Ladies and gentlemen, here are your Evo2k9 winners:

Street Fighter IV
1) Daigo Umehara (Ryu)
2) Justin Wong (Rufus, Balrog, Abel)
3) Ed Ma (Akuma, Zangief)
4) Sanford “Santhrax” Kelly (Akuma, Cammy)
5) Long “ShadyK” Tran (Akuma)
5) Eduardo “Vvv scrub” Perez-frangie (Balrog, E.Honda)
7) Takashi “Dan from Japan” Hukushi (Ryu)
7) Ricky Ortiz (Rufus)

SSF2T HD Remix
1) Hung “Afro Legends” Nguyen (Balrog, Dee Jay)
2) John Choi (Ryu)
3) Damien “Damdai” Dailidenas (Ken, Zangief)
4) Graham Wolfe (Balrog)
5) David Sirlin (Fei Long, Cammy, M.Bison)
5) Louis “Thelo” Paquin (E.Honda)
7) Alex “CaliPower” Valle (Ryu)
7) Alex “Sin” Salguero (Dhalsim)

Marvel vs Capcom 2
1) Sanford “Santhrax” Kelly
2) Justin Wong
3) Michael “IFC Yipes” Mendoza
4) Bill “Deus” Wellman
5) Marc “Madbooface” Ansay
5) SooMighty (Magneto/Storm/Psylocke)
7) Jay “Ytwojay” Son (Magneto/Storm/Psylocke)
7) Erik “SmoothViper” Arroyo

SF3 3rd Strike 2-on-2 Teams
1) Justin Wong (Chun Li) and Issei Suzuki (Yun)
2) Jimmy “Emphynaps” Tran (Urien) and Rommel (Yang)
3) Mark “Mopreme” Rogoyski (Ryu) and Ryan “Fubarduck” Harvey (Chun Li)
4) Alex “CaliPower” Valle (Ken) and J.R. Rodriguez (Akuma)
5) Lee Cephas (Dudley) and Starboy (Ken)
5) Amir (Chun Li) and Thomas (Ibuki)
7) Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont (Makoto) and Sanchez (Alex)
7) Hsien Chang (Yun) and Ricky Ortiz (Chun Li)

Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core Plus
1) Latif (Eddie)
2) Marn (Eddie, Jam)
3) FlashMetroid (May)
4) Hellmonkey (Baiken)
5) Elvenshadow (Faust)
5) Senkei (Faust)
7) Wuku (Testament)
7) Joe Higashi (Chipp)

Soul Calibur 4
1) malek (Ivy)
2) KDZaster (Cassandra, Astaroth)
3) thugish_pond (Amy, Hilde)
4) Ceirnian (Hilde)
5) Omega (Zasalamel, Nightmare)
5) RTD (Hilde)
7) AlphaMale (Voldo)
7) Dreamkiller (Amy)

Street Fighter IV Regional Team Exhibition
1) Team East Coast
2) Team Wildcard
3) Team Southwest
3) Team SoCal
5) Team Midwest
5) Team Northwest
5) Team Norcal
5) Team Southeast

Thanks to everyone for showing up, participating, competing, and helping to make Evo2009 the best one yet!

In perhaps the closest final matchup in Evolution history, Daigo Umehara’s Ryu defeated Justin Wong’s Balrog 2-3, 3-2, to take the Evo 2009 Street Fighter IV title. After some early struggles, Justin surprised everyone by switching to Balrog. The move paid off, as Justin was able to win the first set of the finals, avenging his earlier loss to Daigo in the tournament. The final set of the match came down to the final game. In the end Daigo’s strong positional play allowed him to squeek by and take the title.

Top L.A. player Ed Ma, who placed second in the recent U.S. Super Battle Opera qualifiers, proved that he’s still got the stuff by placing 3rd.

Stay tuned for complete Evo results for all the tournaments!

If you’re not lucky enough to be here in Vegas with all of us, you can catch all the action from your own browser. Check the Evo live broadcast site throughout the weekend for live streamed matches, bracket updates, and photos of the event.

The biggest and baddest tournament is in two days. Some are packing their essentials right now and most will do it the night before leaving for the Vegas. Do you have everything needed for your stay in the City of Sin? The following list will give you an idea of what to pack for the best weekend of your life.

Check it out after the jump…

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One weekend. 6 tournaments. 50,000 matches.

On July 17th, the world’s largest and longest-running fighting game competition returns to Sin City at the Rio Resort and Casino. The heart, history, and unbelievable skills of the fighting game community will be on display as the planet’s top fighting gamers assemble from around the globe to duke it out on today’s hottest games, including Street Fighter IV, Soul Calibur IV, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, and a special BlazBlue exhibition.

EVO 2009 World Finals will feature:

• Special appearance by Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono
• The world’s largest live Street Fighter IV competition
• Tekken 6 playable on console
• Watch all the action streaming live, for free, featuring top players and expert commentary
• The best players from around the US and the world, including Japan’s legendary champion Daigo Umehara
• The newest build of Tatsunoko Vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars
• First publicly playable Marvel Vs Capcom 2 for X360 and PSN
• Complete coverage from IGN Insider, recording HQ, direct-feed tournament matches available for download following the event
• And more!

Spectators can attend the event for free, and are welcome to play at one of the dozens of freeplay stations. For those who can’t make it to Vegas, EVO 2009 will also be streaming live all weekend. The live stream will run all day from July 17-19th, and feature non-stop tournament matches between top players, with live crowd audio accompanied by expert commentary to explain all the onscreen action.

The stream can be found at http://www.evo2k.com/live , http://www.shoryuken.com and http://www.capcom-unity.com

The 2009 EVO Championship Series is powered by Capcom, Namco-Bandai, and PlayStation 3

It’s July, which means you only have 2 days left to register online for the biggest live fighting game tournament EVER! Online registration is MANDATORY, and there will be no in person sign ups.

Head on over to www.evo2k.com/register to secure your place in history as one of the competitors for the Super Bowl of fighting games.

Remember, legendary player Daigo will be in attendance to take all of your monies. Yes, that Daigo!

Earlier this morning on the Capcom_Unity Twitter Feed it was posted that July 29th is the release date for MvC2’s release on XBOX Live via Digital Download. At this time there is no confirmed release date for the PlayStation Network release of the game. More information as it becomes available.

Source via Capcom_Unity’s Twitter Feed

Bunkei and skisonic sat down with Ponder from Shoryuken.com to talk all things GGPO and EVO last night. Ponder’s the Tournament Director of Evolution, the developer behind the GGPO.net lag-free networking middleware, and long time fighting game enthusiast. If you missed the last podcast with MrWizard, be sure to check this one out.

If you want to catch the next AlphaISM Radio live, be sure to keep tabs on the AlphaISM Radio thread in the forums, or catch the crew in #alphaismradio in EFnet.

Madcatz has a few tricks up their sleeves this summer. One of them will be a very limited edition something or another. Alot more information will be available at Evo 2009! Make sure you are in attendance to see what they have in store for you.

See you in Las Vegas!

From Peter Livingston (SRK name: Etep1)

First I would like to thank the great people from Ignition Entertainment and EVO for putting on the tournament and Element for hosting. You guys did a great job handling everything and everybody. I felt like it was an overall success. Thank you guys.

I know this is a few weeks late but having just graduated from college, moved into a new place, and trying to get everything in order to live life in “the real world” has slowed me down a bit. This is going to be the first of three stops I will be making this Summer to fighting game tournaments: KOF XII in Hollywood, Devastation (SF IV) in Arizona, then EVO 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. What else is a college grad to do (besides get a nine-to-five…)?

More after the jump. (more…)