By showing off every characters Astral Finish of course! Astral finishers are similar to the Destruction moves of Guilty Gear ie fatalities. The opponent has to have a small amount of health left, you need a full guage, and the testicular fortitude to witness some of the coolest moves ever seen(well, except for Arakune and Carl's, why da weak finishes, Arc?).



Astral finishes weren't available to every character in the arcade version, in arcades only Ragna, Rachel, and v-13 had astral finishes. I suppose that was story related with their being super-beings or something. In the console version the astral finishes for each character must be unlocked through playing the arcade mode.

Speaking of unlockables, one interesting bit is "Teach me, Miss Litchi!". Taking a break from fighting, Litchi and the rest of the cast teaches Taokaka about the world of BlazBlue. It gives a little insight to the story of the game along with humor, other game references, and a bit of 4th wall breaking. Here's one I found funny which includes Tager and his creator Kokonoe who is like a bitchier Washu







It's too bad kokonoe isn't a playable character.

"Escapingjail" at justin.tv is someone who got BlazBlue early and has been playing the hell out of it for the past few days streaming it all the while. He seemed to be on a Bang kick earlier today so who know's you might see some Bang greatness. Why don't more fighting game characters have a theme song that blares through the speakers when you initiate a certain super? Interesting banter in the chat and messages in Live.

"I'll trade you a pepsi and a neighbors car battery for your early copy"
"throw in a jarate and we have a deal"
"no deal, I know what you're trying to do, clone me"

Apparently Gamestop may have Xbox versions today, PS3 versions haven't even been shipped to america yet. Oh a sad panda is I.

Watch live video from BLAZBLUE LIVE on Justin.tv

I also think I have uncovered the lineage of Bang Shishigami



Multiplied by awesome of course.


Watch live video from BLAZBLUE LIVE on Justin.tv

Unless you happened to reserve it at an import store...but you don't get the uber cool LE pack for the US version, do you, HA HA!

But seriously enjoy the game if you got it. The rest of us will have to wait a week but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves also.

One of the things that makes BlazBlue shine is it's music. With the music headed by Daisuke Ishiwatari, it is one of the more interesting soundtracks for a fighting game. But I'm too lazy to embed every song from youtube so I brought you these goodies.

Instead of the arcade opening, players will be greeted with an animated opening produced by Studio Gonzo (they also produced cutscenes that will pop up in the game) which features the song Iconoclast by Kotoko. I don't follow JP music so I have no idea how popular she is (actually I don't follow much music at all, I gotta work on that), anyone heard of her?


I think it fits the game sets up the action. Sorry for the audio, it was the only video of the console opening I could find.

Here is the song in it's entirety.


A while back I found this set of videos which feature a violinist playing his take on some of the music. Violins make everything more awesome, don't they?

Gale - Bang Shishigami's theme


Lust Sin - Jin Kisaragi's theme


Rebellion - Ragna's theme


Check out the originals here along with the rest of the soundtrack. I'm sure the console version will have much more lovely sounds to add to it though. GET HYPED!!!

BlazBlue is set to release in a tad over a week on the 30th(less if you're in japan, the 25th). It can't come soon enough, I spend most days scouring for match vids and such and game across these interesting vids.

Aksys released some videos to IGN showcasing the characters. For most people who have been following this game the interesting thing about these along with showing some new Astral Finishes would be the english voices. I suppose with Street Fighter 4 having done this also, having english voice options could possibly be turning into a trend. With this being an Arc System Works game you can expect the characters to be saying a bit more than their move names and talking during winposes. These characters will chatter quite a bit compared to SF4. I'm no huge anime nut so I'm not as violently allergic to english dubs as some so I'm hoping this turns out decent.


Ragna grunts, shouts, and sounds like a general badass.


Jin sounds tougher than his japanese counterpart...did they get that line from the Green Lantern oath?


Noel is kind of what I would think she'd sound in english and apparently her stage music now has lyrics. Also a glimpse of Bang's voice, I can't wait to hear his english voice when he's bouncing all over the screen in furinkazan mode.


Litchi Faye Ling. "It's the booby lady!" LOL.

As with most fighting games that get english dubs I suppose it'll be a mixed bag, but there will always be the option of switching them to the original japanese voices which is always a good thing.

A while back I made the plunge and finally got a joystick, the Mad Catz Fight Stick SE. I enjoyed it a while but had plans to mod it since I had been lurking the shoryuken tech forums daily.

I started off by painting it, I had intended to get simple vinyl die but ended up getting some rustoleum vinyl coating stuff and clear gloss enamel.



It turned out okay except for over doing the start and select buttons and having to sand them and their holes to hell and back.


Later I received the Sanwa JLF, Seimitsu PS-14-GNC's, and a Black Mesh balltop from Gareg's Gamingnow.net



These went in with ease, except for the x button which took a bit more patience.


Lastly I created something to replace the art on top with paint.net. This really does look much better I just can't quite seem to size it smaller without mucking it up. If anyone wants I could upload the PSD file somewhere.

Shoryuken.com has plenty of templates for joysticks floating in their boards.

I went the extra mile (and dollar, ouch) to have it printed by mamemarquees.com and was very satisfied with the result. The material they use feels very tough and resilient. I love how my print came out. Only bad part was how tough it was to cut with an exacto knife or maybe I need more exacto skills. The latin quote translates to "To make peace, prepare for war" I thought it fitting of Holy Order Sol from Guilty Gear.


I took apart the seimitsu buttons to place the button art inside, once again I need to mention how tough mamemarquee's material is and I'm a hobby knife noob. I'm truly surprised I didn't slice my fingers open.



And voila! I also added two extra springs from home depot to the stick to tighten it up a bit, I immediately noticed the difference.


I love how everything turned out and want to thank the Shoryuken community for all the info, links, templates, paint.net(I love making fire out of gradients, and google for image search, also Mad Catz. I just wish someone made plexi-tops for the SE, that would just make it perfect.

Now if only I could improve my fighting game skills as easily.

With less than a month until one of the finest looking arcade fighters hits consoles, a new trailer for Blazblue has been released. It shows off it's new animated cutscenes, which show two new characters (will they be playable or are they just characters mentioned in story mode?), I can't tell because I can't read japanese but I'm pretty sure they mention the online features, some character dialogue ala Guilty Gear story mode with a big surprise, (and perhaps one of the most random lines) an English dub option. Perhaps not something a lot of fans want (I always switch the voices to japanese in Maximum Impact 2 and SF4), but nice to know they included it for the people who do want it. To finish it off with a little flair, peeks of Litchi and Hakumen's Astral Finishers (fatality/destruction move/etc).



I just hope I'll be competent with a joystick by that time. I ordered a Mayflash arcade stick, hoping to have it in hand by now so I could adjust to it by the time BlazBlue came out and later King of Fighters XII. But alas, it never came so I have to go through amazon to get my money back from this seller. However I managed to snag a SFIV Fight Stick (SE) from amazon when they restocked recently, and I do mean amazon not some sleazy scalper so I should be getting it within a week. But I still have to wait and I'm starting to hate my ps3 dual shock, it's nowhere as dependable as Ol' Rattles (my trusty broken in original Dual Shock, got it along with Tekken 3 back in the day). I'll eventually mod it, I whipped this up in Paint.Net. Still need to work on the buttons, tell me what you think.



Or should I adapt this design I had originally planned for the Mayflash to the Fight Stick?



I suck at resizing pictures.