Northern California’s premier fighting game tournament returns to the scene in style as the final major for 2009. This year’s NorCal Regionals tournament will be held on November 21-22 at the beautiful Domain Hotel in Sunnyvale CA, just down the street from the historic Sunnyvale Golfland Arcade. 

This year’s revamped lineup of titles features fresh and familiar faces, like the highly anticipated Tekken 6 and fan favorite Street Fighter 4, as well as old friends like MvC2 and NorCal favorite CvS2. Duke it out in any or all of our tournaments, or cheer on your favorite players in our special exhibition SF4 team grudge match: NorCal vs. SoCal.

The highest level of elite players from all over the country including EVO top 8 finalists Alex Valle, Ed Ma, Ricky Ortiz, ShadyK, Combofiend, Chunkstah, and West Coast Warzone SF4 champion Marneto, are confirmed to attend to stake their claim as “The Best In 2009.”

NCR will be utilizing official tournament-grade EVO equipment, and Shoryuken staff members Seth Killian, Ponder, James Chen, and Mr. Wizard will be present to oversee the tournament. Spectating is free and there will be plenty of  giveaways from sponsors including Namco, Madcatz, and Sugar Betty.

Can’t make it this year? All of the action will be livestreamed courtesy of the folks at iplaywinner.com and additional coverage will be provided by Kineda and Get Your Tournament. Pre-register by November 13 to save. To register, visit the official NCR website or browse the SRK thread for additional information.

At Evolution 2009 this past summer, a very special LIVE Dogface Show took place with some very special guests: Tom “inkblot” Cannon and Tony “Ponder” Cannon, creators of many Fighting Game Community standards such as Shoryuken.com itself, the Evolution Fighting Game Championships, GGPO, and more!

Part 1 of this interview was posted up here on SRK earlier. You can try to catch part 2 before watching this final part 3 of the Live Dogface Show. And this episode is noteworthy because or a special award given at the end, so stick around until the end of the interview to see a very special award introduced at Evo 2009.

Get ready for some uppercuts! The third episode features none other than Ken, setting everyone on fire with punches.

If you’re confused or curious about any of these combos, here’s a complete transcript explaining each one in detail.

The response for our first two combo challenges has been overwhelming awesome! Seriously, thank you guys! I’ve noticed some people have been asking for an oldschool game headline and others have been asking for more difficult trials. This should take care of both.

You know the drill: Video quality doesn’t matter so record with whatever you’ve got and post it as a video response. Every game has a solution, but some are more elaborate than others.

Good luck to everyone attending NorCal Regionals and the ActiveGamersLA tournaments this weekend!

ACTivegamerS LA & UFRAGTV present…

Two Days of Gaming Euphoria: Hollywood Massacre & Triple Threat!

Join us on November 13-14 for the biggest gaming event to hit Southern California thus far!  ACTivegamerS LA is putting together two amazing events to cater to the fighting game community!  A weekend of fierce gaming competition, good company, and passion for fighting games!

(more…)

Ready for round two?

Again, video quality isn’t important for this so record using whatever equipment you have available (capture card, camcorder, PVR, DVD recorder, etc.) and post it as a video response. There are already several answers posted, including some difficult ones and some very clever easy ones.

Think you’ve seen everything in Street Fighter IV? We’ve got a few surprises in store for you:

This is actually the second episode in a series of SF4 combo videos released every other Tuesday. Check out the first episode here: SF4 Biweekly TACV 01: Ryu