UFGTX Preview (May 23rd-25th, live from Chicago) & FGC news! The last ever UFGT! Street Fighter, Lethal League & more!

Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament X Preview

http://ufgtus.wordpress.com/

Welcome to the UFGTX preview blog! The final UFGT preview blog, because after this it's done, no more. The man behind UFGT and creator of Divekick Adam 'Keits' Heart is making 10 the final Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament. Sad times, but a lot of fun has been had and will be had this weekend!

Streams and schedule

http://www.twitch.tv/leveluplive

http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp

http://www.twitch.tv/bgcallisto

http://www.twitch.tv/nobodyexe

Check http://ufgtus.wordpress.com/schedule/ for a game by game schedule listing (Friday & Saturday) and stream by stream listing for finals day on Sunday.

In addition to the departing Super Street Fighter IV, a near complete version of Ultra Street Fighter IV will be at UFGT, tournaments and all. Joining them will be the 7 other official EVO games (Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Killer Instinct, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, King of Fighters XIII & BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma) and many more!

Yeah that's right, Tekken is back! It was left out at first, but the finals at Final Round 17 back in March were so hype that the EVO gents added it to the list, making the UFGTX TTT2 that much more important.

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All the UFGT favourites are returning such as the mystery game tournament which last year during the finals introduced a lot of people (myself included) to Lethal League, the browser baseball fighting game which as a result featured on Giant Bomb's own Unprofessional Fridays the following week.

Lethal League recently announced a buffed up version of the game for release on Steam, not unlike Divekick's story. The official blog at http://lethalleague.reptile-games.com/ states that it will feature

• Highly competitive gameplay.
• High performance online GGPO multi-player.
• Up to 4 players.
• Mad art.
• Banging beats by various artists.
• No weak shit.

One of my favourite aspects of UFGT since I started watching during UFGT8 Infinity are the amazing trophies that are always up for grabs, I was a particular fan on the Infinity Gauntlets, which incidentally would give me a lot of Marvel Comics back-story (they were so cool I had to know what the gauntlet was) just in time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to really kick off and start giving hints towards events in a future Avengers film, when that eventually gets made.

UFGTX's trophies look suitably amazing. Solar powered crazy light up glass cylinders. I approve!

Other previous happenings scheduled to return are the panels (featuring the always interesting Seth Killian, a rare appearance by FGC's main YouTuber Maximilian and my fellow Englishman and Sagat player, Ryan Hart) and the Pre-Game Show Friday night in which 12 contestants will compete in an amusing trivia challenge!

Make sure to tune in this weekend for all your favourite games and players, the final UFGT should be something special!

News

Johnny Gat joins Divekick!

Divekick: Addition Edition+ is the PS4 & XBox One version of the two button fighting game, which will also be a free update for PS3, Vita and Steam. One of the new characters has been confirmed as Johnny Gat of Saints Row. What this means for Divekick is that Pandora's Box is officially open. Expect all sorts of character announcement shenanigans between now and release!

Mike Ross gets a job at Twitch

Rather than a player sponsorship change our first story is a player job change. Mike Ross, who just before the news hit of IGN's IPL getting shut down got a job with IPL, has now got a job with Twitch just before the news broke of Google/YouTube buying or not buying Twitch hit the net last night. Coincidence? I think not. (Congratulations to Mike Ross, he's a great representative of the fighting game community, hope he does good things.)

Ed Boon teases MK 10 and confirms MK9's continuing online functionality after GameSpy shuts down

Before the past week or two I would've already recommended Ed Boon's Twitter account, he's a clever and witty man. Recently however he's been doing cryptic tweets pointing towards the announcement of MKX/10 just before E3 2014 (which is June 10th-12th for the record). Initially some thought that with the success of Injustice: Gods Among Us that it might have been MK vs. DC 2, but it's definitely started leaning in the direction of the 10th traditional MK.

An announcement that has been and gone was that of GameSpy closing at the end of this month and that somehow, unknown to everyone outside of NetherRealm and those within their circle of confidants (maybe Jeff, though I doubt he cares), MK9 will continue to function online.

Hyper Dragon Ball Z is the shit

Regardless of your preference between the Budokai games and the Budokai Tenkaichi games, both of them fall short of what a DBZ-style traditional fighting game should be. Hyper Dragon Ball Z on the other hand has no such problems. I hope it's completed one day, even if it won't see a traditional release.

Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist has a May 23rd release date

Whenever I get the chance to talk about SF of MK live action web series I will always take the opportunity! As I've mentioned in previous blogs, the concept short Mortal Kombat: Rebirth was awesome and lead to Mortal Kombat: Legacy, which has spawned 2 web series. And following the Street Fighter: Legacy short comes Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist. I've had nothing but good things to say about these faithful live-action releases which surpass any million dollar Hollywood film. Possibly with the exception of the first MK movie.

Assassin's fist will tell the tale of two time periods, the one in which Gouken and Gouki (Akuma) train under Goutetsu and the one in which Ryu and Ken train under Gouken. Back-stories will be explored, things only mentioned of in passing during the video games will be given spotlight and from what I've seen, we'll get some quality action scenes.

Thanks for reading!

I'll be back next month for the CEO 2014 blog in which USFIV will have officially been released to the masses. The build up to EVO 2014 will be getting serious!

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