Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has the biggest roster in the 3D arena-fighting franchise’s history, but some players still want more. Specifically, more costumes, accessories, and other ways to customize their iconic DBZ fighters’ looks, including with shirts and jackets that pull from deep cuts within the long-running anime’s history.
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One of the most requested outfits is Goku’s pre-Cell Games track jacket that he wears in his off time leading up to the tournament. Another is Piccolo’s yellow “Postboy” shirt he wears in the Trunks Saga filler episode in which he and Goku try to get their driver’s licenses. The streetwear fits aren’t just fan favorites, they also showcase more casual sides of the characters and express a range of personality outside the standard battle outfits.
The Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero subreddit has had fans frequently scratching their heads at why a game that’s bursting with fan service in other areas is missing these key costumes. Some are worried that it simply means Bandai Namco is planning to dole out each new style over months and years through a relentless drip-feed of microtransaction add-ons as it’s done with Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. SparkingZero seems destined to be the ultimate DBZ sim, but no DBZ sim is complete without more robust dress-up options.
Enter modders who are at least bringing some of these costume changes to the PC version of the game. A Piccolo Postboy outfit was added to the GameBanana mod repository yesterday. There’s also a mod for Vegeta’s pink “Badman” button-up at NexusMods. Of course, there are plenty of other outfits still missing, like Goku and Vegeta’s “SAB” winter jackets from the Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie and Gohan’s Kai outfit from the Buu Saga.
I can forgive some of these missing from the game at launch, but too many of the best alternate costumes seem MIA at the moment. I’m not above paying for them all if they get rolled out later. It would have felt more satisfying if they were all late-game unlockables, though.
It’s hard to believe that the most famous franchise in fighting game history has never had a guest character before. God of War’s Kratos has been in Mortal Kombat. Yoda was in Soul Calibur. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s roster is now home to more characters from outside the series than from within it. But Fatal Fury’s upbeat denim-clad, city-slicker Terry Bogard (who is also in Smash) will mark the first time someone from another franchise has been playable inside Street Fighter.
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The news was announced at the Summer Game Fest showcase as part of Street Fighter VI’s season 2 reveal. In addition to the return of Street Fighter III’s Elena and series villain M. Bison, the game’s second year will also see Terry Bogart and the ninja Mai Shiranui join as well, the result of a collaboration with SNK that first got underway at back at Evo 2022, the fighting game event’s in-person return following the covid-19 pandemic. Fighting game illustrators Toshiaki “ Shinkiro” Mori and Eisuke Ogura created a crossover “welcome back” sign made up of characters from both Street Fighter and Fatal Fury.
“It was a big hit and it was really exciting,” Street Fighter 6 director, Takayuki Nakayama, and producer, Shuhei Matsumoto, who are now the faces of the franchise, told me in an interview at Summer Game Fest conducted via a translator. Teams from both companies kept talking in the years that followed and it eventually culminated in the decision to bring Terry, essentially SNK’s Ken, to the rival franchise. What’s it like remaking an outside character inside the Street Fighter universe?
“When incorporating non-Capcom or non-Street Fighter guest characters into this game, obviously [we] have to respect the IP and the characters and make sure that fans of those characters will appreciate it,” they said. While Terry and Mai will follow the same rules as the existing roster, the whole point of the collaboration in the first place is to also bring along their unique personalities and fighting game flair.
Screenshot: Capcom / Kotaku
Nakayama and Matsumoto demurred when I asked for specifics of what that might mean for their styles and move-sets, but stressed the team has some ideas it’s excited about. “Fatal Fury is a long running series for SNK. Characters like Terry also appeared in other games like King of Fighters, which is also a very long running series. The team who work on Street Fighter 6 are all big fans of fighting games in general, including games like Fatal Fury and King of Fighters. They have a lot of things that they want to incorporate, that people, that they think, that fans of Terry and Mai will like, and that’s something that they’re really putting a lot of energy into.”
But before Terry and Mai arrive later in the year, players will get their hands on M. Bison, the crime syndicate boss who’s been a fan-favorite since Street Fighter II. Ryu killed him at the end of Street Fighter V, but as everyone suspected he’s back and looking weirder than ever. His new grizzled, tattered alt costume, a striking contrast with his traditional imperial uniform, has earned him the nickname “homeless Bison” from some, and a revamped arsenal of moves looks borderline broken.
“In terms of his story and why he looks this way, this is something that you’ll get to learn more [about] when you play arcade mode and see him in World Tour when he’s out,” Nakayama and Matsumoto said. While it’s his comeback to the series, M. Bison’s new kit also marks the return of some old abilities in new forms. One of those is his ultra combo from Street Fighter IV which is now a super art in Street Fighter 6. Other moves play off the story and the crime boss’ new level of deviousness. That includes a back fist combo which plants a psycho mine on the opponent that explodes if M. Bison doesn’t get hit for a while.
“It kind of adds this mind game-type aspect to his gameplay, and kind of forces the opponent to play in a certain way when that happens,” they said. The psycho mine also changes some of the effects and combos of M. Bison’s attacks while it’s active, changing the rhythm of the match as well. He’s also a hybrid charge and command input fighter, meaning some of his abilities require holding inputs while others are just simple sequences. His iconic Double Knee Press attack will now just be a “fireball motion” attack, for example, potentially making him a lot more appealing to more players.
It’s poised to be another neat addition to a game that still feels like it’s in a honeymoon phase with fans. Following the disappointing launch of Street Fighter V, which was marred by numerous complaints and incomplete modes, Street Fighter 6 was a return to form for both the fundamentals and positive mood among fans. Despite being a fighting game rooted in a rich history of arcades and in-person competition, modern Street Fighter is as much a live-service platform as anything else. In May, Akuma arrived in the game by way of an event that was part Twitch Plays Pokémon and part MMO boss fight.
Nakayama and Matsumoto pointed to all of the data they collect from players and the new ways they’re experimenting with online events to help the game evolve. ”We released this infographic that shows something like 20 billion matches that have happened over this past year, which is very surprising,” they said. “When we did the raid boss event with Akuma in the battle hub that was a big hit. That just made [us] realize there should be more opportunities to get people excited about events like that, that’s something [we] want to explore in the near future.”
When they told me it’s easier than ever to see what players do and don’t like, I asked them if it ever felt like there was too much data and they wished they could go back to days when developers were more walled off from community feedback and behavior. “Honestly, not really,” they said laughing. “It’s really exciting to see everyone really have fun and play the game and seeing what what people are interested in.”
One thing at least some players still aren’t always having fun with is Street Fighter’s aggressive microtransaction model. Every once in a while outrage bubbles up when Capcom asks players to pay for something they feel is particularly egregious, like color variants for costumes. There’s also no way to pay exact amounts for lots of the in-game purchases since players first have to buy arbitrary amounts of Fighter Coins that often leave them with left-over premium currency. Is the team happy with the current monetization?
Screenshot: Capcom / Kotaku
“I mean people seem to be very interested in purchasable content especially that associates with the actual characters in the Fighting Ground Mode,” they said. “And we see a lot of interest towards that so it’s something that we will continue looking into and seeing if there’s any new stuff that we can just…but in terms of the system it’s probably going to be as is.”
Reading between the lines, it certainly seems like a version of what you hear from a lot of companies,which is that while lots of people complain about microtransactions, just as many if not more, grudgingly or even happily pony up the money for them. Perhaps the sea of player data the Street Fighter 6 devs have access to was also helpful in bearing that out.
Despite containing just four new characters, the season 2 fighter pass is $30, half the price of the full game. But to sweeten the deal, the full game is currently 50 percent off to celebrate its one-year anniversary. M. Bison, meanwhile, arrives over the summer. But the most important part of Street Fighter 6’s legacy, and its potential future, may lie in more community experiments like the Akuma online event.
“Street Fighter 6 gave [us] an opportunity to try out a lot of new things that [we’d] never done before in any other fighting game,” Nakayama and Matsumoto said. “With Street Fighter 6 [we] feel like [we] were able to see a resurgence of younger audiences who became interested in the game through alternate areas outside of just the fighting.” Hopefully that means more live events are planned for year two. The social experience of arcades was central to how many people fell in love with fighting games to begin with. Finding more ways to recreate that online could be the key to maintaining them.
The dust seems to have mostly settled on the Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar rap beef (for now), but the musical back and forth between the two hip-hop titans has imprinted itself on pop culture. That imprint includes video game mods, as a Mortal Kombat 1fan has recently recreated both rappers in the game to pit them against each other. You can check out a match using the mod below, but spoilers, it ends the same way the real-world beef did: Kendrick won.
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The mod by NegativeZoneNerd is up on Nexus Mods as Def Jam MK1 Pack 1 – Kendrick VS Drake, a reference to the Def Jam fighting game series starring different rappers and hip-hop artists from the mid-2000s. The series has been dormant since 2007, so fans haven’t been able to pit a lot of modern rappers against one another in a fighting game. But this Mortal Kombat 1 mod is a decent enough substitute. The Def Jam MK1 Pack has two options to play as Lamar, one makes the “Not Like Us” rapper a skin for Reiko, and the other lets you play as him as a skin for Kung Lao. Drake, meanwhile, is a skin for Johnny Cage.
The Drake vs. Kendrick beef has been entertaining to watch unfold and I don’t think I’ve ever seen people be so unified online. Though it seems both of them have stopped dropping songs about each other for now, it was easily one of the most significant pop culture moments of 2024, even though it’s only May. People love to watch others be haters. I now understand why they held gladiator matches in ancient Rome. Mortal Kombat 1 mods aren’t those, but the fighting game is brutal enough that it gives you a modicum of the same adrenaline rush.
Photo: Valve / Kotaku / Roman Samborskyi (Shutterstock)
A Steam user on Christmas Eve had a question: How do you earn just one measly little Steam Point? They were at 68,999 points and wanted to hit 69,000 because, you know, it’s a nice number and all that. However, because of how Steam Points are earned, there seemed no simple way to get that one measly point. But then a Christmas miracle happened. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Mortal Kombat 1, NetherRealm’s newest entry in its three-decades-old fighting game series, continues its predecessors’ tradition of pulling gut-yanking, brain-pounding final moves, or Fatalities, to the delight of its gore connoisseur fans. But some of those fans are frustrated. MK1’s recent patch introduces seasonal Fatalities—cool, but you have to pay for them.
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Is no body horror sacred? October 23 patch notes indicate NetherRealm issued a ton of gameplay and performance changes to its $70 game, like improved AI and more balanced combat, but it hid the less desirable details about the premium Halloween Finisher among them. It won’t actually make it to the game’s Premium Store until later this week, publisher Warner Bros. Games said on Twitter, but it seems likely that it’s the same themed Fatality Mortal Kombat leakers revealed in September.
Leaked footage shows that, during the Fatality move, you slam a grimacing jack-o’-lantern over your opponent’s face and wait for bugs to slink out. Your enemy then doubles over and you pop their head off with a powerful kick, observing as it flies through space and slams into a front porch decorated for Halloween. The doorbell rings like you’re trick-or-treating, and blood waterfalls around the cracked pumpkin skull. “FATALITY,” the screen announces in vampire red.
Update 10/27/2023 8:24 p.m. ET: The “Happy Halloween” fatality is now up for sale in Mortal Kombat 1‘s Premium Store. It’s price? A whopping $12 USD. Original story continues after the tweet.
It looks like a fun move, and it’s October-ready, but fans stopped feeling as excited about it when they realized they’d have to pay extra for it.
“Pretty bad new precedent set by the devs charging for Fatalities now, and if people pay for it then it will only get worse,” one Reddit user said. “Next they might start charging $0.10 every time we call out our [support fighter] Kameo.”
“Why the hell did I pay for a [$110] Premium Edition […] yet NR has the cheek to try to force more paid content already?” a Twitter user responded to WB Games. “Greedy business practices before quality.”
NetherRealm apparently hasn’t learned from its 2019 game MK11, which gained notoriety among fans for what Kotaku writer Mike Fahey called its “oppressive” grind, which encouraged players to spend thousands of dollars on in-game currency to avoid suffering through tedious amounts of gameplay to unlock rewards. MK1 is also offering a free Halloween Variant, a purplish, cobwebbed middle school dance, to the Cage Mansion Arena, but it doesn’t take the sting out of giving more money to a game you thought you already paid for.
Fighting game reboot Mortal Kombat 1, which got a paid Early Access release September 14, introduces a completely new, single-player board game mode called Invasion. According to a PlayStation blog explaining the mode, the expansive Invasion mode serves as a kind of pinnacle to the 31-year-old series’ history of varied single-player formats. Well, maybe it could have, if only some reviewers didn’t find it so boring.
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What is Mortal Kombat 1’s Invasion mode?
Invasion, which becomes accessible after you roll credits on the game’s single-player story mode, is “an evolution,” PlayStation says, of preexisting features like the storefront Krypt from 2002 game Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and single-player battle Towers. In it, you protect your reality from invaders by battling them “on board game-like world maps,” PlayStation says, in exchange for rewards like in-game money and cosmetics.
“Anyone can enjoy Invasion,” PlayStation writes, “but longtime fighting game fans […] will probably find a second home here. While the main incentive is scoring unlockables to personalize your favorite fighters, there’s much to enjoy.”
A single-player mode that takes inspiration from board games sounds like it could be quite novel, bringing something fresh and exciting to MK1’s single-player offerings. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working out that way. IGN’s Mitchell Saltzman found it overwhelming, saying:
It’s a mishmash of ideas that sound good on paper but, unfortunately, tries to be a few too many things all at once. Almost every invasion “board” is made up of a series of spaces that each have a themed fight assigned to them […]. You move around the board conducting an exhausting grind of clearing repetitive battles against enemies that—at least for the first several hours—don’t put up much of a fight, collecting a slower-than-usual drip of worthwhile rewards, finding keys to unlock gates, and completing challenges like [classic fight interlude] Test Your Might or survival minigames, until you reach the end.
VG247 staff writer Connor Makar agreed in his review, calling the mode “largely unexciting.”
“It has its moments with secret missions and good ‘ol Test Your Might challenges spread around,” he said, “but these perks were countered by modifiers that did more to frustrate than exhilarate. A missile from off-screen may be funny on occasion, but a super-armored katana running at you, over and over again, begins to grate.”
Is there any benefit to MK1 Invasion mode?
Those categorizations might not inspire much confidence in Invasion, but cosmetics fiends should familiarize themselves with it anyway—it’s where MK1’s future seasonal content, which will not involve any microtransactions or a battle pass, can be found.
So you can keep your money; you’ll pay up by enduring potentially sleepy gameplay. But, who knows, you might find Invasions not-so-sleepy. In its review, Bloody Disgusting said Invasions “is a massive improvement over the previous game’s Krypt, feeling less random and cryptic in how to overcome obstacles.”
“With Netherrealm promising to seasonally update the Invasions mode, I can’t wait to see what surprises and themes are in store for us,” said writer Reyna Cervantes.
In any case, Invasions makes sense living in Mortal Kombat 1, a game that wants to strike a clean balance between the decades-old and new. Test it out yourself when the game comes out globally on September 19.
Every now and then I get a reminder that the kids are alright. Sure, they’re gonna be facing some of the worst economic hardships in memory after AI replaces our jobs and capitalism finishes ruining everything else, but apparently they’ll be straight-up vibing as the world burns. The latest reminder of this comes from DJ “OG Kid” Dodd, a 15-year-old competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee player who took a selfie in the middle of a match. Iconic, honestly.
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Dodd plays Jigglypuff on the GameCube crossover brawler, and competed in a tournament at Super Smash Con in Chantilly, Virginia on August 11. The event gathered players from around the world to play every iteration of Nintendo’s crossover fighter, from the original Nintendo 64 game to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Switch. There are plenty of VODs from the show online, but I want to draw your attention to this one, in which Dodd’s Jigglypuff went up against Sushi’s Peach.
Nintendo / VGBootCamp
Dodd’s Jigglypuff is a menace, and his counterplay against Peach is fun to watch. But I gotta give the kid props for not only winning the fight, but popping off on stream both by glaring into the camera multiple times and by snapping a selfie midmatch while Peach was between spawns. Competitive play is a fun viewing experience, but I also find it delightful to watch it unfold with some swagger and theatrics. The commentators called the move “content-pilled,” but I call it “a serve.”
According to smashdata.gg, Dodd ultimately placed 129 in the 860-person tournament, but I hope to see him show up with more antics in future tournaments, as he’s been doing work in the scene for the past two years and has placed in the top 10 at several tournaments. The commentators here even say in the match that this kid could be the future of Melee, so I’m rooting for you, king.
Yep, Super Turbo takes the Street Fighter crown, at least in our book. Truth be told, this is highly subject to personal opinion, and I think any of the top six or seven games in our rankings could easily be number one for someone else. Perhaps for you…and that’s cool. Since Super Street Fighter II Turbo is our top pick, I’ll try to convey why it rules.
For starters, it ended up being the ultimate evolution of Street Fighter II, the single most important fighting game the genre’s known. Capcom made two more attempts to follow up Super Street Fighter II Turbo, but as you’ve perhaps read by now, they had their own issues. This is the entry that stuck, and the one everyone still enjoys today.
Super Turbo was the logical culmination of the journey Capcom started in 1991, incorporating everything its designers learned from The World Warrior, Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, and even the underwhelming Super into one final, excellent game. It also brought its own innovations, like meter-fueled super combos, throw softening (“teching”), and even rudimentary air juggling.
Characters, too, gained crucial moves that completed their movesets. Imagine Fei Long without his chicken wing, Ryu without his advancing fierce and overhead, Chun without upkicks, Gief without green glove, Honda without oicho. (You don’t have to, because Super exists.) The character balance wasn’t perfect, but was good enough to create consistently fun match-ups, and it was exciting when someone went on a streak with a low-tier like Cammy or T. Hawk.
(And let’s not forget series mainstay Akuma debuted here, becoming the first tournament-banned character in FGC history.)
All of the above, combined with the return of Hyper Fighting’s blessedly fast action, worked together to create short, intense matches largely devoid of gimmicks, instead focused on the 2D fighting basics of neutral, footsies, and zoning. Super Turbo was both fun as hell, and an excellent teacher of fighting game fundamentals.
When I play Super Turbo with a similarly skilled opponent today it’s like we’re engaged in an alternate form of communication, a hidden language composed of attacks and retreats, reads and feints. Sometimes words aren’t needed, because our hands are saying everything through the screen. I’m always chasing that mental “zone” feeling in video games, and at its best, Super Street Fighter II Turbo gets me there like few others.
While I’ve played and enjoyed most of the Street Fighter games, Super Street Fighter II Turbo is the one I’ll always go back to. I hold it in the same esteem as Doom, Super Mario Bros. 3, R-Type, Dark Souls…masterpieces that always remain relevant, and always have more to offer. — Alexandra Hall
Coming off the heels of Bleach’s upcoming season of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood Waris the announcement that the popular supernatural sword-fighting anime is also receiving a new video game that looks pretty stunning and action-packed.
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Bleach: Soul Resonance is a 3D-action role-playing game that appears to play similarly to games in the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series or the upcoming Jujutsu Kaisen game, Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash. According to the game’s website, players will experience a “low-latency combat experience with weapons and swords” and engage in strategic battles “with familiar faces on a battlefield full of blades.” The last Bleach videogame to release in the U.S. (outside of Bandai Namco’s delisted Shonen Jump crossover game Jump Force) was Bleach: Soul Resurrección in 2011 for the PlayStation 3. Bleach: Soul Resonance is being published by Nuverse (Marvel Snap) and is currently still under development. You can check out the announcement trailer for Bleach: Soul Resonance below.
Nuverse
Unlike its fellow “big three anime” series, Naruto, Bleach hasn’t had a notable run of licensed video games that resonate with fans quite like the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series. However, the early cutscene and gameplay footage shown off in Bleach: Soul Resonance’s announcement trailer, looks to change that.
Outside of having pretty clean-looking 3D models of the anime’s titular characters, Bleach: Soul Resonance appears to be following the show’s Soul Society and Hueco Mundo arcs—its first two major storylines. In it, protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki wages war against the entire Soul Society and Arrancars to rescue his kidnapped friends Rukia and Orihime.
Right off the bat, Bleach: Soul Resonance nails emulating the anime’s big-fight feel in its early gameplay footage by recreating iconic moments from Ichigo’s hard-fought bouts against the blood-hungry Kenpachi Zaraki and the stoic Byakuya Kuchiki. Both gameplay snippets look pretty promising despite being from an early build of the game. The trailer even plays Ichigo’s catchy theme song “Number One” by Shiro Sagisu and Hazel Fernandez which is always a nice touch to get fans excited to see some action. Time will tell whether Bleach: Soul Resonance will finally give the beloved anime series the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm treatment or if it’ll be just another underbaked licensed video game.
The Evolution Championship Series, typically referred to as just EVO, wrapped up its Japanese circuit this weekend. There was a lot to get hyped for during the tournament, including the epic Guilty Gear Strive sets and the nail-biting Tekken 7 matches. However, one thing that most competitors weren’t stoked about was the laggy setup, which the event’s organizers have admitted on Twitter “produced a flawed competitor experience throughout the tournament.”
Hopefully Street Fighter 6’s New Open-World Won’t Mean Capcom Skimps On The Fighting
A spin-off of the main tournament that first kicked off in January 2018, EVO Japan is a multi-day event centered around the fighting game community. A plethora of popular and recently dropped brawlers are playable there, from The King of Fighters XV to Melty Blood: Type Lumina to Street Fighter V. Alongside these games are an assortment of their best competitors, including top Guilty Gear Strive player Gobou, Tekken 7 pros Arslan Ash and Rangchu, and goated Virtua Fighter 5 player Tonchan. Folks were ready for three days of throwing digital hands, and as a viewer, I can tell you it was exciting to watch all the wild combo strings and even wilder redemption arcs, like pro Tekken 7 player Meo-IL clawing his way from the losers bracket to the grand finals. But as things moved fast, the setup couldn’t keep up and monitors seemingly lagged behind in displaying the gameplay—a particularly serious problem in a genre where virtual life-or-death reactions and vital inputs are the stuff of milliseconds.
Fed up, Punk calls out ‘shitty’ tournament setup
The setup issues appeared to be widespread. Both Tekken players Arslan Ash and Rangchu noted the laggy issues with the monitors, while Guilty Gear Strive pro Jonathan Tenementioned that the venue had “only one setup” per pool. Other attendees, from Guilty Gear player Romolla to Tekken pro Knee, complained about EVO Japan’s setup as well. But the issues were most pronounced during an important Street Fighter V match between Momochi and Punk, which was stalled for almost an hour as Punk had a display replaced because of the latency problems between the monitor and the PlayStation 4.
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Punk, who is a prolific fighting game player, was making his way through the Top 8 losers bracket. After battling almost 400 other competitors in Street Fighter V: Championship Edition, Punk could see the first-place trophy and roughly $7,600 in front of him. He just had to put Momochi, a two-time EVO champion, in the dirt first. Things were pretty evenly matched between the two, even though Punk’s Vega lost the first match against Momochi’s Cody. It was at this point that Punk called over an event staffer to chat about the latency issues. After testing out some buttons, the staffer concluded that a new monitor was in order. Nearly 40 minutes and a new display later, Punk ended up losing to Momochi, who played as Karin for the second match. Punk was clearly unhappy and,, as seen in this fan recording, stormed off the stage. The winner of Street Fighter V’s EVO Japan competition was Oil King.
evo2kvids
On Twitter, Punk popped off on EVO Japan, calling the monitor issues “fucking annoying” and the tournament itself “shitty.” He later explained that he’d spent “over $2000” only to be met with what he felt was an unacceptable tournament setup in which the match’s result was not in his control. He finished off by apologizing to “all Japanese fans” for not playing his best, something he promised just before beginning his match against Momochi.
EVO says the issue was the stage and stream, not the monitors
In the wake of competitors like Punk discoursing over monitors on Twitter,, the official EVO account acknowledged that the event suffered from “a flawed competitor experience” that resulted in an imbalance it promised would “never happen again.” The tournament’s general manager, Richard Thiher, quote-tweeted EVO, saying that the stage setup “negatively impacted players” across games. However, in that admission, Thiher wanted to make one thing clear: it wasn’t the monitors.
“It is important to confirm that Punk and others were right, the Evo Japan 2023 stage setup negatively impacted players,” Thiher tweeted on April 2. “It is also necessary to confirm it was the stage and stream design itself, not the INZONE monitors. We will prove that to you at other events this year.”
Kotaku reached out to EVO and Punk for comment.
Despite the technical issues and drama, EVO Japan was still a blast this year. There’s nothing like watching talented, professional players do incredibly unimaginable things in games, let alone during the stress of a tournament. However, fighting games being what they are, it’s essential that competitors be able to play in an environment where the hardware, displays, and everything else are up to the task, as anything less will inevitably hamper play. With EVO returning in August at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay, there’s still a few months to fix things up and prove that, as Thiher said, the problem wasn’t with the monitors.
Yesterday during Sony’s State of Play showcase, the fighting game community witnessed three character reveal trailers for Street Fighter 6. I say three, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, the only street fighter who’s on anyone’s mind is one Cammy White. So let’s count the many ways that Cammy’s reveal left gamers smiling.
Capcom
As you can see from the trailer above, Street Fighter 6’s roster will include the stalwart standby Zangief, a newcomer named Lily, and the aforementioned Ms. White. Although the general look of these road combatants has been common knowledge for a while on account of the game’s leaked character art hitting the interwebs, many Cammy appreciators both old and new are saying the leaks didn’t do her new threads enough justice.
Instead of rocking her vintage twin tails and green leotard, SF6 Cammy is sporting a short bob, Union Jack jacket, and yoga pants. While deviations on an iconic look typically ruffle gamer feathers, folks online absolutely adore Cammy’s new digs. Twitter user UltimaShadow X pointed out how Cammy’s SF6 streetwear is yet another example of video game character designs ‘[getting] hotter” when they get extra articles of clothing.
Eagle-eyed fans have also noticed a nifty new anime reference. Twitter user Fighting-Games Daily spotted a new, knee-breaking throw in Cammy’s arsenal, and the wince-inducing new move is actually a reference to the same throw she did in the 1994 anime film Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
One last brief snippet of Cammy’s SF6 trailer that’s been making the rounds on Twitter doesn’t depict any of the special forces agent’s killer kicks, but a particular idle animation, specifically her very exaggerated back stretches. Horndog bait for sure, and potentially the start of a new trend à la the Guilty Gear Strive “Jack-O challenge” that swept Twitter back in 2021. This one looks a bit easier, at least. Fan art is already starting to proliferate:
All told, the UK gal’s revamp has left a very positive impression on the Street Fighter community. Though the real test of her influence will be if Cammy mains in the States start putting gravy on their chips.
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