While the temperatures outside may have been freezing, the action inside the Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre was hot! Well, it was still kinda cold inside the building. However, that didn’t stop some of the top fighting-game players from around the world competing for not just the fight purse and prizes, but international pride, too, at Canada Cup 2012!
We will have full results for you after the tournament concludes on Monday, but big ups to Team.DM and Mad Catz’ Xian for taking the Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition ver. 2012 and King of Fighters XIII 1v1 championships! Xian defeated Mad Catz’ Mago to take the SSFIVAE grand finals, and Tokido to take the KOF grand finals. However, Tokido was not content to settle for second place, as he took both the Dead or Alive 5 and Persona 4 Arena 1v1 championships!
Also on day two, the SSFIV 5v5 International Team Play got underway, with Team Japan’s Mago going 5-0 against Team Canada 1 to advance Japan to the Top 8 Winners Bracket, and Team South East Asia’s Kaiser, from Team.DM, going 5-0 against Team Canada 2, as well. Things didn’t turn out quite so well for Mad Catz and Western Wolves‘ LAUGH and INFILTRATION on Team Korea, as they lost a really close set against Team USA 2, with Evil Geniuses’ PR Balrog coming up huge to advance USA 2 to the Top-8 with a final score of 5-4.
We will have more coverage from Calgary as the weekend wraps up, but in the mean time, check out the gallery below!
Thank goodness for the AED (automated external defibrillator) devices located throughout the Chinese Cultural Centre, as the heart-pounding matches riveted the crowd throughout the day. Mad Catz’ Tokido added another line to his resume, edging out Kazunoko and Level Up’s Alex Valle in Persona 4 Arena. This result is especially startling when you consider that Kazunoko considers P4A his main game and devotes more time to it than Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition ver. 2012. Sporting a new winter jacket, shiny sneakers, and a low-carbohydrate diet, Mr. MurderFace would have added another heavy medallion to hang on his strained neck had it not been for Team Desperation Move’s (DM) Xian to thwart his ambitions in King Of Fighters XIII. MCZ Mago, who began his “2D God” journey from a KOF background, took an impressive 3rd place and coached Tokido throughout the tournament. The fearsome duo is consistently going into the training room laboratory to develop new technology and unearth tricky new setups for each title, unleashing a beastly Kim that flustered Xian all match.
It was in Shadowloo Showdown 2010 that MCZ Mago and DM Xian first waged war for the world to see on stream. While both players have been dominant locally in Japan and Singapore, respectively, while peppering their resumes with respectable 2nd place performances in multiple international tournaments, a 1st place championship in a high-caliber international tournament has remained elusive. Both players had the opportunity to eradicate the monkey hanging on their backs in the winner’s finals of SSFIVAE. In an epic set sure to live on for all YouTube eternity, Mago’s Fei-Long and Xian’s Gen dueled like Bruce Lee and his master Ip-Man, with both players adapting mid-match and exhibiting never before seen tactics.
Summoning his last ounce of strength before collapsing from mental exhaustion, Xian managed to eke out the win and make an impressive debut for Team Desperation Move, now under the aegis of the Mad Catz umbrella. The great irony is that this umbrella makes it rain at the same time, and the newly formed team based out of Singapore hopes to make great strides now that they are fully equipped with top-of-the-line joysticks and headsets. They still have lots of room to catch up to their formidable Western Wolves counterparts, as Mad Catz and Western Wolves’ INFILTRATION took the crown for Street Fighter X Tekken, inching one step closer to driving away in the Capcom 25th Anniversary grand prize car come December.
Tags: Canada Cup, Dead or Alive 5, Desperation Move, Evil Geniuses, INFILTRATION, King of Fighters XIII, LAUGH, Mago, Persona 4 Arena, PR Balrog, Street Fighter X Tekken, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition ver. 2012, Team DM, Tokido, Western Wolves, Xian
