Arc Revolution Cup 2014 has finally been announced! It will feature the 3 main ASW games: Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, Blazblue Chronophantasma, and Persona 4 Ultimax. There will be a special pre Arc Revo event at a-cho happening on 5/3-5/6. GG is on 5/5, and there will be two events: a Beginner’s only 2on2, and a regular Singles tourney. The main Arc Revo qualifiers will be taking place from 6/14 to 8/23. The finals will be held at Tokyo Bigsight TFT on 8/30. Arc Revo is pretty much Japan’s national ASW tournament, so this is great news. No details are available about the tourney format, but I hope it’s not 1v1 single elimination like last year’s. A team format would be best!
The Version 1.02 update for GGXrd came out on 4/8, so Ramlethal is now selectable in arcades! She is pretty unique, and if I had to compare her playstyle to another GG character, she has some elements of Bridget and Dizzy. She has two bat familiars who are carrying around two huge swords that are equipped on her, and she can either attack with them using her normals or send them out as projectiles. She is also notable for being the only GG character to have multiple target combos.
I mentioned in the previous post that Xrd had its 1st officially sponsored tournament on 4/6 at Tokyo Leisureland. It was streamed, but unfortunately it was on Nico so due to the high number of viewers, non-Premium members just got kicked left and right. To make things worse, the stream resolution was a pitiful 512 x 288, which is basically 240p. You would really expect an official ASW production to be in decent quality. Anyway, a lot of the preliminary matches were shown as well as all of Top 8. You can see the barely watchable footage after the jump in this post.
There was also an official tournament on 4/12 at Club Sega Akihabara. This time, 3 games were featured: DOA5U, GGXrd, and Dengeki FC. Luckily, the stream quality was quite good this time around, and there were several pre and post match interviews with all of the players. Only top8 was shown, and the footage for that is available after the jump. I highly recommend watching this, as the tournament has an ending that you will never expect.
Last weekend, H.H streamed a special first to 10 exhibition set between Ogawa and Machaboo! You may remember their previous exhibition at Mikado on the 1st week of the game’s release, but this time around Machaboo is using Sol. And what a difference it makes. After the FT10, there was another set of matches with Koichi’s Ramlethal playing against the two, which is also worth watching.
During this set, Machaboo got on the mic with H.H and was asked for his opinion on the GGXrd character rankings. Note that Ramlethal had only been out for a few days at the time of this interview!
S Zato Sol Faust Millia
A Chipp Ky May Axl
B I-No Slayer Ramlethal Bedman
C Venom
D Potemkin
This was later published in the May issue of Arcadia.
Horibuna is a match video archive site for several games including the GG series from XX #Reload to Xrd. It also has archives for non-FGs like Gundam EXVS and Lord of Vermillion. It is a WONDERFUL resource that I highly recommend everyone to use. The only issues are that it require a bit of Japanese knowledge to use and that all of the video links are for Nico. The match video archive on my site is quite comprehensive already, but Horibuna is better when it comes to searching for certain matchups.
Sol, Ky, and Millia have been added as playable units for Lord of Vermillion III! LoV III is an extremely popular arcade-based collectible card game that is only available in Japan at the moment. Famitsu has an article on their additions as well as some short gameplay footage for all three characters.
The opening and ending themes for GGXrd, “HEAVY DAY” and “Lily”, can now be purchased online! They are available at Amazon and iTunes. I hear that they are available on the English version of Amazon as well, but without the karaoke tracks.
There are a lot of videos contained in this post, so they have been posted after the jump!
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