Rise, rally and conquer! Anime fighter Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[st] has officially graduated to eSports. Red Bull Conquest is returning and this time it will feature Under Night–commonly and conveniently abbreviated to UNI or UNIST by its players and fans–joining major competitive titles Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition by Capcom and Bandai-Namco’s Tekken 7.
Red Bull Conquest will feature eight qualifying events in the United States, starting with Orlando on August 24th. Chicago and Philadelphia Qualifiers event follow on September 21, then Los Angeles and Houston on October 12th. San Francisco’s Qualifier is on October 19th, and Seattle and Minneapolis close out the events on November 9th.
The National Finals for Red Bull Conquest will take place in Santa Monica on November 23rd and 24th. What makes Red Bull Conquest special is that the winners from each qualifying event form three-person teams, with one player per game, and compete against each other to earn the title of Conquest champions at the finals.
Red Bull is looking to encourage local scenes and fighting game communities with their “Rise, Rally, and Conquer” events. Hopeful local players will want to enter the “Rise” events, which will be held prior to Qualifiers. This is a great opportunity to scout out the competition and assess their power levels. “Rally” events are where players fight for the top spot in their game, and the eight winners from each “Rally” event then form the location-based teams teams that will go heads-to-heads to find out which region “Conquers” at the Red Bull Conquest National Finals.
In 2018, over 3,000 players participated in the Red Bull Conquest circuit with New York claiming the title of Top Fighting Game Region in the United States, not in small part due to the indomitable skill of Street Fighter legend Victor “Punk” Woodley, anime fighter lord Eli “LostSoul” Rabadad and Anthony “Mr.Whooppee”—a top-level Tekken player. Unfortunately, New York isn’t part of the circuit this year, but lot of crazy talent in somewhat underrepresented regions like Orlando will have a chance to shine and show their strengths to the rest of the country. It’s going to be tough to guess which region will prove to be 2019’s strongest on the Red Bull Conquest circuit this time around.
Red Bull Conquest also features well-known and loved fighting game community commentators and personalities Tasty Steve, Yipes, Persia, and Vicious, who will host each of the regional qualifying events in the Conquest series. They will also act as on-the-ground ambassadors at each of the regional qualifying events this summer to stream and share their knowledge on fighting games and the fighting game community.
Registration is open, and any interested competitors can sign up for their region’s qualifier on the event’s Smash.gg page, with the full schedule for Red Bull Conquest coming soon. More information is available on the circuit’s official website.