Jason Axelrod

Building a stream setup is an incremental process. First you need to put together a system to record your games, then you need to add vocal commentary, and finally you take all that it do it live. Last week, I went through the basics on how to record your video games. The first thing we accomplished was a setup able to handle the recording of video from your console to your computer.

However, just recording video games isn't enough; you need a way to infuse commentary into your recordings. There are many ways to add commentary; if you were just dealing with recordings, and not a live stream, you could simply add a voice over in post-production using a PC microphone and a video editing program such as Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas. However, since the end result of these articles is to have a live stream, this just isn't good enough.

Fighting games are getting more popular, and as fighting games get more popular, the number of tournaments increases. Something we've witnessed in the SF/MvC community is that when there is a glut of tournaments, the tournaments without a live stream of the events often feel "less important". Thats not to say they in fact, are less important; but they get less exposure and consequently often feel less credible.

As most of you know, we have our own live stream. And while the lack of Soulcalibur on the stream is credited to the decline of popularity in the game, I have still incrementally improved on my equipment so that when Soulcalibur does get popular again, we'll have something special. I often get emails and private messages from people asking what kind of equipment I use; so I figured I would use this column to outline whats needed to give a decent quality stream.

If you were watching my Salty Battles #08 stream yesterday, you may have witnessed that sometime during the event I was informed of a new "hot topic" within the fighting game community (FGC). Admittedly, I have done zero research on this topic; but the facts on the issue are not nearly as important as the public perception and what they believe to be true.

My knowledge of the topic in question is directly related to discussions (or should I say, arguments) with the stream monsters on the twitch.tv/8wayrun channel. Readers may say "but thats not true", or "he/she never said that"; but as stated before, its all about perception. This article is my entry into the ongoing and current debate known as "eSports VS FGC"... Don't want to hear what I have to say? Well I have a website, so I have a voice.

Well North East Championship 12; which is basically the most important tournament in North America for the Soulcalibur community is this weekend! Most are considering this the last hurrah for SC4 and this is also the first hands-on public appearance for SC5 and TTT2 in America.

Originally, we toiled with the idea of not doing a "team" tournament this time around... but after numerous complaints we have decided to bring it back; but slightly altered. We will be doing a team tournament, but the teams will be "random". Players name's will be placed in a hat, and players will be paired up at random.

Signup for the SC4 Random Team Tournament begins at 1:00pm on Saturday, December 3. Registration will close at 1:45pm; Because we need a number of players divisible by 3, if we don't get a rounded number of players, the last player or two will have their entries refunded... Signup for the SC4 Singles tournament will begin immediately towards the end of the Team tournament.

I've just finished upgrading our forum to XenForo 1.1! There are lots of new changes, so I figured I would make a new announcement thread to go over it all.

Before I get started though, I'm sure a lot of you are already wondering what happened to the dark skin. Well it's not gone permanently, I'm just waiting for an update to get issued for it and then it will return. Don't fret, it will be back in no time. In the meantime, there are a lot of changes of which you guys should be made aware.

While its nothing new that Namco has featured guest character designs in previous Soulcalibur games; this new one its a bit of a surprise, considering the source. In a new report from 1up; it has been announced that Mari Shimazaki has optioned to create three costumes for the game, including Leixia's 1P.

Mari Shimazaki was the character designer who came up with Bayonetta. The 1up article also features a bit more information about how Shimazaki found herself with the job, and a drop from Hisaharu Tago in how Bayonetta was one of their original guest character choices, but was excluded because of time constraints. Future DLC?

Today, Famitsu announced four new characters for Soulcalibur V! While Yoshimitsu was "sort of" announced in the custom character trailer, there was never any real confirmation. As well, hints about Aeon Calcos comings from soundtrack leaks (the same way Raphael was discovered early). Aeon Calcos in case you don't know, is the original Lizardman!

In addition to the return of the immortal Cervantes, Namco has revealed a new staff user by the name of "Xiba". Xiba, a character clearly designed around the Monkey King from the Journey to the West story in Chinese Folklore. Several months back, Daishi stated on his twitter that Kilik was an "ill-fated" character. With the introduction of Xiba, it begs the question: "What happened to Kilik?"