X-News Week #41 (July 30th-August 5th, 2018)

North America

  • EVO has a new winner this year, RenoMD Dictator. Although he has been playing online for a few years, this was his second offline tournament and this time he had to do it on a big stage like EVO. In order to get the victory he had to beat Tomo (not Ohira) Ryu and the legend John Choi who ended up in third place. Both opponents are specialists in their characters with matchups that are favorable against Dictator. RenoMD is now qualified for Tournament of Legends III as well. Pools stream [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] | Top 24 stream | Top 8 and finals | Twitch clips | Brackets
  • Monday Night Fightcade had Scuzbucket ChunLi as the eighth person to earn a spot in the final top 8 of the Tournament of Legends III online qualifier. Ganelon Claw is also selected for the top 8 replacing RenoMD who got his spot at EVO. Bracket | Video. Remember that the top 8 finals will happen this coming Monday at 7pm on Arkadeum channel.
  • The information at Twin Galaxies website last week had the error of saying that Alex Valle and John Choi exhibition would be a HF game. In the end, it was actually an ST exhibition, just after Alpha 2 and Alpha 3. James Chen gives some old school stories in the commentary. Alex Valle states in the final interview that his best memories of the last 25 years was “his meeting with Mike Watson, his meeting with John Choi, his meeting with Daigo Umehara and his meeting with Justin Wong“. Video
  • For those in Ohio, Ground Zero: Second Impact event will take place with an ST tournament included. It will be on August 18. Registration | Stream
  • Wisconsin will be holding an ST tournament as part of the Paradigm Grand Prix event on August 25. Registration

Japan

  • The classic 3vs3 major in Japan, called X-EST, is going to take place this weekend. Most of the Japanese grandmasters will be competing there. Expect 7 or 8 straight hours of stream so calculate your ways to make it convenient to watch as much as possible. The starting time will be 2pm (Saturday in Japan) or 10pm (Friday in California) or 7am (Saturday in Europe). The venue is Akihabara e-sports square. Team list and brackets | Stream | Website
  • Anyone who has travelled to a Japanese major knows it’s very hard to stay so many long hours in the tournament. But Japanese players can handle that and much more. They will be organizing both a pre-event and a post-event of the main tournament. The pre-event will be a special evening at Daytona Shiki arcade at 8pm (Friday – Japan), 4am (Thursday – California), 1pm (Friday – Europe) and will be streamed at Daytona channel. The post-event will be at Ooyama Newton arcade at 2pm (Sunday – Japan), 10pm (Saturday – California), 7am (Sunday – Europe), unfortunately, there will be no stream for the post event.
  • Last set of casuals from Mat Mouse arcade (Kanto) which closed its doors recently. The most known names of this set are yaya, PECO, ShiroSashishi, Kameraya, Kotaka Shoten and Komoda Blanka.
  • FT10 set at Gamespot Versus (Kanto) between Suzuki Zangief and Kawamata Ryu. Recommended if you want to watch a lot of footsies. [source: GSV youtube channel]
  • Suzuki Zangief also had another set, this time a long series (without counting), against Fukuyama Ryu. [source: GSV youtube channel]
  • Gamespot Versus weekly team tournament (Kanto). GM Dictator and Kawamata Ryu were the team captain. [source: GSV youtube channel]
  • North vs South weekly team tournament from the HL-SEGA arcade (Kansai). With Hazi DJ, Nakano Sagat, KKY, Mori Boxer, Shogatsu and Kusumondo among many others. No annotations in the video description but Shogatsu put the player names on screen both in Japanese and English.
  • Gamespot Versus special weekend tournament (Kanto). It’s not clear what format they are following this time but you will be able to enjoy amazing performances from Grygla Feilong and Kurahashi Ryu. The final exhibition between Kurahashi and Yakitori Hawk is pretty epic. [source: GSV youtube channel]
  • Monthly tournaments at Amipara Technoland (Chugoku) in the very west of Japan. They posted both June and July editions as well as the East vs West special from July. In June, they received the visit of Tokyo players like Kawamata and Shu and in July they received the visit of Shogatsu. [source: Amipara nico channel]
  • Playland F1R 2on2 tournament (Tohoku). From the remote arcade in the very far north of Japan. They posted 3 events. Unlike other weeks the third event is fully annotated in the description [event 1, event 2, event 3]. [source: Playland twitch channel]

Europe

  • The fourth Tournament of Legends III European qualifier is happening this weekend in France. There will be a special pre evening event on Saturday at 8.30pm and the main event on Sunday at 1pm. Both of them streamed on the First Attack twitch channel. Some of the top players will be Dav35 ChunLi, wolmar Dhalsim, Bazoukha Boxer, Soon Claw, Nayma Honda, Pijo80 Feilong and Pe1port among many others.

Others

  • TZW is a known Japanese player that has been doing combo videos (manually in the arcade!) since the very early days. The last iteration of his videos was a DVD that he created in 2007 called “MAXION rev. B”. He has been posting the footage of this DVD on his youtube channel with few new chapters every few months. This time he posted Zangief, Blanka and Honda chapters.
  • For fans of trivia or records of the game, there have been a couple of videos posted with KO at 93 seconds (video 1, video 2). Both of them are done on training mode. Rounds that fast haven’t been seen in actual competition, just some 92 ones.

Also, please check out the TOURNAMENT OF LEGENDS III fundraiser at https://www.gofundme.com/legends3 to help support ST Revival with tournament expenses and pick up some awesome Super Turbo related goodies in the process. If you can’t swing a full donation for one of the prizes, a small donation of even a couple of dollars is still greatly appreciated! The next Japanese invite will be unlocked at $1950!

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