Destructoid put our Terry Bogard hats on and raided the King of Fighters XII championship tournament, hosted by Ignition Entertainment, SNK PLAYMORE, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) and the EVO Championship Series, here in Los Angeles, the weekend before E3 kicks off.
The tournament was to promote the launch of the console version of the game, set to hit retail in July for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Over one-hundred players gathered to fight for the grand prize, a King of Fighters XII arcade cabinet, imported from Japan. Several PS3 consoles were running the console version, freely open for play, all manned by tournament players who had likely never played the game before today.
We caught up with Ignition's Shane Bettenhausen at the event to chat a bit about the tournament and the upcoming console game release. We talked a bit about the sexy 2D hand-drawn game sprites as well as the differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3's online modes, all while DJ Anoop spun tunes and sexy undead nurses flirted with guests.
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
Meet the rest of the team
The event was definitely fun. Ignition put together a nice tournament, cool prizes, and the works. Game looks gorgeous, too. Looking forward to getting owned online.
I had no clue that Shane went from 1up/EGM to Ignition and landed himself on the team responsible for bringing the sequel to one of the most popular fighting franchises of all time onto consoles. Kudos to him.
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2:00 PM on 05.31.2009
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*reminisces*
jim is incredibly fucking tall and just as fucking hillarious in person