The tournament will take place at Gotham City Comics in Mesa on Saturday and will include competitions in Blazblue: Continuum Shift Extend, as well as King of Fighters XIII.

Casuals are set to begin at 1:30 p.m. with KoF starting at 3 p.m. and Blazblue will follow at 4:30 p.m. There are no entry fees and the brackets will be double elimination. Prizes will include Gotham City Comics giftcards in $30, $20 and $10 deviations for first, second, and third place respectively.

Both games will be played on PS3 system setups and players are encouraged to bring their own arcade sticks or fight pads. There will also be a raffle for a copy of Blazblue: Continuum Shift Extend, with tickets for the drawing going for $5.

For more information, please visit the Euphoria Gaming event page.

Arcade-in-a-Box’s owner Ed Farias has made a recent push for a derision from fighting game streams into something different that celebrates the old school arcade in its best form.

It’s called Retro Rumble and it’s a force to be reckoned with.

Image courtesy of Retro Rumble.

The web series features three players who duke it out in random retro arcade games with one champion coming out on top, and all others left in pixilated dust.

The show is a brain child of Ed Farias and his colleagues James Jefferies and Aaron Holley, who wanted to hearken back to their old school gaming loves and change up the pace from their regular fighting game streams and events.

“It really just came from us doing our regular MAME challenges and fun stuff like that,” said Farias in a Wednesday interview with The Pause Button. “Whenever the arcade was closed or things were slow we’d just get together and play old games and just have fun with it.”

Retro Rumble season one players and crowd members. Image courtesy of Retro Rumble.

This is indeed the spirit of Retro Rumble, as the players involved talk friendly trash to each other, hype up whenever their opponents step to the plate, and win nothing except bragging rights. The games are never predetermined, so players are forced to do their best on the spot in one shot. It very much embodies the coin-op camaraderie many remember before the days of online play.

Farias commented that the reception from fans has been thus far positive despite the fact that the show breaks away from their normal fighting game streams and events.

“Probably 99.9 percent of the feedback is really good,” said Farias, expanding to say even the interests of the folks at Kotaku were interested by the show. “Everyone seems to really enjoy it.. …and we’re looking for ways to involve the audience a bit more in the future.”

The first season of the web show is complete, with a single-session competition broken down into approximately six minute segments full of fun editing and entertaining gameplay. The second season has already been filmed and is slated to debut on March 2nd. Farias told the Pause Button that a live show of Retro Rumble on February 20th is scheduled for viewers to “get a fuller idea of all the fun nonsense that goes on.”

This doesn’t mark the end of the fighting game side of Arcade-in-a-Box however, as the emergence of their secondary Hold Your Own series is beginning to take a foothold on the AiaB Youtube channel.

The Geek’s Night Out event will kick off Thursday night at 5 p.m. in downtown Tempe (primarily in the MADCAP theatre area). The event is put together as a hybrid celebration of the Arizona SciTech festival, Third Thursday, and job fair all in one.

Courtesy City of Tempe.

According to the release, the event promises trivia and prizes from the likes of Pop Culture Paradise, cosplay competitions from Phoenix Comicon, R2-D2 replica showcases, and tons more. Among the activities regarding gamers, both Evil Controllers and GameTruck will be present to field some video games played on the large MADCAP screens.

The event also boasts some success panels hosted that will include many of the participants of the event including Adam Coe of Evil Controllers, according to the release. Along with these helpful panels, there will also be a job fair held at the theater from 5 to 7 p.m. that is free-to-all, no resume or fancy dress required. For more info, check out the official release on the city of Tempe’s website.

Once you’ve recovered from all the Jedi battles and sweet nerdy awesomeness on Thursday, Team Hazmat will be present to hold out the rest of the weekend with their Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (2012 ver.) ranbats.

As per normal practice, all entrants must pay a $5 venue fee and a $5 entry fee per tournament. Casuals will start up at 3 p.m. with SSFIV:AE (2012) following at 5 p.m. and UMvC3 kicking off at 8 p.m. Winners will get a derivative of points and prize pot. For more information, check out their official Facebook event page.

Closing out this week will be events from NeoMaxico, LAN Speed Games, and Euphoria Gaming for fighting games galore.

Starting the weekend early will be the NeoMaxico team with their King of Fighters XIII stream on Thursday night. The group will be showing live competition action (for bragging rights of course) on their Twitch.tv channel and may even throw up some online PSN (or is it SEN now?) matches. For more info, check out their official Facebook page.

With 10 hours on Minecraft, what WOULDN'T you build?

On Friday LAN Speed Games will be holding another one of their epic lock-ins from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. As per usual practice, entrants are locked into the building for 10 straight hours of gaming. Since these guys have their own Minecraft server, League of Legends, Star Wars: The Old Republic and tons more to play, there’s bound to be enough to keep players occupied.

To reserve your seat for the lock-in it costs $17.50 ahead of time and $20 the day of. For more information, check out their official event page.

Following up will be Euphoria Gaming with their free Tekken 6 and Soul Calibur V tournament on Saturday at the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe. Casuals are set to start at 1 p.m. with Soul Calibur V starting at 3 p.m. with Tekken 6 following thereafter.

There are no entry fees and prizes will include some giftcards of varying amounts. There will also be a raffle for a copy of Soul Calibur V, in which tickets will cost $5. Players are encouraged to bring their own fight pads or arcade sticks. For more info, check out the Euphoria official event page.

IncreaseBlue-

I need to go back to Soul Calibur V. Things were simpler there.

I dove into these demos as a way to take a break from the strategy and technical game play of Namco’s latest iteration of the Soul series, but both seemed to confuse me much more than I had expected them to.

The Syndicate-

The Syndicate was a demo that I downloaded right away and jumped into with an excited smile on my face, only to have slowly but surely wiped off and replaced by a grimace.

As soon as I dove in I was barraged with a ton of information without explanation. In the main menus you pick your characters’ class, upgrades, and style without a whole lot of guidance. I ended up picking a support character and soon realized that other than the weapons you have, the classes don’t mean much in the way of abilities.

I dove in with a single co-op partner and was dismayed that there was no option to play with humans and AI a la The Heist style. If there was, I certainly couldn’t find it in the puzzle that was the main menu.

Once in the game, I was interested in the cool tech layout for the hud but was instantly dismayed by the splotchy textures and rather bland scenery. The character speeds felt clunky (even with changing up the axis sensitivity) and the weapons felt fairly useless or laggy in the way they cause damage in-game.

Since when did "futuristic" mean "bland"?

As far as game play went, it felt like an un-fun version of Left 4 Dead. All of the enemies seemed to infinitely spawn until you finally did away with the big baddie, which is difficult considering your high powered characters can get killed in only a few shots. My co-op partner and I found that any tactics or strategy was immediately done away with in favor of one person mowing down enemies with a shotgun and the other constantly healing them.

Even more annoying was that if you were to be depleted of health, you didn’t die and respawn, but were forced to hobble to a friend so they can give you a “reboot” to refill your health bar. If both of you need a reboot and there are no partners to do it, the mission is failed (even though you’re still technically standing) and you have to restart.

You can play with up to four people, so one can be the designated healer while everyone else has fun.

Most of the co-op was merely travelling from spot to spot unlocking doors and killing off two minibosses without any real clue as to how or why it needed to be done. The few super abilities you could use such as looking through walls temporarily, were overall useless when being swarmed by enemies and abandoned in favor of running and gunning (and don’t forget the constant healing!).

Overall the Syndicate demo was utterly disappointing and just made me value Deus Ex: Human Revolution more. I can only hope that the campaign mode can offer a better experience, but the hope isn’t held very high.

Thank goodness I got to dive into Twisted Metal though.

Team Hazmat are continuing their “Hazbats” on Saturday the 4th at their hangout in Laveen. This will be third in the series and will once again feature top players from around the state in an out-and-out brawl for the top place in both Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (2012 ver.) competitions.

As per usual practice, there will be a $5 entry fee for each tournament and a $5 venue fee. All entry fees will go to the pot awarded to the top three at the conclusion of the season. The action will also be streamed on their Twitch.tv channel. For more information, visit their official Facebook event page.

If you want to get an early jump on things, the LAN Speed Games Lock-in is planned for February 10th. For $17.50 ($20 the day of), you get to be sealed into the building at 10 p.m. to game, chat, and win prizes until 8 a.m. the next day. They are currently taking sign-ups at their store and seating is limited so getting an early registration may be the best option. For more information, please visit their event page on their website.

Keith Abbott of Euphoria Gaming

The past year has seen many local groups rise to the occasion and provide a vast array of tournaments for the Arizona gaming community. Keith Abbott, founder of Euphoria Gaming, is no different in this respect and spoke with The Pause Button on the groups’ hopes and plans for 2012.

As Euphoria Gaming plows into 2012 with their Super Marvel Madness finale on Saturday, as well as several planned free tournaments, the group has alot of potential to grow and change within the coming months.

Abbott first founded his own gaming group, Euphoria Gaming, in 2010 in an effort to support and flourish a West Valley gaming scene. He started off by hosting small tournament gatherings at a local shop called GameTag in Litchfield Park. The competitions began to receive good receptions and Abbott decided to pursue more.

After running multiple small tournaments in games such as Capcom vs. SNK 2 and the like, Abbott decided to officially name his group Euphoria Gaming and move on to running slightly larger events in different venues. Unfortunately, due to the closing of GameTag within a year, Abbott was forced to re-examine his plans and adjust his strategy.

“It was hard,” said Abbott in a Saturday interview. “Because the West Valley didn’t really have any place to go to other than GameTag and once it closed it was alot harder to find a spot to hold stuff at.”

Hazem Ibrahim of Team Hazmat (left) and Keith Abbott of Euphoria Gaming (right) working at a competition. Photo courtesy of Keith Abbott.

The group took a temporary hiatus as Abbott changed plans. Euphoria re-emerged more so in 2011 with hosting several tournaments such as the Bloodlines and Arcana Blaze series of competitions held at various venues such as Gotham City Comics and LAN Speed Games. Abbott cited the support from local gaming groups such as Team Hazmat, as well as the venues, helped fuel his plans for more competitions.

“My purpose is to help AZ gaming and grow the scene and welcome new players,” said Abbott. “I want to grow the scene and get alot of stuff going in the state for upcoming games.”

Abbott and Euphoria Gaming are definitely not alone in this aspect, as the group has received much support from other local gaming groups. Abbott mentioned that the new year will hopefully see the birth of an official Euphoria Gaming website, logo, and bigger and more varied events.

Euphoria’s next event will be the finale to their Super Marvel Madness series on Saturday at the University of Advancing Technology, where they will be joined with Team Hazmat. Following that, the group has plans to host numerous free tournaments for Soul Calibur V, King of Fighters XIII, and Blazblue CS: Extend.

For more information, follow Euphoria Gaming on Facebook for event information, as well as keep an eye on The Pause Button for posts on upcoming events.

Both LAN Speed Games and Team Hazmat are hosting events this week in Peoria and Laveen respectively.

First off is LAN Speed Games with their traditional Lock-in/All-Nighter event on Friday, in which they take a group of entrants and seal them in the building with nothing more than pizza, soda, and various games to keep them company.

The Lock-in costs $17.50 for a sign-up beforehand, $20 the day of, and will start at 10 p.m. going all the way until 8 a.m. Saturday morning. LAN Speed has confirmed that only about 10 seats are remaining so participants may want to register quickly. For more information, check out their official event page.

For those of you keeping track, this weekend aligns itself for the second official round of Team Hazmat Hazbats. On Saturday, the team will be hosting their ranbats for both Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition (ver. 2012) and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

The action will start off at 3 p.m. with casuals and sign ups, with $5 venue and entry fees into each tournament. For the full rundown of rules and info, check out our previous post or the official event page.

The device on its own appears to be similar to a tablet, but as explained in the video, offers up a personalized screen for multiplayer integration. Players can apparently get their own screen on the Wii U controller, in addition to their own split piece on their television of choice with which the game is playing on.

The controller itself is fairly large with a touch screen, what appears to be an IR receiver on the front, two analog sticks, a d-pad on the left side, a four button layout on the right hand side, various pause, start, and home buttons on the front, and two sets of bumpers on the back of the device.

The Wii U seems to be self sustaining on its own, so the thought of using it on a television screen with an apparent “home base” device seems a bit redundant. However, more features remain to be seen, which the company has promised to reveal at the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo  in June. 

After seeing this, are you more or less interested in the Wii U? Let us know in your comments below!

The team is hosting their official “Hazbat tournaments” a.k.a. ranbats (ranking battles), starting off this Saturday the 7th at their hangout in Laveen.

Team Hazmat has officially announced they will be hosting a season of ranbats for both Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition 2012 ver. and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on every other Saturday for the first three months of the year. The schedule for them is as follows:

-January 7 

-January 21st

-February 4th 

-February 18th 

-March 3rd

Every ranbat will kick off officially at 2:00 p.m. for casual play and sign-ups, with SSFIV: AE 2012 battles starting at 4 p.m. and UMvC3 following at 6 p.m. Everyone is welcome to enter, with a $5 venue fee and $5 entry fee per tournament. The entry fees will be split into a grand winners pot and a tournament pot, so if you win on any given night, you will also be awarded a pot prize as well as points.

Ranking battles is of course about building up your skills, so the team will award points to 1st through 8th places in each tournament every ranbat. First place will be awarded seven points, second gets five points, third gets three points, fourth gets two points, and fifth through eighth placers receive one point apiece.

At the end of the season, all the points will be totaled up to see which participant ranked the highest, not only to crown the best of the best, but also to award the ranbat grand winner pot.

The ranbats will also be streamed on Team Hazmat’s official Twitch.tv channel. For more details, please visit their official event page.