Capcom offers its sincerest apologies to everyone who participated in this first beta test.  While the purpose of a beta is to work out these type of issues, it was very clear that the issues we faced were more severe than we were prepared for.  After three days of testing, while we were making progress and collecting valuable data, we felt the majority of players were not having a good experience, and the best course of action would be to take the servers offline for extended maintenance.  We will be postponing our first beta phase until we believe the experience is going to be a positive one for players. 

UPDATE: There seems to be concern from some players who were unable to connect to the beta, that they would not be able to get the in-game incentive we mentioned.  We are still working out the specifics on the incentive, but can confirm that connecting to, or not being able to connect to the initial beta, will not be a factor in receiving this incentive. 

To be clear, this first beta test attempt will not count toward our previously announced beta test allotments.  There will still be at least three full beta tests prior to the game’s launch.  So for those in the Americas that feel disappointed that they were not able to experience their pre-order incentive, there will be plenty of opportunities prior to launch to experience the game. 

Additionally, we are working on a worthwhile in-game incentive for the players that participated in the first beta test.  While we can’t confirm specifics just yet, we will have more details on this in the coming weeks. 

To all of the European and Asian players that felt like they were missing out on the beta since we limited it to North America on Friday and Saturday, we apologize for the inconvenience. Due to the state of the server issues, we had to limit the numbers to a smaller pool in order to identify issues and potential solutions. Either way, we will still be providing these players with an incentive as well, as all territories were inconvenienced.

To all of the players that participated and supported us through this initial phase, we cannot thank you enough.  We understand how frustrating it is to be so close to playing the game you are excited for, and to not have it working.  The whole team here is very disappointed that we were unable to deliver a proper beta experience this time. Thank you so much for your continued support, and we promise that we will have a better experience for you with the future betas. 

We will be sharing more details when available, but for now, we appreciate your patience as we work on solutions to offer the experience that we had intended.

Tune in to our Twitch channel today at 4pm Pacific (7pm Eastern) for another awesome Monster Hunter Mondays live gameaply session! Who knows you can even join us for a quest or two! Also, if you’ve missed last week’s show, we now have it up on YouTube :

See you soon!

Number: DWN-023

Weapon: Spark Shock

Weakness: Shadow Blade

Possesses twice the electrical power of Elec Man . That said, his programming makes him somewhat scatterbrained.

Seemingly designed as an industrial ‘bot destined to replace  Elec Man, Spark Man instead becomes a powerful weapon in Dr Wily’s latest bid to take over the world.

That said… his impressive spec sheet leaves out how all that raw power affects his combat ability. Instead of a nimble, bolt-tossing ninja a la Elec Man, we get a hefty hopping robot that’s taken out fairly easily.

Defeating Spark Man earns you the Spark Shock, which fires a small ball of electricity. I suppose it’s a very dense, powerful burst as opposed to Elec Man’s wide, dispersed beam… but at the end of the day I kinda prefer the Elec Beam ! It has a great crackling, raw-power kind of feel, while the Spark Shock is more of a typical projectile.

Spark Man does have an interesting design though – the spark plug look is distinct and makes it easy to understand his purpose even before you hear his name.

There’s still time to enter our Mega Man Legacy Collection art contest! The goal is to re-imagine the cover of one of the six original Mega Man games in a way that better represents the actual gameplay. Or at least  looks  like Mega Man this time 😛

CONTEST RULES: From now until August 14th, you can email one entry to  contest@capcom.com  (labeled MMLC ART CONTEST) and be entered for a chance to win one of six copies of the game. We will notify winners by September 4th, 2015 at the latest. Please submit an entry that depicts your ideal Mega Man box / key art, choosing one of the six Mega Man games collected in MMLC.  Please also read the full contest rules.

There is no min/max size but it’s generally nice to have art that’s high-res (i.e. not like 300 pixels wide or something)  and  if you’re taking a photo instead of scanning, just make sure the image is clean and it shows your work in a positive light.

And to keep the ball rolling, I worked with artist Chamba to re-imagine the MM1~6 covers. This week we’re debuting MM4, and here I wanted to have a cover that actually showed Mega Man using one of his stolen powers. The “Blue Bomber” aspect is lost, true, but given that this is number four in a series you can expect fans / kids of 1991 to recognize the name at least.

Dunno, that’s what I thought about for MM4 ( and MM3 was last week ) but we really want to see what  you have in mind!

Mega Man 5 image coming next Friday!

Round 1 of the Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition Style Tournamentbrought us some very impressive and creative Nero play, and the voters have spoken! Hit the jump for Round 1’s voting results as well as the rules for Round 2, which starts now!

This round was a close match with several strong, technical, and innovative contenders, and the vote turned into a bit of a tug-of-war. In the end, Serj Angelo came out on top, securing 33% of the electorate. Trailing just behind with 30% was DelusionaryKiller , with GarudaPSN coming in third with a respectable 19%.

Congratulations to Serj, and we hope to see all of our other contenders return in the coming rounds!  

Now then! Onto the rules for Round 2!

First, be sure to check the initial tournament post for important information about how to submit. 

FULL CONTEST RULES

Round 2 Rules: 

Character: Dante

Difficulty: Son of Sparda

Modifiers: Turbo Mode is optional! No Super Dante allowed. You may choose the costume of your preference. 

Mission: 12

Fight: “Meeting Room” fight, against the Mega Scarecrows. You do not have to perform the entire fight in 60 seconds, but the clip itself must be limited to a 60-second (or shorter) piece of the fight. It may, of course, be shorter than 60 seconds.

Deadline: Monday, July 27th @12:00pm (noon) PDT

Good luck, and may the most stylish player win!

Number: DWN-022

Weapon: Search Snake

Weakness: Needle Cannon

Like a tenacious snake, he steadily drives his prey into a corner… He moves about a lot, so stand still and attack.

At first glance, Snake Man doesn’t seem to follow the usual “industrial robot turned bad” format of many other bosses. However, the reason he’s designed after a snake is because his original purpose was to explore other planets and scurry around in search of raw materials. With that in mind, I can kinda see it – much better than a clumsy rover!

But – Wily turned him into a battle ‘bot like so many other Robot Masters, and he became one of the more iconic MM3 bosses.

After sending Snake Man to the scrap heap, Mega Man gets equipped with the Search Snake. True to its original purpose, the SS hugs the ground to track the lines and curves of the environment. It also happens to deal solid damage to Gemini Man :3

Snake Man’s stage is without a doubt my favorite of the MM3 lot. Obviously the giant snake enemies are cool (and v impressive by 1990 standards) but it was also such a themed-up stage in a game where the relationship between boss and stage isn’t always clear. Plus having a robot based on another living creature is an interesting angle.

We’ll finish up Mega Man 3 next week and then it’s off to Mega Man 4!

If you missed our latest post about the game’s extra features, check that out too.

Number: DWN-021

Weapon: Top Spin

Weakness: Hard Knuckle

Spins at high speeds and has a shield system that renders incoming attacks ineffective. He’s popular at New Year’s, because he can produce toy tops from his head.

Originally built to search for extraterrestrial components needed to build a massive peacekeeping robot, Top Man eventually fell to Dr Wily’s programming and became a fighting robot like his MM3 brothers. How he was meant to succeed in this mission, armed with just tops and the ability to spin fairly fast, is still a mystery :3

The fight against Top Man, however, is one of my favorites in MM3.  He has an enjoyable pattern that easy to understand and fun to practice. Easy with a buster, and cake with the Hard Knuckle!

Gaining the Top Spin  allows Mega Man to SPIIIIIN slam into enemies. It’s perhaps best known as the weapon to use against the aforementioned peacekeeping robot who… uh, is not used for peacekeeping. Someone set this thing to evil!

If ya like that art, don’t forget about the MMLC contest that runs for the next few weeks!

This is an exciting time for us here at Capcom as we launch our first BETA for SFV. Prior to getting started however, I wanted to provide you all with a bit more information on how the BETA will work in terms of matchmaking and availability, when characters will be unlocked and what exactly is happening with Fight Money!

EDIT: The BETA will go live 7/23 at 6pm PDT (7/24 3am EEST/ 7/24 10am JST).

When players first start the BETA, only Ryu, Chun-Li, M.Bison and Nash will be available for use. As we are testing out our content delivery system, Birdie and Cammy will not be available until Saturday. After getting to the selection screen, be sure to pick your favorite character and familiarize yourself with them in the grid. While in the grid, players should use this time to practice scenarios, configure buttons or go back to character select to pick another character as they will not be able to do so before battle.  For this BETA, you cannot invite friends into matches, all matches are chosen at random.  Additionally, share functionality is currently disabled in the BETA.  

As players wait in the grid, we will match players up with opponents. Please note that there’s a possibility of being matched with opponents ANYWHERE in the world during this BETA. This is NOT how the final product will function, as we are still working on our location tracking / match making algorithm.  The purpose of this test is to get a large variety of different connections globally, so we can use that data to refine our systems.   

To ensure that your SFV experience remains optimal throughout the BETA, daily maintenance is scheduled to take place throughout the BETA. From 11pm-1am PDT, the SFV servers will be unavailable for play. On the downside, SFV won’t be available to play, but on the upside, everyone’s PlayStation 4 will have a chance to cool down and players will get a chance to eat!    

For those wondering about Fight Money and experience points, those are placeholder at the moment and do not affect the experience.   

After players have had enough time with the BETA, we would appreciate it if everyone could take the Street Fighter V survey (European survey found here ) and leave feedback in this thread (that I’ll be personally viewing) if they so desire. 

For all of those who participate in the BETA, Capcom would like to thank you for participating in history and helping us make sure that Street Fighter V will be the greatest fighting game ever made!

Wow!  What an Evo, over 2,200 entrants came to Las Vegas this year to show what they’re made of. After an intense first day, we ended with an extremely diverse top 8 (a Juri made it!) and watched one of the most amazing Street Fighter performances by Gamerbee as he made his climb through losers all the way to the grand finals.

EDIT: A change for BGS has been added to the blog.

If there was one thing we pulled from this tournament, it’s that there’s plenty of life left in USFIV and we don’t see that changing anytime soon. That said, we’d like to let all of those within the competitive community know what our future plans are for the Capcom Pro Tour and which console the tour will continue on.

SCEA and Capcom have been hard at work at optimizing Ultra Street Fighter IV on PS4, and after the feedback we have received from fans and professional players, are happy to confirm that all issues that could affect competitive play have been resolved, while the input delay is now on par with the Xbox 360 version.  Thanks to the feedback that we have received, both Capcom and SCEA agree that this is truly the definitive version of Ultra Street Fighter IV and as such is worthy of being the new tournament standard. Needless to say, we will be migrating all future western Capcom Pro Tour events over to the PS4 as the PS4 is going to be the home of competitive play for Street Fighter moving forward. 

The availability of USFIV on PS4 in Asian territories will be coming soon.  Until then, Asian Capcom Pro Tour events will continue to run on PS3.  Once all versions of USFIV PS4 are released globally, it will be exciting to have all players on the same global standard. BGS however, will remain on PS3.

Now that we are half way through the Capcom Pro Tour, we now have eight qualified players and the competition is only getting more intense. If you haven’t transitioned over to the PS4 version of USFIV yet, now is the perfect time to do so and practice up before our next ranking event; VS Fighting on August 8th!

During SDCC we began taking pre-orders for a life-size, wearable, light-up Mega Man helmet . Today we have a few additional shots that should give you a even better look at the remarkable headpiece and how it functions.

The helmet can open up and then close again for a snug fit, while two layers of internal padding keep things comfortable. One layer is removable, however, to accomodate bigger noggins.

Pre-orders are moving along quickly but will end in the next few weeks, so if you’re thinking about picking one up, head over the Capcom Store before orders end! After that they go into production for a holiday / end of year release!

Just wish I had one of these back in 1990…

Number: DWN-020

Weapon: Hard Knuckle

Weakness: Magnet Missile

He has a special body reinforced with ceratanium. He weighs three tons. Dodge his Hard Knuckle at the edge of the arena.

Large and in charge, Hard Man throws his weight around big time. First he’ll fire his entire fist at you, then hurl his massive chassis your way with a screen-shaking thud. This impact will stun Mega Man in a manner similar to Guts Man , only this time you freeze even if you’re in the air!

Hard Man’s size also makes him an easy target for the Magnet Missile, which homes in and deals substantial damage. Despite his girth and imposing appearance, Hard Man falls with ease.

You’re then treated to the Hard Knuckle, which fires a floating fist across the screen. You can somewhat guide its path, although its initial slow firing speed makes it a difficult weapon to use outside of Top Man’s fight.

While he’s not a construction robot per se, his stage is reminiscent of Guts Man’s and you get a solid “excavation” feeling from the design. It’s been said Hard Man enjoys sumo wrestling, which makes me want to see him & Guts Man go at it!

The  Resident Evil 0 T-Shirt Contest wages on into Round 3 today, and we still want your designs and your votes! If you’re late to the party on this, be sure to read our initial blog post on the contest.

TL;DR? Design a T-shirt for Rebecca to sport in  RE0 as FREE-LC. Anyone who votes will receive a free download code for the shirt once it is available. But first we gotta figure out together what shirt it will be! Go participate !