Soulcalibur V comes out on January 31! A week before the special occasion, Namco Bandai will be hosting a open-door pre-release party in the hometown of their US headquarters, San Francisco. As I said, its an open door event; but because of size of the venue, they will start closing the doors when they reach capacity.

So if you find yourself bored on a Tuesday night in San Francisco; you should stop on by. Attendees will be some of the first to get their hands on exclusive Soulcalibur swag, and get the chance to meet the people responsible Soulcalibur V. Myself and Malice will also be in attendance!

Last Saturday began quite typically for me. I passed most of the day in a park near my apartment, enjoying the mild northern California winter and altogether being excruciatingly wholesome. It was not to last, however. My usual routine of smelling flowers, writing poetry, and being kind to animals was cut short by the arrival of Namco Bandai’s FilthieRich. He approached me, introduced himself, and asked me one fateful question: “Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?”

I awoke hours later in what can only be described as a lair. The space was dark and cramped, its walls and floor adorned with blinking lights, dangling electrodes, whirring machinery. Someone had stolen my shoes. Just as I felt fear couldn’t tighten its grip on my heart any more viciously, Rich appeared once again from the shadows obscuring the far end of my cell. “Hey, wanna play some Soul Calibur 5?” he asked.....

ShinBlanka has just finished conducting a broadcast of his Final Round podcast, where FilthieRich was on as the special guest. The podcast begins with Rich's background in fighting games, then later on into Soulcalibur V.

For those who missed the broadcast live, you can find the main archives after the break. Also, don't forget to register for Final Round XV which takes place on March 2-4, 2012 in Atlanta, Georgia, and has a $5000 pot bonus from Namco Bandai.

While checking Destructoid's latest video which briefly touches on their criticism of the latest ad for Soulcalibur V, it was also mentioned that they will be streaming their hands-on of the game on their Twitch TV show Mash Tactics.

You can catch this episode of Mash Tactics live at 4PM Pacific on Monday, January 9th, 2012. Also, FilthieRich has something special planned for this broadcast, so you can find additional details and a link to the stream archive can be found after the break.

For a while, I was hoping that this type of collaboration would take place for Soulcalibur V in Northern California, and now it is official. Haunts over at iPlayWinner has announced that they are teaming up with FilthieRich to give people in the NorCal area an early crack at Soulcalibur V, which will be held on Sunday, January 8th at SouthTown Arcade in San Francisco, California.

For those who are unable to attend, iPlayWinner will also be running a stream starting at 6PM Pacific. Additional details and an embed of the stream can be found after the break.

Lately it seems like we're being flood with Soulcalibur V news and media the closer we are getting to the retail release of the game, which has recently went gold for anyone who happened to miss that announcement.

On Thursday, both Gamespot and IGN uploaded videos of their hands on with Soulcalibur V. The videos are worth checking out for those who want to hear more of the announcer or for those who want to get a better look at the stages or Natsu's second player costume. Don't expect much in the gameplay department.

And now we finally get to the meat of the matter. In truth, everything I explained so far is simple; how to record your games in part 1, and then how to add commentary in part 2. This is all simple stuff, even part 3. Streaming is easy: its easy to do things right, and at the same time its easy to do things wrong.

As I've stated previously, I have been releasing videos online for almost a decade now. Back when I started, bandwidth and space wasn't nearly as fast and abundant. So you had to learn "tricks"; things like "b-frames", "QP", "trellis" or "umh/esa/tesa" became the norm. Ever wonder how fansubbers release episodes in high quality with low file sizes? Sadly, most of these techniques can't be used in the world of streaming; but much of the knowledge can still be put into practice.