Hot off the tails of the Ryu Hayabusa vinyl figurines, is Ryu Hayabusa in 8-bit graffiti glory by GameBoyOne. Check out a complete collection of his work on Flickr.

The web geek side of me was very impressed by TOKI WOKI’s Scroll Clock created using only the MooTools framework. Very clever and creative use of javascript!

NorCal Regionals (NCR), Northern California’s biggest fighting game tournament returns with style, this weekend at the Domain Hotel in Sunnyvale, CA. If you’re a fighting game fan, you won’t want to miss this huge two day event, that draws in the top Street Fighter IV players in the U.S. – Justin Wong, John Choi, Mike Ross, Ricky Ortiz, Alex Valle, Gootecks, Combofiend and many more!

Online registration is still open for those who would like to compete, and spectator admission is completely free. Live stream provided by iPlaywinner. This is one event you don’t want to miss!

Super Street Fighter IV features the full roster of 25 characters from Street Fighter IV such as Ryu, Ken, Crimson Viper, Abel, El Fuerte, and Rufus, while adding about eight new characters to the world of Street Fighter IV. The impressive new roster includes classic combatants from previous Street Fighter games like T. Hawk and DeeJay as well as all-new characters such as the mysterious and deadly female fighter, Juri. The addition of Juri also brings another first to the Street Fighter franchise as she is the first fighter in series history to utilize the legendary Tae Kwon Do fighting style.

Beyond characters, Super Street Fighter IV adds an enhanced Ultra Combo system as well as major enhancements to the online and offline gameplay modes introduced in Street Fighter IV.

Features: + Enhanced online play featuring new modes:

+ Team Battles: Up to eight players can participate in 2 vs. 2, 3 vs. 3, or 4 vs. 4 team elimination battles.

+ Endless Battle: Up to eight players can participate in an endless elimination online match where the winner stays on and plays against the next player in true arcade fashion. Spectators can also chat with each other as they watch the match.

+ Replay Channel: Players can view recorded matches and discuss the match while watching replays of great matches from players around the world.

+ Tournament Mode coming as DLC after launch.

+ More classic Street Fighter characters re-imagined for a new generation of gamers, including favorites DeeJay and T Hawk.

+ New challenger: mysterious female Juri is the first character in Street Fighter history to utilize the Tae Kwon Do style.

+ Bonus Stages: Return of the classic car and barrel bonus stages made popular in Street Fighter II both available in arcade and challenge modes:

– Car stage: Annihilate the car with regular and special moves before the time runs out.

– Barrel stage: Players are given 20 barrels and must destroy as many as they can within the time limit.

+ All playable SFIV characters will be unlocked out of the box.

+ Gameplay has been rebalanced to provide challenges for both newcomers as well as the most seasoned Street Fighter pro.

Advertising agency Espaco/Z has created quite an interesting ad campaign for the launch Sony’s 2012 The Movie in Brazil. They painted flood art on the walls of the Cantagalo subway that stretches roughly 45 meters long. The work looks awesome, but I wish they would’ve done the ceiling too!

Tami and I took a trip down to ACTivegamerS LA with Northern California’s top SFIV players. After some serious partying the night before the big event, Ricky Ortiz, John Choi and Filipino Champ, all managed to place in the Top 8. Marn, who recently moved to Las Vegas from the East Coast, won 1st place against U.S. National Champion Justin Wong. ACTivegamerS also ran Femme Fatale, a side event strictly for girls to get their feet wet in Street Fighter IV competition. Congrats to Miyuki on taking 1st place with her crazy Abel against Princess Aura’s Ryu.

Despite feeling like a frozen popsicle inside the hangar the tournament was held in, I still had fun. There’s never a dull moment when hanging out with crazy gamers! As for the ACTivegamerS competition, I’m extremely disappointed at how long they made us wait to get in (event was supposed to start at 11am but didn’t until close to 3pm), and even more disappointed in how the prizes were handled. Apparently, the guaranteed prize money wasn’t so guaranteed when it came time to pay up. The players in the winner’s bracket were up in arms and were ready to call it quits. I don’t have the entire details, but we caught a vid of the explanation on our iPhone. This type of mismanagement of tournaments can ruin the competitive Street Fighter scene, so I hope things will all be sorted out and the winners get their due winnings.

Congrats to all the winners, and I hope to see you all at NorCal Regionals in Santa Clara, CA next weekend. It’s a Kineda sponsored tournament, so you know it’s going to be hype!

1. Martin “Marn” Phan (C. Viper)
2. Justin Wong (Rufus)
3. Ari “fLoE” Weintraub (Sagat)
4. Alex Valle (Ryu)
5. Ricky Ortiz (Rufus, Chun-Li)
5. John Choi (Ryu)
7. Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez (Dhalsim)
7. YeB (Gen)

ACTivegamerS LA Photo Gallery