Go for Pro
Capcom Cup – 2016
Whew, another year goes by and that marks another successful year for the Capcom Pro Tour (CPT). It really does show how much love Capcom is pouring into the FGC and eSports scene, despite failing in other areas, and it’s proving that their approach to making SFV an awesome and lasting eSports title is bang on track.
But wow, what a tournament! The 32 man bracket featured the best players from all over the world and even included many players who were previously unknown. A surprise leading up to the Tournaments announcement which was bound to be a shake-up was changing the format to best 3 / 5 for every match. This meant a few things (i.e. longer waits for players) but for those who have been playing the game all year can attest that SFV matches are fairly quick due to high damaging combos being very frequent. So changing this seemed like a smart choice. It was fairly clear after the first day that this was the right choice to make, with many players getting their two wins then suddenly going down for the next three! It’s incredible to think how differently the brackets would have played out if the format had done the usual ‘best two out of three’ until the semi-finals.
Naturally, when you have the best 32 players in the world you’ll see some upsets, but no one could have possibly predicted Infiltration and Tokido, clearly two of the favourites for the tournament to bow out 0-2. It was clear that their opponents had obviously done their match up revision homework and the results spoke for themselves.
K-brad did extremely well for a player who was a last minute entrant as a result of another player pulling out as he dispatched Daigo Umehara in the first round in a nail-biter. Daigo is the kind of player that will make you earn every victory through smart pressure and clever mix-ups as he plays a game plan so clean that no one (to this day) can come close to mimicking it, so it speaks so highly of K-Brads ability to adapt and pull out an amazing win at this tournament.
My eyes were very focussed on one final player who was riding good momentum coming into Capcom Cup, NuckleDU. The veteran representing North America who showed the world that Guile should be considered a high tier character was tearing through his first bunch of opponents using a combination of Mika and Guile and no one seemed to be able to slow down his pacing. Until he came up against fellow North American Ricki Ortiz who was dispatching all of her victims with some incredibly solid fundamentals and execution using Chun Li. The two seemed just as good as one another but NuckleDU sent her to the loser’s bracket and propelled himself forward into the final on the Winners side.
Ricki was not done though and she smashed through Kazunuko (previous year’s Capcom Cup winner) to rematch NuckleDU for first place. It was not to be though as no one seemed to have the ability to stop this man from taking first place!
Great sportsmanship was shown by both finalists and more importantly it was incredible to see the Americans finally take such a high title in FGC eSports for the first time in what is, honestly, an amazing event.
Capcom weren’t done however, they then showcased the newest Character that will be added to the roster and will thus kick start Season 2, Akuma, who looks just as devastating as he always has.
You’d think we’d be done, but oh no, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 has now been ported to the PS4 in 1080P and 60 frames per second and can be downloaded right now from every other PSN Store except Australia (Australia is still waiting for a re-classification before we can purchase it). And to cap that off we always got our first glimpse of a new Marvel vs Capcom game – MvC: Infinite!
Let’s hope that Season 2 and CPT 2017 blows away all previous years benchmarks and continues to hype the FGC to the point where it’s impossible to ignore.
Let’s go 2017, let’s go!
Adam Rorke
