Combo Breaker 2017 was a

fighting game A fighting game, also known as a versus fighting game, is a video game genre, genre of video game that involves combat between two or more players. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as Blocking (martial arts), blocking, grappli ...

event that took place in

St. Charles, Illinois St. Charles is a city in DuPage and Kane counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. It lies roughly west of Chicago on Illinois Route 64. Per the 2020 census, the population was 33,081. The official city slogan is "Pride of the Fox", after the F ...

on May 26–28, 2017. 20 different tournaments were held during this event, including a

2017 Capcom Pro Tour The 2017 Capcom Pro Tour was the fourth edition of the Capcom Pro Tour, an annual season of ''Street Fighter V'' tournaments that are officially sponsored by Capcom. The 2017 Capcom Pro Tour followed several months after the "Season 2" update of '' ...

Premier Event for '' Street Fighter V'', which was won by

NuckleDu Du Dang (born May 12, 1996), more commonly known by his nickname NuckleDu, is an American fighting game player known for playing Guile and Decapre in Ultra Street Fighter IV, Guile and Zangief in Street Fighter X Tekken, and Guile and Rainbow Mi ...

. Combo Breaker was the debut of the ''

Injustice 2 ''Injustice 2'' is a 2017 fighting game, fighting video game it is the sequel to 2013's ''Injustice: Gods Among Us'' and is the second installment in the ''Injustice (franchise), Injustice'' franchise based upon the DC Universe. It is developed ...

'' Pro Series, a tournament which was won by SonicFox.

Background

Combo Breaker 2017 was the third annual Combo Breaker event since it was rebranded from Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament. ''

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

'' called Combo Breaker the "third-largest fighting game event in the US," only behind the Evolution Championship Series and Community Effort Orlando. Besides featuring a Premier Event for the

, Combo Breaker 2017 also featured the first tournament of ''

''. The convention was held in Mega Center in

on the weekend of May 26 to May 28. Other games played at Combo Breaker 2017 included ''

Super Smash Bros. Melee ''Super Smash Bros. Melee'' is a 2001 Fictional crossover, crossover fighting game, fighting video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. It is the second installment in the ''Super Smash Bros.'' series. I ...

'', ''

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and (colloquially and collectively referred to as ''Super Smash Bros. 4'' or ''Smash 4'') is a group of two 2014 crossover fighting video games developed by Bandai Namco Studios and Sora Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS a ...

'', '' Tekken 7'', ''

Guilty Gear Xrd is a fighting video game sub-series by Arc System Works and part of the ''Guilty Gear'' series. ''Guilty Gear Xrd'' was developed using Unreal Engine 3, with cel-shaded graphics in place of the series traditional hand drawn sprites. Following th ...

REV2'', and ''

Super Street Fighter II Turbo ''Super Street Fighter II Turbo'' is a fighting game released for the arcade game, arcades by Capcom in Japan on February 23, 1994, in North America on February 23 and March 26, 1994 (beta) and in Europe in March 1994 (beta). It is the fifth ins ...

''. In total, twenty different games were played at this event, and were broadcast across seven separate

livestreams Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...

Tournament summary

''Street Fighter V''

Combo Breaker 2017 coincided with two major invitational ''Street Fighter V'' tournaments in the United States: Eleague and

Red Bull Red Bull is a brand of energy drinks of Austria, Austrian company Red Bull GmbH. With 38% market share, it is the most popular energy drink brand as of 2019. Since its launch in 1987, more than 100 billion cans of Red Bull have been sold worldwid ...

Kumite. Due to the scheduling overlap, former

Evo EVO or Evo may refer to: Companies * Evo (company), American sporting goods and outdoor recreation retailer Games * Evolution Championship Series, an annual fighting game esports tournament in the US * ''Evo'' (board game), a 2001 board game * ...

-winner Keita "Fuudo" Ai and NorCal Regionals and DreamHack Austin-winner Victor "Punk" Woodley was unable to attend Combo Breaker, competing in Eleague instead. The schedule was selected by lottery, and both Fuudo and Punk were chosen for the Friday night pools. The top 8 of the ''Street Fighter V'' tournament at Combo Breaker 2017 was dominated by United States players, with only one international player left on the final day of the event, the Japanese Naoto Sako. Though the newcomer

Balrog A Balrog () is a powerful demonic monster in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. One first appeared in print in his high-fantasy novel ''The Lord of the Rings'', where the Fellowship of the Ring (characters), Fellowship of the Ring encounter a Bal ...

-player Brian "Brian_F" Foster was highly successful, Combo Breaker also saw multiple older players thrive, such as Chris "Chris G" Gonzalez,

Justin Wong Justin Wong, occasionally shortened to just Jwong, is a formerly American and now Canadian professional fighting game player. Wong has won more EVO titles than anyone else with nine tournaments won: seven for '' Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of ...

, and Ryan "Filipinochamp" Ramirez. This tournament was won by

Capcom Cup 2016 Capcom Cup 2016 was a ''Street Fighter V'' video game tournament that was held in December 2016. 32 players qualified for the tournament by winning one of the eleven Capcom Pro Tour Global Premier Events, Evo 2016, one of the four regional event ...

-champion

, defeating

Snake Eyez Darryl S. Lewis, better known by his in-game name Snake Eyez, is an American professional fighting game player. He is considered one of the best Zangief players of ''Street Fighter IV'' and ''Street Fighter V''. Lewis was the highest seeded player ...

in the grand finals. Snake Eyez came in from the winner's bracket after winning a set against NuckleDu's Guile by playing with

Zangief , based on Russian Зангиев, often called the , is a fictional character in Capcom's ''Street Fighter'' series. Considered to be the first controllable fighting game character whose moveset is centered on grappling, he made his first appeara ...

. NuckleDu managed to reset the grand finals, however, and though Snake Eyez was ahead of NuckleDu 2-0 in the final game, NuckleDu was eventually able to take the game.

''Injustice 2''

The first ''

'' Pro Series event was held at Combo Breaker 2017. This tournament was won by Dominic "SonicFox" McLean, primarily playing the characters Deadshot and Black Adam throughout the top 8. According to ''

'', he was a favorite for the tournament and managed to control the pace of every match in which he played. The grand final was played between SonicFox with Black Adam and Sayed "TekkenMaster" Hashem with

Atrocitus Atrocitus (Atros) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Atrocitus is an enemy to the Guardians of the Universe and Sinestro, their former Green Lantern. He is the leader of the Red Lantern Corps. Publication ...

. SonicFox had beaten TekkenMaster 3-0 earlier in the tournament, which had made him drop into the loser's bracket. In the finals, SonicFox took the first two games, though TekkenMaster took the third by chip damage. TekkenMaster managed to force a stage transition in their fourth game, but a missed attack created an opening SonicFox was able to exploit, resulting in a 4-1 win.

''Tekken 7''

Ahead of its official console release,

Namco Bandai is a Japanese multinational video game publisher headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo. Its international branches, Bandai Namco Entertainment America and Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe, are respectively headquartered in Irvine, California and ...

supported a '' Tekken 7'' tournament held at Combo Breaker 2016. During the top 24 matches of the tournament, player KoDee halted his match against Tanukana in order to check the

screen resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is ...

of their monitor, to everyone's surprise. Though it is unproven for ''Tekken 7'', some professional fighting game players believe that perform better at a resolution of 720p rather than 1080p. Though KoDee still lost to Tanukana 3-1, he later tweeted that at least five other players had complained about

lag Lag, or similar, may refer to: Lag * Łąg, Poland * Lag (company), a French guitar maker * Lag (cue sports), a brief pre-game competition to determine which player will go first * Latency (engineering), a slower response time in computing, commu ...

. During the finals of this same pool, Tanukana and Mateo attack each other simultaneously and both of their characters are knocked out, resulting in a double KO. Though neither the Combo Breaker 2017 event rules or the ''Tekken 7'' World Tour rules mention anything related to double KOs, the judge decided that the two would need to play another set, which Tanukana went on to win. The tournament was won by JDCR, defeating Saint in the grand finals.

References

{{Capcom Pro Tour 2017 2017 fighting game tournaments 2017 in Illinois