Slashback is a brand-new competitive fighting game tournament, featuring some of the biggest anime fighting games at its inaugural 2023 outing. This tournament will feature events for games like Guilty Gear and Melty Blood, but also more niche titles like Gundam Extreme. It’s all taking over the coming weekend in March.
In recent weeks we’ve seen top fighting games like Guilty Gear conclude big circuits, but there are already big events for the game up and running. This is how the Slashback tournament will work and what to expect.
Slashback Fighting Game Tournament
Slashback 2023 is the first edition of a new fighting game tournament, organized by Slashback. The event has managed to pull in some big-name sponsors though, including Red bull and DreamHack. Another sponsor includes Arc System Works, the dev behind half of the line-up of games.
The tournament will be starting on March 18 and finishing the following day. Across the two days though, there’s a good number of fighting game events taking place. The event is aiming to “fill gaps left in the west coast regional events”. It’s specifically targeting anime fighting games, with a big presence for Guilty gear alongside other titles.
Guilty Gear at Slashback
Slashback 2023 has a decent array of tournaments on offer, but Guilty Gear is definitely one of the biggest. The series has three titles with tournaments over the weekend. The XRD Rev2 prize pool has even seen some expansion, an anonymous donation came in to give this side game a pot of $400. That’s not the only unique add-on for the prizes. ApologyMan has promised to buy anyone who lands a Slashback in Ancient Core on the event stream a drink! These are the Guilty Gear tournaments at the event.
Strive
Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R
Coming so soon off the ARC World Tour Finals and the announcement of Bedman DLC, it’s been a busy few weeks for fans of Guilty gear Strive. It’s worth checking out smaller tournaments like this to see the up-and-coming players who might end up at the next ARC Finals.
Other Games
Outside of Guilty gear, there are loads more anime games at the event. These are the other titles that you can catch at Slashback.
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late [cl-r]
Melty-Blood: Type Lumina
Granblue Fantasy: Versus
BlazBlue: Central Fiction
DNF Duel
Gundam Extreme Vs. Maxi Boost ON
Some of these inclusions like Gundam Extreme are more surprising! These will be a fun chance to see a less mainstream competitive fighter getting played in this region.
How to Watch
That’s everything that’s going to be running at the Slashback 2023 fighting game tournament. If you want to watch along at home, there’s an official stream of the event that will have more broadcast details closer to the time.