The 20-year-old game put on the biggest show at Evo 2024

Now I wasn’t at Evo– for those of you not in the know, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world and something of a Super Bowl/Anime Expo at the same time for our subculture— but I did spend my entire weekend holed up watching the tournament final streams; damn near all of them. It took every ounce of will in my body to not just turn on a fighting game myself but dammit, I spent the better part of three days taking in the best fighting play in the world. It’s a pleasure all its own.

I mostly have stuff to say about the Third Strike tournament and specifically Hayao’s amazing performance, but I will talk about some of the other games as well.

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Third Strike

(They got the original rapper from Third Strike, Infinite, to record a new song over the game soundtrack 20 years later.)

The most interesting thing going on in the retro scene at Evo was the full-on tournament for the legendary, 20-year-old Street Fighter III: Third Strike. It is a lot of work to do this right: modern console ports of Third Strike and modern LCD HD displays have too much input lag to be acceptable for top-level 3S play. Previous tournaments for retro games held on modern hardware have left competitors feeling laggy and disappointed.

Instead, 40 custom setups were built using real arcade boards and high-quality CRT monitors, both of which are quite expensive to come by these days. The estimate given by the builders was $1400, but consider that a genuine— or hell, even pirated— Third Strike board goes for over $1500 by itself. Evo paid a lot for this.

(Speaking of, it's right there so I really must point it out. In this video you can see CPS3 carts for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Street Fighter III New Generation, meaning Evo did in fact go for the technically illegal but much more reasonable flash cart solution, where you buy a less collector-desirable game and turn it into a multi-cart that can play any CPS3 game.)

I was honestly kind of skeptical about this tournament. This beloved title disappeared from competition for a reason; its lopsided balance leaves many serious competitive players resorting to one of three overpowered top-tiers (Yun, Chun-Li, and Ken, in descending order), which in turn bores spectators to tears as they watch the same characters fight over and over again. I’m old enough to have watched “Chun and Ken” tournaments when the dominant style was extremely passive, so I was dreading the tournament a bit.

And yeah, MOV, the best Chun-Li player in the world— so confident in his skills that he stuck with the weak Elena for much of the tournament— did defeat Yun in the final round, but anybody who watched the full top 6 can tell you it was a lot more exciting than that. See, the other scenario that Third Strike’s poor balance can create is an underdog story.

So about Hayao…

Enter Hayao. Competitive veteran, Hugo user, and 41-year-old showman. There is no question that Hayao’s shockingly unpredictable and skillful use of one of the weaker characters in the game won him the heart of the crowd, if not the actual tournament. MOV won, but everybody was talking about the man who did the splits in the middle of the tournament, the man who pulled off a move so insane it’s being compared to Daigo’s historic parry against Justin Wong all those years ago.

Let me explain this exchange and why it’s so remarkable.

Hayao is getting up from a big hit with Ken’s Super Art II and he doesn’t have a lot of life left. FrankieBFG’s Ken has been hopping back and forth all match to avoid grappler Hugo’s big throws, and Hayao definitely has anti-air on his mind as the two try to swat each other out of the sky. Frankie lands a poke and puts Hayao at zero life. Any hit kills, any blocked special move kills. Hayao has only one defensive option: the risky parry, which requires perfect timing.

Incredibly, Hayao perfectly predicts Frankie’s next action, even though it is by no means obvious. Ken tries to jump forward and come down with the EX Tatsumaki Senpu-kyaku (Hurricane Spin Kick), trying to dive in and clip him with multiple kicks, any of which would kill Hugo if he doesn’t parry. Anticipating this action, Hayao jumps in and parries all four hits. Immediately, Hayao takes the tiny opening that he’s created and lands a full combo on Ken that nearly ends the round.

Frankie is down, Hayao is up, and both players have such a small sliver of life remaining that the next hit will be the last. What Hayao does next is even more insane.

He presses hard kick. This man presses hard kick. Hugo’s standing hard kick, a slow flying drop kick, is not a very useful move, nor does it seem to be a good choice when standing over a downed opponent at point-blank range. But as it turns out, it was another genius read.

Frankie uses Ken’s Super Art II as he stands up, while Hayao’s Hugo is beginning to leap up into the air. And a miracle interaction happens. For just one precious moment Hugo’s drop kick puts him way up in the air above Ken’s head, and Ken, stuck in the kick combo motion of Super Art II, helplessly zooms under Hugo and across the screen. Hayao reacts immediately, using a fast clothesline to run Hugo across the stage and clobber Frankie’s Ken while his leg still hangs in the air from his ill-considered Super Art.

This sequence by Hayao calls for a laser-precise read on the opponent and the quick wits to form a counter plan in the space of two seconds. It takes the pure muscle-memorized dexterity to parry four timed hits, and the presence of mind to— in the very next moment— realize one’s position relative to the opponent and input the most damaging possible combo. Then it calls for one last— utterly galaxy-brained— read and counter. It is a virtuosic display that demonstrates a bone-deep level of mastery. Hayao deserved to run out and start high-fiving people. I would too, if I pulled that off.

So yeah, MOV took the tournament, but Hayao won all the hearts in the arena. Thanks for one of the all-timers, Hayao. We’ll be talking about you for a long time.

Tekken 8

I don’t feel terribly qualified to judge Tekken play, other than to say Arslan Ash's run is just getting more and more remarkable. Mostly, I just want to point out how different the game’s nature is from the previous one. I have already written a full review that goes more into detail, but note the way every match is just a rock-paper-scissors slugfest, with position and movement playing a much smaller role in the game. It doesn’t matter that these are the best players in the world: It’s just the way Tekken is now, and though I’m sure it’s easier for newbies to play, I can’t help but feel like Tekken’s lost a lot of its identity in this version.

Guilty Gear Strive

Nitro is a New York local, not that I've been to play GG in tournament for uh four years or so. Seeing his guys just pluck him off the stage and hug him and crowdsurf him around was such a joyous moment, a why we do this moment. So happy for him.

I haven’t been around Strive a lot lately, but sometimes in the game's life, it feels like the meta is “just pick this guy, he’s better than everyone”: I got tired of the game when Happy Chaos was still a really big problem. Other times it feels like anybody could win on a high level, and then when the semi-yearly balance patch comes in the game gets shaken up in one of those two directions again. Well, Jack-O won Evo, so I guess we’re in the latter category. Beautiful, calculating play from Nitro; I was truly in awe.

I keep wanting to come back to this game– it's actively supported, GG is my favorite-ever series– but more than anything the terrible online lobby experience ruins it for me. The lobby system doesn’t work, you’re up against the same two people over and over again, connections constantly fail. I queued up for online play the day after Evo and the game put me in an empty lobby. I could load up SF6 or Tekken and play three full sets in the time it takes me to get connected to a single person in GGST. It grates no matter how much you like the game.

And thus the only thing I can think about the upcoming 3v3 mode is this: if I can barely connect to one person in Strive right now, how the hell am I gonna connect to five?!

Under Night In-Birth II

A lot of people already pointed this out, but I love the minor-game spirit on the big stage. Nobody who’s hardcore into Under Night is looking for a million dollar prize, they’re just there because they love their special game. As the scene gets more and more commercial I'm happy to see people get paid (someone pay me tbh), but I'm honestly happier to see the kind of joy that was expressed from top to bottom in this tournament.

The crowd-appeal moment was the way Senaru got cheered every time he reloaded Sion’s gun after her combos.

(This reminds me that I never really reviewed UNI2, huh…)

King of Fighters XV

Love Colt the luchador announcer. Dude had a different mask for each day. Fantastic.

Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising

I almost forgot GBVSR even though it's one of my favorite currently active games. The great thing about Rising is that even though the character balance is wack, you can just learn whatever character you gotta learn in five minutes. I had a reign of terror with Beatrix. Carried? Obviously!

I say this because the guy who won Evo in GBVSR (Aarondamac) said on Twitter that he probably wasn't even going to play because he hated the balance so much, and then he entered anyway and took Evo with Belial, the dude who's right under top tier. GGs, shake his hand.

SF6

I think it’s great there’s a 17-year-old kid on that stage. It makes me feel proud of how far we’ve come. You know, the FGC was always kind of an Old Man Gamer thing, even when I was a college kid discovering the scene. Critics around this time first said that arcade and fighting games were mindless button-mashers for children and dumbasses, and then that they were obsolete. The early FGC was just a loose collection of genre enthusiasts who insisted very differently, against the grain of the time, and came together to enjoy the games in the way we knew they were meant to be played.

Now fighting games (not just Street Fighter!) are legitimately mainstream, respected in the way they always deserved, and best of all, we have a new generation coming through. Fighting games have really never been in a better place. Seeing a kid that young on the top-6 stage makes me think of all that, and it makes me really happy.

As for the play, I still like SF6 a lot. The balance between rush offense and classic Street Fighter is something that really appeals to me, and the system is so strong it’s going to last years in this scene. Punk was absolutely laser focused and max-efficiency at all times and it’s beautiful to see that in action. Glad he finally took the win.

Worth it every time

Fighting games are probably my first great love, the first thing that took me from huge nerd to full obsessive otaku. And I would learn from them. I owe these games and their community so much, in terms of my development as a human being. Really! They taught me a way of looking at the world, and they helped teach me to get along better with people when I was uh... less socially adept than I presently am. I was only able to afford Evo one time, but every time I see these streams I long to be back among my people in the desert.

In conclusion, yo, who's hiring?