The official Guilty Gear Xrd website updated today with a surprise location test for Version 1.02! The loketests will be happening all this week in three different arcades in the Tokyo Area. There is a partial English translation of the changes posted by Ronove on Dustloop here. There are a number of bug fixes and minor character changes, like Bedman’s tension gain getting an improvement. There are some system changes as well, the most significant of which is that bursts are throwable again! I have no idea why this was removed in the original version of Xrd. This was by far the coolest thing you could do in older Guilty Gear games. But the most significant change for these loketests is that Ramlethal Valentine will be playable! She has been announced to have a mid April official release, so this week will be the only chance that players get to test her out before unlock. You can see some nice screenshots of her in Dengeki’s article right here. I will update this post throughout the week as more information and articles become available.

In site related news, I have finally stopped being lazy and brought the GG video pages up to date with Xrd and all of AC+R. The Xrd videos page can be accessed by clicking on 2014 Videos in the sidebar. AC+R has officially lasted almost 2 years, so the complete match video archive is spread across three pages: 2012, 2013, and 2014 videos.

The Notable Players page has also been updated for Xrd. There aren’t that many players in it at the moment because of the scarce number of videos, but you can expect the list to be updated frequently.

This week, Jonio is holding the Mikado Masters WGC event, which is GGXX AC+R ONLY. So we won’t be seeing any Xrd tournies at Mikado until 3/27. It is pretty clear that there is a sizable portion of the GG playerbase that prefer AC+R over Xrd. Not just because of missing characters, but also because of different mechanics, character changes, and the overall pacing. There were a decent number of players who showed up to last weekend’s AC+R 5on5 who have not been active in Xrd, like Nakamura, Maruken, En, and Satou. I’m sure that a good fraction of the playerbase will actively play both games as well. With that said, there is a chance that this will be the last major AC+R event in the Kanto region. The schedule is as follows:
3/15 5on5
3/19 Beginner’s tournament
3/20 3on3
3/21 Beginner’s 3on3, Ladies only tournament, singles tourney
3/22 2on2, 3on3, and Same character 3on3
3/23 Haisha Kyuushu tourney
You can expect Jonio to stream everything on the Mikado nico channel. Nowadays, Jonio has also been streaming the tournaments on his Twitch channel simultaneously, so you can check that out as well. Be sure to follow Jonio on Twitter for the latest updates.