TOPANGA Z: Nemo vs. Uda result

Uda (Firebrand, Amaterasu, Vergil) 3-10 Nemo (Strange, Nova, Spencer)

1. 0-1
2. 1-0
3. 0-1
4. 1-0
5. 0-1
6. 1-0
7. 0-1
8. 0-1
9. 0-1
10. 0-1
11. 0-1
12. 0-1
13. 0-1

Next week is Jeo vs. Frieda.

Darkstalkers Resurrection delayed to March 14

Capcom announced today that the release date of Darkstalkers Resurrection (Vampire Resurrection in Japan) is changed from February 7 to March 14. The news said that the delay is to improve the online function.

The game is priced at 2,990 yen in Japan.

Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo coming next week

We used to write about Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo when it was announced, now the game is coming next week and we think we should write about its features.

Cosmo Gauge
This is like Super Meters, increased by attacking. Super moves cost one gauge. You can spend all 3 gauges to activate Cosmo Burst which give you more power in limited time.

Big Bang Attack
You have the access to this ultimate move only in Cosmo Burst status. After using it, the gauge becomes zero and Cosmo Burst is gone.

Destructible Cloth
You can destroy opponent's Cloth to lower his defense. The Cloth damage will also be carried over to the next round. Some move is made to deal huge Cloth damage.

Story Mode
- Original story with full voice acting
- Story from Omega saga (with Poseidon and Siren)
- New illustrations or animations
- Characters from different sagas
- The 6 heroes can change from Bronze Cloth to Scale (Mariners' armor in Poseidon saga)

Characters
- 18 playable characters
- Bronze Saints: Koga, Soma, Yuna, Ryuho, Haruto, Eden, Andromeda Shun
- Gold Saints: Sagittarius Seiya, Capricorn Ionia, Leo Mycenae, Aries Kiki, Libra Genbu
- Silver Saints: Hydrus Ichi, Ophiuchus Shaina, Peacock Pavlin
- Martians: Hornet Sonia
- Mariners: Poseidon (Julian Solo), Siren Sorrento




The PSP game is coming on November 29.

TOPANGA Z: Abegen vs. VX result

Abegen (Thor, Tron, She-Hulk) 4-10 VX (Doom, Dante, Phoenix)

1. 1-0
2. 0-1
3. 0-1
4. 0-1
5. 0-1
6. 0-1
7. 1-0
8. 0-1
9. 0-1
10. 1-0
11. 1-0
12. 0-1
13. 0-1
14. 0-1

Next Wednesday is Nemo vs. Uda.

Umehara to appear on Nagoya ZIP FM radio

It is revealed just now that Daigo Umehara will appear as a guest on a morning program of Nagoya's ZIP FM radio station tomorrow 7:45 AM.

Just last month, Umehara has appeared on a radio show hosted by Chemistry's Douchin.

Brokentier announces Umehara T-shirt collection

The fighting game inspired apparel maker Brokentier announced today that they will start selling The Daigo Umehara Collection on November 23.

The new line of product is a mini collection of T-shirts inspired by Daigo Umehara. There are 2 types as of now: Arcade Culture and Parry. Both types will be sold for $27.99.

Arcade Culture came from Umehara's support game centers campaign that began since the end of 2011. Support Your Local Arcade! was written in both Japanese and English.

The Parry one has Kiseki no Gyakutengeki (Miraculous Reversal Play) written in Japanese. Apparently it is a reference to Umehara's famous comeback at Evo 2004.

Umehara used to have his T-shirt made by Meat Bun before in 2011.

Umehara wins local Gunslinger Stratos tournament again

Reported by the game producer himself, Daigo Umehara and his team won a local Gunslinger Stratos tournament at Adores Sunshine game center in Ikebukuro today.

The place was packed and there're 22 teams trying to get into the tournament although they accepted only 8. They had to choose by lottery.

The team today "TOPANGA" consists of Umehara, Fuudo, Nyanshi, and an unidentified player.

Pictures
- After winning [pic]
- Bracket [pic]

Umehara didn't show any interest in any genre other than fighting games before. But he invested a lot of time in Gunslinger Stratos after becoming the official supporter and was recently said by some to be the strongest Jonathan player in the game. He also won a local GS tournament in Akihabara last month.

TOPANGA Z's opening match is Abegen vs. VX

TOPANGA revealed last night that the first match of their 8-man UMvC3 tournament has been decided. It is Abegen vs. VX. The match will be streamed on November 21 (next Wednesday) starting from 21:00 JST.

TOPANGA announces 8-man UMvC3 tournament

TOPANGA announced last night on TOPANGA TV an 8-man UMvC3 tournament, tentatively called Z Tournament.

Details
- 8 players from Kantou region
- Offline
- Single elimination tournament
- First-to-ten
- One match per week, every Wednesday (7 weeks long)
- Will be streamed on TOPANGA TV @Twitch TV (from 21:00 JST), starting next week (if possible)
- 50,000 yen prize money for tournament winner only

Players

1. Frieda
2. OGTY
3. Jeo
4. Uda
5. Abegen
6. VX
7. Nemo
8. Tokido

Match-up (drawn live on the stream)

• OGTY - Tokido
• Abegen - VX
• Uda - Nemo
• Frieda - Jeo

The fact that it is offline and will feature those well-known players from Kantou region (Tokyo and nearby prefectures) makes it a rare one.

Note that both KUBODSGARDEN and KVO were held in Osaka. It seems that Kantou region will now have a bigger local UMvC3 scene since Kubo (the man behind KG and KVO, Japan's UMvC3 success) left UMvC3 for P4U then Under Night: In-Birth.

Umehara on today Asahi newspaper

Today's morning issue of newspaper Asahi Shimbun has Daigo Umehara article on page 2 in People corner.

Summary of the article

- The headline is "The pro gamer that holds 3 Guinness world records in fighting games category."
- He has sponsorship deal with foreign game peripherals maker.
- His income is from tournament prize money and being presenter.
- He won world's biggest fighting games tournament many times, and holds 3 Guinness world records. People even call him God.
- He goes to game center since 10 am. everyday.
- He won national tournament at the age of 15.
- He became world champion at the age of 17.
- He used to quit gaming at the age of 23 and took nurse job.
- He released autobiography "Willpower to Keep Winning" this Spring.

Gunslinger's Battle Arena 2013 in Tokyo detailed

The details of the first official national tournament of Gunslinger Stratos "Gunslinger's Battle Arena" in Tokyo have been revealed today.

Prizes
1st place - 3 million yen, trophy, special in-game title, exclusive in-game icon
2nd place - 1.5 million yen
3rd place - 500,000 yen

Schedules
November 22-29 - Team registration (you can register your team first then find members later)
December 5-17 - Team members registration
December 25 - End of registration process

Rules
- If a team has less than 4 members (absent or late), the space(s) will be filled with CPU(s).
- A team cannot have the same character, and they must use what they registered (one character per one player).
- Players are free to change weapon packs and costumes.
- Headsets are provided at the event, no headsets from outside allowed.
- Players can choose not to use the headsets in the qualifiers, but they must use them in the finals.

Gunslinger's Battle Arena 2013 Tokyo will be held on January 13, 2013. The second national tournament is already scheduled for Summer 2013. Both will have 10 million yen prize money in total.

Team Umehara get exclusive icon in Gunslinger Stratos

Square Enix announced today that the latest version update (Ver.1.30) of Gunslinger Stratos that is being released today will add an exclusive in-game icon to the authorized players. The icon will appear above the player name.

There're currently 3 types of icons (Special, Expert, Dengeki Musketeer) for 11 players.

Special
- Atsushi Abe (voice actor)
- Kana Ueda (voice actress)
- Masakazu Nishida (voice actor)
- Bunbunmaru (from Famitsu)

Expert
- Umehara
- Fuudo
- Mago

Dengeki Musketeers
- 4 players from Dengeki magazine editorial department

At this point, the icon is nothing but to tell people that the players are associated with the developers and they're official. The news said that, in the future update, players will receive an in-game title from winning a team that has these authorized players.

Gunslinger Stratos is an arcade 4 on 4 light-gun shooter that lets players battle in stages based off real locations in Japan. All the cabinets in Japan are linked so players around the country can find a team to play with in less than a minute. Players can buy new equipments and customize their characters. All the data and statistics will be saved using arcade player card and can be accessed via cellphones.



The game is heavily promoted in Japan. It had promotional events since beta test. It's having national tournaments with 10 million yen prize money. It has its own radio show. It's also recently extending 200 yen per 3 plays campaign to attract new players (normally 200 yen for 2 plays).

Daigo Umehara was appointed to be the "official supporter" of the game since January. He has spent so much time on the game, and also participates in the development.

Gunslinger Stratos was released on July 12 in Japan and they have also conducted beta test in Hong Kong.

Umehara on latest Kindai Mahjong Original cover

Amazon Japan has revealed the cover of the next issue of Kindai Mahjong Original today. The magazine will have the debut of Umehara's Mahjong manga as already reported.

Daigo Umehara, in manga character form, is also on the cover.

People outside Japan can also buy this magazine but the shipping (3,000 yen) is 6 times the price of the magazine itself for North America.

Under Night In-Birth developers interview

4Gamer.net posted an interview with the developers of Under Night In-Birth, Nobuya Narita (France Pan/French-Bread representative) and Kamone Serisawa (battle planner).

Beast Note again has a summary.

- They wanted to do a new Melty Blood (tentatively Melty Blood HD) but they need to find a way to continue the story first. At the time, TYPE-MOON's Kinoko Nasu (author) was busy with Mahou Tsukai no Yoru, so the project is postponed.
- However, UNI is completely new project. It's not based on Melty Blood HD prototype.
- They fear that UNI won't sell because it's an original work (not based on any popular work). They had a bad experience before when they did self-published stuff (doujin).
- They took a challenge by making it an arcade game instead of a doujin game. One of the reasons is there's no real brand new fighting game at the moment.
- UNI is distributed through Sega's ALL.Net P-ras MULTI. (A network that distributes arcade games to game centers, same with Taito's NESiCAxLive and Konami's e-AMUSEMENT Participation. The shops take no risk of losing money on buying dedicated cabinets each game, but they share income with the network owners.)
- The first idea in the development of UNI is "something different from Melty Blood." This's why it has no aerial combo like MB.
- They said MB has "launch, aerial, then air throw" impression.
- They feel relieved after getting good feedbacks from players, especially about characters and world setting.
- UNI is about ground game so they were worried about Hilda which is (as they said) the only projectile-dependent character in the game. (Boss character Hilda was unlocked as playable on November 2.)
- They said Vatista (also has long-range projectiles) is different from Hilda. Vatista is wait-and-see character.
- They said we won't see Eltnum as playable character in November.
- Eltnum is actually a modified test character from "Melty Blood HD." They had some time after the early stage of development and they wanted to add one more character but they didn't have enough time to make a complete new character. They had permission from TYPE-MOON.
- They said there won't be a Melty Blood character in UNI.
- For UNI, they avoid doing frequent small updates like what they did to MB.
- Narita personally wants to distribute [UNI PC version] on Steam.

Street Fighter X Tekken Vita is dead on arrival

The PS Vita version of Street Fighter X Tekken has sold only 5,420 copies in its first week in Japan according to the well-known Japanese console market researcher Media Create (via GAF and 4Gamer ).

There are many factors as to why the game has a disappointed first week -- only 1 million Vita users in Japan, bad reputations from console versions, marketing, etc. But when you look at everything, it could at least have done a bit better than this. Capcom had 2-3 stage shows in events (including the one that has Umehara). They had an ad before 2nd TOPANGA League (all 12 days). The game was demonstrated on the shows on Nico several times.

For reference, Project DIVA f, which is the best selling Vita game, has sold 159,592 copies in its first week.

And as always, we put the numbers in the chart so you can compare.

First week sales of fighting games between 2008-2012 in Japan by Media Create

1. [PSP] Dissidia Final Fantasy (Square Enix) {2009.12.18} - 489,100 | NEW
2. [PSP] Dissidia: 012 (Duodecim) Final Fantasy (Square Enix) {2011.03.03} - 286,117 / NEW
3. [PS3] Persona 4: Arena (Atlus) {2012.07.26} - 128,485 / NEW 
4. [PS3] Tekken 6 (Namco Bandai) {2009.10.29} - 103,105 / NEW
5. [PS3] Street Fighter IV (Capcom) {2009.02.12} - 86,000 / NEW
6. [PS2] Fate/Unlimited Codes (Capcom) {2008.12.18} - 82,900 | NEW
7. [PS3] Super Street Fighter IV (Capcom) {2010.04.28} - 80,882 / NEW
8. [PSP] Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces (Namco Bandai) {2010.01.21} - 76,088 / NEW
9. [PS3] Soul Calibur IV (Namco Bandai Games) {2008.07.31} - 74,607 / NEW
10. [PS3] Marvel Vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (Capcom) {2011.02.17} - 67,187 / NEW
11. [PS3] Dead or Alive 5 (Koei Tecmo) {2012.09.27} - 66,586 / NEW
12. [PS3] Naruto Shippuden: Narutimate Storm Generation (Bandai Namco Games) {2012.02.23} - 65,758 / NEW
13. [PS3] Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (Bandai Namco Games) {2012.09.13} - 62,630 / NEW
14. [PS3] Street Fighter X Tekken (Capcom) {2012.03.08} - 58,471 / NEW
15. [PS3] Dragon Ball: Raging Blast (Namco Bandai) {2009.11.09} - 57,972 / NEW
16. [PSP] Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny (Bandai Namco) {2011.12.22} - 57,320 / NEW
17. [PS3] Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (Capcom) {2011.06.30} - 54,924 / NEW
18. [PS3] BlazBlue: Continuum Shift (Arc System Works) {2010.07.01} - 49,871 / NEW
19. [PS3] Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 (Bandai Namco) {2010.11.11} - 47.610 / NEW
20. [3DS] Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition (Capcom) {2011.02.26} - 44,649 / NEW
21. [PS3] Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi (Bandai Namco Games) {2011.12.08} - 44,593 / NEW
22. [PS2] Melty Blood: Actress Again (Ecole Software) {2009.08.20} - 44,292 / NEW
23. [360] Street Fighter IV (Capcom) {2009.02.12} - 38,000 / NEW
24. [360] Soul Calibur IV (Namco Bandai Games) {2008.07.31} - 34,786 / NEW
25. [PS3] Soul Calibur V (Bandai Namco Games) {2012.02.02} - 34,328 / NEW 
26. [PSP] Fate/Unlimited Codes Portable (Capcom) {2009.06.18} - 34,205 / NEW
27. [PS3] BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (Arc System Works) {2009.06.25} - 33,768 / NEW
28. [PS3] BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend (Arc System Works) {2011.12.17} - 32,992 / NEW
29. [360] Super Street Fighter IV (Capcom) {2010.04.28} - 28,454 / NEW
30. [PSP] Tekken 6 (Namco Bandai) {2010.01.14} - 25,131 / NEW
31. [360] BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (Arc System Works) {2009.06.25} - 24,812 / NEW
32. [WII] Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes (Capcom) {2008.12.11} - 24,100 / NEW
33. [PSP] BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II (Arc System Works) {2011.03.31} - 23,808 / NEW
34. [3DS] Dead or Alive: Dimensions (Koei Tecmo) {2011.05.19} - 23,078 / NEW
35. [PS3] Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 (Capcom) {2011.11.17} - 22,436 / NEW
36. [PS3] The King of Fighters XIII (SNK Playmore) {2011.12.01} - 21,525 / NEW
37. [PS3] AQUAPAZZA (Aquaplus) {2012.08.30} - 20,935 / NEW
38. [PS3] Arcana Heart 3 (Arc System Works) {2011.01.13} - 17,219 / NEW
39. [360] Dead or Alive 5 (Koei Tecmo) {2012.09.27} - 14,811 / NEW
40. [360] Marvel Vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (Capcom) {2011.02.17} - 13,779 / NEW
41. [360] Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (Capcom) {2011.06.30} - 12,326 / NEW
42. [360] Phantom Breaker (5pb.) {2011.06.02} - 9,960 / NEW
43. [360] Persona 4: Arena (Atlus) {2012.07.26} - 9,801 / NEW 
44. [3DS] Tekken 3D: Prime Edition (Bandai Namco Games) {2012.02.16} - 9,421 / NEW
45. [360] Street Fighter X Tekken (Capcom) {2012.03.08} - 8,527 / NEW
46. [360] Soul Calibur V (Bandai Namco Games) {2012.02.02} - 7,679 / NEW 
47. [PSV] Street Fighter X Tekken (Capcom) {2012.10.25} - 5,420 / NEW