We are proud to announce the 2006 EVO Finals will be held at the Red Rock Casino, Resort, and Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada, from August 18th-20th. We have many surprises in store for attendees this year that will take EVO 2006 to a whole new level. Register NOW and experience the world’s most exciting competitive videogaming event for yourself!

Evolution West and Evolution East are fast approaching and I’m reminding you to go sign up right now. Running three big events this year (remember, the final event is in Las Vegas) has been challenging to plan, and the payoff comes when we can show our sponsors that fighting game tournaments are popluar and exciting (even more exciting than the tournaments some of those other gaming leagues run).

Luckily for us, these tournaments ARE exciting. We’ve had Duc’s return of the king in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Kuni’s crazy Zangief in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and Daigo’s parry-filled unadulterated madness. If you just show up and be yourselves, I’m pretty sure it will be 10 times the excitement as any Halo 2 tournament. Besides all that, I want you to go Evo East and Evo West because it will make those tournaments more fun for me as a player.

There are a few game communities I’d like to talk to here. I went out on a limb on getting three particular games into our lineup, and I want those communities to show that we made the right choices. Picking which games we feature at Evolution is a very difficult task because we can only run so many tournaments during a weekend. Although we have a great lineup of games, I’m aware that there are also other great games that didn’t make it in this year (hopefully you’ll play those in the Bring Your Own Console area).

Let’s talk about the games that did make the list. First off: Tekken 5, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK2, and Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike. These games have had great attendance in the past, and we expect them to be as good as ever this year.

Next is Mario Kart DS, a seemingly strange choice. The Nintendo DS is an awesome game platform, so it is my great pleasure to include a DS game at Evolution, in an attempt to reach out to some new players. Note that this game did NOT replace another fighting game, because Mario Kart DS is the one game that can run in parallel to all the rest. Mario Kart players please sign up and support your game.

Now we come to the meat of the matter: Dead or Alive 4, SF2:Anniversary Edition, and GGXX Slash. There were all sorts of reasons to cut these games completely, and I pushed and pushed to keep them.

Dead or Alive 4 has the virtues of being new and pretty, but that’s not the reason it’s part of Evolution. Dead or Alive 4 has the best online play of any fighting game I’ve played, which means it can actually spawn a community of players outside of arcades. The gameplay is also quite a bit better than most people give it credit for. When your character is getting hit, you can often risk a “combo breaker” reversal to get out, but guessing wrong can mean eating a bigger combo. Interesting gameplay, best online play, new and pretty. Many people said that attendance would be low, but this game deserves its shot, damn it. If we don’t get decent attendance, we won’t be able to feature the game again unfortunately. DOA players, I did everything I could for you on this, so please step up and come to these events.

SF2:Anniversary Edition is a sticky subject. Everyone wants ST (Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo) and we have no good console version of the game to use. It’s increasingly important that we move to all consoles, especially with how many stations we’ll be setting up at once this year. Dropping ST entirely was definitely a strong possibility, but to me, ST is our heritage. Having a game for the old-timers (which is also played by many new-schoolers now, I should add) shows that we care about where we came from. ST is a great, great game and dropping it entirely wouldn’t feel right at all.

Anniversary Collection offers a crazy mash-up of all five SF2 games in one, including ST. Although some ST players object that it isn’t “pure,” I’ve actually had quite a bit of fun with the game. Try out some old versions of Guile and see how good they are. Or the legendary Champion Bison (who I promise not to lose to in a touranment). Hyper Blanka has that ridiculous upward roll, and the ST characters are still good too. I don’t mind that we’re taking one year off of ST to try out something crazy (which still includes ST characters), and it might even end up being more fun. ST players (and anyone who halfway remembers the old SF2 games) please sign up for this and show that we need to keep our heritage alive.

Also note that I am the Lead Producer on Capcom Classics Collection Volume 2 (PS2/Xbox) which will be out in time for next year’s event, and it will feature an arcade-perfect emulation of ST.

And finally Guilty Gear. What a trouble this game has been! Everyone wants GGXX Slash (the new version) which is totally understandable, but it only has a japanese release. Normally, we would not consider such a thing, but the GGXX players were very clear and forceful about demanding Slash. Because of the equipment costs involved, we had to make it a team tournament. I hope you’ll bear with us there (and even enjoy the team tournament format for one year), and sign up for this tournament. Believe me there was LOTS of talk about cutting this game entirely, but I just couldn’t bear to allow us drop what is a) the only 2D fighting game with high-res graphics, and b) what is, in my opinion, the best designed fighting game there is. If we run a national tournament without this game, what’s the point, really? Also, why are you not playing this game? Seriously, if you aren’t, I can only imagine that you don’t realize the careful crafting that went into each every character.

The reality is that we will be running tournaments without Guilty Gear unless players sign up for it. We’ve actually gotten good attendance in that past with GG, so I’m not too worried. I love this game to death, so please don’t allow it to have low numbers. Get your team captain to sign up now.

I’ll see you all there,
–Sirlin
www.sirlin.net
Playing to Win, the book