White Man

Ah, you're right. Looks like she was officially unveiled on June 24th (give or take a day), then the game came out on July 1st. Still, that's one week before the game came out as opposed to over a month in the case of Kokonoe in CP. Not saying this is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, just that it's indicative of a different marketing strategy than what ASW has done in the past. Take that for what you will.

Something to remember with the CS1 DLC characters is that none of them were announced before the game was released. I have no idea how much of Kokonoe's data was finished at the time the master discs went gold, but the fact that she'll be playable before the game is even on store shelves tells me with near 100% certainty that she's a lot further along development-wise than any of the DLC characters for CS1 were when that game shipped.

If Kokonoe is that far along then it's a safe bet she will indeed be on-disc DLC. Arc System Works, I am disappoint.

Keep playing +R then.

Oh? The last thing I heard was that he'd be unlockable OR you could buy a code to get him right away. I guess that info is outdated. Hm. Okay then. EDIT: It's like Mori is addicted to lying to us.

I've never been particularly excited over the prospect of Kokonoe becoming a playable character, and what I'm hearing now does absolutely nothing to make me feel differently. I'll keep an open mind until the actual reveal, though. Thinking about it, I guess including Kokonoe in the console version sort of makes sense purely due to the way story mode is set up. If you get Terumi for beating the Six Heroes path and Kagura for beating the Chronophantasma path, it makes sense they'd throw in another unlockable character for the Sector Seven path. I think folks are more worried about her pulling a Makoto or a Mu-12. :scared:

Sweet-ass pirate cat for S+ tier. Thanks to the OP for sharing this stuff. Even if this art is for the slot/pachinko game animations, I wouldn't mind it in the least if any/all of those designs ended up in Xrd. The only one I straight-up dislike is Johnny; everybody else looks pretty good. I really like snake guy as well. It's possible he's just a one-shot villain for this particular game, but that would be awesome if he did end up being That Man's third lackey.

For all the folks talking about Axl's new outfit, have they released any new footage/pictures of Axl in Xrd? It's kind of hard to get a good look at him in the new trailer because it's such a quick shot and the camera is sort of at a weird angle that partially obscures him even if you freeze-frame it.

You and me both! Err, neither? But yeah, so happy they're going multi-console with this. I got scared for a second there. Welcome back Axl and I-No! The party wouldn't have been the same without your crazy time travel shenanigans.

You know what would be rad? If everyone put every character into every game ever.

I get the vibe that this is how a lot of people feel about Valk. He has a great design and I respect them trying to do something unique with his play style, but I don't think it really panned out the way they were hoping.

Guest characters are the Hot Thing in fighting games right now, I guess. Oh well. Can't say this makes any less sense than Solid Snake in Smash Bros or Freddy Krueger in Mortal Kombat or Darth Vader in friggin' SoulCalibur.

I was thinking about those intros and how some of them seem weirdly... environment specific. Take May's, for example: How is she going to ride a dolphin across a large body of water if the fight takes place on Sol's stage, which appears to be in the middle of a desert? (I know the whole summoning marine animals out of thin air thing doesn't make sense either, but work with me here.) I'm thinking maybe what we saw at the loketest were single player mode intros that precede CPU opponents you fight in arcade mode to make the fights seem more cinematic, while PVP matches might have shorter, more simple character intros reminiscent of what we saw in the earlier games. This would also free them up to have special intros between certain matchups. It's a completely random theory with no basis outside of my imagination, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to toss it out there.

No kidding. They've got so many titles in development right now and it seems like they're announcing new projects every couple of weeks. Seeing the company pick up this kind of momentum is exciting, but more and more stuff is slipping through the cracks. AC+ got one of the most half-assed ports they've ever made, and now it's looking like patching the game outside of Japan has completely fallen off their radar. I feel like BlazBlue is kind of getting shoved aside as well, especially with them announcing a brand new title the same month the console version of CP comes out. It's like everyone in the company just got addicted to caffeine all at the same time.

That's unexpected... What games are they showing, then?

I saw enough Johnny and Bridget players in AC that I'm not too worried about the tiers affecting character selection in any significant way. As long as everybody is considered realistically viable in the competitive scene (which it sounds like the general consensus is that they are...?) I imagine only the most fickle players will drop their characters because of tier ranking. Hell, I saw a TON of Justice players in match footage shortly after +R hit and she was universally considered the worst character in the game before the patch.

Divekick got mentioned in a discussion about fighting games, so yes, I made the leap that people were categorizing the game in the same genre that was currently being discussed when it was brought up. Not trying to start anything, though. I am utterly indifferent to that game. It's just a pet peeve of mine when everybody calls it a fighter solely because of the graphical style and HUD when the gameplay lacks all but one or two very basic conventions of the genre. People would probably start calling Angry Birds a fighting game if you gave it a techno soundtrack and threw a couple of life bars on the screen. But I digress! Concerning Pocket Rumble, I think the game has potential largely because of its simplicity. Just look at how popular Smash Bros. is among both casuals and the EVO crowd. I think the core concept of fighters has incredibly broad appeal, with the barrier to entry and overwhelming complexity of the gameplay in most titles being what usually scare people away. If you can keep the basic structure of "you and the other guy using various attacks to kill each other" but simplify the core gameplay to something that can be learned in hours rather than days or weeks, I think you have something with a potentially massive audience. The 8-bit graphics won't be a hit with everyone, but enough retro titles have found mainstream appeal that I don't think the visuals should hurt the game's chances for success. They might even be another selling point in some circles.

People are still calling Divekick a fighting game?

New Shonen Jump scan reveals Vegeta (Dragon Ball Z), Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto), and Zebra (Toriko). Guess that answers the question of whether or not they're only including one character per series. Now to begin speculating whether the second Bleach character will be Rukia or Rukia With a Lesbian Haircut...

SRK mods are too busy linking videos that demonstrate how to pull off infinites in UMvC3. My math says a new ones of those hits YT every 18 seconds on average. Regardless, I'm surprised the response to this has been so lethargic. These crowd funding campaigns usually see more activity closer to the deadline, but still... Maybe folks are just burnt out on indie fighting games. This is, what, the sixth or seventh indie fighter to get a KS campaign this year? I do hope more people start to show interest in PR, though. The gameplay looks very accessible (which is rare for this genre) and it has some interesting mechanics. The whole retro presentation is neat too.

I thought they nerfed the hell out of Zappa in the 1.1 patch. If he's still that good... Damn, how ridiculous was he in 1.0? I heard stories, but I never actually saw footage of him being as broken as folks said. Faust being S tier I can totally buy. That dude is scary in +R. Kind of surprised the patch didn't hit him a bit harder than it did, honestly. No idea why Kliff is so low... Last I heard, general consensus was that he was still pretty dangerous in the right hands. Like A/A- tier, maybe B at the worst. I generally take tier lists with a grain of salt anyway, but some of those placements just seem kind of wacky given what players were saying about the game a month or two back. I have a hard time imagining the meta game could have evolved so much in a matter of weeks that characters are just jumping all over the place (wasn't Slayer C/D tier at one point?). Frankly, I think that list might be the result of people reacting to isolated instances of certain players having a really good/bad day at the arcade or landing some lucky hits in a tournament more so than a proper analysis of all the matchups. I think Dusk Thanatos just accidentally leaked the first paid DLC character for Xrd.

Haaaa. Good to know they're working to make this the definitive version of the game even as far as the roster goes. At long last, Heihachi vs. Spawn matches will be a reality! I still have serious doubts Link is gonna make it in, but it'll be cool to have everybody else.

I'd forgotten how much I miss the blood effects from the older games... Based on what I've seen/heard from the loketest and discussions, it seems like the air game in Xrd has diminished quite a bit from previous GG titles. If ADC is gone and characters like Millia and Chipp lost most of their air combos, maybe the intention is to bring the bulk of the gameplay back to the ground. I suppose aerial stuff is still in there, it just doesn't seem as much as it was before. That's my perception, anyway.

I guess they didn't want the two characters to look too similar in terms of color scheme, maybe? I'm hoping they give Yusuke his classic green gakuran as an alt outfit though. He just doesn't look right without it.

I thought the devs basically declared war on ASW (or at least BB) when UNIB was first released. Or was that just a bunch of fans blowing things out of proportion?