Arc Revolution Cup 2015 concluded this weekend! This year’s Arc Revo was a big departure from previous years for several reasons, one in that the game lineup expanded to 4 titles. Guilty Gear Xrd and Blazblue CP Extend were featured as the main games, but there were also side tournaments for Persona 4 Arena Ultimax and Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]. By popular demand they also changed the format from singles to 3on3 teams, and expanded the brackets to allow 64 teams each to participate! As a result, this was the biggest Arc Revo in its history, and it definitely showed on the stream as the production quality was much lower than previous years. Pre top 8 for BB and GGXrd was kind of a mess, with only around 30% of the time dedicated to showing matches. There was a lot of dead air and footage of the commentators talking about brackets. They also did away with the concert that was a mainstay from the previous years.

In any case, top 4 did not have any problems! You may have already seen the hilarious .gif of Team Unusual’s botched entrance in grand finals. Very unexpected result this year because Ogawa’s team was definitely the favorite to win. It is also special because traditionally Machaboo’s team has always lost to Ogawa’s every time they had to fight each other in a big tournament, so this is his revenge after all these years. If you would like to watch the archives, Arc Revo always uploads the full tournament to Youtube eventually so it is just a matter of time. For the stream version, Youtube user Fahadouken has already put up everything on his channel.

Arc Revo Cup 2015 Guilty Gear Xrd Preliminaries
Arc Revo Cup 2015 Guilty Gear Xrd Top 4
1st – Dogura(Sin), Machaboo(Ky), Kazunoko(Sol)
2nd – Ogawa(Zato), Karinchu(Millia), Koichi(I-No)
4th – Sharon(Elphelt), Hasegawa(I-No), Zadi(Sin)
4th – Day(Elphelt), eki-chan(Millia), Sabamiso(Bedman)

At Arc Revo, they also unveiled the arcade opening for Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator, which you can see on the ASW Youtube channel. The game will be coming to arcades a little more than a week from now on August 25th. Be sure to watch the entire video because Jam Kuradoberi makes her official entrance at the end! Unfortunately her original voice actress Manami Komori could not reprise her role. But her new voice actress Rei Matsuzari has spoken up on Twitter stating that she has been a longtime GG fan, and apparently went into voice acting because of a chance meeting with Komori. So I think she will do a fine job. Since she was not present in location tests, Jam will not be immediately playable in Revelator. She will likely be a time release like Ramlethal was in the original Xrd.

In other news, Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator was briefly featured on the Sega AP channel during a Dengeki broadcast, and they demoed Jack-O’s stylish mode! The guy playing is just mashing buttons, but you can get a brief glimpse of the new graphics and you can also hear Jack-O’s voice. She kind of sounds like Millia with that big sister type voice. You can watch the clip on Dailymotion and Youtube.

Episode 5 of Daigo Umehara’s training with Machaboo for Toshin Gekitotsu is out! This time, sako dropped by so it’s definitely worth a watch to see all 3 of them go at it.

Because of Evolution, GG has gotten quite a popularity boost outside of the fighting game circle so many of the Japanese players have been writing informational pieces about the game! Tenma0105 and greatfernman on Twitter have been translating them into English, and I have listed them below.
Traps in GG that beginners fall for easily by Konsome
Philosophy of analyzing losses by Nage
Blue bursts by Nage
Limiting nervousness by Nage
Advantageous positions and Dash FD by Nage
GGXrd tier list by Nage