BODY: On Saturday, a multipurpose sports field on the eastern edge of Utsunomiya becomes a fighting game arena — and the hardware on the tables comes with a pro team's name on it.
Mouse Computer has announced it is sponsoring "DetonatioN FocusMe presents CONNeCT TOCHIGI 2026 powered by Ashikaga Bank," a free-admission esports event opening at 11:00 a.m. on October 24 at Ark Town Utsunomiya, inside the Tobu Comprehensive Park multipurpose grounds in Tochigi Prefecture.
The company's contribution is both machines and a showcase. Attendees can sit down at gaming PCs from Mouse's G TUNE line, including the G TUNE FG-A7G70 — a model developed in collaboration with DetonatioN FocusMe, one of Japan's best-known professional esports organizations. The demo stations are set up for competitive fighting games, letting walk-up visitors feel what a tournament-grade rig does to input response and frame stability rather than just reading spec sheets.
The headline draw is Street Fighter 6, with playable stations open to the public and exhibition matches from pros Itabashi Zangief and Nauman. Pairing a hands-on PC booth with live top-level play is a deliberate structure: the crowd that watches a set is the same crowd that then queues for a controller.
Ashikaga Bank's presenting-sponsor billing is the detail worth noticing. Tochigi's largest regional bank is not a gaming company — it is underwriting a youth-facing event in its home prefecture, with a pro team as the marquee name.
The insider take
Regional-bank money in esports has quietly become one of the most reliable funding streams in Japan's competitive scene. Prefectural governments and local lenders have adopted esports as a chihō sōsei — regional revitalization — tool, something that pulls families into a public space and signals that a prefecture outside the Tokyo-Osaka corridor is worth staying in. For Mouse Computer, which assembles its machines at a factory in Iida, Nagano and leans hard on its domestic-production story, these regional dates are a natural fit: they reach buyers in markets where Akihabara storefronts and Tokyo Game Show crowds never do. DFM supplies the aspirational logo, the bank supplies the civic legitimacy, and the PC maker gets a day of people touching the keyboard.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).