Pomp, pageantry, and punching: Evo 2024 is a celebration of fighting games
7.31.2024
By Jason Fanelli, Contributor
The Evolution Championship Series—or "Evo" for short—is an annual competitive gaming event that focuses solely on fighters. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, Tekken, and more all take center stage as players from around the world descend on Las Vegas to try to take home a piece of fighting game glory.
Evo 2024 not only set attendance records for Evo itself, but its 10,000-plus unique registrations made it the largest single competitive gaming event in history. However, the competition only takes up half of the Las Vegas Convention Center; the other half is a celebration of fighting's past, present, and future, with a convention hall rivaling that of the now-deceased E3.
We spent a hot July weekend in Las Vegas walking the Evo 2024 floor, watching matches, talking to the team, and getting hands-on with Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves. Between the relics of the past, the action of the present, and the promise of the future, the Evo experience is enough to leave any fighting game fan feeling a little punch-drunk.
The evolution of Evolution
After years in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center and Arena, this year's Evo moved to the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, the largest venue the event has ever seen. Mark "MarkMan" Julio, who heads business development for Evo, attributes the move not just to the competitors, but to the fans.
"Based on our ticket sales, we know there are more spectators coming here than competitors, and that's never really been the case before," Julio said. "There's whole families that are coming here. People are bringing friends, and a lot of those I've been talking to are first-timers. It's been a great experience overall."
There aren't many communities in gaming that have the opportunity to celebrate their favorite genre like this. In fact, Evo general manager Rick "TheHadou" Thiher thinks the word community might be too small to convey just how big fighting games have become in recent years.
"When you wind up global, I think community's too small a word. Evo has become a centerpoint for what has emerged as its own culture," Thiher says. "We are a rallying point for what is, at this point, a decades-old thing."
What makes Evo that rally point, in Thiher's eyes, is the ability to balance the competition and the celebration of all things fighting games.
"I think it's very important to be aware of the past, present, and future of fighting games, and generating the response that we have by doing so is validation," he explains. "I've never met anyone that doesn't like validation and awareness, so to combine those with a competition, we create an experience that may not be unique in its individual components, but one that I think is incredibly unique as a whole."
Part competition, part convention
The layout of the Las Vegas Convention Center for Evo 2024 shows the aforementioned competition/celebration balance in action: the floor is essentially split in two. The first half houses the Arena, a 9,000-seat viewing area for the final matches in each of the event's eight featured tournaments. A combination of floor seating and stadium seating—borrowed from the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, in fact—creates a gladiatorial environment that's bathed in Evo blue and more than worthy of the championship moments it houses.
Just outside of the Arena are the main competition areas, which are lines of tables equipped with monitors and PlayStation 5s. This is where the grinding happens; where the 5,000+ entrants in the Street Fighter 6 tournament are whittled down to the top six that fans flock to the arena to see on Sunday. After the tournaments are complete, they turn into open-play areas where fans can throw down on their own time.
The other half of Evo, meanwhile, looks like any other video game convention. Rows of vendors and artists sell their wares. Massive booths themed around current and upcoming fighting games invite attendees to take up a controller. PlayStation—which purchased Evo in March 2021—hosts an Astro Bot booth, showing it off to anyone who wants to check it out. However, with few exceptions, every booth, vendor table, and artist in that convention center is focused on fighting games.
Perhaps the most striking section of the floor is the Museum, a booth that celebrates the history of the genre with artwork and fight stick controllers that span decades. Some exhibits on display include the original cover art for the Super Nintendo port of Street Fighter 2, a rare holographic Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 poster from Japanese arcades in 1999, and rarely seen Tekken 7 pieces with a traditional Japanese feel. Jesse "J-Ryu" Yu, artist and curator of the Evo Museum, has a clever analogy to describe how these pieces of art feel to those who grew up with them: rock music.
"If you listen to rock, and I mention an album cover, you immediately think of Led Zeppelin and the zeppelin crashing, or The Beatles crossing Abbey Road," Yu says. "Fighting game art is the same way; when you think about it, it harkens back to a point in your life, it creates a reference point, and it exemplifies your love of these games."
Fatal Fury revs it up
If the competition represents the present, and the Museum symbolizes the past, then the SNK booth on the show floor is carrying the banner for the future of fighters. Here, we get a chance to go hands-on with Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves, the first installment in SNK's fighting franchise since 1999's Garou: Mark Of The Wolves.
Our demo features five of the eight currently revealed roster members:
- Terry Bogard, the longtime protagonist of the series
- Rock Howard, Terry's adopted son and the biological son of villain Geese Howard
- Preecha, a Muay Thai expert and disciple of another series stalwart, Joe Higashi
- Marco Rodrigues, a Brazilian martial arts master
- Vox Reaper, a street assassin and the lone new character in the demo
In battle, the core mechanics resemble that of a standard 2D fighter: Each button gives you a different strength of attack, you execute special moves with specific movement combinations on the D-pad, and a super meter builds up over time that allows you to pull off more powerful attacks. However, there are two key elements that make Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves stand out, and they are the REV System and S.P.G.
The REV System encompasses enhanced moves, special counters, and more, all represented by the circular REV Gauge on-screen. As you use these moves, the REV Gauge builds up; however, in an inversion of typical fighting game meters, you don't want the REV Gauge reaching its max. If it does, you'll enter an Overheat state which locks you out of these special mechanics, and you'll have to wait until the meter empties before you regain access. It's a clever way to give the player more tools, but also to ensure that they can't be abused to the point where each match becomes a REV-fest.
S.P.G., or "Selective Potential Gear," is a more strategic mechanic. Before a match begins, you can designate a third of your life bar to be in S.P.G. range. When your health is inside that range during the fight, you'll slowly regain health, the REV Gauge won't fill as quickly, and you'll have access to your character's most powerful attack, among other benefits.
Placing the S.P.G. range, in turn, becomes a game-changing decision before you even throw your first punch. Do you place it at the beginning of your health and try to overwhelm your opponent immediately, or do you save it for the end and use it as a comeback mechanic? You have the power to choose depending on your playstyle, and it makes for instant intrigue in every Fatal Fury match.
Fighting for the future
The first Evolution Championship Series took place in 2002 at UCLA in southern California, and it featured only three games. Now, Evo has become a crown jewel for fighting fans, a desert oasis filled with fights and fun across a multitude of franchises that have stood the test of time. With more games on the horizon and more content coming for fan favorites, the immediate future of fighting games looks as bright as it's ever been.
Evo's path forward is just as luminous, as it has established itself as the "rally point" for fighting games as a whole—and a blueprint for how a video game convention can look in this post-pandemic era. The organization announced new events coming to Los Angeles, Tokyo, and France, along with the event's first trip to Singapore in 2026.
The NFL has the Super Bowl. Major League Baseball has the World Series. Fighting games have the Evolution Championship Series. If future events play out like Evo 2024, this fighting game festival will continue to rock Vegas for years to come.