Special Feature: Announcements from Evo 2018

Evo 2018 is officially behind us, and the tournament expectedly featured several good matches throughout the weekend. But Evo has also become a spot for several fighting game-related announcements, due to the number of genre fans watching it. The number of them increases every year thanks to the perpetually climbing popularity of eSports, meaning publishers will want to reveal their fighting game titles in front of more eyes. I’m going to spare you my usual nonsense for the lede and get right to the announcements.

Arc System Works was going to have a hard time topping themselves after last year, where they shocked everyone not in-the-know after announcing crossover title Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle.

Sadly, they didn’t come close to rivaling that this year. While they teased an announcement for Saturday, it was for the final set of Cross Tag Battle characters, which include Izayoi, Mai Natsume, and Nine the Phantom from the Blazblue franchise, Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Labrys from the Persona 4 Arena games, and Merkava, Yuzuriha, and Mika from the Under Night In-Birth titles. The characters are all available now. A new franchise was also teased for the game, due to arrive at an undetermined time in the future. It could be Senran Kagura, since announcer data exists for some of its characters; but since the franchise was teased with a pink motif instead of Senran Kagura’s green one, it could actually be for Arcana Heart.

It was a nice announcement, but not on par with a new game reveal; but it wasn’t entirely ASW’s fault that the existence of the remaining CTB characters was leaked after savvy players datamined it. It was also bad when several players hyped themselves up for something grander, like another Shonen Jump anime adaptation or a Persona 5 fighter.

ASW also announced the ArcRevo World Tour, meaning Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 and Blazblue: Central Fiction and Cross Tag Battle will officially be eSports games. A new Guilty Gear game was also teased, though it’s not ready to be shown. It sounds like this will be the fourth installment and not the third Xrd title, but hopefully we won’t have to wait long to see it.

Arika recently released Fighting EX Layer, which was previewed at last year’s Evo. The game launched with eleven characters (including both Hokuto versions, which have minor gameplay differences), and as previously announced, two more are on the way: Pullum Purna and Vulcano Rosso. Both will arrive either late this month or early next month, and gameplay videos of both in action released earlier today.

The game will also receive an arcade release, though that may not arrive in western territories. Also coming is… Terry Bogard!? Between Mai in Dead or Alive 5, Geese in Tekken 7, and this, SNK is really spreading their characters around for the company’s 40th anniversary. It’s also funny seeing him after his gender-swapped version was just revealed for SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy.

Sharon Dame was also teased at the end of the video, who could arrive along with Area soon.

https://twitter.com/DOATEC_OFFICIAL/status/1025979208621674496

There was no key character announcement for Dead or Alive 6, since Team Ninja (smartly?) revealed new character Diego and returning character Rig before Evo. However, two characters were teased in silhouettes, clearly for Hitomi and Lei-Fang. It shouldn’t be long before they’re shown, perhaps at Gamescom later this month.

Bandai Namco recently confirmed Voldo for Soulcalibur VI at San Diego Comic-Con, but fittingly saved two characters for this fighting game-centric show. Astaroth’s appearance isn’t a surprise, since he’s been a mainstay character ever since he debuted in the original Soulcalibur. The real surprise appearance was Seong Mi-Na, who hasn’t been seen in a new game since Soulcalibur IV just over a decade ago. I’ve mentioned her in several prior SC6 posts, and would have been disappointed if she didn’t appear again. Needless to say, I’m glad they delivered.

It’s been four years since Tekken 7 was announced at Evo, and it was played as one of the main games for the second year in a row. Bandai Namco clearly wants to ensure it remains that way going forward with the announcement of the second season, meaning all the rumors about it happening were bang-on. The season will include six characters, the first two of which will be heavily-requested returning characters Anna Williams and Lei Wulong. Anna has returned with a semi-crazy new outfit, though it’s not as over-the-top as her sister Nina’s. While Lei’s main outfit isn’t much different than what he wore in previous games, his face has been changed so he resembles Jackie Chan a little less.

The season will also have another bonus character, which will be… Negan from The Walking Dead? It’s one of the most off-the-wall choices for a guest character around, but it’s already attracting a bunch of attention for the game. The teaser image suggests he’ll be the last character of the six, so it could be a while before we see him in action. There are still three characters left to be revealed for this season, and it’s possible they’re more returning characters. Hopefully they won’t keep us waiting too long to reveal and release them.

Bandai Namco also provided a new trailer for Dragon Ball FighterZ after its fantastic (though lengthy and repetitive) Top 8 tournament finished, which showed several Dramatic Finishes for characters previous revealed. That includes Base Goku and Base Vegeta, who are due for release on Wednesday. The trailer ended by revealing a character who will come after them: Cooler, Frieza’s brother from the fifth and sixth Dragon Ball Z movies. He looks great, like every character in the game. Since Broly will become canon after being released as DLC for this game, perhaps Cooler will follow in his footsteps.

That datamined list of characters was accurate, meaning Android 17 has to be the last character of this season. They should both release around the same time in the fall.

Street Fighter V was the last game of the night. Producer Yoshinori Ono knew what he was doing when showing off the final two characters of this current season before the matches started, given how the Top 8 didn’t conclude until around 3 AM for those of us on the east coast. Yes, “two,” because while Capcom teased G throughout the weekend, showcasing Sagat was a complete surprise.

G thinks of himself as a president of Earth, who looks like a parody of several former US presidents from a time when they could still be parodied. His techniques and movements are unique for the Street Fighter series, though his height and one of his outfits brings the Street Fighter III series’ Q to mind. Sagat, however, is mostly the same as everyone knew him, though he has a new default outfit and several new techniques attached to his V-Skill and V-Trigger. This was a nice surprise, but the even bigger surprise was how they were both will arrive tonight, marking the first time Capcom has released two characters simultaneously and in this quick of a fashion. Hopefully this was planned a good while ago, and they weren’t pushed out the door in unfinished states.

The announcements from this year’s Evo weren’t on par with last year’s, which were admittedly tough to top. But we’ve received so many fighting games recently that this is fine. The matches for each game were also great, even if some ran a little long, so it was a great tournament. There are tournaments running throughout the year, but the next massive event will be Evo Japan 2019, which will happen in Fukuoka from February 15-17. The games that will be played should be announced in mere months.