As you must already know, Capcom France is organizing the Master Series Europe (MSE), one of the european qualifier for the Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Tournament.
This tournament is an invitational event and 16 European countries are organizing qualifiers for the MSE, 6 of which will take place this very weekend.With so many top European competitors, this ought to be quite a “black” weekend: don’t expect to sleep much !

UK QUALIFIER

13-14/10/12 – EGL 8 – Manchester, UK – organized by EGL & ArmsHouse.tv (SFXT, SSF4AE.2012, SF3.3S, SSF2HDR)
Stream:

• http://www.twitch.tv/armshouse

AUSTRIA QUALIFIER

12-14/10/12 – VanDammage 4.4 – Vienna, Austria – organized by Virtual Dojo Vienna (SFXT, SSF4AE.2012, SF3.3S, SSF2HDR) – Semi-Open tourney*

SWEDEN QUALIFIER

13/10/12 – Scandinavian Edge – Göteborg, Sweden – organized by Negative Edge (SFXT, SSF4AE.2012, SF3.3S, SSF2HDR) – Semi-Open tourney*
Stream:

• http://www.twitch.tv/negativeedgegbg
• http://www.twitch.tv/fightingforsweden

ITALY QUALIFIER

13/10/12 – Revolution – Hell in a Cell 2012 – Pompei, Italy – organized by Revolution Championship Series (SFXT, SSF4AE.2012)
Stream:

• Coming Soon

NORWAY QUALIFIER

13-14/10/12 – Round1 Oslo Round2 Paris – Oslo, Norway – organized by Round1 KO (SFXT, SSF4AE.2012)

BELGIUM QUALIFIER

13/10/12 – eLive Arena 4 Belgium – , Brussels, Belgium – organized by eLive Arena (SFXT, SSF4AE.2012, SF3.3S, SSF2HDR)
Stream:

• http://fr.twitch.tv/forcedegypte

Master Series Europe Grand Final 

Taking place during Paris Games Week (October 31-November 4), The European Masters will provide a stage for the best fighting game players from across Europe to showcase their skills and compete for the opportunity to represent Europe in the World Finals this December in San Francisco.

• INFORMATIONS / SCHEDULE : www.streetfightercup.com

EXCELLENT!

Violet is fabulous. Anyone that disagrees has not yet played through Tekken Tag Tournament 2’s Fight Lab. Robots, chickens, flying pizzas, cameos and a shipping crate load of humour all combine to create a hugely enjoyable experience that acts as TTT2’s tutorial mode.

Playing through Fight Lab has occupied the last three hours of my time with the game, although the mode is not actually all that long. A new player who wants to learn the game will beat the mode in about an hour, provided they are paying attention. They’ll also have to check the manual once or twice, because the mode does not explain what certain icons mean. It’s an odd oversight which runs the risk of making new players lost. That aside, the tutorial is largely complete. You won’t be leaving with a complete understanding of the game, but you’ll know how to move, attack, throw and combo. Violet, the instructor, will also spend time with blocking, punishing and tagging, which will probably be of great use to everyone buying the game, even experienced gamers.

Speaking of Violet…

Violet and his secretary are the two instructors for the tutorial. They explain things via pop-up text boxes in a very standard way. What isn’t standard is how they say it. The quality of the localisation to English is outstanding, and there’s no lame puns, awkward dialogue or dodgy phrasing. It’s absurd and witty, complementing the overall weirdness of the mode’s art and design. The characters are voiced in Japanese. This would normally be a downside, if it wasn’t for Violet’s voice actor. Violet’s catchphrase – “Excellent!” – is made memorable both by how often he says it and how it is said. It’s hard to describe – look up a video, or play the mode yourself. It’s not often that you will remember a game for its tutorial. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is an exception.

I’ve been playing through the Fight Lab for about three hours. As I mentioned above, that’s not due to length. The mode is not just a tutorial – it is a challenge mode, which encourages a dedicated player to sit down and attempt to get an S-rank on each of the boss stages. The reward for doing this is upgrading the custom Combot character, who you play with in the mode, with new moves. You get points just by playing the mode. Some of these points are generic funds that you can use for any costume item for any character. The other points are development points, used to unlock moves. You can give Combot a large variety of moves and strings, but some of the most classic Tekken moves – like Paul’s Phoenix Breaker and Kazuya’s Wind God Fist – require an S Rank on certain stages to be able to use. This is why I’ve been trying to beat the boss stages – to unlock all of the moves and make my personal Combot as powerful as possible. It’s an enjoyable grind, but it is still a grind.

What all that grinding has taught me is that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is still a Tekken game. It’s not totally new, and most of the characters will feel very familiar to people who have played the series before. The tag mechanic makes both a welcome return has clever additions, but does not significantly change the gameplay. In a lot of ways, TTT2 is like playing a repackaged Tekken 6 – but, so far, it’s an excellent repackaging which strips out Tekken 6’s numerous flaws and replaces them with colour and light.

Update: It’s over! Harada showed a video of four of the six leaked characters – Miharu, Slim Bob, Sebastian and Dr. B. Here’s my recording of the video. The presenters quit out of the video before it was over. Presumably, the video goes on to show Violet and Unknown. We’ll probably see the whole thing at TGS.

A quick post, this – Katsuhiro Harada, Tekken’s lead developer, will be showing off the discovered secret TTT2 characters at 22:00 Japan time (2pm UK time), via Bandai’s own streaming service. The stream will probably not be available to anyone outside Japan, but the footage will probably make its way to the open internet quickly after the broadcast.

The information was disclosed via Harada’s Twitter.

We’ll cover the showcase live, and add any information we can to this post. Watch this space.

Source: Twitter

Dreamhack have announced that their approaching tournament in Valencia, Spain, will be streamed live by Armshouse. They have also announced that WW.MCZ|F-Word and WDM.MCZ|Necromina will form the commentary staff.  The tournament, which is on from the 21st to the 23rd of September, will feature a singles Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition tournament with €3000 in the prize pool.

Alongside winning most of the prize pot, the winner will also be formally invited to the Dreamhack Winter event, which will take place in Sweden in a few months.

WorstGiefEVER, who runs Armshouse, commented that:

“I am delighted to join the Dreamhack Valencia team for this Spanish gaming extravaganza. It is a great opportunity the expose the Spanish Fighter scene to a worldwide audience and welcome Dreamhack Valencia to the European Tournament Circuit!”

Dreamhack is an interesting sort of event for the EU FGC. Although it is typically held in a remote part of central Sweden, the events have slowly attracted more and more international attention over the past two years, which Armshouse’s stream has contributed to.

Dreamhack Valencia’s tournament signups are now open online. For some more information, click here.

Top image from left: Gon, WhiteBl4ck, Bulbamike
Bottom image from left: Luffy, VRyu, Ryan Hart

Bushido Impact, one of Paris’ major FGC events, was this past weekend. It featured a number of tournaments, had some of the best Super Street Fighter 4 and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 players in Europe in attendance, and was streamed by Armshouse. And yet, well, this post is going up four days late. Sorry about that. We’ve got the results, and links to the stream archives, inside.

Results (via HitCombo.com)

There were also exhibition team matches for SSF4AE2012 and UMvC3:

Media

There’s a tonne of photographs of the event up on the sister post over at HitCombo.com.

The archives of the Armshouse stream are on their archive page on Twitch.tv.

WorstGiefEVER’s Youtube channel is slowly being updated with match footage. For a taster, have a look at the footage from the France versus Rest of Europe exhibition match below!

For a comprehensive write-up, check out Madcatz’ post about the event: http://www.madcatz.com/bushido-impact-international-mad-catz-wdms-v-ryu-takes-gold/

Manchester Battle Arena’s organising team has announced two new fighting game tournaments to take place in the next two months. As usual for MBAs, they will be one-day events and take place at Gamerbase Manchester.  Also as usual for MBAs, expect a very loud and excited atmosphere. Information on the tournaments is inside this post.

The first event will be an unofficial celebration of Street Fighter’s 25th Anniversary. It is being held on Saturday 22nd of September, and will feature tournaments for SSF4:AE2012, SF3:3S and ST. The entry fee is £4, with each tournament being £1 to enter. This event is on the same day as the Manchester Tekken Tag Tournament 2 qualifier to be held at Kyoto Lounge (see here for details) which means that it’s going to be a generally quite large day for fighting games in Manchester.

Saturday 20th of October will see Tekken return to Gamerbase Manchester with MBA’s first Tekken Tag Tournament 2 event. Entry and tournament fee will be £7, with online sign-ups here.

MBA have released two posters, one for each event. They’re pretty classy, and are below.

“With Tekken Tag Tournament 2, the team is committed to providing an unparalleled fighting game experience,” commented Carlson Choi, Namco Bandai Games America’s Vice President of Marketing, “and [we] are proving our dedication to this effort by offering World Tekken Federation free of charge to everyone who buys a copy of the game.”

We’ve already reported on WTF on HitCombo (see here), but this is the first formal confirmation that the service will cost nothing. It’s a good reason to show off this trailer again, anyway. How many takes must it have taken to get all that pointing right?

“No, you have to drag your finger from up-left to the centre… err, no, YOUR up-left…”

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is launching in Europe for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on the 14th of September. The Wii U release date is still TBA.

Source: Press release, via Gamasultra

Canada Cup is a yearly fighting game tournament that takes place in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

CG|Taaha is being sent to Calgary with four other British Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition Version 2012 players. The team will compete in the international five versus five team tournament, and independently in the singles competition. Alongside CG|Taaha, WW.MCZ|Ryan Hart, WW.MCZ|Andreas, CG|Problem X and WW.MCZ|F-Word will represent the UK.

CG|Taaha also noted that he was a replacement for i46 champion CG|Yota, who would not be able to travel to the event.

Canada Cup 2012 will be taking place in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, between the 26th and 28th of October.

Source: Twitter

Canada Cup information: Here

In any case, this week is UMvC3. You can watch the stream below, or head over to Armshouse’s Twitch TV page to view the stream chat and archives.

Watch live video from armshouse on www.twitch.tv