Fighting Games Friday: It’s Evo 2019!
The Evolution Fighting Game Tournament 2019 (Evo 2019 for short) has finally arrived. This is the biggest fighting game tournament of the year, where the best players around the world come to compete for the top prize in the most popular fighting games on the grand stage. The event has been around for over two decades, but it’s only been climbing in popularity with the rise in prominence of eSports. Several franchise installments have the most entrants in a fighting game tournament ever.
To no surprise, the top draw this year is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The Super Smash Bros. games have always been a big attraction, but never as big as this year. Part of that is due to the sheer number of good guest characters the newest title has, particularly Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter, Simon and Richter Belmont from the Castlevania series, and Joker from Persona 5, which attracted a wider set of the gaming audience compared to previous games. It also helps that Super Smash Bros. Melee didn’t return this year, meaning all Smash players are on one game. With 3,492 total sign-ups, this is bound to be a logistics nightmare.
Since registration for Evo began, Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 have been competing for second place, and both traded places several times in terms of the number of registrants throughout the year. SFV ended up winning, with 1,929 entrants; but Tekken 7 is close behind with 1,885 entrants. It’s notable that while the number of SFV entrants has dropped year over year, Tekken 7’s have been steadily rising.
Samurai Shodown made a surprisingly strong showing for its first year, despite just releasing at the end of June — just before the cutoff date to qualify. It has an impressive 1,719 entrants. The game itself is solid, despite not having the best online play, like every other game SNK has released. It surprisingly has more entrants than Mortal Kombat 11, which has 1,567. This is still quite a bit for a NetherRealm game at a tournament, but many fans of the MK and Injustice titles aren’t professional players. Otherwise, it would be well above the aforementioned three games.
The sixth game is Dragon Ball FighterZ with 1,191, a significant fall from being the top game last year; there are several reasons why it’s fallen in popularity since. The second season’s characters haven’t been as exciting as the first season’s. Jiren and Videl were good, but Kid Goku from GT was an extremely divisive addition; they’ve been the only characters since January, while two released on a bimonthly basis for the first season last year. The length of the game’s matches has also worn thin with players, and it doesn’t help that several of the same characters dominant at this point last year are still highly-used fighters, like Adult Gohan and Bardock. Get ready to see the latter’s super ad infinitum again this year. It’s also a problem that one of the companies that own Dragon Ball, either Toei or Shueisha, has been playing games with tournament organizers, which made players consider whether they wanted to focus on it too hard. This is how they make money, after all.
Under Night In-Birth EXE:Late[st] came in just behind FighterZ with 1,156 entrants. The game was actually ahead of FighterZ for a while, but it fell behind just before registration closed. This is still an impressive performance for a niche game that many in the fighting game community previously never heard of.
Second from the bottom is Soulcalibur VI with 742 entrants. It’s a quality game, but it’s in this position due to the lack of content support it’s received from Bandai Namco compared to Tekken 7. It’s also going to be a logistics nightmare, since the tournament will start and end today.
Last is Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle with 640 entrants, which has an even worse concerning developer and publisher Arc System Works’ underwhelming support — especially for English-speaking players. This issue reached its zenith when the latest update was curiously exclusive to the Japanese arcade version for over a month. Still, the number of entrants isn’t bad despite being down from last year.
The order in which the finals will be played will also be remarkable to see this year. The biggest difference is that for the first time in years, a Street Fighter game won’t close Evo. The honor will instead go to Smash Ultimate. In fact, SFV’s finals will happen on Sunday afternoon (ET), since Tekken 7 will be the penultimate game. FighterZ was one of the biggest attractions on the final day of Evo last year as the penultimate game, but its finals will happen on Saturday afternoon this time, after UNIEL, but before Samurai Shodown and MK11.
Despite having the lowest number of entrants, Cross Tag Battle somehow got one of the cherished Sunday spots — the first game on Sunday afternoon (again, ET), specifically. This is partly due to how quick its matches are, meaning it will end on time unlike other games; it’s also possible ArcSys has an announcement to make just before the finals conclude. The company announced that a new Guilty Gear game is in development at Evo last year, but I have the feeling they probably won’t reveal it here.
In addition to the main tournaments, keep in mind that AnimEvo 2019 will be happening while the bigger games are also being played. They’ll include titles like Melty Blood: Actress Again and the verbosely-named Sailor Moon S title, but also games that were main attractions in previous years like The King of Fighters XIV, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. New release Kill la Kill the Game: IF will also be included.
Have a good time watching all the streams. I’ll try and keep you updated on the biggest happenings, along with a post about all the announcements (sans Street Fighter V’s characters, probably) on Monday. It’s going to be a fun weekend.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
