Browsing Posts published by Goldenrody

Wow, it’s been nearly a month since my last post here! I’ve been enjoying the rest of my summer along with wrapping up some loose ends. I’ve been occupied with a lot of things recently, as I have finally purchased a PS3 with Persona 4 Arena and I’ve also been playing a bit of online poker! There are a lot of different services available, but the one I’ve been using is PartyPoker. It has a lot of cool features, and has a Facebook app so that you can play it on the go if needed. Right now, they’ve got a cool deal in place that allows new members to get an early start with a free $50 in the bankroll!

In addition, standard Texas Holdem poker isn’t the only thing that you can play! Other variations like Omaha and Seven Card Stud are playable as well. They’ve also recently added Blackjack, though I’m not a big fan of playing that online. For the more serious online players, they also have some features that help people who play multiple tables simultaneously, like priority seating and hot hand/big raise notifications. Finally, it’s even available in multiple languages, like the Greek version right here.

In Guilty Gear news, a-cho is holding a really cool Guilty Gear event this entire weekend to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Guilty Gear XX series in arcades. Featuring every single version of the game that was available in arcades, it will also double as the final big Accent Core tournament in the Kansai region, so it’s their version of The Last Battle. Schedule so far is
Day 1: AC singles and Same character 3on3
Day 2: AC 3on3 and #Reload 2on2
Day 3: X, XX, and Slash 2on2
The other cool thing is that while I’m writing this, they are streaming the AC singles on the a-cho ustream channel, so tune in frequently throughout the weekend to join in on the action!

The Kansai players decided to stream again this past weekend, and this time the featured players are just Omito and Dry Ace.  Dry Ace is a great Anji player who I haven’t seen in videos in FOREVER, so this is some great footage.  Almost 2 hours of Johnny vs Anji!

In other news, ArcSys Yamanaka has finally confirmed on Twitter that the PS3/XBox360 port of Guilty Gear we’re getting is indeed Accent Core Plus.  It will be arriving in late October, but most importantly, Accent Core Plus R will be a future update!  Hopefully it’ll be a free upgrade like BBCS to CS2, but if not, I’m sure we’d all be willing to shell out the extra cash!

Omito(Johnny) vs Dry Ace(Anji)

I-No by yamaishi108

I-No by yamaishi108

The Last Battle, which was the final big GG tournament in the Kanto region, just happened last weekend.  I stream monstered a fair bit of it, but I was also busy with a bunch of other stuff like P4U release tournies.  Anyway, all of the main events were on Day 1.  Singles tourney was first, and I believe it was run in 9 different pools.  The website has the brackets in 8 pools, but I believe those only include the pre-registered entrants, so a 9th pool had to be made for people registering on site.  There were some surprising entrants like Tsujikawa and Hima, two people I thought were lost in the BB vortex.  Nakamura Millia, who I haven’t seen forever in videos, also entered and did pretty well!  Top 8 ended up being Kuni(Baiken), Nage(Faust), Haaken(Potemkin), Samitto(Chipp), Endou(Chipp), Nakamura(Millia), Kedako(May), and Kiisha(Faust).  Nage and Kiisha played remarkably well for this tournament, with some very clutch victories against the Millia gods.  And RF thinks it’s an impossible matchup!  They both made it to grand finals, and Nage ended up winning the tournament convincingly.

The ladies tournament was up next, and they ran it in this weird format where every entrant would actually play two characters.  The first character would be random, and the second would be their main.  Unfortunately, only the first half of this tournament was streamed, so I only know from the website that TTU Bridget was the winner.  I also didn’t recognize any of the players…

Next up was the 3on3, which was run in 4 blocks.  I always feel that GG tournaments are always the most exciting when run in a teams format, and this 3on3 was no different.  Tons of exciting matches and a fair deal of upsets.  The FAB/Kedako/Teresa team lost first round to an Eddie player with some odd alias!  Top 4 was Ain(KY) Kiisha(FA) Ishii(JA), Kishitaka(SO) En(SL) Samitto(CH), N-O(VE) Woshige(MI) Haaken(PO), and Isa(ED) Maruken(BA) Ueno(VE).  Haaken played amazing as always, and ended up OCVing grand finals!

Afterwards, there were a ton of casual matches on stream, mostly with Makkii(DI), FAB(PO), Nage(FA), Woshige(MI), and Mugen(BR).

For day 2, there was a really long set of casuals played between Nage(FA) and Roi(SO).  I think they ended up playing for like 45 minutes on stream.  Afterwards, there was an N-O Venom exhibition, where he played against Kishitaka(SO) and the Faust gods Nage and Kiisha.  Finally the main event of day 2 started, which was a random 5on5 team tournament.  I missed a fair deal of this, but I do remember N-O getting a ton of really dominant wins early on.  Surprisingly, the winner of the tournament was Roi’s team, pretty much pulling over half of his team’s weight as he had a fairly weak lineup.

After the tournament, there were a ton of casual matches yet again, mostly with Woshige(MI), N-O(VE), Nage(FA), Roi(SO), and Samitto(CH).  But most importantly, Inoue AKA Kazunoko was in attendance!  He was also at Sekai Saikyou Ketteisen doing commentary, but every time he played it was offstream.  This time, they made sure to have him play on the streaming cab, so there was an Inoue Order-Sol exhibition with him playing against Teresa(JA), U-Zen(IN), Satou(JO), and Woshige(MI).

All in all, I had a lot of fun stream monstering this tournament, and it was a nice way to send off vanilla Accent Core before we get AC+R next month.  There were a lot of good matches, both in tournament and casual sets, so I hope Jonio will eventually put them all up.  If not, I did archive the entire tourney, so I can upload these if needed.

Speaking of Accent Core + R, ArcSys Yamanaka announced on his twitter that the official release date will be September 20th in arcades!  In addition, the final location test will be held at Club Sega Akihabara, Kagurazaka, and Shinjuku West Gate for the entire duration of August 15th-22nd.  There are even more changes in the game from the 2nd location test, so there’s a flood of information coming from Twitter and various Japanese players.  Be sure to keep up with the Dustloop AC+R topic to stay on top of all the changes!

I-No by GENZOMAN

I-No by GENZOMAN

This is gonna be a crazy week, as Persona 4 Arena is getting its American release on Tuesday.  The game is getting pushed pretty hard by several communities, so expect there to be release tournaments everywhere.  In my area, there are already three that are confirmed, two of which will be streamed on LevelUp.

But most important is the upcoming Guilty Gear tournament, The Last Battle, which will be happening this weekend at Takadanobaba Mikado.  Seeing as how Accent Core Plus R is getting a Fall 2012 release date, this could very well be the last big Japanese vanilla Accent Core tournament in the Kanto region.  The Last Battle is set to be a two day event happening on the 11th and 12th.  Since it’s a Mikado event, you can expect Jonio to be streaming it in its entirety on his Nico community and/or his Twitch channel.  For people like me in the US, the stream should be on for us late night on Friday and Saturday, so be sure to check those two links periodically or follow him on Twitter.

So far, the schedule is:
Day 1 (8/11/2012)
-Singles tournament
-Ladies Only tournament
-3on3 tournament
-Drinking party

Day 2 (8/12/2012)
-Random team tournament(format undecided)

As you can see, most of the action is happening on Day 1, so I’m already preparing myself to stay up all night on Friday.  I also want to mention that En has been promoting this event with a special blog he’s made.  So far, he’s got several interviews with some of the attending players.  It’s a good read, and it’s very interesting to see how everyone got their start and their philosophies on the game.

In site related stuff, I’ve been slowly updating the 2012 Videos and the Compilation Videos pages with some of the recent footage.  I also want to announce the creation of a new page, the Guilty Gear Combo Video Archive, in the Downloads section.  I mentioned in an earlier post that recently, many of the big Youtube accounts that had GG combo vids have been taken down, mostly because of Sony Japan.  Seeing as how Youtube is no longer a safe place to put up videos with any kind of copyrighted music in them, some people have suggested that there be a big archive for every single Guilty Gear combo video ever made, like a public FTP.  It’s a good idea, especially since there have been so many amazing vids made for this game.  But since there’s so many, it would be really difficult to sort through them.  So a database that supports searching would be best, and I finally found a plug-in that has most of the features I want.  So far, I’ve uploaded everything I have and I’ve also gotten my friends to upload some stuff too.  If you’re at all interested in helping this project by contributing some videos, don’t hesitate to comment!

Dizzy by hidezi

Dizzy by hidezi

It’s been a while since my last update here!  Summer has been quite a bit busier than I expected, but things are finally starting to settle down around here.  It’s gonna get crazy next week though, with the American release of Persona 4 Arena!

Anyway, there hasn’t been any news in the world of Guilty Gear, but there has been some great footage released from the Kansai players.  I mentioned it in my previous post, but the Kansai GG players have begun streaming crack sessions on their Nico community and Hama’s twitch.tv channel.  I used to complain about Woshige footage being a rarity, but now I have more videos than I know what to do with!

There’s a decent amount of videos in this post, so they’ll be posted after the break. continue reading…