My 5 Favourite Characters in Fighting Games

Character choice means everything in a fighting game. It’s about the moves that your character has. The strengths and weaknesses they have. Their look. Their back story. All of this ends up being a reflection of you and how you like to play any given fighting game.

For the fighting games I play, this very much applies to me. Characters that I use need to look cool and fit my play style. If they don’t fit both, I have a hard time being effective with them or finding the motivation to get better. As such, here’s my five favourite fighting game characters!

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: 11 Tips To Help You Survive a Fighting Game Tournament


When it comes to fighting games, there’s nothing more exciting, intense or as important as the fighting game tournament. This is the place where fighting game players who take their games seriously strut their stuff in hopes of winning the big prize, and more importantly, earning the respect of their fellow fighting game playing peers. You can say what you want about how you scrape your friends all the time at your place, or how you’re a legend at your local arcade, or how you’re one of the top ranked players online, but in the new era of fighting games, it’s all about showing and proving at a tournament, especially one that’s being live streamed for viewers around the world to check out.

Though I’m far from a seasoned tournament veteran, I’m still very much feeling the buzz from my time at T12: Toronto Fighting Game Championships, which is the inspiration for today’s post. I think I’ve had enough tournament experience (and have heard enough second-hand accounts) to give you a few words of wisdom if you plan on going to a tournament, especially if this will be your first one.

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The Toronto Fighting Game Championships Are Taking Place Today

The biggest fighting game tournament that Toronto has ever seen is upon us! T12 Toronto Fighting Game Championships are set to take place today, and if you’re reading this shortly after I posted this, I’m most likely on my way to the venue. If you’re interested in watching all of the hot fighting game action, you can watch it all thanks to the Team Spooky stream. If you’re lucky, you just might catch me on the steam! If so, If you’re super lucky, you might catch me winning a match or two, though I’m not holding my breath for that particular outcome. 🙂

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: Understanding Combos Systems Part 2 – Putting It All Together

Welcome back to part 2 of a mini-series of combo systems posts within In Third Person’s Universal Fighting Game Guide. Part 1 dealt with the elements that make up a combo system in most fighting games, which you can find here. This post will take those fundamental elements and try to outline a process you can use to help you establish a knowledge and execution foundation to build your combo abilities on.

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I’m Going To T12: Toronto Fighting Game Championships

Last year, I dipped my toe into the competitive gaming waters by participating in Fan Expo 2010’s Super Street Fighter IV tournament. While I was bummed out that Fan Expo didn’t run any fighting game tournaments this year, I am attending something that will most likely be way cooler.

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: Understanding Combo Systems Part 1 – The Elements

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If you’ve ever had any sort of interest in fighting games, you’ve probably stumbled across a combo video or two. They’re very cool to watch, and you may have even taken it upon yourself to be as good as the person in the video by going to a guide and learning how to read an execute something like this from BlazBlue:

214D -> B (FC), 623D, dash, 3C xx 236236B, 214D -> C, 5C 2C 4D -> D, [j.C x n] [dj.C x n] xx j.214B – 50% Heat

While you may be tempted to learn the big fancy combos the moment you start playing a new fighting game, it’s not the best way to level yourself up. Mastering the physical execution of big combos is nice, but learning the big combos without knowing the context behind them first is like trying to run without learning how to walk. This is post 1 in a two-part mini-series about understanding combo systems. Part 1 will deal with the elements that make up most combo systems, while part 2 will discuss how to put context to those elements to shape your offensive capabilities. Let’s get moving with part 1!

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EVO 2011 Story Lines

The biggest fighting game tournament in the world is only a week away. As a hardcore fighting game fan and stream monster, I can’t wait to sit in front of the computer all weekend to watch the scene’s best go at it all weekend long. If you’ve never watched a fighting game stream before, but have any interest in it, EVO 2011 is definitely the place to start.

If you do start here, you should know that this EVO tournament is actually the last tournament in the 2011 EVO season. A lot of drama has taken place between the start of the season and now. Unless you want to sit through hundreds of hours of tournament footage or read through much more comprehensive and better written recaps on the EVO tournament season, I can give you a primer on a few of the story lines surrounding EVO’s biggest games.

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Pick-Up Post: Mortal Kombat Season Pass

One of the most recent developments in DLC is the idea of paying for a set of content up-front and receiving a discount on the set rather than buying the components of the set separately. From a business perspective, this makes a lot of sense, as it’s a lot easier to ask me for $15 now rather than four payments of $5 spread out over 8 months. It also makes sense from the player’s perspective, as we get stuff at a discount.

Case in point, the Mortal Kombat Season Pass. There are four DLC characters scheduled for release at $5.00 each. However, if you buy the Season Pass up-front, you’ll get all four characters for $15, which is a savings of $5.

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Mortal Kombat Review

It’s been a while since Mortal Kombat was relevant. Say what you will about the series’ consistently good sales, but when the genre fell out of relevance with the mass market, Mortal Kombat did, too. However, when Street Fighter IV single-handedly revived the genre, it was only a matter of time before Mortal Kombat came roaring back. And roar back it did. You, as gaming consumers, made it the number 1 selling game in the US in April, selling over 1 million copies.

Is the latest in the MK series a return to form? Did it sell solely on hype? Or does it take the series to the next level?

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In Third Person’s Reader Trends: May 2011 Edition

It’s usually that time of the month when I’d write about In Third Person’s top 5 posts for the month. I don’t want to do that anymore, because I don’t think it told that interesting of a story. I don’t think it benefits anyone when I write about the same 5 or 6 top posts every month that just so happen to be Google aggregate favourites (I’m looking at you, Gaming’s Definitive Moustaches).

Instead, I thought I’d do something more interesting with the numbers. Let me know if you enjoy this format better!

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