July 2024: EVO Moment #38
July 28, 2024
EVO 2024 has come and gone and I gotta say, from an at-home viewer perspective, it might've been the best EVO yet. We had some insane Top 6's from almost every featured game, complemented by great production value and camerawork.
If you haven't seen any of EVO 2024, you owe it to yourself to at least watch the breakout match of the tournament: Hayao vs FrankieBFG at Street Figther III: 3rd Strike! When SF3 was announced to return for this year's EVO, we expected a Top 6 composed of only the broken top tiers like Chun-Li and Yun. But we instead got a pretty diverse lineup, including the low-tier Hugo main, Hayao, who delivered an electric performance that rivals the original EVO Moment #37 from exactly 20 years ago. It's poetic, really.
Other highlights from the competition for me were the amazing intro songs for each Top 6, ET's performance in KoFXV, Atif and Arslan Ash's Tekken 8 rivalry, and Punk finally taking home the trophy for Street Fighter.
Alright but before we get into EVO announcements, I gotta cover something I missed. Something big...
MARVEL VS CAPCOM LIVES!
Literally THE DAY AFTER I posted the first FGC Roundup, Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics was announced. It's a re-release of every single 2D Marvel game Capcom produced in the 90's including the acclaimed, Marvel vs. Capcom 2. It'll come equipped with modern features like training mode, rollback netcode, lobbies, and more. They even got Bengus to make new art and it's glorious. There's no set release date except that it's come this year.
This will be the first time Marvel and Capcom have collaborated since the failure of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. The Capcom producers have even spoken publicly about hoping this leads to a future VS game. Suffice to say, reception has been overwhelmingly positive.
The games included are:
- The Punisher
- X-Men: Children of the Atom
- Marvel Super Heroes
- X-Men vs. Street Fighter
- Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter
- Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes
- Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
Secret characters will be unlocked and non-game breaking glitches will be left intact.
MY OPINION
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is my favorite fighting game of all time. Full stop. This is insane. It's been a month since the announcement and I still can't believe it.
I recently got the previous Capcom Fighting Collection and I can attest to its top-notch quality, so I'm sure this is guaranteed to slap.
I see a lot of people going around saying to buy this game to show Capcom there's interest in a new Marvel vs. Capcom game. But if I'm being honest, I don't know if I even want a new Marvel vs. Capcom game. Considering all the stories I've heard of Disney meddling and making things difficult for 3 and Infinite, I don't know if it's worth it. I'd rather Capcom work with a different franchise and move on than have another Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite situation on our hands.
Either way, you shouldn't just get a game on the expectation of getting another shiny, new one. You should get the collection because its full of some of the best games of all time and it's fun as hell. I'm a very happy camper here and am looking forward to all the crazy stuff people are gonna figure out when this game releases with a functional training mode.
Alright, done catching up. We got a lot of EVO news to get through.
THE FUTURE OF EVO
First up, EVO announced a new third location coming in Nice, France for 2025 and a new EVO Awards show in Los Angeles, USA. Alongside this (not pictured) are plans in 2026 for an EVO Singapore. With these plans EVO will have tournaments centered in North America, Japan, Europe, and Southeast Asia, which will bring in lots of new international competition that were unable to travel before.
MY OPINION
There were actually rumors going around that EVO's next location would be Saudi Arabia, a country with notoriously awful anti-LGBTQ laws that has been investing a lot into sportswashing lately. See (or better, don't) the recent eSports World Cup for an example of Saudi Arabia's recent efforts. I'm glad this was false.
Travel and visas have always been an issue for EVO attendants so more locations seems great for the space. I hope one day we could even get an EVO Latin America!
FIRST LOOK AT TERRY IN SF6
We got our first look at Terry Bogard in Street Fighter 6, along with his accompanying stage, the Pao Pao Cafe. Though we don't see anything in terms of gameplay, we do get a crap ton of easter eggs to comb over in this small cinematic.
There's a couple cameos from the Mad Gear gang and some cosplayers of Joe Higashi, Blue Mary, and Andy Bogard. Perhaps we can procure these costumes for ourselves? The big standout cameo however is the guy getting the crap beaten out of him by Terry! It's Lao, the street brawler turned Lilien Knight, and Fatal Fury's resident punching bag!
Moving on the stage, Pao Pao Cafe is an iconic SNK location and great choice to feature. This location has had wildly different looks in each appearance, but this specific variation with the chandeliers, warm lighting, and dragon statues on each side definitely screams King of Fighters '94 to me.
We've yet to see gameplay, but with all this just in the first cinematic, we can probably expect a lot more easter eggs when he releases.
MY OPINION
I'm gonna be real, when Terry first showed his face, I thought: "OH GOD! WHO IS THIS MAN AND WHAT DID HE DO WITH TERRY?"
I've gotten used to the face, but I still feel like Terry didn't make as good of a transition to a realistic artstyle as Geese Howard did in Tekken 7. I wouldn't want a hypothetical Capcom vs. SNK 3 to use the SF6 artstyle after seeing this.
Regardless, I think he'll look better in motion and be fun to play! I hope the Pao Pao Cafe stage features more background cameos, since SF6 stages have felt kind of empty as a whole. I want more populated stages like Metro City Downtown.
HEIHACHI LIVES!
Lidia Sobieska has finally been released for Tekken 8 and at EVO we got our look at the next character. It's... Heihachi Mishima!? The very same Heihachi who was dropped into an active volcano at the end of the last game!? Well, yes, he's back.
We got a sneak peek at the extra story content that will be dropping soon with the DLC characters. It featured a clan of "Tekken monks" trained in Heihachi's fighting style, and seemingly led by Heihachi himself. It's too soon to say what exactly is going on here, so we'll just have to wait and see how this dude survived drowning in lava. He's set to release in Autumn 2024 with no word on when the story content will release.
See the trailer for yourself below!
MY OPINION
I've seen less of a negative reaction to this compared to M. Bison coming back in Street Fighter 6 and it's probably because this is expected of Tekken at this point. You can't kill a Mishima! It's hilarious to me that he's back and I've been enjoying the reactions and memes from it.
We see in the story mode trailer a lot of dark magic and a blood moon which makes me think they must've pulled some hell-raising ritual to get this geezer back to life. I'm very interested to see it. Plus, I've always wanted to play a Mishima but never dug the Devil Gene stuff Kazuya and Jin got going on, so I could see myself trying Heihachi.
One more thing: there were "leaks" before EVO that the next character was gonna be Marduk. What? It's one thing to lie on the Internet but it's another to make such a lame lie. Thank god it's not that guy.
GUILTY GEAR X CYBERPUNK
GUILTY GEAR: STRIVE has shown off its entire Season 4 lineup with the following characters! Fan-favorites Dizzy and Venom are back from Guilty Gear Xrd. We also got a brand new character named Unika from the upcoming Guilty Gear anime. And finally, there's the first guest character in the history of Guilty Gear, Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
We're also getting 2 new stages, new colors, and an absolutely insane looking 3v3 mode that is currently in beta. I haven't seen too much footage of it so far but I do hope it turns out well because 3v3 GUILTY GEAR: STRIVE tournaments would be absolutely insane.
The guest character reveal has gotten some mixed reactions, with many saying a Blazblue character would've been more fitting for Guilty Gear's first crossover slot. Me, I don't really play STRIVE so I don't have much of an opinion on it. But if I had to pick a guest character from a TRIGGER anime specifically, I do have a few in mind I would've gone with instead...
KOF LIVES! SVC LIVES! FATAL FURIES!
SNK dropped a couple of announcements here. First off, we got some new characters for King of Fighters XV. It is unclear if these are the last characters the game will get or will be part of a larger Season 3, but we are getting Vice and Mature in December 2024.
Evil secretary fans rejoice!
SNK also shadowdropped a re-release of SNK VS. Capcom: SVC CHAOS on multiple platforms. For those that don't know, Capcom wasn't the only one making crossover games in the early 2000s; SNK also had permission to use Capcom characters for a bit. Most of these games would go on the Neo Geo Pocket, but for the home platform we got SVC Chaos in 2003. The game was produced around when SNK was going bankrupt so its a janky, but fascinating time capsule of a game. I'd recommend checking it out but only when it goes on sale. GuileWinQuote has a great video on SVC CHAOS you should check out if you're interested.
SNK and Capcom need to get a room already. At this point, something Capcom vs. SNK related in the future is inevitable.
Finally, we got some new reveals for Fatal Fury: City of the Woves. We got Kevin Rian returning from Garou, but more importantly Billy Kane! This is our first time seeing a character that isn't returning directly from the previous game; with that timeskip, Billy's got an entirely different look. We also got a look at two new stages. Both are locations we haven't seen before in previous games, though Billy's stage does resemble Freeman's stage from Garou.
MY OPINION
This was my reaction to seeing Kevin back:
Nah, but for real he's at least got cool gameplay and I'm glad to see his sidekick Marky joining him in the background.
I'm way more interested in Billy Kane though. I was getting worried we wouldn't see any Fatal Fury veterans, but that's certainly changing now. His redesign is great and I love it particularly because it's so risky. The fact they weren't afraid to remove his iconic headband makes me excited to see what they do with other veterans. Mai and Joe, for example, have had the same design for decades and I'm itching to see how they're reimagined post-timeskip
CLOSER
Here are some miscellaneous stuff I missed:
- Mortal Kombat 1 showed off their Season 2 lineup and new story expansion at SDCC. In typical Mortal Kombat fashion, half the cast is once again guest characters from random movies. Trailer.
- Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising showed off Verusia gameplay. She's LARGE. Vikala and Sandalphon were also revealed with Season 2
- UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II Sys:Celes revealed DLC character Uzuki
- Rivals 2 showed off Orcane and announced that all characters ever released will be free. That's pretty awesome of them.
- Braum got revealed for 2XKO and the animation team cooked with him.
- Joe Biden has dropped out of the U.S. Presidential Election
- Blazing Strike got a release date for October 17, 2024 after months of silence. Trailer.
- Samurai Jack and Betelguese are confirmed for MultiVersus. Trailer.
Holy crap. That was a LOT of news. This took forever to write, but I'm not complaining. It's a good time to be a fan of fighting games, both new and old right now. I'm excited to finally get my hands on a lot of this stuff. Until next time, stay tuned and play fighting games!
