Another year of Evo leads to another mass quantity of EPIC and HYPE! The best avenue would to be to watch live in Las Vegas placing all your salty bets; however, the rest of the world watches second-hand via twitch.tv or youtube.com (the two easiest ways at least). There’s always something special about watching climactic Grand Finals amidst the wary paths of climbing the EVO Top 8′s.
One of the reasons why matches are great to be watched online is the commentary tied to them; so, don’t take for granted the wonderful flavors some of these commentators add. Here’s the list of all the major games played this past weekend: Super Street Fighter IV: AE 2012 Ed, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Injustice: GAU, King of Fighters XIII, Mortal Kombat 9, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Super Smash Brothers Melee, Persona 4 Arena, and Street Fighter X Tekken. This one page shows every EVO 2013 Grand Final of each of these games, and also features the EVO Moment of 2013. This is the closest thing to a fighting game olympics that we can get. Enjoy!!
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (TTT2)
CafeID Knee from China just powers through USA’s Eightarc Bronson Tran. Hell of a match but Bruce makes the difference for Knee at the end.
Persona 4 Arena (P4A)
Yume straight up dominates Lordknight practically in straight sets. I wish I knew more of this game but that’s why the EVO tournament is so great, this annual event exposes us to fantastic games and competition we were never truly aware of.
Mortal Kombat 9 (MK9)
Crazy DJT 88 had a great weekend as it started off with a championship victory over VXG.EMP|REO. Though, it looks like Injustice has taken over as Netherrealms premiere product, this weekend proves Mortal Kombat’s relevance in the FGC should not be understated.
Street Fighter X Tekken (SFxT)
Infiltration brings his “A” game to one of the best FGC icons ever, EG Justin Wong. Infiltration is known for his mastery of SSFIV as last year’s EVO champ, but he doesn’t mind flossing his immaculate skill set in SFxT.
King of Fighters XIII (KOF XIII)
AS Reynald took out the incumbent champ MADKOF in losers bracket to finish off the surprise challenger Hee San Woo. Reynald was so close last year and it’s good to see him style out to the ultimate victory. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, not only can you appreciate the technical inputs KOF boasts, but you should just listen for the music.
Super Smash Brothers Melee (Melee)
Mango caught so much momentum as the Melee tourney escalated leaving Wobblez stonewalled with his Ice Climbers in this excellent grand final. Even though it felt one-sided at times, Wobblez definitely made this highly entertaining. It’s good to see a Nintendo game (mind you a 12 year old game…very MVC2 like) staying in the rotation.
Injustice: Gods Among Us (Injustice)
EMP|KDZ was very super with his Superman as he took on this year’s MK9 champ, Crazy DJT 88. The way DJT was using Green Lantern’s defensive and opportunistic gameplay was stunning leading up to Grand Finals, meanwhile at the Hall of Justice, KDZ’s Superman overpowered this grand finale stuffing him until Doomsday.
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 (UMVC3)
EMP|Flocker has rivaled Chris G for UMVC3 dominance this entire year, however, this nail biter went down to the finest of wires against a suddenly volcanic hot EG Justin Wong. In what will go down as the one of the most memorable tournament runs in EVO history from Justin Wong, Flocker just exhibited a little more survival in keeping pace with his Zero play. Even though you know Justin Wong loses this grand final you can’t help but be surprised how it ends every time it’s watched.
Also, rarely does commentary outshine a match but IFC Yipes has that unique presence to make any match that much better (which was actually impossible in this awesome battle). If we only we could have alpha-countered Magus for MegaManSteve.
Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition 2012 Edition (SSFIV:AE)
DM|Xian worked his way to victory by defeating one of the Japanese Fighting Gods, MCZ|Tokido. What may look like a steamroll if you were only to glance at the end results, this turns out to be a close fight similar to when the Thunder lost to the Heat in the 2012 NBA Finals. The Murderface could only do so much killing when knotted up with a true assassin found in Xian’s Gen. These two guys played each other three times total this Sunday (2 wins to Xian in SSFIV while Tokido beat him during the KOF Top 8); although, Xian took the “W” when it mattered most.
As a closing note, the SSFIV Top 8 was a massive billing of possibly the strongest list of players competing in one finals round ever. You had the previous year’s champ (Infiltration), the second place player from last year (GamerBee), one of USA’s strongest players in his prime (PR Balrog), three of the few Japanese FG Gods (Tokido, Haitani, Sako), a modern day legend who might be the greatest of all time (Daigo), and the current champion who’s been on a rampage the past year (Xian). If you have the time and you missed some/all of this year’s Top 8 then do yourself the service of watching it in full. It’s the reason why the FGC (fighting game community) will often abuse the words “EPIC” and “HYPE” when referring to the EVO Fighting Game Tournament.
EVO Moment of 2013: EG Justin Wong vs AGE Chris G
The dormant monster creeping inside Justin Wong awoke to extinguish the shine of Chris G’s dominance over the FGC the past year. This year’s EVO Moment momentum nearly carried Justin Wong to owning his first UMVC3 crown as every match proceeding it had pushed JWong to another level of nastiness. So, instead of Chris G inheriting the anticipated status of #1 in UMVC3, he becomes the most recent victim of Justin Wong in this year’s most distinguishable EVO Moment.
For deeper information involving every Top 8 seed and below, Eventhubs.com has done a fantastic job of listing the EVO 2013 results in Grand detail!
