If you missed some of the action from the UGTL 5 tournament a few weeks ago, the people at Machinima have posted a video with some highlights.

It focuses more about the UGTL and those that run the event rather than the matches, but they make note of how the final matches went.

Here are some of the videos from the LA Riots III qualifying tournament, which took place this past Monday at Family Fun Arcade in Granada Hills.

Included in the videos are matches featuring Mike Ross, Hugo101, OnlineTony213, Warahk and others.

You can watch all of the matches continuously in the YouTube video player below:

Videos by Cami Vicencio.

It's going to forever be a topic in competitive gaming, and I'm glad that EA Sports brought it up. Is there such a thing as “cheesing?”

One game that's dear to me is Mario Kart. In past versions, I would get called out for SSMTing, or to the commonfolk, snaking. Is it an exploit? The developers must have thought so beause they took it out for Mario Kart Wii.

The term is brought up more in competitive games like Madden, where you could win using one or two plays. Look at what happened during the 2007 Madden Challenge tournament series. During the first four events, everyone came to tournaments with different offensive schemes, hoping that their scheme would get them to the Finals. Then, Kornstar won easily using the rocket catch with the Patriots, and immediately everyone switched over.

The next year, everyone found out right away that the fullback dive was the most effective play in the game. Guaranteed yardage with minimal effort. Run the play repeatedly and it often resulted in clocking plus touchdowns. The only thing that could stop someone was a fluke fumble.

Should someone be obligated to mix things up in a match? Or, is the onus on the player that's continually getting beat?

The guys at EA Sports responded to this question a few days ago:

Because cheesing is within game rules and there are people that will use the corner route all day if they have it, it's going to frustrate the gamers and lead to callouts on cheese plays. Understandable and it does give feedback to the developers on what is over effective in the game. However some of the cheese callouts are premature and isn't actually cheese. A key strategy to any sport is to find the opponent weakness, and attack it as your own strength. This is what coaches look for when they're drawing up their gameplans. And when it comes game time and they are able to pull off a play with great success, they would be very keen to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again until the other team stops them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

So since every cheese play is finding this weakness, and exploiting it, what is there to do when an opponent has discovered this weakness? Try to defend it by adapting. If that idea was taken seriously enough, I bet you it would reduce on a fair number of cheese callouts because they would defend it by calling the right plays. Going for it on 4th down is not cheese play. Going for an onside kick at kickoff to start the 2nd half is not cheese play. (Or Sean Payton just doesn't care) Those two situations are some cases that will claim cheese and were prevented by the infamous Fair Play feature in Maddens of years past. I do feel the term gets tossed around to freely and some users may be being too passive in reacting accordingly.

Wednesday Night Fights is back on tonight. The highlight match is scheduled to be Andy OCR vs. Alex Valle. If the character usage goes normal, it will be a Bison/Dictator vs. Ryu matchup. A few weeks ago, Alex Valle talked about playing against Bisons/Dictators.

Be sure to check out all the action starting sometime after 8:30 p.m. It's on the JustinTV portal.

As always, check out the thread on Shoryuken to find out what's going to happen.

Here's some info on what'll be happening:

Purpose: To share beginner to advance Street Fighter 4 knowledge with some of the most dedicated players in the Fighting Game Community.

Features: Live commentary from some of the best fighting game community analysts such as James Chen, UltraDavid, and surprise guests. Watch top players such as Combofiend, Justin Wong, Ed Ma, Ken I, and many more beasts battle it out in crazy sets! Tutorials from Alex Valle on beginner to advance players so everyone can Rush that Shit Down!

If you're a Tekken 6 player and interested in competing in the Level|Up tournament, there's still spots available. As of 5:30 p.m. PT, there were 12 spots remaining, so sign up as soon as you can.

Go here to sign up. If you're trying to sign up for the Street Fighter IV tournament, unfortunately it is still locked, with all 64 spots having been full since last week.

The tournament is Feb. 27 at The Block in Orange. More info can be found here.

Seth Killian talks to Gamespot about Super Street Fighter IV and all of its goodness, so you will want to check it out.

And if you're wondering whether Capcom listened to the fans ...

The 10 new SSFIV characters were based on post-SFIV fan feedback, which we then filtered according to which characters we felt would be a good fit for the game in terms of fighting style. I'm happy to say we were able to include almost all of the most popular requests.

Also, if you haven't seen the new footage with the new characters, Gamespot has them posted on their page.

UPDATE: Speaking of Seth, he separately addressed my interview with Keno and cleared up a few subjects, so go check that out as well. (thanks to Jay T for pointing it out in the comments).

Tonight's the night to get some ranking points in the AllisFighter ladder system. Matches start at 5 p.m. PT and will go for three hours so be sure to get in some action and move up the ladder.

More info is on the AllisFighter page:

All is Fighter's Rankings Ladder is a great complement to your favorite fighting game's in-game ranking system. Instead of leaving your fate up to random match assignments, take advantage of our rankings ladder to find quality opponents ready to play right now. Based on Microsoft's TrueSkill system (the same rankings that power most Xbox Live games!), our ladder combines an advanced ranking system (where you earn points for defeating other players) with the best Street Fighter matchmaking service anywhere -- our interactive chat room! Sign up for our singles ladder, join the chat, and start challenging others to get your rank up. It's an easy, fun, and accurate way to show the world what you're made of!

Here are the top three standings going into tonight:

Xbox 360

1. avj89: 1357
2. anton: 1329
3. dfw jay: 1209

PlayStation 3

1. dfw jay: 1151
2. MC-Los: 975
3. GoV: 957

A new trailer has been leaked showing footage of Makoto, Dudley and Ibuki in action for Super Street Fighter IV. You can watch or download it here.

Or, you can watch it below:

You might learn a lot more by listening to the audio here.

Or, you can go here.

The choices are yours and yours alone.

(First link via JamesBardolph on Twitter)

If you're into competitive StarCraft or wanting to find out about the StarCraft 2 beta, the people at 1up are running a live stream right now as they play the game. Check it out below.