Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

Falcons|Joka has released his first tier list for Tekken 8. For those that aren’t aware of him, his recent tournament placements include a third place finish at Thunderstruck 2024, fourth place finish at Crossover 2024, fourth place finish at CEO 2024, and 33rd place finish at Evo 2024.

All 35 characters currently in Tekken 8, including Heihachi Mishima, have been divided up into one of five different tier categories — S tier, A tier, B tier, C tier, and D tier. All character placements have apparently been ordered within each tier group.

According to Joka, the strongest characters in Tekken 8 right are Dragunov, Nina, Jin, Alisa, and Yoshimitsu. This combatants tend to be the top ranking fighters in most other tier lists.

A tier consists of Feng, Kuma, King, Law, Ling Xiaoyu, and five others. It’s interesting to note that none of the DLC fighters have been positioned in either the S tier or A tier categories.

Eddie appears to be the strongest of the DLC characters right now with him being fourth from the top of B tier. Of course, Heihachi is also in B tier, but came close to falling into the C tier group. As for Lidia Sobieska, she’s said to be the worst DLC character and the second worst overall.

The only character occupying D tier is Panda. Needless to say, the addition of the Electric Wind Godfist to Kuma’s arsenal has had a huge impact on his viability considering that Kuma and Panda are very nearly identical to one another in terms of their movesets.

Check it all out below:

Click images for larger versions

Fighting games have the power to break out into different forms of media, and we’re not just talking about things like the Mortal Kombat movies or UDON’s Street Fighter comic books.

The manga series Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games (Tai Ari Deshita: Ojоu-sama wa Kakutоu Gēmu Nante Shinai) is reportedly set to receive an anime adaptation fairly soon.

According to the leaker account Sugoi LITE, the series about school girls getting way too into fighters currently has an anime in production with a broadcast scheduled to start in Japan some time in 2025.

Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games follows Aya Mitsuki after she joins the Kuromi Girls Academy through a scholarship as opposed to her more privileged classmates.

She wishes to become a “proper young lady,” but she catches one of the most popular girls Shirayuri playing the non-descript fighting game Iron Senpai 4 using an arcade stick and her laptop.

TV Anime “GGWP.: Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games” (Tai Ari deshita.: Ojou-sama wa Kakutou Game nante Shinai) is currently IN PRODUCTION; Broadcast scheduled for 2025. pic.twitter.com/QUv59bNxLz

— Sugoi LITE (@SugoiLITE) November 8, 2024

The usually reserved girl pops off after winning and shouting expletives about her opponent being a noob, but after being caught, she cries and begs Aya not to tell the teachers about it because video games are banned from the school.

And perhaps Aya has more of a history with fighting games than she lets on.

This drama comedy (with some girl love mixed in) features a lot of in-jokes for fighting game fans and over the top reactions that you’ve likely seen online before.

The manga written by Eri Ejima originally began in early 2020 through Kadokawa’s Monthly Comic Flapper with its most recent volume 8 dropping just last month.

Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games already received a live-action TV drama back in 2023, which you can see a trailer for below where they actually play Street Fighter 5 and feature some familiar faces from the Japanese FGC.

This obviously isn’t the first manga / anime to focus on those who play fighting games since Hi Score Girl and Daigo The Beast: Umehara Fighting Gamers have been around for over a decade.

An anime adaptation for Young Ladies was previously announced all the way back in 2021, but had mostly gone quiet until now.

Faye Mata, the voice actor for A.K.I. in Street Fighter 6, has already expressed her interest in auditioning for the English dub for the anime should it eventually come our way.

I mean

I just want to audition. https://t.co/S39YZ1KdyU

— Faye Mata @ AX Chibi (@FayeMata) November 9, 2024

There’s no real details on which studio is working on the anime adaptation or where it’s going to be broadcast upon release, but we should be finding out more fairly soon.

Ghostface is the first guest character for the Kombat Pass 2 coming to Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns. He’s slated to be released on November 26, but those that already purchased the Khaos Reigns story expansion will get him for Early Access starting on November 19.

The Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Kombat Kast for Ghostface is slated to be aired on Wednesday, November 13. Leading up to this, we’re expecting NetherRealm Studios to release Ghostface’s gameplay trailer.

Earlier today, NetherRealm Studios released another teaser for Ghostface. This time, some of Ghostface’s intro dialogue gets revealed during an exchange with Smoke.

“Scary movies have made you a psycho!” exclaims Smoke.

“Movies don’t make psychos; they make psychos more creative!” responds Ghostface.

In turns out that this is actually a reference to a line heard during the “Scream” film back in 1996.

“Now Sid, don’t you blame the movies. Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”

Of course, Ghostface doesn’t name Smoke in their conversation together, which suggests that this piece of dialogue could be reused for other character match ups.

Regardless, Smoke then responds by attacking Ghostface. Unlike every other character in the game so far, Ghostface is actually knocked down from this exchange. However, he quickly gets up, ready to start the match.

What’s interesting about this is that Ghostface can also been seen holding his side, implying that the attack actually injured him. More than likely, this is also probably a reference to something from the Scream movies.

Check it all out below:

Street Fighter 6 Competitors like FLY|Punk, Falcons|MenaRD, Rohto|Tokido, TM|NoahTheProdigy, Takamura, Liquid|Nephew, and many more are already qualified to participate at Capcom Cup 11 scheduled to start on March 5, 2025. A lot is on the line as the first place finisher will receive $1,000,000 as the grand prize.

Though we’ve yet to finish with the eleventh Capcom Pro Tour series, Capcom is already making announcements confirming that there will be a Capcom Cup 12, which is apparently scheduled to take place in Spring 2026. It turns out that the Capcom Cup 11 champion will automatically qualify for Capcom Cup 12.

The four top performing players at Street Fighter League 2024 will also be given guaranteed slots for Capcom Cup 12. Of course, since Street Fighter League operates under the team tournament format, these four qualifying competitors will all come from the first place team of the series.

As of right now, we do not yet have confirmation about how many qualifying slots will be available, but it should be noted that previous Capcom Cup events functioned as 48-man brackets. With five slots in total going to the Capcom Cup 11 and Street Fighter League winners, this suggests that the Capcom Pro Tour series will allow players to compete for the remaining 43 spots.

Just like with the eleventh Capcom Pro Tour series, the 2024 Street Fighter League series is still currently ongoing. The Street Fighter League: World Championship 2024 will be taking place at the same time as Capcom Cup 11 spanning from March 5, 2025 until March 9, 2025.

More than likely, we’ll probably hear more details about Capcom Cup 12 before the end of the tournament series being held then. Based on the wording of Capcom at Capcom Cup X earlier this year, we suspect that Capcom Cup 12 won’t feature a $1,000,000 prize for the first place finisher like with the two previous finale events, but it will still probably feature a substantial prize pool.

Check it all out below:

CAPCOM CUP 12情報解禁

2026年春開催予定の「CAPCOM CUP 12」

下記選手が出場権を獲得
CAPCOM CUP 11 優勝選手 1名
SFLWC2024 優勝チーム選手 4名

各大会の続報をお待ちください#CC11 #SFLWC2024 #スト6 pic.twitter.com/1TholIv8TG

— CAPCOM eSports (@CAPCOM_eSports) November 11, 2024

While other video game companies have been facing a fairly rough 2024, Capcom is continuing to do pretty well for itself, which is apparently carrying over to their fighting games as well.

The house built by Mega Man and Street Fighter then expanded by Resident Evil and Monster Hunter recently released their updated sales figures for their highest-selling video games with some nice boosts for Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom.

Capcom’s platinum titles page is now updated to reflect the end of the last quarter, so we can see the new sales listings as of September 30, 2024 for all of the game’s that have pushed at least 1 million copies.

The company previously announced Street Fighter 6 crossed 4 million copies sold at the start of September, but they apparently added even more to that.

Now we can see SF6 is up to at least 4.10 million worldwide and up to 22nd on Capcom’s chart in less than a year and a half after launching last year, which still puts it at more than double Street Fighter 5’s sales over the same period.

Speaking of the predecessor, Street Fighter 5 is continuing to sell more copies up an additional 100,000 units from the last quarter up to 7.7 million and 300,000 for the year keeping it ranked 13th overall on the list.

And those weren’t the only increases either.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 sold another 100,000 copies up to 2 million now, and the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection increased by 200,000 up to 3.4 million.

Although it wasn’t over the last quarter specifically, Street Fighter 4 even saw a surprising jump from March to June this year after being pretty stagnant for a long time.

Both the vanilla and Ultra Street Fighter 4 listings increased by 200,000 each, which likely indicates they were purchased mostly through Steam / on PC.

We’re not sure if this is because of a really good sale or perhaps connected to enthusiasm surrounding the rollback netcode project for SF4 that was teased last year and then briefly appeared online before being quickly taken down around the start of 2024.

There are a couple of notable absences from the rankings as well that are worth pointing out.

The Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection released digitally in September, but it did not cross the 1 million mark in that window (though it should get another boost soon with the physical edition’s launch this month).

We were a bit worried that it may not have even sold 100,000 copies since the Marvel vs. Capcom series sales is still listed at 11 million total, but it turns out that number just hasn’t been updated all year — and should be at least 11.3 million by now.

Early signs did indicate the new MvC Collection is selling well, so hopefully we’ll get some concrete numbers for its performance in the near future.

The other more recent title missing in action is the Capcom Fighting Collection, which still hasn’t managed to reach 1 million after more than two years on the market.

This probably isn’t a great sign for the future of the Darkstalkers since they were the emphasis of the compilation and especially now that we’ve learned that a new Darkstalkers was being worked on and then canceled over a decade ago.

Presumably, the Capcom Fighting Collection 2 will perform better than the first with the Capcom vs. SNK games as well as Power Stone and Project Justice.

It’ll be interesting to see if Black Friday and holiday sales will be enough to push SF6 over 5 million copies before the year ends, but it’s on track to take over the highest-selling single fighting game release from Capcom at some point in the next few years (though the combined sales of Street Fighter 2 and 4’s various versions will be harder to top for a while still).

You can check out how Capcom’s fighting game sales and ranks have changed over the past three quarters and year thus far below.

13. Street Fighter 5 – 7.7 million

14. Street Fighter 2 (SNES) – 6.3 million

22. Street Fighter 6 – 4.1 million


24. Street Fighter 2 Turbo – 4.1 million

29. Street Fighter 4 – 3.6 million


33. Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection – 3.4 million

52. Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite – 2.3 million



54. Ultra Street Fighter 4 – 2.2 million


55. Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds – 2.2 million



61. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – 2 million

64. Super Street Fighter 2 – 2 million


67. Super Street Fighter 4 – 1.9 million

68. Street Fighter X Tekken – 1.9 million


74. Street Fighter 2 Special Champion Edition – 1.65 million


89. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age Of Heroes – 1.4 million

97. Street Fighter 4 3D Edition – 1.3 million

103. Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition – 1.2 million


105. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – 1.2 million

120. Street Fighter Alpha 3 – 1 million

12. Street Fighter 5 – 7.6 million

14. Street Fighter 2 (SNES) – 6.3 million

23. Street Fighter 2 Turbo – 4.1 million

26. Street Fighter 6 – 3.7 million

28. Street Fighter 4 – 3.6 million


35. Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection – 3.2 million

51. Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite – 2.3 million


54. Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds – 2.2 million

55. Ultra Street Fighter 4 – 2.2 million


62. Super Street Fighter 2 – 2 million


64. Super Street Fighter 4 – 1.9 million

66. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – 1.9 million

67. Street Fighter X Tekken – 1.9 million


74. Street Fighter 2 Special Champion Edition – 1.65 million


89. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age Of Heroes – 1.4 million

95. Street Fighter 4 3D Edition – 1.3 million

103. Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition – 1.2 million


105. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – 1.2 million

119. Street Fighter Alpha 3 – 1 million

12. Street Fighter 5 – 7.5 million

14. Street Fighter 2 (SNES) – 6.3 million

23. Street Fighter 2 Turbo – 4.1 million

26. Street Fighter 4 – 3.4 million

31. Street Fighter 6 – 3.3 million


34. Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection – 3.1 million

52. Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite – 2.2 million


53. Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds – 2.2 million

57. Ultra Street Fighter 4 – 2 million


61. Super Street Fighter 2 – 2 million


63. Super Street Fighter 4 – 1.9 million

65. Street Fighter X Tekken – 1.9 million

67. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – 1.8 million

72. Street Fighter 2 Special Champion Edition – 1.65 million


88. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age Of Heroes – 1.4 million

95. Street Fighter 4 3D Edition – 1.3 million

102. Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition – 1.2 million


104. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – 1.2 million

119. Street Fighter Alpha 3 – 1 million

You’d think that, with 182 characters (and more to come) Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero developers would understandably go a little light on individual details, especially when you consider how much suspension of disbelief is required when instantly allowing so many different non-human fantasy figures mix and mingle.

That’s not at all the case, however, as Bandai Namco was careful to load Sparking Zero with as many canonical references and Easter eggs as possible. Today we’re sharing one we missed as YouTuber 5en points out unique interactions with Cell’s throw and Super, depending on whom it is you’re attacking.

Some of the androids from Dragon Ball have vampire-like qualities as they can sap energy from foes in various ways. Cell is among these vampiric bots as he can use his tail to suck life from (or later on, engulf entirely) victims.

Of course, characters who aren’t actually alive don’t have ki or life energy, and so it stands to reason Cell’s draining attacks wouldn’t work on them. If you land Cell’s life-stealing throw or Super on the likes of Androids 16, 19, and 20, the damage dealt will be minimal and Cell will receive no life bonus.

This gives these characters an obvious advantage when facing off with Cell in his base form and stands as an appreciated effort to stay true to the source material, but when you land those same moves on Androids 17 or 18, you’ll notice they have full effect.

You can see the examples in the short video below as 5en shows us exchanges with all relevant characters. He also shares the reason why the latter two Androids do take damage when the others don’t:

In other Sparking Zero news, Bandai Namco recently announced the Dramatic Showdown Tournament, which will be an international competition filled with crazy rules and culminating this coming January.

Maybe just for Virtua Fighter but that door may be opening now

Bandai Namco was quick to jump on the guest character train for Tekken 7 by including Street Fighter’s Akuma on the base roster by the time it launched on consoles before taking those ventures even further, but things are certainly not proceeding the same way with the new game.

Tekken 8 doesn’t have any crossover characters yet whether in the original cast or Season 1 DLC though maybe that’ll change soon thanks to Sega.

This past week Sega surprisingly just dropped the news on the world that they are indeed developing a brand new Virtua Fighter out of basically nowhere in the middle of an interview.

While there had been rumors and some musings about where to take the fighting game franchise next, that marked the first official confirmation that a new project is indeed in the works, and one of the people most happy about that may be part of their biggest competition.

Longtime Tekken Director Katsuhiro Harada recently discussed how he was sad that his series was the only 3D fighting game still around while others like Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive have mostly disappeared — but it seems they won’t be alone any longer.

There is something else he said earlier this year, however, that has fans buzzing again.

After Heihachi was announced as the third DLC character for Tekken 8, one player requested they add Akira Yuki as the last fighter of the season.

Harada actually responded at the time saying, “First they should announce VF6, then we can talk.”

First they should announce VF6, then we can talk. https://t.co/Vn3sxbKNYY

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) July 29, 2024

Well, here we are. It may not be confirmed to be Virtua Fighter 6 specifically, but let’s talk.

A Virtua Fighter representative would probably make the most sense at this point for Tekken 8 since they already went with Street Fighter and SNK’s Fatal Fury in the past with Geese Howard.

It could also benefit Sega greatly by helping reintroduce some of their signature characters to the newer fighting game crowd before the next Virtua Fighter drops for added exposure.

Sure there was Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown from a few years ago, but that was a PlayStation exclusive that was still built on the foundation of a game from 18 years ago.

Plus there was already the Tekken crossover DLC pack for VF5 Ultimate Showdown building that bridge officially before.

Akira would be the safe pick as the poster boy, but he’d also probably be one of the least interesting to make the conversion in our opinion.

Right now, we’d probably go with Pai Chan, Sarah or Jacky Bryant, but maybe since Tekken 7 focused mostly on villains for their crossovers besides Final Fantasy’s Noctis, perhaps Bamco would try and choose someone like Goh Hinogami instead.

And although Harada said that this Summer, he already likely knew something was coming considering his industry connections and friendship with some of the current Virtua Fighter development staff (so maybe this was all part of his plan).

Bamco still hasn’t announced that last Tekken 8 DLC character for the first year, so there is a chance it could be a VF rep or perhaps someone else.

The most highly requested crossover fighter for Tekken is likely still Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy 7.

Harada did respond to fans asking for Tifa around the time Tekken 8 released saying they had not decided anything about guests yet but acknowledged she is indeed attractive.

He also briefly discussed the possibility of Mortal Kombat characters in Tekken a few months back, but Harada doesn’t think that’ll happen easily though it would be wonderful.

There of course have been ongoing discussions about guest characters becoming an oversaturated practice in fighting games with even Street Fighter 6 hopping on board now, however, that doesn’t mean they’ll be going away any time soon with the amount of interest they can still generate.

We’d be very surprised if Bandai Namco stayed away from guest characters for Tekken much longer, so it’ll come down to who and when at this point.

Keep an eye on The Game Awards 2024 next month since that’s seemingly the most likely place the new Virtua Fighter could be debuted in the near future.

And there’s also the Tekken World Tour Finals in December as well where Bamco will presumably announce the final Season 1 DLC character and maybe a tease of who is coming afterwards.

In just 24 hours after it was released, it was reported that Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero had sold over 3 million copies. It had surpassed every other fighting game in terms of its peak player count on Steam, with the exception of MultiVersus.

While these signs were certainly promising at first, it would appear that Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has lost much of its playerbase. A look at the SteamDB chart for Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero (via GWM) reveals that the number of players currently playing the game as of a few hours ago was recorded at 13,807. This is quite a far cry from its peak record of 122,554 players recorded 31 days ago when the game was initially released on October 11, 2024.

Naturally, it’s expected that a game’s playerbase will be most interested in a game when its first released. We’ve seen this time and time again, but this is reduction of 88.7% since then.

Reportedly, this drop in players is due to frustrations dealing with the game’s balance. There are even reports that players are cheating and rage quitting during online gameplay. Notably, a rage quit will result in the winning player receiving no points for their efforts.

Recently, the Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero developers issued a warning to those that were injecting mods into the Custom Battle mode. If caught, players utilizing mods in their Custom Battle scenarios would be banned.

More than likely, this warning will probably also extend to those that have been cheating in multiplayer matches. It will certainly be interesting to see if the players return once the cheating and balance issues are properly addressed.

Bandai Namco recently announced the international Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero eSports tournament. Alongside this announcement, it was also revealed that a new balance patch will also be dropped sometime in December 2024.

Though this may seem to paint a grim picture for Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, its 24-hour peak of 16,073 is outperforming Tekken 8 and Dragon Ball FighterZ’s 24-hour peaks of 7,853 and 935 respectively.

However, Street Fighter 6’s 24-hour peak appears to mark it as the top fighting game right now as it had a 24-hour peak of 28,200. Still, as of the time of writing this, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero currently has nearly twice the number of players (15,168) as Street Fighter 6 (7,708).

One month out, Street Fighter 6 dropped from 70,573 to about 39,834, Tekken 8 dropped from 49,977 to 23,371, and Dragon Ball FighterZ dropped from 44,303 to about 15,819. While Dragon: Ball Sparking Zero does currently hold advantages over the other fighting games, it appears to be losing players at a much faster rate.

During the special finale episode of his YouTube channel, Masahiro Sakurai revealed that he has been working on a secret game project since April 2022. He apparently wrote up the game proposal at “lightning speed” back in July 2021 while still developing Tekken’s Kazuya Mishima and Kingdom Hearts’ Sora as DLC challengers for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Of course, Sakurai wasn’t willing to divulge too many more details about the secret game project that he’s been working on. He did, however, note that the game “should be announced sooner or later.”

More than likely, this mysterious title is being created specifically for the Switch successor. According to Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, the Switch successor is intended to be revealed within this fiscal year, the last day of which is on March 31, 2025.

We recently learned that the Switch successor is being designed to be backwards compatible with the Switch. This certainly bolsters the rumors suggesting that the dubbed “Switch 2” console will be a direct upgrade over its predecessor.

Of course, fans have begun speculating that Sakurai could already be working on the next entry in the Smash series after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Ever since the franchise’s debut on the Nintendo 64, there has been a new Super Smash Bros. for every mainline console.

Considering that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate recently broke the 35 million sales milestone while still being sold at full price, Nintendo would most definitely have a vested interest in continuing this trend. It’s also expected that Masahiro Sakurai would once again be designated as the director of the next title.

What exactly is it that makes the Super Smash Bros. series so successful? Considering that Sakurai has acted as the game director for every one, it likely has to do with his game design philosophy.

“See things from the player’s perspective. Don’t limit the possibilities of gameplay.” — Masahiro Sakurai on his game-making motto

Back in 2007 (during the days of Super Smash Bros. Brawl), Sakurai participated in a rapid-fire 100 question interview. At one point, Sakurai was asked about his “game-making motto.”

“See things from the player’s perspective,” responded Sakurai. “Don’t limit the possibilities of gameplay.”

Just to give an idea of the extreme measures Sakurai will take to actually see things from the player’s perspective, he once apparently disguised himself as a part-time game shop employee specifically so that he could get a better understanding of video game consumers.

During the development of Super Smash Bros. 4, Sakurai described the character selection process as being stressful “almost to the brink of death,” specifically because he had to make decisions to cut characters which could potentially hurt the feelings of the players.

“Still, if it resulted in more people playing my game, I think I would weather any hardship.” — Masahiro Sakurai

More than likely, it was this thought process that inspired Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s “Everyone Is Here” theme. Of course, it should be mentioned that Sakurai apparently was met with dead silence when he first presented the idea to the rest of the development team at the beginning stages of the game making process.

Obviously this resulted in an insane workload to accomplish. However, Sakurai has made it clear just how far he’s willing to go to get more people to play his games.

“As you can imagine, making games and working with computers that don’t always do what you want takes a tremendous amount of effort — almost like stacking small stones one at a time. It’s a hard road to walk,” stated Sakurai back in January 2023. “Still, if it resulted in more people playing my game, I think I would weather any hardship.”

Having said that, Sakurai at his age now understands that it’s good to pace himself appropriately. During the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee, Sakurai landed himself in the hospital due to working 13 months straight without a single day off.

At this point, we don’t know if the next game that Sakurai has been working on is for the Super Smash Bros. series or not, but we do know that he’s been working on it longer than the development time of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate until its first teaser trailer. Despite this, we’ve yet to get a trailer for this new game.

Regardless, we suspect that Sakurai’s philosophy for game design hasn’t changed. As much as possible, he always strives to see things from the player’s perspective.

If and when Sakurai does eventually begin development on the next entry in the of the franchise he’s worked so hard on already, it will most certainly prove to be a tough act to follow up after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Even Sakurai himself believes that the “Everyone Is Here” theme of that game is something that could’ve only happened once.

More than likely, we’ll find out more about Sakurai’s secret game project when Nintendo is finally ready to showcase the Switch successor. With that in mind, we’re expecting it to be quite the launch title.

As far as the competitive aspect of his life goes, Zangief in Street Fighter has had a pretty rough go of it over the years. Being a traditional grappler who is usually considered the basis for what the “grappler” archetype is, his fighting style revolves around a lot of struggle until he finds his opening, then he makes his opponents pay.

Due to his style being so extreme, Zangief usually finds himself on the weaker side of the tier list because any single buff in the wrong direction can quickly turn him into a nightmare. But there was a time where Capcom seemingly forgot to balance Zangief, and no, we’re not talking about Street Fighter 6 Season 2…

In a new video, prominent fighting game community content creator JMCrofts looked back at a time where Zangief was insanely good and pretty darn broken. The game is X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and this version of Gief can still be found in the recently released Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics.

Crofts begins by noting that XvSF Zangief might not seem all that great on the surface. He’s very slow, has potentially the worst dash in the game, and he can’t chain normal attacks into each other on the ground.

However, he has a strong Spinning Pile Driver to work with, and most importantly Zangief in X-Men vs. Street Fighter has some of the easiest infinite combos in the entire game.

If he lands his launcher just once, he can technically KO you fairly easily as long as the player does not drop the combo. Not only that, but there are alternative ways to set up his infinites outside of launcher including landing his air lariat.

Now, you might be thinking that having easy infinites doesn’t really mean much in X-Men vs. Street Fighter as every character could do the same in the original version of the game that was first released in arcades. But for some reason, even in the updated version that was also released in arcades and is currently what is playable in the MvC collection, Zangief retains his infinites while the rest of the cast had theirs largely removed.

JMCrofts questions why Zangief kept his easy infinites speculating that maybe Capcom simply forgot to remove them in the updated version or that perhaps they thought Gief was weak enough before to warrant keeping them.

Regardless, easy infinites Zangief is playable right now in the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection’s iteration of X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and in JMCrofts’ video below, we also get to see him hop online to show just how unbalanced and powerful this iteration of Zangief truly was/is.