Apparently there is also a torrent going around if you want to watch it without youtube troubles.

Shown above is screen shot from the TTT2 Live Monitor in Australia. To those who are unfamiliar with how the Live Monitor works for the arcade Tekken Tag 2, it is basically a monitor where you can view replays from around the world and [your own] player statistics. You are able to search by player rank, character, region, country, [etc] for replays.

Previously, the live monitor did not have an option for “North America” since an arcade release for TTT2 had not been decided on by Namco Bandai. Because it has now appeared officially on the world wide monitors, it does now seem apparent that America is definitely getting an arcade release for Tekken Tag 2.

You can probably expect to see some videos showing up from certain arcades across America shortly

credit goes to Demoyon from Tekken Zaibatsu

src: ATP

What does this mean for you? Well if you are a casual gamer, it means nothing. Playing on your neighbor’s 50 inch plasma won’t really have an effect on you. However, if you are sitting at home in practice mode aiming to get Top 8 at the next major tournament, then lag may have an effect on your timing – in this case, the 50 inch plasma may not be the best TV to practice on. It will negatively affect how you perform your 1 frame link combos in SF, throw breaks in Tekken, just frames in Soul Calibur and other timing-strict games. Those serious gamers may want to consider investing in a new HDTV setup.

“Okay, I have a couple hundred to spare, but I don’t know which TV to buy… now what?” Well, stumbling across this thread on shoryuken.com, it gives some very informative information and a huge list of TV’s that have 1 frame or less of lag – the most popular one in the list is probably the Asus VH236H “Evo” monitor, which shows 8.3ms of lag, or roughly 1/2 of a frame [or 1/120th of a second]. Take a look at this thread here:

Sub 1 frame HDTV/Monitor Input Lag Database

A couple things to consider about HDTV’s and lag is that when a monitor advertises “Response Time”, it is NOT the same as Input Lag. If a company advertises “2ms response time”, don’t be fooled since that does NOT reflect the monitor’s lag. Another thing is that in a lot of these tests, they are testing at a certain resolution, usually 1080p. However, most games do not run in 1080p – they can only be run in 720p, such as Tekken 6, Soul Calibur 5, etc… so for some of the tests, the lag reflected in the thread will not be completely accurate [it'll most likely be higher when playing those games]. For example, the Asus monitor running Tekken 6 in 720p is probably going to have more than 1 frame of lag. 1080p is the optimal resolution for the monitor, but since it has to down-scale the image to 720p, it requires some processing power, therefore creating lag.

With tournaments in mind, which is the recommended TV to get? Well, the Asus monitor or anything showing less than 9ms of lag is going to be ideal, just remember to keep in mind that not all of the listed monitors have speakers, if this is important to you. [some people like myself use external speakers anyway].

Speaking from my personal experience, my first real hdtv monitor was the Asus VH236H, it really felt amazing as I had not played on anything that didn’t have lag, other than the crt’s on arcade machines. I had that monitor for about 2 years or so, then I had more recently purchased a different Asus monitor – VG236HE. This is an updated 3D version with a [very nice] glossy screen, however I did notice that the VG236HE was slightly less responsive than the VH236H evo monitor.

Even more recently, I stumbled upon the sub-1 frame lag monitor thread at shoryuken and made a purchase based on the tests, which was the Dell S2330MX, which shows a very very low input lag of 3.8ms. It wasn’t too expensive at around $180 + shipping from Dell. I did some combo testing and this monitor truly feels awesome and probably the least laggy monitor I’ve ever played on – once calibrated properly. The only downsides to this monitor [which doesn't affect me much] is that there are only 2 inputs – VGA and DVI. It does, however, come with an hdmi to dvi adapter, so you can just plug in your hdmi cable to that. The screen itself is less than 1 inch thick – very very thin, light and energy saving.

This monitor also does not have speakers, but I use external speakers anyway. Since the hdmi cable is being using just for the monitor, you can take a composite or component ps2 cable and just use the red / white audio wires from that to plug into any speaker device [audio to 3.5mm adapter may be required]. Just goto the ps3 xmb and change the audio settings from hdmi to the rca audio cables and then you’re all set.

I hope this has been an informative article … so it’s time for you to … Level Up Your Monitor !

a fat ryu and ken? … or maybe cosplaying Ganryu and Bob? Heihachi cosplaying as Akuma?

under “Heihachi” looks like it may be perhaps Devil Jin and Kazuya in the small filmstrip pics as well.

Discuss.

“Tekken tag drops in September? Fall championship? Tell @Filthierich to make it happen ”

I’ll take that as a not-so-subtle hint that there is a good chance Tekken will be making a RETURN to MLG. Incase you don’t remember how awesome it was last time, take a look at this:

more after the jump…

Every so often, tekkenbbs of japan has discussion on who are the good and not so good characters in the newest Tekken games, however usernames are not required, so the information can sometimes be skewed by popular opinion. However, this month’s Arcadia gives some better insight since it comes from the opinions of top level Japanese players such as fukushi, yuu and others. The current Japan tier list is as follows:

S – Devil Jin, Kazuya, Heihachi
A – Nina, Feng, Steve, Bob
B – Lars, Leo, Jinpachi, Armor King, Jack6, Bryan, Hwoarang, Dragunov, Lee
C – Marduk, Jaycee, Bruce, Lei, Ganryu
D – “the rest”
uncertain – Ling, Miguel, Paul

Tier lists are somewhat interesting, but there will be a lot of changes once the game hits console since there will be the inclusion of at least 7 more playable characters. Even though this list is from Arcadia, it is still very early in the game’s life and characters are bound to rise / fall as time passes.

~~~

People who have been keeping up with our website may have read the recent posting on the damages in TTT2: Unlimited. This has now been corrected by the official confirmation from the Arcadia Magazine.

Tekken games lifebar damage:

Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion [console] – 180 points
Tekken Tag 2 – 180 points [per character]

Tekken Tag 2: Unlimited – 165 points [per character] for teams, 230 points for Solo mode.

My guess is that Namco decided to reduce the lifebars to reduce the number of time-outs. My personal opinion is that the damage and lifebars were perfect with the vanilla TTT2 version. Haven’t play Unlimited, so I cannot judge it much until actually playing it, but in any case, a new Tekken game is very much welcomed.