TEAM IKARI! And a $4!7load of new info? Sorta.

Welp, without further ado, SNK wasted NO damn time dropping our classic Ikari Team on us, with a dual Ralf&Clark trailer! Like I suspected, they were not going to debut these two by themselves. 

                                                                        MAH BOIS.

While didn't get a cross changer intro, we got a *shout out* to it which amused me, plus a very sweet looking Metal Slug stage. Clark has his Frankensteiner back! We are looking at something close to XI Clark and I'm here for that. Ralf didn't get his backbreaker back(booo!) BUT, he looks like, from this angle, to be able to work with this new system pretty well(despite the fact that Clark kind of kicked his superior's ass a bit more in the video. Ralf got his shots in at the end, at least.) I love these big dorks.

I do like how the tackle super is utilized in this. EX Ralf Kick, and just in general I think Ralf having access to the armored guard attack and EX moves could well do more for him since he felt sort of empty in XII+. He could be a character that falls really well into the new system. I will say he looked a lot more fun and beefy than he did in XIII or XIV in this trailer, so there's that. Clark looks amazing and I will definitely be playing him some(who am I kidding, I play any and all Ikaris, though to differing levels of competency. I'm a pretty intermediate FG player as it is-I'm more of a theorizer and guide writer than I am competitor.)

(As a side note this makes me super happy overall. The Ikaris are one of my fav canon teams, and I'd actually pick them in a 'team competition' over old Yagami Team since I don't really click playstyle wise with Mature/Vice despite having Iori there as an anchor, where I can happily enjoy all 3 Ikaris here.) So yeah, 2 weeks, Ikari team complete, let's hold onto that Heidern team hope, shall we? ;) 

Overall mechanic wise, we got some goodies in this one.

Ralf right here does the guard attack. It gets blocked and punished with a grab. He does it again later where it's dodged. This attack is confirmed to be usable out of ANY mode, since we also see Leona and Ryo/Robert do it. 

Here, we see Clark quick activate into a New Red Mode! He then goes into an EX move and then ends it with a super. The Red Mode ends supers, unlike the Blue Mode. 

Here, we see Ralf utilize EX moves with NO RED GLOW, so these are still useable. (I slowed this down to make sure.) He does a level 1 super. Still no red glow; just the purpley activation flash to begin with. 

Finally here's a series of pictures: While it seems Clark keeps the red glow and loses it on the super after his purple activation...Ralf, on the other hand, does not seem to have a persistent red glow. So I'm not sure what's going on here? 

We don't see any of the big cancel combos like in the other videos(Leona did EX-Level 1-Level 3, no mode active, at least, but these guys didn't do any of that.) But really I think we have some more things to chew on. I dunno if Ralf's red glow isn't seeable due to it being a WIP or if he's using EX moves outside of Max Mode. 

I did a tweet storm on this one, but...I have a couple of theories here onto what we may be looking at. 

The 'Modes'-For lack of a better term, we'll call them Glows, and we'll call them Blue Glow and Red Glow. This way it doesn't really assume there are two modes, or two grooves or anything. Here is what we know:

Regardless of glow or mode, you can use EX's outside of them, and you can use that new guard attack whenever. 

The Blue Glow we have ONLY seen raw activated, in Mai's trailer.  We've seen it used in several, like Terry's, pointed out in the other blog. We know that we have seen people link together 3 supers, and the mode does not end until the Climax(as seen here again in Terry's.)  So we have not seen it quick activated. This glowmode or whatnot seems connected to DMs/Supers in some way. 

The Red Glow, seen above in the Ikari trailer, was quick-activated, and seemed to act Max-Modeish as we know. No idea of costs or anything. This ends on super. It shows it pretty clearly. 

Now, this entire time, I've made it pretty clear that I felt like SNK has been hinting toward some sort of dual-system of sorts. Modes, Grooves, whatever, but looking at the logo, and the website, and how they correspond with Shun'ei and all of that? I feel like they've been kinda shoving it in our faces that we might be seeing some sort of duality deal. Between the bars in the background of the website, the same bars in the trailer thumbnails and the clear blue-red split of the logo, this has been marketed toward us.

The Blue Glow seems tied, in some way, to DMs. That's the juice they always show off during that. The Red Glow seems more classic max-modey by the look(though this is the first time we've seen it.)

So from this, there are a few theories getting thrown around online. I'll go over them-

Mode Determined By Activation Method: This seems like it holds water. If you quick max, you get Red Glow, if you raw max, you get Blue Glow. This seems fairly simple, all told. Why they would tie different modes to activation methods, though, I'm not too sure about, and it's what gives me a bit of pause on it. Like, in previous games that had a Max Mode, you're able to actively raw activate into the mode if you want; this method means that you *cannot* raw activate into Red Mode, only Blue Mode. Thus while again, I feel like it holds water, it seems a bit weird you'd never be allowed to even raw activate. (I can see not allowing *quick* activation of a mode.) In 2k2UM for example, you could raw activate for 1 bar, or quick for 2. In this, we KNOW Red and Blue modes do different things; they show that pretty clearly in the videos, without a doubt. So we know they are not the same function. I just would give pause onto why they wouldn't allow people to raw activate into Red/Max mode. 

EDIT: This one comes with an addendum! I also have heard a few suggestions that's it's more of an 99/00 type deal, where you activate it two different ways(button wise, not necessarily quick vs. raw), only instead of Armor and Counter, it's Max and...DM? Whatever the blue mode is going to be. 

Grooves: I've seen the Groove Theory being kicked around, Red/Blue groove, Yin/Yang grooves, whatever, basically in the vein of ADV/EX or something, or Slash/Bust, Power/Speed or whatnot. I can see where one could guess this! It holds water too, in its way. I'm not sure this is going to be the case, since I sort of wonder if they'd go back to this in a more modern game, I'm not sure if they would. Another thing against it is that it feels like Blue Groove just...lets you crap out a lot of supers so far, and we haven't seen much else about it(yet.) But I can see where people could come up with this theory, very easily. On the same note, though, I will allow that it cleans up the above issue of 'Why does it seem you can only quick activate into red mode.' (For now. If they show anyone raw activating into red mode later? This changes things.) Also we don't know what OTHER abilities can link to what. Like what else does Blue Mode let you do? I think I'd be warmer to this theory if I had more info about what ELSE the 'grooves' do. 

Two Bars, Two Resources: So this is the third. Going by the trailers, I'm starting to wonder if this isn't a possibility. What leans me against this slightly is the fact the the Blue Glow doesn't really seem to do much more than to allow you to go off with your DMs; that said, once again-we dunno what would 'hook up' to what. Like what abilities feed off of what resource? Do EX moves and that guard attack feed off of one, and everything else from another? Since Blue Mode seems DM-oriented, is all the DM stuff(cancels, DMs, etc), attached to said Blue Mode? Do both bars have the same amount of 'charges'(3/4/5) depending on position, or does one have 3/4/5 and one 1/2/3? Does only one have variable position charges and the other is static(like XI's Skill Stocks?) This is all a big bunch of whatever...just like everything else, really. I'm just kicking around possible ideas going by everything I've been reading and ingesting. 

THAT SAID!

I'm not sure if the 2 resources case, that they are necessarily tied to the modes themselves; we don't need two modes to get two resources. We can have two resources under a Groove system, or whatever. The two can exist together; the main reason why I feel like we're getting 2 resources is because as of now, loading ALL the mechanics up on 1 bar, including(but not limited to given we may not have seen them all):

-Red(Max?) Mode

-Blue(DM?) Mode

-EX Moves

-The new Guard Attack

-Guard Cancel Rolls(still likely in)

-Supers/DMs themselves

-Possibly more we haven't seen yet!

I mean meter management meaning something-that I'm behind 100%, but it almost feels like it's two much on one little meter and would turn meter management into more of a micromanagey chore. But if stuff is split up? That, IMHO, would make it a little more elegant. Again; the game doesn't need resources tied to modes or anything, but even if it's the 'Quick vs. Raw Max', two meters could still come into play, like in 13, etc. 

Of course, we REALLY can't see what is tied to what. THAT SAID: 

It was pointed out to me in a Discord chat how the guard attack move has a purple flash. Purple=Red+Blue. It could be that, in the event of 2 meters(Red/Blue), that move costs some of each, possibly.

(The jury is out on this move. I have spoken to a number of people who have differing opinions of the move: some feel it will be very strong as is, given you can reverse momentum with it, and should have a heavier cost as a result since you can just hail mary your way out of a situation. Others don't think its strong enough to cost meter *as is*. I've seen some others think it should have a light cost. I am of the opinion that half a bar seems good for what you get-reversing momentum is powerful and this move does not look terribly unsafe, but a full bar may be too much. If it turns out that it does less than I think, or MORE than I think, my opinion can well change here. Also my opinion could change knowing what the mechanics are overall more, too.) 

As always, this is pure speculation. With no gameplay, we can only guess, and there's not even a UI to match up so we're still in even like, super speculation mode. In any case this video gave us some more to chew on until we get either more info or an actual gameplay drop, which I think is imminent; it feels like they're just waiting for the right time for it. 

Here's hoping for SOMETHING soon to see. E3, perhaps? I'm going to cross my fingers here. 

New Trailer-to no one's surprise, Welcome, Leona!

 Another week, another trailer. The silhouette was, IMO, pretty obvious, though there was a small chance of it being something else(in this case, Kasumi was brought up.) But c'mon, most of us knew it was Leona Heidern.

                                                            And she looks excellent!

I was very happy here given that I'm a big fan of the Ikari Warriors as an entire unit(Ralf is one of my mains as most know), and so starting them rolling out was something I was waiting for. I mean when it comes down to my favorites in KOF, it's basically the Sacred Treasures, Adelheid and the Ikari Warriors, and I have the first thing and now they're putting the third out!

She looks really cool in the trailer; it was not what I'd call a spectacular trailer in showing off, but it did well at what it did show off; it showed Leona, a beloved regular, doing her classic moves in cool ways. It showed us some combo example, and it gave her back her Heart Attack(AKA: her sticky earring bombs with delayed explosion), and those were fun in the past. She does the guard CD attack at some point(I still suspect that this is going to cost.) The delayed blast seems like it could be really fun for combos and I think putting this back in is going to make her more fun to play.

Also this video was the first time they didn't show any 'Max mode' stuff. She did not once, that I saw, get the blue glow, so whatever that mode is wasn't put in. They showed her do EX-Super Cancel-Dream Cancel, all out of max mode. This could in theory cost 4.5-5 bars depending on how expensive EX moves are, but I'm *still* thinking that we're looking at some sort of dual system-again, two meters, two resources, or two modes even-I won't rule out that third thing. 

Another bit is that showing off those supers out of max mode...we dunno what Max Mode even does still, except to enable triple supers, which I cannot think is the only thing. I am admittedly getting antsy on the system stuff. Not that I don't trust it-it looks fun so far! But I just wanna see it already. Hell, I'd be happy to just see the UI; they don't have to explain anything, just show the UI. I'm sure it'll keep us talking about it. I mean they could even show a *picture* of it and I'd be fine! 

Anyway, not much system stuff shown except for showing you can do some stuff out of the mode. But this time, name-wise, she's actually called Leona Heidern(where they often left her last name out in older games.). Also, her artwork and a blurb popped up today: 

One CAN read 'Important Mission' as an ':O' moment, but then when you think about it, the Ikaris so far had helped stop doomsday lasers(NESTS), as well as doomgates(Ash Saga, when they were pretty overall important, even moreso than they USUALLY are), and given that Ikari 2 had Ralf and Clark fighting aliens(I don't even think I remember seeing those games cut from the canon, either), 'Important Mission' could mean either "Huge" or "Tuesday" for them. Or that just may be the same damn thing. 

Now what team do I think she'll be on? Well the Ikari Warriors of course, but I'll allow a small chance that she could be with Heidern himself instead of Ralf and Clark, though I think the latter is MUCH more likely. (Though I do think Heidern is forming his own team.) I'm not ruling OUT the Heidern/Leona/X team, but I just think she is more likely with Ralf&Clark, due just the huge amount of closeness she has with those two. 

                                                                    I mean...;_;

So we'll see. We may get more hints on this soon. But the chances of her leaving *The Ikari Squad* are less than nil; she would never abandon her close people, and Heidern would never send her with strangers. She really doesn't talk to anyone but her squad. It would be senseless and just go against everything. Heidern taking her is one thing but having her on a different squad in general? Not happening. In her case it's more a guess of 'Which Ikaris is she going with.' And seeing Traditional Ikari(with Heidern taking Whip, given they were both DLC as well) is one of the teams I can see sticking. 

Team Hints?

Looking over old videos, I was trying to see if I could find any actual team hints for the team-ups. While there are In Hindsight things, they're very hard to tell while they're happening, even though I did call the Sacred Treasures for a myriad of reasons. CYS notwithstanding(we knew they would be together), there were some things that one COULD, if you're going a little Pepe Silvia, see as team hints.

Team Hero: Benimaru's shirt was seemingly the giveaway here(and what I saw, was the reason some people did indeed predict him for Hero Team.) Nakata even pointed this out in his art, talking about his updated look for the team.

Sacred Treasures: For me there were numerous hints. Even putting the other story bits of resurrections aside, Kyo forcing Benimaru to mentor the kids(one with some dangerous power he could barely control) told he had far more important things to do than to drink with Shingo, and that meant Treasures duty. Then there was the fact that Iori and Kyo both had their symbols in their level 3's. Finally, Iori getting Orochi's voice superimposed over his during said level 3? I think in this case it was like 'Yeah these guys are a thing.' So this was like, hints even before the trailer, and then hints right away in the first trailer with Iori's treasure and voice, and it kept going. 

Art of Fighting: In this case, it seemed to be King's AoF2 stage. That was what seemed to split people on who the 3rd of AoF was going to be. In hindsight, I could see this as the hint that putting King on her AoF 2 stage would put her in AoF. Yuri in Pao Pao is interesting since Pao Pao has been used for WFT a lot, but ALSO it was the OG AoF's stage, so that was a bit of a ???, but seeing King on AoF2 I feel may have been the stronger hint. We didn't see this until King was announced, though, so she wasn't the first in line. 

Fatal Fury: A little mix of things here. For one-this is one of those teams that rarely breaks. The only time they did was in Ash Saga, when Andy was off training Hokutomaru for two games and Joe had to defend his title for one. But it seems like if they're all *in*, they're all together. Now that's not really a hint, though-but I sort of feel like their picks of soundtrack for Andy and Joe, as well as use of the Beach Stage, were enough of a subtle hint that we'd see these three together as usual. Hell, thinking how it's also the 'Year of Fatal Fury' like they were saying, seeing Joe's trailer right off the bat use his old music was probably at least a small hint itself. 

Unformed Teams:

WFT: I don't even know the hints here. I've been looking over both Mai's and Yuri's stuff, and I can't say I have found anything. The only thing I have here is the knowledge that this team *usually*, when they're around(well, half the time anyway), takes on a new, or newer, lady in their ranks, like I discussed. But that's not an in-trailer hint so much as it is just some team history.

Ikari Warriors: So far we've only had Leona's trailer. She's on stages that we've seen already, so nothing new there, but they use Irregular Mission as the track for it, which was the Ikari's theme in KOF XIII(which was also subsequently the KOF where they were doing a lot of work to solve the plot involved in the Ash Saga-and the Ikaris were quite important in the Ash Saga overall, even narrowly winning the '03 tournament. Which then resulted in Adel and Heidern working together in, you guessed it, 13, behind the scenes, since the character cuts galore happened.) Leona was with Ralf & Clark there, and she also was very very steadfast in joining them in that one as shown in the team stories(which, well, 13 team stories aren't a hint, they're just team history.) 

Besides the track *possibly* alluding to her teammates(Ralf/Clark probably? That said that's...sort of the common guess), her cool sentai outro pose she does could also be a bit of a Ralf/Clark hint? I'm kinda squinting here but we might no more after we see more stuff popping up. 

Alrighty, decent sized blog this week! Here's hoping for some more news incoming or some more hints next week. More mechanics, a UI picture maybe...? I can hope. 

Welcome, Team Orochi! Also Welcome Team AoF! And...New Mechanics?

Well the boy was announced last week, closing off CYS, AKA The New Faces, AKA The Band, and in this, officially known as 'Team Orochi', which basically answers any questions about Orochi's involvement. (How? We can't say. We just know they're called Team Orochi, and in Yashiro's announcement, the Four Heavenly Kings were mentioned...so could we see Goenitz, as well?) 

                                                             In all of his super-fast glory.

Quality-wise, this trailer was excellent I felt; probably one of the best yet just in terms of actual showing off. While they still didn't drop new system mechanics, they showed off a nice portion of Chris' kit, and it wasn't too short, either. It showed off some things like EX Scramble Dash(which hits low from across the damn screen), the classic jump CD(how terrifying will it be this time?) and EX Shooting Dancers. I legit think he was a good watch and he looks like he'll be great fun to play. His climax was sweet too. He seems to still look like a little shit, which is perfect. 

And oh yeah, the greetings are intact! Which is important. All in all, great trailer, he looks like fun, and it's awesome to see the band back together after so long! 

BUT...as for new system Mechanics...

We DID see something new in this OTHER new trailer! Welcome, Ryo and Robert!!

After a very cool intro(one of the coolest intros IMHO, we need more like this-a nice shout-out to AOF3 here), we are greeted with some pretty good gameplay between the two of them(PS: I DEMAND a Ralf&Clark trailer, since now duo trailers are on the menu.). We get to see them do a bunch of their classic moves, we have projectiles available, and it's always nice when they showcase some actual combat between the two(like they did in the Fatal Fury trailer.) 

(As a side note, King is capping out this team, it turns out! While it wasn't my first guess, it was my second-I do think the WFT is going to be some combo now of Mai, Yuri, and one of the new 14 ladies. I was leaning a little more toward King being on WFT, but this was not the first time she made an appearance on AoF; the other two times she did were 2000, and XI.) Ironically, I had tripped over a very old prediction list(from like, August or something-way back there), and I had King on the AoF team. I had changed it later after thinking. You know what they say about going with your first instinct. 

So this now brings the completed teams up to five: Hero Team(Shun'ei, Meitenkun and Benimaru), Sacred Treasures(Kyo, Iori, Chizuru), Fatal Fury(Terry, Andy, Joe), Orochi(Yashiro, Shermie, Chris), and now Art of Fighting(Ryo, Robert, King.) 

This will be Benimaru's 5th time on the Hero Team-the last time he was here was, to be sure, XI. (ST's last appearance, which I mentioned before, was sorta '03-they entered solo, but had a team story. It was kinda weird.) 

As for the new mechanic! you see it a few times in the video, and it has a purpley looking aura around it. While no one knows the name of it, it seems to be an amalgamation of 12's and Neowave's guard breaks/attacks. In 12, the move wasn't unblockable, and didn't blow back, but did inflict crumple. In Neowave, it had armor and blew back. In this one, it blows back in the air, inflicts crumple on the ground, and is blockable; it also appears to be armored, but I can't 100% tell for sure(it seems like it one of the times in the video.) So yeah; it LOOKS like a mix. 

I'm not sure if it's safe; Ryo seemed to be pretty late on his punish there(their DP startup is both 4f-according to current frame data, we dunno if they'll be changing this), but again, it does appear to be armored. It might not be *incredibly* unsafe though. It does also look like it can potentially mess with delayed blockstrings, which yeah, may require this thing to have a cost otherwise. I kinda feel like it'll get too out of hand if it didn't. 

I suspect-back to pure speculation-this is going to cost some sort of meter. Which brings me back again to the OTHER speculation that I have that we're going to have two resources. I can't say how they are going to be divided up yet, but I think for now we can break down what we have. 

So what do we have so far?

Going down the line of Stuff Shown In Videos, mechanic-wise, we have: 

-Some sort of 'max mode' like thing, with the blue aura. We have seen it raw activated(in Mai's trailer), but we have yet to see a Quick Max combo(to my knowledge, but someone may have missed it in the past trailers.) We really don't know what else this thing does, though, besides enable those dream cancel things(see below.) We haven't really seen it do anything else(now that EX stuff can be used outside of it). So I think this will be a wait and see thing. 

-Super Cancels, and then Dream/Climax Cancel back(depending on how you want to spin it; it's basically a level 2 to level 3 cancel. I'm old school so I still use Dream Cancel.) This appears to be able to be used IN this max mode and it ends the mode. We do not know if it's useable outside of this mode yet(we have not seen it done so.) You can cancel a level 1 to a level 2, to a level 3. The first two do not end the mode. 

-EX moves useable outside of said mode. 

-The 'new' guard break blowback/crumple attack.

-Just Defend still exists(not a metered thing but a thing that exists.) 

So right here there's four things and I'm again guessing that last thing is going to cost meter of some kind. Given that I can see Guard Cancel Roll still in(which traditionally costs some meter), this is a big reason why I've been speculating we will get two meters/resources for this(besides the marketing on the website which I mentioned in previous blogs.) If we only have one, it might get *too* overloaded. Even with EX moves only costing say half a meter, I kinda feel like there will be a bit too much loaded on. 

With some more thought(branching out from older blogs), the potential two resources could be split several ways; I'm just not sure how it would be split for sure. Part of me thinks they might link the EX meter with the Max mode gauge(leaving Supers on another with this new mechanic to be decided.) Another side thinks they might link EX's/this new mechanic and max/supers on another. And again-we don't even know if there are *other* mechanics yet. There's a lot we still don't know to make total calls, but I have noticed, going around social media and the like, that a 2 resource system seems to be generally suggested more often than not. So unless they're taking a *lot* of people for a ride, I think there's some stuff here to make a few educated guesses. 

Anyway, looking forward to next week then! Also, SNK, when it comes time...please?