At Least SNK and Bandai Namco Had Evo Japan 2023 Announcements

Evo Japan 2023 has now come and gone, under the radars of many English-speakers. The event has never received anywhere near as much advertising as the main Evo event. Worse, the time zone differences led to most matches happening while Americans and some Europeans were sleeping, which limited English discussions about ongoing matches. The easiest way to keep track of the matches involved following the highlights on social media, and catching the Twitch streaming archives the next morning. There were plenty of great matches too, including the incredible Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown finals and similarly solid Guilty Gear Strive and (perhaps for the last time at Evo Japan) Tekken 7 matches.

On the same note, the announcements were nowhere near on par with those from the main Evo event. Publishers know that most watches of fighting game tournaments tend to be English speakers, who did not tune in during the live broadcast for multiple reasons. Still, a couple of them came with something.

(One of them was, sadly, not for a new Virtua Fighter game to capitalize on the excitement generated by the finals. Sega perhaps didn’t anticipate how good they’d be, but it’s not like the chances of them developing a new numbered entry were ever high.)

In addition to showing off Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, SNK surprisingly confirmed that The King of Fighters ’96 boss Goenitz will return as a downloadable character for The King of Fighters XV. Even better, he’ll come as another free character, following in the footsteps of fellow former boss character Rugal Bernstein. He, along with Kyary and the previously-announced Najd, will arrive sometime this summer, likely not at the same time.

The announcement of The King of Fighters XIII: Global Edition was unexpected, at least for now. SNK has made a habit of rereleasing their older titles with new features, but it seemed like it would take time before they revisited The King of Fighters XIII, an important title in their history thanks to it being their final sprite-based title. Clearly, they disagreed. Like other ports, this one will include rollback online play for fantastic internet match connections, and preserve the game on consoles outside the backwards-compatible Xbox version and the DRM-free PC version. SNK continues to make up for the mistakes of including bad online play in many of their older games. This version will release for PlayStation 4 and Switch, leaving poor Xbox and PC out in the dust. It might come to both platforms soon afterward, if they don’t patch the existing versions.

SNK also provided a bit of info about the long-awaited Fatal Fury/Garou: Mark of the Wolves sequel — and I mean a “bit.” Terry Bogard was unsurprisingly confirmed to return, but surprisingly with Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi. This significantly shows how the next installment will be more than a mere MotW follow-up, but one for the entire Fatal Fury brand. SNK isn’t simply progressing with the plans that were in place for the old and cancelled MotW sequel. This means characters like Mai, Blue Mary, Kim Kaphwan and Duck King can be added to wish lists that previously included the likes of Gato, B. Jenet, Hotaru Futaba, Kushnood Butt/Marco Rodriguez, and… well, too many more. The game is deep in development, but likely won’t arrive until 2024.

Following the reveal of Ling Xiaoyu for Tekken 8 early last week, two more returning characters were revealed: Asuka Kazama and Leroy Smith.

Asuka is the newest character returning with several altered hit properties and dash mechanics to take advantage of the game’s many new gameplay features. She also has a new outfit that somewhat fits her style, though producer Katsuhiro Harada promised that several old ones will return as options. The Tekken development team isn’t the type to charge for alternate classic outfits… yet. I just hope they remember to add a pre-match interaction between her and Jun. Recent previews mentioning how Jun doesn’t have one with Jin has me worried, despite them being mother and son, but they could always be added in the future.

Leroy Smith’s presence is important thanks to being the first character introduced in Tekken 7 confirmed for this game. Considering how immediately popular he was upon being announced for the last game, and how he became too prominent a face in tournaments, it’s no surprise that he’s joining the legacy characters first here. It’s far too early to tell whether he’ll be more balanced, but, in another one of my hopes, they shouldn’t overly focus on that and potentially make him a bottom-tier character, like what occurred with Nina Williams between Tekken 5 iterations.

Considering the pace at which Bandai Namco is revealing Tekken 8’s roster, it’s extremely difficult to tell whether this game will release by the end of the year. The pace at which they’re showing them has been quick, but there’s a good chance the game will have a larger starting roster compared to the last two numbered non-Tekken Tag Tournament games. Not to mention how they’ll have to reveal brand-new characters at some point. Publishers tend to like for there to be a period between the final initial character reveal and the release, as Capcom has done with Street Fighter 6. The chances of it arriving in late 2023 will depend on whether the current character showcase trend is maintained or not.

Since this post is so focused on news, I must again say that Evo Japan’s matches were more than worth watching. But you’ll now have the bonus of speeding through the advertisements and breaks between bouts. The bigger fighting game news will have to wait until the main Evo event in August, or other publisher-held events like those from Capcom and Arc System Works. I fully expect for Bandai Namco to maintain the pace of character reveals, until a release timeframe or date is provided.

P.S. Arika appeared to be teasing that an updated version of Fighting EX Layer for showcase at Evo Japan, specifically called Fighting EX Layer 3.0 in a now-deleted video. This version will add sidestepping to take better advantage of the 3D space, in addition to updated graphics and textures for ports to current-generation platforms. But the event came and went without an announcement from Arika. Chances are, it was never fully intended for an Evo Japan update, but one to commemorate the anniversary of the original game’s announcement on April Fools’ Day in 2017, which happened to coincide with Evo Japan. With the sidestepping feature, I’m hoping they’ll eventually add the Fighting Layer characters, assuming they have the budget and aren’t too busy assisting Bandai Namco with Tekken 8.