Evo Cancelled... Well Sort Of

Back in March I posted about the Evolution Championship Series. The single largest fighting game tournament in the world. You can read all about that here.

This leads us to May 1st, when tournament organizer, Mr. Wizard, announced that due to the current pandemic, Evo will be cancelled.. at least the physical part of the event. He said that they are working on something but had nothing to announce.

Announced today on Mr. Wizard's Twitter is "Evo Online". A 5 weekend event that will feature 7 games - which I will note is 1 less game than originally announced, more on that later.

This new tournament setting will feature the following games;

Dragon Ball FighterZ
Granblue Fantasy Versus
Samurai Shodown
Soulcalibur 6
Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition
Tekken 7
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r]

Evo Online will also feature 4 "open-tournament" games. These games were not apart of the original line up but have since been included.

Killer Instinct
Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath
Skullgirls 2nd Encore
Them’s Fightin’ Herds

We will also have the "20urnament of Champions" which is the Marvel vs Capcom 2 20th anniversary special invitational tournament.

In the world of fighting games, lag means everything. Some of these games aren't known for having the best net codes (looking at you Street Fighter 5). While the players them self don't seem to have any issues with this... yet anyway. I do believe that this is the reason why one of their main games, a game that was originally announced. Is now, no longer being held.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is no longer going to be apart of Evo this year. Which is both weird to me and not very surprising. Weird to me because this game has been a staple in the last 5 years. After the Evo tournament organizers having their battles with Nintendo over allowing the game to be included and eventually winning that battle. Nintendo has since blessed the event them self and even welcomed their games at the show.

Not very surprising in the fact that Nintendo online is awful at the moment. I don't think it would be beneficial to Nintendo or Evo having the best-selling fighting game of all time turn into a slideshow in front of millions of viewers.

This would be a good time for Nintendo to step up and work with the Evo organizers to help make this happen. It would great PR for Nintendo them self and it would make the thousands of players who signed up for Smash very happy knowing that Nintendo - the company who originally didn't want their game at Evo is now helping them organize the tournament.

Evo Online will take place on the following dates.