Fighting Games Friday: Striking Moments for Evo 2024

The Evo 2024 title announcement stream has come and gone, one that’s become a ritual for fighting game fans who enjoy watching these tournaments to understand what they can look forward to in a little more than five months. Evo’s organizers perhaps realized their importance a little too much for a couple of years, when they provided live matches during the stream. The experiment was understandable, a time for anyone who wanted to see what tournament-level matches would be like for every game involved, but it made the entire process an overly long affair. People just want to see what games are going to be there. They’ve fortunately understood those criticisms, which is why the show was barely an hour this year.

The stream focused on the basics: Providing a simple list of the games that will be at Evo 2024 in July alongside short previews of them. This focus was necessary because of the few surprises among them. Street Fighter 6 and The King of Fighters XV, are returning after debuting last year, while Guilty Gear Strive is returning for its third year. Mortal Kombat 1 and the recent releases of Tekken 8 and Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes will debut at this year’s Evo. The same goes for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, an updated version of the original that’s returning to the grand stage after being screwed following its original release (the original Versus released around February and March of 2020, alongside the key competition of COVID-19).

The lone surprise is this year’s Throwback Title: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. The game is memorable for establishing one of the most legendary moments in Evo and overall Street Fighter tournament history through Evo Moment #37, which Justin Wong, the Chun-Li player on the losing end, references constantly to hilarious degrees on social media.

3rd Strike should be a treat to see in action again on the grandest stage, even though SF6 will be the main attraction for the Street Fighter franchise. This one is unlikely to go the way of the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournament last year, which appeared after those involved considered the halcyon days of Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s tournaments. It was halcyon until they remembered why they got tired of seeing the game played professionally after the finals. There’s a reason why MvC3 can be more entertaining to watch when mid-tier players and characters are going at it rather than top-tier players. There’s a lot of monotony with the latter.

The other surprise is through the game that isn’t there this year. For the first time since it released in January 2018 six years ago, Dragon Ball FighterZ won’t be on the grand stage. Well, it’s not too big of a surprise. It was already pushing its luck at Evo 2023, after being included among the lineup to a divisive reception from the fanbase. Some players still enjoyed partaking in the memes, especially Perfect Cell’s scream when he starts a match. Others rolled their eyes at how its matches tend to, fittingly enough, drag-on, pushing back the schedules for the days on which they occur. Granted, not having FighterZ scheduled on certain days hasn’t stopped Evo from going too long into the morning for us East Coasters in previous years, but FighterZ made that excessive. It is, of course, proof that it was a good fighting game adaptation.

This means Evo is lacking both a Marvel game and a Marvel-like game this year. The event itself will be fine, as all these games will deliver quality entertainment. But it’s proof that we need a brand-new tag-team fighting game to fill in the gap. The last thing I expect at this point is a brand-new Marvel fighting game title from Capcom, so the best we might hope for is a brand-new Dragon Ball game developed by Arc System Works. It’s taking them a bit too long to implement rollback netplay in FighterZ to keep the community going, so perhaps they can apply that to a new title.

Or, I don’t know, maybe that Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact game will be hot stuff, despite its low-budget looks. It is from the same developer as the MvC3 games (Eighting), though its gameplay approach shouldn’t be judged before the game is shown in action.

Either way, I’m going to make the brave prediction here that Evo will be an entertaining time for fans of multiple fighting games. Most of them are also satisfied at the games chosen this time around, so the weekend will be nice for those in attendance and others watching the stream.

P.S. Meanwhile, Ed was finally shown in action for Street Fighter 6. Capcom is bound to provide a longer gameplay demonstration for him before he arrives in the game on February 27th, but the trailer suggests that they’ve completely reinvented him here. That’s intriguing considering how experimental his move set was in Street Fighter V. He feels like the character everyone wants to get out of the way before Akuma is revealed and released, but don’t count Ed out. He could be plenty of fun to play.