Neutral Game

This week, Six had the opportunity to sit down with Guilty Gear pro and Evo 2018 top 3 player, LostSoul. One of the best GG players in the US, the Elphelt from the East Coast has proved that result was anything but a fluke, with impressive tournament showings that cement him as perhaps the best Elphelt in the world. Six sat down with him to talk about everything from his start in the arcades, to how he picks a main, to the merits of an unbalanced game. Please, enjoy the interview.

Neutral Game will have a regular episode early next week. Until then, please enjoy this rare opportunity I received! LostSoul can be found at @Lost_Relic on Twitter, his Twitch channel is here, and he plans to attend Texas Showdown 19 next month if you want a chance to see him work!

This month, Bear and Six sit down to talk about VS Puzzle Games, which share a lot with fighting games. We particularly focus on Magical Drop III and Money Puzzle Exchanger.

The world’s biggest platform fighter has come to a new platform (heheh) with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and a whopping roster of 74 fighters, with more still to come. And yet, none of them is host Miodrag, who is out on vacation! Scrambling to put together a show, Six grabbed ver friends Kat and Tai to come talk about the latest and greatest in the world of fighting games, and why Falco should really have more to say about how weird Pikachu is.

This month, Miodrag and Six welcome you back to the stage of history. Soulcalibur claims to be a tale of souls and swords eternally retold, and after over ten games, we can at least agree that the series has remained true to the elements at the soul of its success. The fundamentals are the same, but how do new characters and new mechanics push the series forward? Let’s take a look.

SNK has a storied history of fighting games, from Art of Fighting to Samurai Shodown, and a wealth of other styles of fighting game besides. But of all their works, one of them is mentioned as perhaps being the best fighting game ever made. The end game of the Fatal Fury series, Garou: Mark of the Wolves is a masterful summation of what makes fighting games unique and great. This month, Miodrag and Six tackle one of the greats of the genre, and examine what makes it tick.

You can contact Six on Twitter at @sixdettmar, and Miodrag at @MDKII. We’ll see you again in a month.

Miodrag and Six welcome Mario to the show for the first (but likely not last) time as they discuss the Switch release, Mario Tennis Aces. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine how a sports game can fit into the fighting game mold, but a Mario sports game? Well, this one’s a real moldbreaker. This month, we’re discussing the changes that made Mario Tennis into a fighting game, and how much they committed to that vision.

You can contact Six on Twitter at @sixdettmar, and Miodrag at @MDKII. We’ll see you again in a month.

This year has been so packed with new and noteworthy fighting games that Six and Miodrag have had to split the duties of coverage! When the developers of the old Street Fighter EX series finally decided to come back to the fighting game genre, we knew we had to be there to see what they made. What they made is Fighting EX Layer, or FEXL: a new fighting game with a classic feel, at once both crisp and loose, and wholly unlike any other fighting game currently on the market. Do the PS2-styled fighter’s ideas have enough merit, or is its vision of a different type of fighting little more than a Skullodream?

You can contact Six on Twitter at @sixdettmar, and Miodrag at @MDKII. We’ll see you again in a month!

Fate will not be denied. Though we try to resist, fortune conspires for Miodrag and Six to come together once again and make a fighting game podcast… this time about the newest Arc Systems Works fighting game, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. Worlds collide, mechanics cross, but spacing and rushdown are the same as you ever knew. How have existing characters changed in this crossover? What has been done with new character designs? And how does this crossover game pay homage to BlazBlue’s history without being trapped in the shadow of its classic mechanics? You can’t escape from the answers to these questions.

You can contact Six on Twitter at @sixdettmar, and Miodrag at @MDKII. We’ll see you again in a month!

As 2018 prepares to head into a fevered pace of fighting game releases, Six and Miodrag take a moment to look at the past before diving into the future. Neither of them played the Street Fighter Alpha series when it was popular, but it still has lessons to teach, even years removed. What systems and gameplay decisions in the oft-forgotten prequels of the Street Fighter series bear merit today, and what ideas from that golden age of fighting games were lost in the shuffle?

You can contact Six on Twitter at @sixdettmar, and Miodrag at @MDKII. We’ll see you again in a month!