Behind the joystick at the Evo 2013 fighting games championship

LAS VEGAS—The night before I left for Evolution 2013, I mentioned to a few friends that I wasn’t going to be around for the weekend because I was heading to a big Street Fighter tournament. I’m used to having to explain that a bit: yes, people still play Street Fighter and other fighting games. Yes, people travel from all across the world to compete. And, yes, this is basically the Olympics for fighting games. Before I could launch into my spiel, one of my friends responded:

“Oh, you’re going to Evo. Hey, how about that Infiltration, right? Could you believe he beat Daigo?”

He paused and looked a little sheepish. Almost apologetically, my friend looked at the other guy in the room—a 40-year-old man who came to the gym with his kids—and said, “Yeah, we’re all nerding out over here.”

The older man looked back. “Naw, I play Street Fighter X Tekken online with my son.”

I first started attending Evolution (though everyone just calls it Evo these days) in 2003, fresh out of high school, back when it was held in the main ballroom at Cal Poly Pomona. To the best of my memory, attendance that year barely broke 1,000 people total. That felt big back during the peak of Capcom vs. SNK 2 and the nascent Street Fighter III: Third Strike revival, which would soon be fueled by the infamous Evo Moment #37 (video below).

But this year saw more than 3,500 competitors and thousands of spectators packed wall-to-wall in a pair of massive Las Vegas ballrooms. The place was overflowing with people playing just about every fighting game you’ve ever heard of (and many that you haven’t). It felt like bearing witness to a movement. For one golden weekend, practically everyone walking around Bally’s and the Paris was wearing Street Fighter shirts, carrying 10-pound arcade sticks, swapping tips, and talking about who we like to win it all this year.

Welcome to Evo, 2013.

Day 1: Enjoy your complimentary butt-kicking

The line.

Credit: Manya Susoev

My first day at Evo got off to a rough start. I drove from Oakland to a friend’s house in Las Vegas, and my poor car broke down about two miles from my destination. After troubleshooting and a tow, I didn’t get to sleep until 4am and was up three hours later to catch the mechanic as he opened the doors. But there’s no time to be tired at Evo—especially when your Street Fighter IV (SF4) pool starts at 10am—so I made it down to Bally’s in a borrowed Prius (thanks, Manya!). I got there just in time to see… oh my God, this line (right).

Get excited, everybody. At this point, I was lucky enough to catch the eye of long-time fighting game community organizers Tom “inkblot” Cannon and Seth “s-kill” Killian. They kindly handed me my competitor’s pass and sent me on my way to my SF4 pool.

Now, SF4 isn’t my main game. I’m a Marvel vs. Capcom devotee. But I figured I should enter the “main event” anyway. My first opponent was an El Fuerte player named Jose “GordoRlz” Moreno who came all the way from Mexico. He absolutely destroyed my Ryu with non-stop mix-ups that I simply couldn’t deal with. I was sent packing into the loser’s bracket after two games. As I unplugged my arcade stick, one of his friends came up to me, said, “With love, from Mexico,” and gave me some candy.

“With love, from Mexico.”

Credit: Manya Susoev

Thanks, guy.

Next up was an E. Honda player named Joon “Jdok” Dokgo. He was a younger guy, and this was his first time at Evo. Ryu is a tough matchup for E. Honda since a smart Ryu player can dictate the pace of the match with fireballs to slow Honda down and chip away at his life—which is exactly what I did. In the end, he succumbed to tournament nerves (I threw him four times in a row). I put him away. After the match, he grudgingly shook my hand, frustration clear on his face. After a few minutes, he opened up a bit. “Sorry,” he said. “I got salty.”

No problem, Jdok. Welcome to Evo.

Sadly, I was the next player to go. An Oni Akuma player named Chris “Chrisz” Zelenka took me out fairly easily. Still, I managed to win a single match. Considering I don’t play SF4 very seriously, I wasn’t terribly disappointed with my performance. And since I wasn’t due to compete in anything else until Marvel vs. Capcom the next day, I decided to check out some indie games.

Fighting gamers, an untapped resource

Evo isn’t just about fighting games anymore. Capy Games President Nathan Vella (Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery, Super Time Force) and Seth Killian collaborated in 2012 and 2013 to set up an official indie showcase where independent game developers can show off their works-in-progress to Evo attendees. Games in the showcase are selected with an eye towards deeply competitive gameplay, a satisfying feel, and (mostly) local multiplayer, all of which are game design virtues that the fighting game community has kept alive since the days of arcade Street Fighter II.

At this year’s showcase, Aztez drew a lot of passer-by interest, in part due to the really bold black/white/red visual motif and in part due to the fact that the developers were demoing it with an Oculus Rift dev kit. Samurai Gunn got a lot of love because it was so easy to pick up and play, and the idea of a multiplayer dueling platformer was easy for people to immediately pick up on. And Spy Party returned from last year’s showcase with a very large group of players—no doubt because creator Chris Hecker was excitedly explaining to anyone who would listen how to play the game.

An attendee gets a personal lesson in how to play Spy Party at the Evo indie game showcase.

Credit: Manya Susoev

Evo isn’t just another trade show for these developers. They bring their games for publicity and free, high-quality playtesting. The average Evo attendee has an unrivaled ability to quickly learn a new game and suss out the easiest path to victory. I was chatting with Noah Sasso, creator of BaraBariBall, and he kept noting that many of the newcomer players we watched looked like they were due to put on a good show at Saturday’s BaraBariBall tournament. TowerFall creator Matthew Thorson concurred: “Evo is different. People who played TowerFall at E3 weren’t as good, and you kind of have to pretend to be bad when you’re showing them how to play.”

The showcase was accompanied by a panel talk, too. Vella joined Chris Hecker (Spy Party), Beau Blyth (Samurai Gunn), and TowerFall‘s Thorson for an entry-level discussion on breaking into indie game development. It’s not a bad fit for a place like Evo. After all, the way a fighting game player methodically dissects a game is not so dissimilar from the theoretical work a game developer does to build a game and make it balanced and fun.

So how do you start? “Just start making stuff,” said Blyth. “I thought of Samurai Gunn when I was at a party watching The Room one too many times.” Which programming language should you learn first? “It doesn’t really matter,” Thorson said. “Use GameMaker.”

Should I quit my job to go indie? “Make your mistakes on someone else’s dime,” Hecker said. The crowd nodded along, dutifully taking notes. Maybe I’ll see some of them presenting at next year’s showcase.

Closing out with quarterfinals

The first day at Evo closed out with tournament finals for two of the smaller games (Mortal Kombat 9 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2). But for most people, all eyes were on the Street Fighter IV quarterfinals. The top two players from each qualifying pool fought each other until only eight players remained to fight for the title on Day 3. The culling process typically takes at least three or four hours, and the excitement in the hall only grew until the main screen had everyone’s undivided attention. After a certain point, the hall hype passed the threshold of no return. The crowd reacted to every excellent play with a rippling ooooh and ahhhh that you can’t help but take part in. It’s an amazing feeling, and it’s why I come back every year.

Credit: Manya Susoev

The first day’s SF4 competition had plenty of amazing matches. A Japanese player named Haitani came out swinging with Makoto. This is a fairly unpopular tournament character pick, but Haitani managed to pull off several upsets with excellent reads and unrelenting aggression. Drama only grew as Japan’s Street Fighter legend Daigo “The Beast” Umehara took an early loss to Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi, another longtime Japanese player with a storied Evo history.

Then, Eduardo “PR Balrog” Perez sent last year’s dominant SF4 champion Sun Woo “Infiltration” Lee to the losers bracket in an unthinkable upset. Infiltration went on to meet longtime friend and training partner Ryan “Laugh” Ahn in the loser’s bracket, eventually knocking Laugh out of the tournament. Afterward, neither player was willing to make the customary post-game handshake—they wouldn’t even make eye contact with the other. The crowd didn’t seem to know what to make of it.

But my favorite moment from Evo Day 1 was much smaller. Two drunken game devs off to the side were commenting on American veteran Alex “CaliPower” Valle’s advancement into the semifinals in between sips of some awful-looking margarita-in-a-can:

“It’s so great that he’s gotten this far,” one said.

“Why?” the other said. “Because he’s old? Are you saying old men can’t play Street Fighter?” (Valle’s age is a bit of a running joke in the Street Fighter community, even though he’s only pushing 35).

They continued for a while. “Do you know why it’s important?”

“I know. Do you?”

It reminded me of the endless days I had spent as a kid watching Spring Training baseball in the Arizona heat, overhearing a dozen similarly dumb boozy chats while wishing I was somewhere else. We’ve made it, I thought to myself. Street Fighter has made it.

I headed back home shortly afterwards. Had I been staying in the tournament hotel, I might have mustered up the energy to try to find the “Salty Suite”—an after-hours unofficial hotspot for top players and up-and-comers looking to challenge top players to high-stakes money matches. But the day’s events left me drained. I repaired back to my friend’s house for a sandwich and some sleep.

Day 2: It’s Marvel, baby

My Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 qualification pools weren’t until 2pm, which meant I had plenty of time to wake up, spend some time warming my hands up in training mode, grab a healthy breakfast, and make my way to the tournament at a leisurely pace.

Just kidding—the mechanic called and insisted I pick my car up that morning. I got all of 10 minutes in training mode, ate two donuts, and hustled down to the qualification pools just in time to see Capy Games’ Nathan Vella pleading with the tournament official running my pool. “He’s gonna be here; I just texted him. He’s on his—see, there he is now.” I checked my phone; he did text me. “Dude, you need to be at Pool 17 right now or DQ.”

The TO looked at me and said, “You were 30 seconds away from getting DQed.” Thanks for the assist, Nathan.

I parked my butt down in the chair and got to work; my first opponent was a young player named Fernando “Twod Nando” Ortega. My three-character team, made up of Zero, Doctor Doom, and Vergil, was about as dirty as you can get in a game that can get very, very dirty. But Ortega put up a great fight. We traded matches back and forth, both of us making some pretty awful tournament-stress-related mistakes. Eventually, I pulled out the win—three games to two. By the end, my hands were shaking so much that I needed to catch my breath and grab some water.

When I got back, I was ready for round two: a Wesker/Iron Man/Strider player named Bobby “Majin Bob” Ketterer. His team was unconventional, and I was poorly prepared to deal with Iron Man in particular. I quickly found myself fighting my way up the loser’s bracket against a player from Mexico named Carlos Ramirez. He’s got nothing on my Zero, who effortlessly rolled his entire team three games in a row. I almost felt bad for him.

Welcome to Evo, kid.

Next up was a player I’ve actually heard of before—Ryan “Fubarduck” Harvey, a Texas player who had a very solid reputation in Street Fighter III: Third Strike. There is little skill crossover between that game and Marvel though, so I was inclined to think I could take him. Then I saw his team of Nova/Doctor Strange/Spencer, popularized by a Japanese player named Nemo for its excellent inter-character synergy. This team gave me fits against others in the past, but I still got off to a good early lead with Zero. It went downhill quickly from there. Harvey put me down 3-0 without much trouble.

“We’ve got lots of great Zero players in Texas,” he told me. “So I’ve got plenty of practice in this matchup.”

“I played against a few of them at Arcade UFO in Austin last year,” I replied. “They’re really something.”

“Yeah, that’s my arcade.”

That made me feel better, at least.

A competitor is nothing without the right equipment.

Credit: Manya Susoev

Harvey ended up qualifying from our pool, putting my unexceptional 2-2 performance in a somewhat better light. But I didn’t let the early loss stop me from enjoying myself for a bit. Wandering the halls, I ran into a friend who works for the tournament every year, Andres “nothingxs” Velasco y Coll. I asked him what it’s like working for the event.

“It’s roughly two straight 20-hour work days that start and end in the wee hours of the morning,” he said. “It’s tough but ultimately rewarding and, to me, incredibly satisfying work. There’s something great about sitting down in finals day looking at what you and your fellow crew have helped put together.”

“I can’t say I do it for the money,” he continued. “I’ve been volunteering at the event since 2008 with no expectation of reward other than the satisfaction of getting to say I did my part to help the community. I know what it’s like to be a player, and I know and appreciate how hard it is to put a good event together. This way, all the people who play these games with us can focus on having a good time.”

Next, I stopped by the Skullgirls tournament—they showed the Top 8 on a secondary stream—and chatted up two of the animators, Mariel Cartwright and Jonathan Kim. I never saw the Skullgirls community in person, but it looked just like any other fighting game group. “They’re taking side bets,” Cartwright said to me. “This is awesome!”

By this point, the Marvel tournament had reached the semi-finals. I found a few friends and spent the rest of Saturday making small bets on the outcome of the matches. Highlights included the tournament favorite, Chris “NYChrisG” Gonzalez, getting sent to the loser’s bracket by Tommy “Windzero” Nguyen, a local SF Bay Area player I’ve had the privilege of getting wrecked by. Chris G later went on to knock Eduardo “PR Balrog” Perez out of the Marvel tournament, inciting Perez to retire from Marvel and focus on other games. Lastly, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 legend Justin Wong defeated last year’s UMVC3 champion Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez in a nail-biting 3-2 set.

That was great, but the best was still left for Sunday. And everyone knew it.

Day 3: The moment you’ve all been waiting for

I have an Evo Finals Day ritual: I drive over to Lee’s Sandwiches, a Vietnamese sandwich (bahn mi) chain and stock up on coffee and grub for the entire day. The finals run more or less back-to-back starting at 10am, so it’s not easy to run out and get food in between games without missing something (or giving up your spot).

By the time I got to the venue, King of Fighters XIII had just made it into the Grand Finals, where crowd favorite Reynald came up from the loser’s bracket to take on Hee San Woo. Reynald won six straight games to take the title, inciting Hee San Woo to throw his arcade stick on the ground in disgust. The crowd went wild with chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and a few people even waved flags around.

That’s exactly how Finals Day should start.

Credit: Manya Susoev

Next up was the Top 8 for Super Smash Bros. Melee. It was the first year in a long time that Melee had come to Evo, and it happened because the community earned it. The community conducted a breast cancer research fund donation drive contest to the tune of about $95,000. But just a few days before the tournament, Nintendo demanded that Evo organizers nix the livestream for Smash—and then immediately reversed their decision after seeing the outpouring of outraged gamers of all stripes standing in solidarity with their Melee-playing brethren.

So Melee made it onto the big stage, and the crowd showed that it belonged there. Tournament favorite Joseph “Mango” Marquez took the finals in a commanding performance that cemented his own legacy and broke fighting game stream records, getting more than 100,000 simultaneous viewers online. I personally am not a huge Melee fan—I gave it a serious run for a month or two, figuring out Marth and Fox. Still, as someone who grew up with Nintendo games and familiar characters, it felt strangely important to sit in a room full of thousands of people cheering on Fox McCloud and the Ice Climbers as they brawled it out.

After Melee was the Injustice: Gods Among Us finals. While the tournament itself was big, the crowd wasn’t nearly as interested as they were in the earlier games. Champion KDZ received a hearty round of boos for winning with Superman, a character that’s widely considered to be overpowered.

Before Marvel finals started, Microsoft and Double Helix devs took over the main stage for a short demonstration of their upcoming Killer Instinct reboot. Again, Evo is a community event, not a trade show or press conference where people are expected to be professionally civil to you. Hence, the presenters were widely jeered and mocked whenever Microsoft’s name or logo appeared. You can get your game in front of the fans, Microsoft, but you can’t make them like it.

After what seemed like an endless succession of “C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER"s, it was time for Marvel. Street Fighter IV may be the Evolution main event, but Marvel vs. Capcom was arguably the more exciting finale this year. Before the final match, last year’s champion Ryan Ramirez was knocked out by a relatively obscure player named Cloud805. Wolverine/Dormammu/Shuma-Gorath player Angelic also acquitted himself quite nicely, placing third overall.

This helped set up a grand finals that was easily the best story of the tournament. Crowd favorite Justin Wong lost early in the tournament to top Florida player Job “Flocker” Figueroa, 3-0. Wong then clawed his way back up the loser’s bracket, getting past tournament favorite Chris G to reach the finals and face Flocker a second time. Wong needed to win two matches to take the championship; Flocker only needed one more win.

The pair played a series of ten nail-biting back-and-forth games. When the dust settled, Flocker just barely emerged as the champion. My words don’t do it justice; you have to watch the series yourself.

With that, it finally was time for the evening’s main event: Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition 2012. The Top 8 was a veritable who’s who of worldwide SF4 talent. Infiltration and Daigo reprised their finals battle at Capcom’s 25th Anniversary tournament last year, and Infiltration won once again. PR Balrog’s played his eponymous character in an incredible back-and-forth set against Infiltration. It came down to the wire, but Infiltration ultimately eked out the win by switching to Hakan, an unpopular tournament character that appeared to just barely catch PR Balrog off guard.

By the time the grand finals came, two players clearly stood apart from the pack: Singapore’s Kun Xian Ho (known simply as “Xian”) and Japan’s Tokido. Xian masterfully dismantled Tokido in a fantastic display of patience, spacing, and prediction. The crowd went crazy, and then it was time to go home.