But, all things aside I finished in the top 20 (tied 17th) which is not bad at all. My other two highest finishes were when I placed 4th at NJIT, and 3rd at an admittedly low-turnout King of the Couch in Morristown. I can confidently say that my play has improved from last year. I don’t wake up unsafely as much I used to. I still have my issues with defense (I get grabbed easily and my blocking isn’t fully solid yet) however I have gotten better at avoiding some situations. On the other side of the coin, my offense has experienced the same growth. I am trying to make the transition from being a brawler to a more refined fighter. Yes, it’s a slow one with no real metric in which to measure your success, but I’ve noticed I have been winning a bit more in ranked matches online.

I finally made a return to Next Level for the big Two tournament series. I get there, I’m excited to play, but then, just my luck, I get to play a Spam ‘Rog and his cheap El Fuerte on stream . Overall, I didn’t do too bad, but I see that the potential here. I looked way better here than I did at Apex, but I’m still too inconsistent. I missed a few key punishes but I reacted well in some situations. If you’re wondering how I did in the overall tournament, I was blown up I haven’t gone 0-2 in a while so it was refreshing to be put down for once. That means I still have work to do, but just where do I get started?

Fortunately for me, Shoryuken has many posts on how to level up your game. I have been following them when I am in the lab, however I’ve just been playing online more to see what people are doing and get a feel of what I should be doing with my character. I just don’t feel that I have enough experience versus some characters or situations. Top players have been in some fight situations over and over again, and they just know what to do without wasting time to think about it. Me? I have to think. I’m also not able to accurately manage my meters without looking constantly. I still find myself peeking when I’m mid fight. I feel that if I can get better, more intuitive with my H.U.D. management then I can do things like make better reads on my opponent by looking at his life bar, super meter or even time with ease. I’ll also be able to mentally access my situations a bit better. I think the only cure for that is experience, so I have resolved to try and make it out to more local tournaments.

I think with more practice, I’ll build up the muscle memory required to not drop combos too often. I’ve made some progress, I just need to work out the kinks. I do not easily spook under pressure, it doesn’t affect me much, so I know that isn’t the problem. I however need to be able to take my comfortable, casual state of high-level play to tournaments. The transition seems to be giving me a hard time and I think that leads to my erratic play sometimes. I’ll keep working at it!

In any case, like always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on getting better. Tweet to me guys!

“The Bandwagon Effect is a well documented form of groupthink in behavioral science and has many applications. The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as fads and trends clearly do, with “the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have already done so”.As more people come to believe in something, others also “hop on the bandwagon” regardless of the underlying evidence. The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others. Both explanations have been used for evidence of conformity in psychological experiments. For example, social pressure has been used to explain Asch’s conformity experiments, and information has been used to explain Sherif’s autokinetic experiment.

When individuals make rational choices based on the information they receive from others, economists have proposed that information cascades can quickly form in which people decide to ignore their personal information signals and follow the behavior of others. Cascades explain why behavior is fragile—people understand that they are based on very limited information. As a result, fads form easily but are also easily dislodged. Such informational effects have been used to explain political bandwagons.”

Thanks Wikipedia <3

Note the first sign.

We’ve all seen this in action so many times before. When a team catches a hot streak at the right time everyone suddenly a fan of said team. Stadiums are full and once cheap tickets are now super expensive. If you want to see it in everyday life look at all the ‘new’ Yankees or Giants fans (sorry, I’ve never been a big football guy, but I did like the Chargers in the Junior Seau days) that pop up whenever the team is competing for the c’hip (or championship). For the purposes of this article, I’ll use three really good examples: The Miami Heat once they signed Chris Bosh and Lebron, The L.A. Clippers once they got Chris Paul and Chauncey Billups and the Golden State Warriors when they made that incredible play off run that produced highlights such as this.

After that dunk, Warriors tickets became the new thing for everyone. The Clippers are currently going through the same thing. This phenomenon is not just limited to sports, or politics, it also extends into the gaming world. Allow me to give you some background before I rage the hell out.

In fighting games picking a character is a much like picking a tool box. There are different tools in each of them for different situations, but they all serve the purpose of winning the match for your character. In most competitive games (especially fighters) people tend to pick their characters, teams, weapons, etc in usually one of three ways.

The first type of player picks by character loyalty. This means they simply like the character design so much that they play as that fighter/race/whatever for that reason alone. These people will usually use the same character over the course of multiple installments of a game. It’s like those die hard sports fans who like their team even if they’re horrible or someone who likes a band that everyone thinks is terrible. The second type of people pick their character based on whether the character-in-question’s play style fits in with their current skill level. For example, in my early Street Fighter IV days, starting off with a complex character like C.Viper wasn’t a good idea because at the time I didn’t have the execution required to play her effectively. This skill-based approach to choosing also leads them to experiment with other characters after they get to a certain level of proficiency with their main character. The third and final type are the people who pick characters because they are easier to win with, or ‘high tier’ ones, meaning they have attributes that outrank a considerable number of characters in the roster. While this may seem shameless, it is in fact a valid strategy. In the end, the game is about winning, so you pick whoever gives you the best chance of winning.

Teaching them early, huh pal?

With that said, you’d think things would be pretty cut and dry, right? No, they aren’t. In fact, there is a fourth shadow group no one wants to admit they are a part of. The assholes are called the bandwagoners. These are the people who I despise the most. “But Phire”, you ask, “Why all the hate towards the bandwagon?” Simply put, for the fact that these are the same people who, to use a fighter as an example, will talk about how bad your character is, how weak/low-tier they are and how you need to switch them. However, if something changes or new tech is found, they’ll jump on that character too and talk about how good they are with everyone else. Of course, if you confront them, they will deny they ever said anything negative about them and claim that they had “played them before”. Come on. It’s like they just saw the ugly girl from High School hit her stride, become hot and they’re the first in line, claiming they always had a crush on her.

No one was there for these days in Vanilla 4 or Super Turbo.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well since I started playing the SFIV series I’ve watched my Cammy develop from an ’0-2 and out’ champion to something actually kind of dangerous. With the new 2012 patch, Cammy is no longer nerfed to hell. I remember in the original Arcade Edition when they took her dive kick I was about to commit seppuku and find a new main (had my mind set on Yun at the time) but I decided to stick it out with her, and my patience paid off becuase now, I like the way she plays. But now I’m seeing Cammy players popping up EVERYWHERE claiming to have a good one, which 90% of the time they really don’t. They lose to characters that they should be beating, and when fighting against Cammy they lose horribly. Playing online, I tend to win the mirror matches because 80% of the time I know what I’m looking for, what to watch out for, I’m not doing anything stupid, because I know how she works. This is the main problem with bandwagoners, because they really don’t understand the character they’re choosing. They will see videos, or watch some matches and say “Oh man that’s so cheap, I want to do that too!”. So they practice that set of moves, go out to try, then lose to high level players who know their bandwagon character is fraudulent or they lose via being counter-picked because they have NO match up experience.

Even he wasn't safe from Bandwagon fans after death.

Having beaten several ‘Cammy’ players far worse than I should have, in situations that wouldn’t have happened (like misjudging her drill distance) if these people actually knew her well enough to call their play style ‘unique’(which most bandwagoners do by default) we wouldn’t have this problem. I personally feel that people should just pick either what they like, or what they are most comfortable with and just play the game. I think it would make for a better game overall because we’d have more diversity rather than cookie cutter clones of a particular character and play style. Newsflash: This ultimately serves you and the community no purpose, because you aren’t choosing a character you’re invested in, you’re just trending. However, this may be part of a larger problem as a whole with players who aren’t willing to do any work to win popping up in large numbers. I’ll examine that next time.

Diego (left) stands solemnly as I (right) take notes

Diego, 19, was someone that I could relate to: his first rpg was Final Fantasy VI. (Ok, I’m 27 and my first RPG was Final Fantasy IV, but that’s sort-of close…) He currently is playing Etrian Odyssey on his DS, but his favourite series is the Shin Megami Tensai series. I asked him, “If you could be any FFVI character, who would you be? “… and he picked Cid ! I was taken aback by his answer. Why would anyone pick Cid? I mean, sure, he was Celes’s father figure and he ate fish like it was nobody’s business…but …there were so many other people he could have picked from that game…Cyan, Leo, Relm, Siegfried…

I asked him if he was sure that he meant Cid from FFVI and not Cid from FFVII. He was adamant: he meant Cid from FFVI because he “had a good reason to fight.” … and Cyan didn’t? They poisoned his family and rolled up in his back yard with machines! Ohhh well… I asked what he thought about Kefka and he was shocked by my question.  He settled on “Kefka is the best Final Fantasy villain…better than Sephiorth.“ Fair enough, fair enough. I asked Diego if he had any Chilean games that he liked, and of course he did: his own games.  He makes action and puzzle games for mobile platforms. Neat!

Carolina (left) and some of her adorable wares (pictured at right)

My final interview was with Carolina, 24, who is a self-described “retro gamer”; she makes her own (adorable) retro game-themed jewelry and accessories. She still actively plays her N64, NES, and SNES but she does not play any of the portable Nintendo systems.  Additionally, she is a huge fan of Plants vs Zombies on the PC. She has been playing games since she was 14, and like the Carlos’, her first game was Super Mario Brothers on the NES.  The Kirby series is her favourite, though, and the NES game Kirby’s Adventure was her first Kirby. I asked her what made her decide to start designing game jewelry, and she said that it’s simply a matter of “making what she likes.” Megaman is her next jewelry muse.  I told her that I noticed that there were not a lot of women at the game stores, and asked if she had any female friends that played games. She does: her cousin, but she shrugged and said that the vast majority of her gamer friends are guys.

Overall, it seems as though Nintendo’s game consoles are quite dominant here in Chile. There is a mainstream media frenzy over the 3DS at a much greater level than I have observed in the United States.  Then again, when I was here in September there was also a massive Sony Move media blitz. Perhaps the news media in Chile is just more enamoured with gaming gadgets than those old talking heads that we have in the United States. Or, maybe it’s some cross cultural difference in product placement fees. I’m cynical: it’s probably the latter.

(A special thanks to Rene Moncayo for providing translation and photographic assistance when it was necessary.)

Replay Old Games

Now I am not talking about games that just came out last month or playing some of the latest DLC content, no I am talking about dusting off the consoles in the closet and trying your hand at some games from your past. Doing speed runs of games you have beaten or just playing a game you miss playing is a great thing to do. If you don’t have those games and you don’t want to hunt for them online, go to your local mom and pop game store. Places like that are full of retro games for great deals while you are there you can pick up old games you never played before.

Online Games

Online gaming is of course now part of the mainstream when it comes to gaming. Not too long ago, the concept of it was only limited to very few games and the crowd of online gamers was a very small niche of a group; however recently as more and more games are made the community has grown. So hopping online with your favorite shooter and playing some multiplayer mode is a great way to entertain yourself until that next game you want comes out. However, this isn’t just limited to console gaming, far from it. PC games are a huge market for online gaming in the realm of MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). As more of these games are made, there is a wider variety to please the different types of gamers that are out there. Also there are more games that are free to play so you can avoid the monthly charge just to play it. So get out there, download your favorite game if you are a fan of it, and if not…it is always good to try new things.

Table Top Games

On the subject of trying new things, as a geek I always try to get people to try new things that are outside their usual comfort zone. Majority of the time whenever I do this my friends enjoy it and I have them hooked on a new hobby. Table top games are a perfect example of this. While many gamers out there do enjoy a good table top game there are some who will shy away from it or they don’t view it as something they won’t see themselves interested in. However any kind of board game, Trading Card Game, or table top role playing game has as much fun and excitement as any video game will offer to the average player or hardcore player. Also it is a great way to get your friends together for a fun game night and socialize with people offline.

Gaming Meet-Ups

This is a great way to meet people and make new friends in the gaming community; there are plenty of places that hold meet-ups on various days of the week at the local game shop. At these meet-ups people will play games and socialize. For the more hardcore gamer, this is a great way to meet others in your gaming community and trade stories and tips on how to make your own personal gaming even better. A good example of this is when some game stores have Fighting Game Dojos. At this specific kind of meet-up members of the fighting game community come together to train and test their skills against one another to improve themselves or to just have fun.  So check out your favorite gaming forum and find out where these meet-ups are happening, or if you want try to start your own. You will not be disappointed.

After these great examples of things to do in the world of gaming I am sure you will find something great to do to kill time until that next great game you are waiting for is coming out.

Recently, a debate came up between “E-Sports” and the “FGC”. You can find all the info you need ,here, here and here.IF you’re interested, click through at your leisure, read them and form your own opinion and stance. You’ll also need Sir Scoots rant that started this whole thing to get some perspective, and it can be found here.

This has been a topic that’s been raging on twitter for some time between people deep within both communities at every level. To say it could be like Marvel’s Civil War would make it seem cooler than it actually is, but people are choosing their sides on this like there’s an actual registration act and things are actually changing within the community because of it.

So before we get started, lets define the key terms that are at the core of this issue.

Professional Sports, as opposed to Amateur Sports, are sports in which athletes receive payment for their performance.”

Electronic Sports (E-Sports) comprises the broad scope of competitive video game playing. Other terms include “competitive gaming”, “professional gaming” and “cybersports”. Games that are played as E-Sports normally belong to the “Real-Time Strategy” (RTS), “Fighting”, “First-Person Shooter” (FPS), “Massively-Multiplayer Online” (MMO), and “Racing” genres. They are played competitively at Amateur, Semi-Professional and Professional levels including participation in leagues and tournaments. Because they are usually compensated for playing at a higher than average level, the definition of a “Pro” gamer is someone whose sole income is generated from gaming.

The Fighting Game Community or FGC is the collection of players, tournament organizers and online streaming teams that keep the competitive aspect of a wide selection of fighting games going from local to national/global levels. This is done in an organized and regimented, yet informal manner however as the FGC has no governing body, having a scene anyone can join.

Alright, so where do I stand on this debate?

First off, I feel that Fighting Games have always been an “E-Sport” from the time of their creation. I feel that the Fighting Game Circuit is similar to more individual sports such as Tennis, Bowling, etc. rather than the traditional league based sports like Football, Basketball, Baseball, etc. because hey just aren’t compatible on the same terms. One good reason for this is, similar to any individual sport, they travel the country competing in different tournaments with the chance of winning prize money. In line with this, the money for the player competing is limited to three things: the amount of people entering the tournament, the pot bonuses, and in some cases the extra money matches that are played on the side. The way I see it, if players choose to attend a big event with a bigger turnout, they have a bigger pot in the end because you have more pot monsters in attendance(people who contribute to the pot with no real chance of winning). If they happen to get sponsored along with all of this then that’s a bonus, but In this system, the player is in total control of their entire career. Those who knock this method argue that under a league, you’re going to get more money per event, guaranteed.

It isn’t that being an E-Sport for the FGC couldn’t work. It could, just not for the top players. It could work for the mid-tier, to close to top-level players, but not the best. For example, with most professional leagues, if you sign a contract, you’re bound to that league. Just look at the NBA, for example. When players are under contract in the NBA, they cannot play in any other league overseas or no without voiding their NBA contracts. The reason for this is simple: Leagues want to protect their brands. Imagine, if the top players in the NBA could play where and when ever they wanted, you’d have a ton of things like the recent lock out happening all the time, with players jumping overseas for 1-year paydays that beat their current contracts. The quality of the NBA would suffer overall if there were seasons where star players weren’t playing on their teams, when they’re supposed to consistently have the best players in the world.

Back to how this relates to gaming, if you have the the top names in the community playing in your league, why would you let them play in other leagues and events if you are trying to show that yours is the best? So let’s say, if Jwonggg (Justin Wong) signs with X-League, he is now under contract and cannot play in any other league or event where he can make money. If you watched the indie documentary The King of Chinatown, Justin made quite a bit of money for his team in a year playing in events and such. Under a league format, he couldn’t have done that if those events weren’t sanctioned or if whatever deals he signed conflicted with those of his league. I know, one could argue, “Well, what if the contract allowed him to play in other events, but not leagues?”, or “What if it allowed him to play in other leagues and events?” My answer to that is: What would be the point of signing someone to your league if there’s no exclusivity? You sign a contract, and it becomes a waiting game with the hope that it averages out to more than what you would have made playing in various events, which is basically guaranteed money.

There are always events to attend, too. Currently now there are tons of local,regional and major tourneys within the FGC. While not an always perfect system, it does a good job of self regulation within itself. New tournament organizers (TOs) pop up and fade from existence frequently along with big names, but what makes the FGC great is that if you really want to be apart of the community and be accepted you have to get out there. It’s welcoming if you’re able, and people take notice of hard work with a serious attitiude being appreciated. Everyone in the FGC knows fighting games need to be played offline in order for the matches to be played at their fullest, as offline tournaments are practically the litmus tests of competitors. This is because to be honest, the netcode for most fighting games sucks, and they wern’t made to be played with things like input lag and frame delays. There is a reason online rankings in fighting games aren’t taken as seriously as much offline victories, and I feel it should stay that way.

Getting back to those mid-level to high-mid players, they are the ones that however could benefit from an online league because as it stands right now, frankly I don’t see them traveling long distances just to get blown up (i.e. ‘beaten badly’) in tournaments by those same top level players. In a league format, the league could basically monitor in house talent and develop some players and enter them in events in an attempt to showcase their brand. These same mid-level players would also get some chances that they normally wouldn’t be able to get because they don’t have time to practice or actually dedicate serious time to the game due to, with other reasons, perhaps having a life and job outside of professional gaming.

Under this tried format, most of the games will take place online so they can have a ranking system for their offline events and majors. Leagues like MLG currently do this with internet services like . While it’s an admirable system looking to get the whole country involved, it’s flaws become quickly apparent due to disputes (over match outcomes), disconnects (sometimes the internet doesn’t want to be bothered or someone ‘ragequit’), boosting (making fake accounts or having friends lose to you so you can boost your stats), not to mention shoddy connection issues, missed matches, etc. I’d have to say, if the league uses these standings to determine seeding for a fighting game event, that would be to say politely, bad. I mentioned earlier fighting games have notoriously poor net code combined with bad connections. If you add mild cheating or lag switching as a result of these bad connections you’ll have players who are ranked highly that shouldn’t be, another common flaw. It needs to be managed much better in order to work on the level of the FGC.

But then, there’s also the publishers. In my opinion, one of the biggest problems keeping fighting games from being considered an E-Sport is quite simply some companies don’t want them to be. There’s a reason Capcom didn’t allow WCG, MLG or any other leauge to ever run Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom officially as tournament games. Companies in general seem afraid to take that kind of commitment to a league. Part of the problem is issues on how their game(s) will be portrayed, along with wanting a piece of the direction if you’re using their intellectual properties. Most of the companies that create these fighters are Japanese and the Japanese have their own way of doing things when it comes to stuff like this. The rule sets or the way the ranking system is run may anger the publishers too. There’s a ton of things that can go wrong between two companies in terms of communication and execution, not to mention that in a league capactity it also takes a great deal of control away from the actual community, the ones who shape the scene to begin with.

In closing, the bottom line? At the end of the day we can all find things wrong with both sides rather than finding the right things. I say that the league notion for fighting games is tough and as it currently stands, there are no leagues that can run them properly. It isn’t a bad idea to want them, but it’s going to take some serious work and consideration. I think if multiple leagues picked up the same game and allowed players to freely play between them that would properly capture the spirit of of the community. Among other things, the local scene has to be integrated into what they are doing as well. You need to have locals AND regional tournaments as well as true majors. It isn’t a simple answer in the least, and everyone has one, but answers

are

there, you just have to work for it.

I got 9th place out of 27 people. It’s not bad considering I just started playing this game a bit more serious. Some of the things I’ve noticed is that I tend to drop combos. Talking to Megaman Steve he told me that I should practice combos in different situations such as training dummy crouching and jumping since the hit scaling is different from the standing states. I’ve been doing vs crouching opponents in AE but not Marvel. I feel that Marvel while combos are easier there’s way more memorization and muscle memory involved because things can drastically in a combo all based on what you do to start off the combo. In the tournament I was sent to losers by an 8-bit Dojo regular, Baydo. I did ok in losers but I dropped crucial combos with every member of my team at different points. Eventually I would have had to fight Baydo again in losers if I wasn’t such a scrub.
I think he probably would have beat me again seeing the fact as if he looked like a man possessed when he took third place.

In AE there were 32 fighters and I took 4th. Not bad for my first time out of the dojo in a while. There was obviously some rust and some combos dropped abut I did my best and played solid. I didn’t do too much crazy stuff but I did do unsafe things. I fought bad match ups all day such as Guile, E.Honda and Balrog. I had to be moved away from Sol Lekz in the second round though. I ended up playing a pad Blanka with a throw macro, while not illegal it’s sort of silly and generally frowned upon because it removes some of the actual skill involved, and lost (later the dojo told me what I needed to do to win against this). I fought well in losers and I avenged my PAX demon by defeating a Chun Li when I need to. I did pretty well till I ran into Chad Viper, who defeated me with his alternate character Ryu. To be fair Ryu is a 50/50 match up due to the fact that he’s so balanced you’re going to have to out play him to win. I should have won that match up because Ryu is the most common character you see online, so at this point I should know what the situation was. The match between us is going to be available sometime on the net.

Looking back at the match I could have done so many things differently. Part of that I’m sure was tournament nerves, the other part of my loss was execution. I had Sol Lekz in my corner coaching me not so much on the game but to keep my focused at the task at hand and not let me get too wild with the things I do. He even gave me a shout out on his facebook.

“As we progress, I continue to realize that Phire is no where near the “old man” status that he claims. He has the ability to absorb knowledge as well as execute. Coaching him is fun because as a player, although not as experienced in fighters but has coached a lot in FPS, knows what needs to be done but lacks the execution to do so. As to where Phire simply forgets at times but when you stay on top of him, he stays on top of the game as a whole.”

What’s next I’m going to try my hand at Savage Saturday this weekend and then Apex next month. I have to get ready for EVO 2k12 and do better than I did. I also have to run more 8-bit tournaments because I know you miss us.

Want to spar or tell me how free I am tweet it and expose me as a fraud.

The Child’s Play Gala and Auction is one of the highlights of the annual Child’s Play Charity fund raising drive that donates toys, games and cash for hospitalized kids. At the black-tie event the gaming community bids on rare and unique items. Some of the stand out items from the auction included the life-sized Half-Life Gravity Gun that went for $21,000 and one of the rarest video games on the planet, the Nintendo World Championships Grey #60 that went for $11,500. A lucky bidder also won a guest starring role in a Penny Arcade strip for $10,000.

The proceeds from the gala and auction add to donations already contributed by gamers around the world. In total, Child’s Play has raised more than $1.5 million this year.

“The gala and auction always brings in a lot of donations, but it is just one part of Child’s Play,” said Jamie Dillion of Child’s Play Charity. “The real heroes are all the gamers who organize local events and send in individual donations that account for the vast majority of what we raise every year. We couldn’t do this without all of their support”

Started in 2003, Child’s Play http://www.childsplaycharity.org, supported by the entire video game community, has raised more than $10 million dollars in toys, games and cash for hospitalized kids since its inception.

Good stuff guys keep up the good work

For those who didn’t know who Josh was or what he did, he was a Rose player really active in the FGC community and on the boards. His Rose pissed off many people but that’s the sign of a good Rose. He was probably one of the nicest guys you could meet ever in the community. He was always willing to help and had some words of encouragement for other players as well.

Just like his character who was prone to being pressured he always seemed to find some sort of way to maintain composure and somehow swing things back in his favor. He was battling with some personal and employment issues but he managed to get through and he was on the path of turning his life around.

I am shaken because you were so young when you were taken from us. I remember trying to learn how to skateboard with you and Rob.

From all this I hope people take away that you have to cherish the people around you.

Thank you SK not only for being a good player but a good person.

Aksys Games will sponsor the winning team of the BlazBlue Revolution US Finals by providing full airfare and hotel accommodations to Japan, along with the pride of representing the United States in the BlazBlue Revolution Japan Finals. Not only that, but if the US Team is able to take the top spot in the Japanese Finals, an extra bonus prize will be awarded to the US Team! Now’s the time to grab two of your most trusted comrades and prepare for the revolution of a lifetime!

BlazBlue Revolution US Event Details:

Finals Date: 2/25/2012

Location: Southern California, venue TBA

Format: 3v3 Double Elimination, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift EXTEND console version

Prize: Winning team will win full hotel and airfare to Japan and a spot in the Japan Finals

Restriction: Winners MUST have their US passport or equivalent document by 2/25. NO EXCEPTIONS.

BlazBlue Revolution Japan Event Details:

Final Date: 3/24/2012

Location: Japan, venue TBA

Format: 3v3 Format Final Rules TBA, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II (V1.05) Arcade Version

Prize: TBA + Special US Team Prize*

*The US Team prize is a monetary award that will be given if the US Team is able to take the gold at the BlazBlue Revolution Japan Finals.

Full rules and event details will be announced on 12/17/2011 here. Until then, stay tuned for more information on BlazBlue Revolution at www.aksysgames.com.