Free Step Dodge

Today in Paris, France @Gehaktbal was able to defeat Ky-Dragon in the grand finals of Stun Academy #3 and providing him a paid trip into the Dead or Alive Festival tournament being held in Tokyo, Japan on August 1, 2015.

The Dead or Alive Festival will be featuring an international set of players including America's MC Kwiggle and XCalibur BladeZ.

Congratulations to Gehaktbal for his win, and all of the players who attended Stun Academy #3 to support their scene, their game, and their players.

Tom Lee and Big E Gaming have just announced that Kristian "MC Kwiggle" McLean and Ryane "XCalibur BladeZ" Jimenez will be representing North America at the Dead or Alive Festival in Tokyo, Japan on August 1st. The pair will be provided airfare and board by Koei Tecmo.


Ryane was known as one of the early competitors to dominate the Dead or Alive 5 and Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate scene with his Helena, Alpha 152, and Eliot. He's also been known to play a variety of characters in addition to those two so he may have some up his sleeve for just such an occasion. It will be interesting to see if Ryane uses his Alpha 152 in Japan, as it's been reported that Japan believes her to be one of the worst characters in the game...

The genius game theorist, whom is aware of his catching good looks... pastes his face onto Christie and says that the skimpy outfits are distracting and that the community leaders were wrong for the soft ban. My question is, if this is a strategy; shouldn't it be banned? Wouldn't that mean the community did the right thing? Because it's not a fair strategy if it was ever considered one to begin with.

I didn't support the soft ban on outfits, but at this point I'm not sure I really care. Do you agree with this game theorist, or do you think his claims are ridiculous?

Team NINJA has released a new statement for Core Fighters on Youtube boasting the 3.5 million downloads and has announced that Rig will be free for Core Fighters until 7/14.

For Core Fighters on XBOX ONE you can get: Tina, Bass, Jann Lee and Hitomi for 4.99 USD. This is a nice deal for anyone interested in checking out two of the best grapplers. Hitomi and Jann Lee are also great starter characters for anyone beginning.

If you're new to DOA you can see just how competitive our community is by checking out our most recent tournament ECT 2015. Get practicing because EVO is next month, fighters!

The Dead or Alive Festival voting has been opened up on Big E Gaming's website. It allows one vote per day per person, and the top two voted players will be flown to Tokyo, Japan in order to represent the North American DOA scene in the DOA Festival tournament event.

Be sure to cast your vote at the website, and results are hidden from view so you won't know if who you voted for is winning or not until the official announcement is made at the end of the poll. Below is the official information on the poll:

Big E Gaming said:

We are happy to be a part of the Dead or Alive Festival hosted by KOEI TECMO and Team NINJA. We will be running a poll from now until June 30th 12 midnight PST to find out the top 2 players that you want to compete in Japan. Results will be posted on July 3rd, 2015. You can choose from the following list of the highest ranked players in...

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After quite a long break, DOA is finally back on tournament stream with East Coast Throwdown, the next tournament in Team NINJA's Battle Royal. Expect high quality matches and lots of effort from the fantastic players in our community.

Stream "We got shafted" | Schedule

Team NINJA announced today the Steam "Monster" Sale has begun, and the Online Patch will arrive at the end of the month.

Dead or Alive Game said:

Steam "Monster" Summer Sale has just begun! 30% Off! Also Fun Theme Costume Set and Halloween Debut Costume Set are 50% off! One more.. Your wait's almost over! The Online Patch (Rank Match) will go live at the end of the month! Thanks for your patience!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/311730/

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Currently, the "30% discount" appears to be in addition to the existing 10% discount that was in effect due to Online Networking not being available. This means the game has a total discount of 40% off making the game available for $23.99 off - saving $16. The game is also...

"Thank you to everyone who attended, watched, or helped out with Midwest Championships this weekend. It was a fun event that I hope everyone enjoyed." -- @Vandy

Congratulations to Hoodless aka Mark Macklin for winning MWC. Hoodless has also uploaded replays from the tournament... which are all now available in the improved media section.


In Grand Finals, @SilverForte goes head on with Hoodless using Raidou, a new character we haven't seen much of yet in the tournament scene. Silver is able to close in a few rounds, but has a few problems opening up Jacky for a win.


Silver and Vandy have a down to the wire set.

A small update for Last Round just came out, and this patch is for PS4. The Xbox One version is still under testing and should be released soon. There are no balance adjustments, but it does fix a few bugs. You can view the list of changes at their official website.

Version 1.03

Just a quick reminder: @iHajinShinobi will be streaming in the next hour or so, and this tutorial will revolve around Ayane. As I said in an earlier post, this stream should be beneficial to both parties; people that fight Ayane and play her. She's been deemed as one of the harder characters to fight, so why not get insight from the best Ayane player?

http://www.twitch.tv/hajinshinobi

Within the competitive community Kwiggle is definitely one of the most well-known players. He has represented the game at almost every tournament and has won almost every tournament he's entered the past year. Kwiggle is also known for having multiple characters -- all at high-level play.

The TFC champion will be at ECT next month to defend his ECT crown winning last year against his little brother Sonic Fox.


Kwiggle can be beat, but you must train and you must play offline (well you should). Do you know how to fight against Kasumi? How about Christie? Form strategies, learn tech; check out the character forums here at FSD! Prepare yourself for ECT next month!

Next on the docket of the 2015 Battle Royal is ECT on June 13th-14th. Team NINJA has thrown in $500 to the prize pot for this NJ major, and like last year I expect we will see some hype matches, and I believe @Sly Bass will be there. Check out his profile when you get the chance because he has lots of educational materials that could enhance your skills before entering a major like ECT. Also, @iHajinShinobi will be showcasing Ayane in his tutorial series this weekend if you want to brush up on that character. Might be ideal to any competitive player seeing as how threatening of a character she can be.

For registration information please head over to ECT's official website.

I have upgraded the Media and Streams section for Free Step Dodge.

The Media category will now (finally) take https as a url so you don't have to worry about that anymore. Additionally, the system has been fixed to get the proper Thumbnail image for any submitted YouTube media automatically, instead of the error'd Thumbnail. You can submit media here.

Streams unfortunately had submitted streams removed from their upgrade so please re-submit your stream if you had before. You can submit any stream here. The Stream system has temporarily been taken offline while I repair it from the last database corruption it caused.

Hello Fighters,

Sadly, today at 11 AM (GMT -4) the Free Step Dodge database (the thing that contains all of our user names, posts, and information) became corrupted. Fortunately, I keep back-ups of the database in the event something like it happens. Unfortunately, the May 6th backup did not complete before the corruption occurred. So the database has been fixed by restoring from the May 5th backup. That means that any accounts, posts, likes, threads, private conversations, etc. that were made or performed since May 5th at 4 AM (GMT -4) were lost.

I apologize for any inconvenience. If you encounter any errors with re-creating lost information please be sure to make a post about it in the Issues board, or if the information is private feel free to start a conversation with me.

Thank you for your understanding,
Matt Ponton

As Team NINJA announced its Halloween Designer Challenge 2015 contest, we have the winners for Free Step Dodge's first Last Round Photo contest. It was very fun to see everyone's submissions, and the top placing screenshots were very tough to judge. It is because of such a great turnout that Team NINJA has helped provide some additional prizes to the Top 3.

First Place wins the following:

• Dead or Alive 5 Last Round (Steam version)
• Steam DLC: Variety Costume Pack
  • 10 Sexy Bunny costumes
  • 10 Overalls costumes
  • 10 Bath & Bedtime costumes
  • 30 Ninja Clan costumes (Vol. 1-3)
  • 8 Showstoppers Encore costumes
• Steam DLC: Pre-purchase Reward Set
  • Currently cannot be purchased otherwise
  • 4 Ninja 2015 costumes
  • 4 Beach Party costumes
  • 4 Aloha costumes

...

It's time to show other communities what we are really made of by making an impression at EVO 2015! The event has been known about for a while now, but you can now RSVP on Big E's Facebook Invitational thread. We already have 15 planning on going including: @Mr. Wah, @E-Mann, @XcaliburBladez, @Crazy Steady, @NukNuks, @iHajinShinobi and other players from the community.

That roster alone should tell you how serious of a tournament this is. With a $1,000 pot bonus and help from Big E, we are advancing from our tournament last year, and improvement is always a good thing no matter how you look at it.

Thanks to community contributor @DestructionBomb we have the NCR 15 tournament recorded in better quality. Might be good for anyone scoping out the competition for SCR which is scheduled to happen in the coming months as a Battle Royal sponsorship match. Watch it on your PC, your phone, your laptop or your console; offline if you want. Just remember to skip the first ten minutes of previews.

NCR 15 Full Download

Are you ready for the SCR? After some super intense matches at NCR, I hope you are! We saw the return of one of DOA's finest competitors.... Requiem... aka... CJ... aka, uh Corposant... I guess he was living in the 16th century with that name, but alas he has won the major defeating Hajin in a very methodical finale.

1. Requiem /Corposant
2. Hajin
3. Accurate
4. BLAZE
5. Nykko
5. Madian
7. Sora Dora
7. Koompbala

Bracket

Every move was carefully thought, the zoning was great, the display of throw punishes was maddening. If you missed this tournament, be sure to check out the replay at IPW on Twitch. Stay tuned for a possible Youtube release.

Also worth mentioning is the current point standings for Team NINJA's 20015 Battle Royal. You can take a look at the...

IGT was South Korea's first Major tournament, but it also featured players from all around the world. I think this top 8 looks fairly accurate and thanks to @CatzDaLegit for recording the event and posting it on Youtube. I know a lot of people missed it because of Easter weekend so now is your chance to scope out future competition.

Congrats to Teru-Rock for winning an International Major with Lei-Fang. Enjoy that $900 prize pot.

1. Teru-Rock
2. Test
3. Kamen
4. BC McWild
5. YOUSEE
5. YUICHI
6. Itabashi Zangief

Semi-Finals we see McWild's Tina get dominated by a vicious assault from Rock's Lei Fang. McWild tried to play a defensive game, but the swiftness of Rock's Lei made a convincing semi-final. We also see Kamen and his unique Brad face off against Test. Test tossed Kamen around during the first set with...

You wanted your tournament scene to hit the West Coast, and now you not only have a tournament, but a Battle Royal Tournament this weekend in Sacramento. Check out the invitational thread in our forum for full details.

The stream is expected to be noon-2 p.m. Pacific Time Zone on Saturday via IPW on Twitch.

After an unfortunate delay, and some terrible news the PC version of Dead or Alive 5: Last Round has finally been released. You can catch up on what's going on with the PC version at the information thread. That also might be a good place to post any problems you may be experiencing if any at all.

Also don't forget that Free Step Dodge has a steam group you're welcome to join.