Key Note Gaming

While Daigo Umehara isn’t dissatisfied with the current state of Street Fighter 6, he says the game’s “random” style makes it difficult to determine the best player in modern tournament settings. Evo 2026 is in the books, with Saul ‘MenaRD’ Mena once again claiming victory on the biggest stage in all of fighting games. It’s hard to argue against his current status as the most dominant Street Fighter 6 player, with two Capcom Cup championships and four Evo victories to his name… but Daigo Umehara isn’t sure a true ‘GOAT’ of the game has yet been crowned. We got the chance to sit down with ‘The Beast’ of fighting games during Sunday finals, who revealed his surprising take on the divisive nature of Street Fighter 6’s balance as it stands at the tail end of Season 3. Right now, the Western fighting game community (FGC) is vocally outspoken regarding Street Fighter 6’s Drive Rush mechanic, arguing that the tool is too overpowered and hard to ‘check’ even at the best of times — something ...

With all of the excitement surrounding the new upcoming fighting games like Marvel Tokon , Avatar Legends , and Virtua Fighter Crossroads , as well as all of the buzz surrounding Tifa and Yujiro Hanma joining Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 respectively, it's easy to feel like Guilty Gear Strive has fallen a bit into the background. But the reality is that Strive is still going strong after six years, especially after the Guilty Gear Strive 2.0 patch completely revitalized the meta with the removal of a core system mechanic and a roster wide rebalancing patch. At Evo this year, I got to do my yearly catch up with Guilty Gear Strive Producer Ken Miyauchi, to chat about what's still to come in the world of Strive, how he feels about the current state of the game, and what players can expect when Robo Ky releases later this week. IGN: I asked you last year if you could share any details about Robo-Ky and Jam. Obviously it was a little bit too early back then and Jam is already at...

The first Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 teaser is here, and fans have already found some of the locations the new season pulled from Cyberpunk 2077 . Netflix, CD Projekt Red, and Studio Trigger returned with a minute-and-a-half teaser for Season 2 of its anime adaptation today. As if there was ever any doubt, it's a brutal trailer, using Rico Nasty's "You Can't Run From Me" to show how characters like Weak Kingsley, D, Roman Carax, and Talia Yang will tear back into Night City. Despite offering such a small slice of the 10 episodes set to premiere this fall, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 has already given fans a lot to sink their teeth into. Watchers have been so starved for updates that some Cyberpunk 2077 players have already loaded back into Night City to find where some of the show's scenes will take place. New crew. New story. Same Night City. Get ready to jack back in. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 is coming Fall, 2026. pic.twitter.com/27OTFA31pi — Cyberpunk: Edg...

You certainly could make a case for MenaRD being the best Street Fighter 6 player in the world right now. His win at Sunday's Evolution Championship Series in Las Vegas brings him up to four total Evo wins, with two back-to-back wins at Evo in Las Vegas (2025-2026) and two back-to-back wins at Evo Japan (2024-2025). And while his Blanka looked dominant throughout the tournament, one of the more interesting stories that came out of the Street Fighter 6 top eight was the fact that in his most crucial matches, Mena opted against using the character that he's most well known for. In Winners Semis, Mena started off by using M. Bison, going 2-2 with Shigematsu's Blanka. After swapping to Blanka for the mirror match in the deciding game, Mena won a hard fought game that ended up going to the final round, sending Shigematsu down to the losers bracket. Shigematsu wouldn't be denied his runback however, as he ended up fighting his way through Dogura, Craime, and Kilzyou to reach...

Unionized Xbox employees are pushing back against the company's looming layoffs and have outlined various demands. Earlier today, the CWA (Communications Workers of America) held a press conference in which various unionized Xbox employees spoke out against Microsoft . The conference was held ahead of reported layoffs at Xbox, which insiders have stated will be a "bloodbath." It's also a painful reminder of last year's layoffs at Microsoft, where 9,000 people lost their jobs across the entire company (not just Xbox) and resulted in multiple projects being cancelled, including the long-awaited reboot of Perfect Dark. The studio behind that game, The Initative, was also shuttered without having ever released a game. The upcoming layoffs reportedly puts more studios, such as Double Fine and Ninja Theory , at risk of closure. South of Midnight developer Complusion Games is also reportedly at risk of shutting down, despite winning a Peabody Award earlier this year. ...

SNK told us how they managed to pull off one of Kenshiro's most iconic moves without sacrificing their Teen ESRB rating. Kenshiro is the latest guest character from an anime to make a splash in a mainline fighting game, punching his way into Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves this June. We got the chance to sit down with producer Shinya Tamaki and director Hayato Konya ahead of his release at Evo 2026, who explained the difficulties they faced in translating Hoktuo No Ken’s comparatively gory fighting style into Fatal Fury’s decidedly less grisly hand-to-hand combat. Part of this problem necessitated finding a balance between Kenshiro’s status as a Bruce Lee-inspired martial artist and the use of his special technique, the Hokuto Shinken, which sees him press opponents’ pressure points, causing them to explode seconds later. It’s arguably the most iconic thing about the show, and despite how bloody it is, it’s something the team wanted to make sure they included in the game. To fix t...