring SNK’s next big fighting game is as accessible as possible without making it feel like a casual experience.

Be sure to give the full interview a look through, and let us know in the comments below how excited you are for City of the Wolves to release release on April 24, 2025.

Capcom has just dropped the latest Street Fighter 6 trailer for its next DLC fighter coming to the game here in Season 2. Mai Shiranui of Fatal Fury and King of Fighters fame is joining the fight as the second-ever guest fighter after fellow SNK representative Terry Bogard joined back in September.

This new trailer gives us a look at the introduction to Mai in Street Fighter 6’s single player World Tour Mode. In addition to this, Capcom has also confirmed the fighter’s release window.

“Mai will teach you all the Shiranui techniques you can handle—as long as you don’t keep her waiting,” wrote Capcom on Twitter. “This good girl from SNK’s Fatal Fury series is coming to #StreetFighter6 in early 2025!”

Ms. Shiranui is the third DLC character to be added to Street Fighter 6 in Season 2. She was preceded by M. Bison in June, then Terry in September, and she will be followed by Elena sometime in spring of 2025.

In the teaser, we see the main World Tour protagonist walk into a new area that Mai specifies is Aokigahara, Japan. This happens to be her stage from Fatal Fury Special, though it is currently unclear if it will become an actual playable stage in Street Fighter 6 or just acts as her World Tour area.

She offers to show her new pupil all of the Shiranui techniques that they can handle before silently appearing and putting on a graceful display of fire dancing with her trademark fans.

Mai is able to offer her potential pupil a demonstration of said techniques when several ninja appear and attempt to attack her. Quickly and easily thwarting them with fluid movement and fiery attacks, she laughs and lets the player know that the Shiranui clan welcomes them with open arms.

In the original Season 2 DLC line up infographic, Capcom noted that Mai would be set for release in “Winter 2025,” which originally confused a lot of people as Elena was slated for Spring 2025 despite being shown to come after Mai. Today, however, the company confirmed that Mai will be joining the game in “early 2025,” so we definitely won’t be seeing her released here in December even though this month is technically considered a part of Winter 2025.

You can check out the teaser below.

While it’s not grave enough to cause a Capcom Pro Tour delay, yet another hiccup has manifested as a result of Street Fighter 6’s latest update patch.

This issue is a little lighter than concurrent ones, and is actually a little on the humorous side, perhaps for everyone except Ed players.

Ed was widely seen as one of the best characters on Street Fighter 6’s roster before this recent update, and as such wound up squarely in the sights of Capcom’s nerf gun.

The Psycho-Powered pugilist is among the hardest-hit on the roster, and one of the many ways developers achieved this was through an extended hurtbox on his retreating Kill Box maneuver.

Ed will now have a harder time evading incoming attacks with Kill Box, and this truth is harshly highlighted in the game’s tutorial mode. Street Fighter 6 Demonstrations show how each characters’ most important tools are applied in the midst of battle, and this is depicted via AI recordings of characters.

Ed’s latest change causes him to get hit instead of successfully evading when showing off Kill Box retreat, however, which then places both him and his AI counterpart in the wrong places for the subsequent part of the demonstration.

This is a relatively minor issue, if one would even be inclined to call it that, but @NezsKillerQueen, the X user who shared this finding on social media, feels it’s a piece of larger and more pressing picture.

The Ed player suggests that the implemented nerfs have begun to remove Ed’s identity as an SF6 character, which very well may be the sentiment the majority of the Ed chorus sings here in the game’s updated landscape.

The character guide is malfunctioning because they ruined kill rush backwards .

This is what I’m talking about with this change. It’s removing the character’s identity. He can’t even do what he was designed to do within the game’s tutorial.

Begging Capcom for it back pic.twitter.com/9m8tvi4MmA

— Nezs (@NezsKillerQueen) December 5, 2024

For comparison’s sake, here’s how the Tutorial is supposed to play out during this particular sequence:

If you’re interested in hearing more of what Nezs has to say about Ed’s latest changes, he has en entire 17-minute video on the subject here:

What do you think of Ed as well as the current, admittedly turbulent state of Street Fighter 6? Do you feel this will all be sorted out in short order? Chime in with your thoughts on the situation in the comments below.

Some fighting game characters, such as Street Fighter’s Akuma, are expected to be good in just about every entry they appear in, but the Mortal Kombat franchise really does not follow that formula. Regardless of how much fans have expressed love for any particular combatant, Ed Boon and his development teams tend to keep tier levels inconsistent across games.

In their latest video essay, Ketchup and Mustard look back over the series history to point out five of the most popular characters that, despite their charisma with audiences, wound up being amongst the worst on their respective rosters.

You might think if developers are well aware of a certain fighter’s popularity, they may be inclined to not only feature them more often, but also to ensure they’re amid the higher tiers to ensure those using them will be saved from some frustration.

It’s fairly true that NetherRealm Studios tends to ensure fan-favorites make it into entries more often than not, but their effectiveness from game to game is almost always a toss up.

We won’t spoil the whole list, but there’s one example that likely comes to mind first as it happened very recently and made a large social media splash for quite some time: Mileena’s infamous Mortal Kombat 11 appearance.

The character’s absence from Mortal Kombat 11’s base roster was enough to send fans into a frenzy on social media, regularly badgering developers to demand they bring her in as DLC. Ed Boon would eventually admit he and his team intentionally delayed Mileena’s release to stir up anticipation, but doing so wound up making entirely too much of her debut.

With all the hullabaloo and intense build up surrounding her release, fans were almost immediately underwhelmed when the character came out and wound up struggling to get consistent wins.

While MK11 Mileena stands as the most prominent example of a popular character being competitively bad, her example is just one of five highlighted in the full Ketchup and Mustard video below:

The December 2024 patch for Street Fighter 6 was recently dropped. Though Capcom effectively described the patch as being a minor one, it actually proved to have a substantial changelog featuring adjustments for every character in the game.

It’s only been a few days since that update was released, but it does seem like M. Bison might end up being one of the biggest losers in terms of the nerfs that he’s received. Funnily enough, it’s these changes in particular that seem to have BST|Daigo Umehara ecstatic about the rest of this season.

Though M. Bison’s back and heavy kick still leaves him at frame advantage, the amount of Drive Gauge it reduces on block has seen a significant reduction. Daigo initially makes fun of how weak this feels, but eventually noted that he thought this was a bit overkill and unnecessary.

After reading through some more notes, Daigo is initially surprised to learn that M. Bison didn’t have a hurtbox on his fit when rising with his Shadow Rise special. Ultimately, Daigo felt as though that hurtbox should’ve always been there.

However, Daigo ends up getting really excited upon testing out anti-airs against M. Bison’s Devil Reverse follow up. This change should make it much more difficult for opponents to bully their way in.

“Oh! This is big!” exclaimed Daigo upon testing what Akuma can do against this move now. “That’s what I’m talking about! It’s over! Shadow Rise is cooked!”

Check it all out in the video below:

The Evo Japan 2024 lineup has been revealed. There will be five games played in the 1on1 format with two more featuring 5on5 competitions.

Ultimately, it just wouldn’t be Evo without Street Fighter, so it should come as no surprise that Street Fighter 6 will have a big presence at the event. More than likely, Street Fighter 6 will bring in the most entrants as it typically does for Evo events.

Tekken 8 will also be present at Evo Japan 2024. Considering its popularity, it’ll probably be the second most popular title that players will compete in.

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Guilty Gear Strive, and The King of Fighters 15 are the other three 1on1 format games. Considering that the developers behind these games are still working on content and new games, will likely get a few reveals at this event.

Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. are the two titles that will be played in the 5on5 format. We should get to see a number of players getting in on the action with both of these games.

With the recent confirmation that Sega has been developing a new Virtua Fighter, it’s currently unknown if this was just a reference to Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O., or if there is a Virtua Fighter 6 in development. Needless to say, Virtua Fighter fans might want to pay attention to Evo Japan this year.

Check out the new trailer for Evo Japan 2025 below:

Five 1on1, Two 5on5#EVOJapan2025 Registration is open until April 7 at 11:59 JST pic.twitter.com/RHbeja3Egr

— EVO Japan (@evojapan_info) December 4, 2024