EVO Reveals Its Fighting Roster For 2024

This'll be the year when Chipotle finally announces their own fighting game, I can feel it

If you even moderately enjoy fighting games I highly recommend tuning into the stream at some point during Evo! It’s so cool seeing so many players at the top of their craft.

All i needed to see was KoF.

Man not seeing a Virtua Fighter and a DOA up there is a sad reality that Sega (Virtua Fighter, Fighting Vipers, Sonic the Fighters, Last Bronx, Eternal Champions, Power Instinct, Persona 4 Arena, Dark Edge, Virtual On) and Tecmo (Dead or Alive) had both given up on the fighting game genre joining Nintendo (Super Smash Bros., ARMS, Punch-Out!!, Kirby Fighters, Pokken Tournament), Microsoft (Killer Instinct, Fighters Uncage), Sony (PlayStation All-Stars), Atari (Kasumi Ninja, Primal Rage, Ultra Vortek), Interplay (Clay Fighter), and Hudson (Bloody Roar) by leaving the fighting space for good.

Really surprised Mortal Kombat's being included, given both how fast 11's tournament presence fell off and how no one including the people playing it seems to have any interest at all in 1's competitive scene and it gets barely any viewership.

Mortal Kombat 1, seriously?

I’m out of the loop, is smash not at these things?

3rd Strike is back?!

@Ironcore Ever since Sony bought EVO a few years ago they've gotten a lot more restrictive with it.

You see, it's not just the SSB Melee diehards who want to play older versions of the game in favour of the newest entries - you can see here that 3rd Strike is still alive and kicking alongside the newest Street Fighter too.

If a game is good and unique and offers something the newest games don't, there's no reason to stop playing it.

It's a good time to be playing fighting games. Both Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 are great!

this is sony fighting tournament now.

Sucks Smash Bros isn’t there! That was the most fun to watch!

@Serpenterror I don't think anybody took Punch out seriously or even labeled it a proper fighter. And Kirby Fighters isn't even a competitively viable game. It's a party game first and only, unlike Smash which has King of Fighters DNA hidden in it's spiritual code.

Seriously, listing off fighting games that aren't taken seriously isn't helping your lament.

So sad Sony bought Evo and removed Smash from it. I stopped watching it since.

@KoopaTheGamer UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II [Sys:Celes] too!
@Samalik
«...unlike Smash which has King of Fighters DNA hidden in it's spiritual code.»
What? I don't see any connection between KOF and SSB.
Also, for everyone mentioning SSB... They are platform fighting games, ya know? Not traditional or tag/team fighting games... That's why there's no sense in SSB being featured at EVO, imo.

Third Strike is back! Oh yeah gonna be good!

That being said I am most excited for granblue. I am enjoying SF6 since I semi skipped 5 but it isn’t gripping me like 4 did. Still feeling out Ryu’s skillset. I was hoping VF5US was gonna come back though.

@Vyacheslav333 Sakurai got inspired by the old KoF games to make smash, especially when he saw how people struggled to play. If you watch his channel, he does talk about it occasionally. So Terry Bogard was a weird roundabout reunion of ideas.

That said, what subgenre a fighter is in should be irrelevant. What matters more is their competitive viability. A game as beloved as Gundam VS shouldn't be seen as lesser than Tekken or StreetFighter when all of these games pay attention to their competitive feedback.

And besides, EVO has already included Smash in the past.

@Azami Nintendo removed Smash, not Sony.

@Azami likely because of the partnership with PANDA Global at the time, as well as the general disgust surrounding competive Smash and EVO in general post-2020. (you know, the scandals that came out about abuse and the like) That's also in addition to Tournaments playing a game of tug o' war with Nintendo over the use of mods and emulators with Melee (AKA The Big House 2020 and SaveMelee)

Recently the GM of EVO has praised Nintendo's new licensing program, so maybe there's a sliver of a chance Ultimate might make a comeback in 2025.

What, no BloodStorm or Zero Divide??

Cool. Have to write the dates down.

@Samalik Some people don't consider it as a fighting game at all. I kinda label it as a competitive platformer. Others say the genre is "party game". It's one of those games that doesn't really fit in with genre many label it as, like Zelda being called an RPG. Traditionally Zelda was an adventure game, but because it had swords and elves, the masses just slapped the "RPG" sticker on it since day one.

I think it's fair either way, leaving it out or putting it in fighting game tournaments. And tbh there isn't a lot of crossover between competitors/spectators playing games like Street Fighter versus games like Smash, other than they are competitive video games.
A KOF champ is just as likely to have StarCraft as a game he also competes in as he is to have Smash.. But that same player is 100x more likely to play Tekken than they are Smash or StarCraft. To say Smash and fighting games are the same genre is a little bit of a stretch.

@Azami Kinda hard to blame Sony. Smash community has a really bad reputation and it's unreasonable to expect any corporate face to deal with that community. Also Nintendo is demanding 100% control over everything to do with the game, including tournaments, so there isn't much Sony could do even if they were willing to tarnish their business relationships and face and deal with the Smash community, they will still have to setup their whole event around Nintendo's demands and walk on eggshells. That's unreasonable.

@DestructoDisk This debate is long since dead. Smash already has decades of documentation to show that it has just as much competitive edge and mechanical ground work to be seen as a fighter. Disqualifying it based on subgenre isn't really fair to the game or it's community. Because if it does, what does that make arena fighters? Is Pokken not a "real fighting game" because Daigo doesn't wanna play it? Like C'mon. It's like comparing a competitive boomer shooter (which are more movement and combo based) to Call of Duty (which is more environmental and twitch based). it's a different skillset to do the same thing. Hence they are subgenres.

This isn't the same as Zelda, which was only looking it it's narrative tropes tropes even though the gameplay is effectively a puzzle exploration game, removed from any table top mechanics altogether. that's not a good example.

@Samalik I don't deny it has competitive edge. StarCraft has competitive edge, much deeper than Smash or Street Fighter. But StarCraft isn't a fighting game. I am not disqualifying it and many people do not see it as a sub-genre of fighting games, they see it as completely different genre. Its genre has nothing to do with its community. Pokken is a fighting game clear as day, that is its genre. Again nothing to do with the community or what top players play it. It has to do with the game mechanics and feel. That is what fits it into a genre.

The game (Smash) as designed is focused around navigating platforms, using items, maneuvering and manipulating stage assets, and simple inputs. It is a multiplayer FFA crafted to give random outcomes that are intentionally unbalanced and crafted to subvert trained skill and grant access to wins by novices. It was designed from the ground up to be a party game based around platforming. Now you can set up matches to be one on one and to be more balanced by removing features of the game, this is true. But setting up a single match this way does not change the entire genre of the game.

Some fighting games may even have some of these same features. But sharing one thing or another is not enough to merit a genre label. You can force a 1 on 1 match in Smash, but that doesn't make it a fighting game anymore than using "mode B" in a beat em up, makes the beat em up a fighting game. It's still a beat em up, you are just choosing to duke it out with your buddy.

Speaking of which, Smash has just as much in common with Beat em Ups as it does fighting games. So why isn't Smash a beat em up genre game? How about competitive single screen arcade game.. actually that genre seems way closer to Smash than fighting games do.

At the end of the day to me, Smash is a competitive platformer. Platformers are a different genre than fighting games, they are not a sub genre to fighting games. When playing Smash I don't feel like I am playing Mortal Kombat, I don't feel like I'm playing Soul Calibur, I don't feel like I am playing Street Fighter. Those 3 games are all different genres of fighting games. Smash feels like I am a platform game character, in a boss room against a platform game boss. The mechanics across the 3 fighting games are different but similar enough to be a genre. Smash is just too different to be the same genre. It has things that are the same (jump, attack), but those same things are general video game things found across many genres.

Say I am playing Mega Man X and I am squaring off against Sigma. I have jump and attack. I even have some command inputs. Is Mega Man X a fighting game? Nah the genre is platformer. That is the whole design of the game. Doesn't matter if there is a 1 on 1 fight on a single screen that can be accessed. My movement, my abilities, the stage design, its all built off of platforming. Mega Man X, even if I just did a boss rush mode, or hacked the game so 2 players could face each other in any boss room using any character... it wouldn't be a fighting game. It would be a platformer. It would share the fact that two players are competing one on one with fighting games, but it wouldn't be a fighting game. There is head to head Tetris, its still a puzzle game not a fighter. Head to head platforming is still platforming.

@DestructoDisk - No offense, but I think you wasted your time writing all that text: you could just said “ I think Smash is a platformer, not a fighting game” and it would have had the same effect. Because all that stuff you said? Ultimately it’s based off of flawed logic and thus reaches the wrong conclusion. If nothing else, you forget that in platformers, your goal is to reach the end of an obstacle course using your skills in the genre. That’s how Super Mario works, that’s how Mega Man works, that’s not how Smash works. Beat em’up doesn’t work either, as you also make your way through a level, beating up low and mid level goons on the way. Final Fight and Yakuza do this, Smash does not (outside of specific modes like SSE).
What you do do in Smash is simple: beat the other player in a fight. That fight may be 1-on-1, it might be a FFA, or a team match, it might have items, or stage hazards, or it might not. Either way, the fight is the core of the game, albeit with platforming elements as well, thus why most call it a platform-fighting game.
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As for the topic, not much to say as there aren’t too many surprises, outside of a couple of games missing the cut (like DB FighterZ). Didn’t expect 3rd Strike at first, till I was reminded that Evo includes a single retro game these days.
Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how the SF6 and T8 tourneys go; if they’re anything like SF6’s last year, they should be worth the wait.

@FullMetalWesker there are lots of single screen games where you are fighting against other players and they arent fighting games. Is Bomberman a fighting game? In Smash im jumping around platforms killing the other player. In Bomberman its a maze setting. Wouldn’t call either a fighter. They are just party games. Ones a platform party game.

@DestructoDisk - You can keep trying to argue your point, but it won’t change how inaccurate it is. Smash is a fighting game, because that is the core of the game. That’s it. Bomberman, on the other hand, is apparently a maze game, not a party game, because the core of the experience is navigating a maze using explosives (had to look it up mind, since I have very little first-hand experience with the series, but a quick wikipedia search tells me that’s at least how it started).

@DestructoDisk All I'm seeing is you avoiding the conversation right now. And I'm not tackling that wall of text.
Fact is, Smash has all of the fundamentals of fighters from combos, setups, mind games, neutrals and the whole nine yards. Everything that makes it EVO worthy at minimum. It just redirects it's systems towards jumping and sumo. Trying to disqualify it with the logic of "it's a party game" should then also disqualify all of the other fighters for having party modes as well, even StreetFighter 6 and Tekken 8. That's not how it works.

@Samalik Well, that's good... But, I still don't see any parallels between KOF and SSB.
«That said, what subgenre a fighter is in should be irrelevant. What matters more is their competitive viability.»
Nope. I disagree.
«And besides, EVO has already included Smash in the past.»
Okay.

@Vyacheslav333 What's do disagree with? That's literally what EVO is for for fighters.