Sunday

As mentioned in the interview last year, every Sunday at EVO is Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar's holy grail. That is when all the best matches of the tournament happen, when the top eight survivors from the tournament face off against each other. If you were lucky enough to be there this year or to have seen the stream, you would have witnessed events such as Kelly's Cable defeating Wong in MvC2, despite losing the set of three out of five matches before, Wong's Balrog outplaying Umehara almost to the very last round in SFIV, or funny moments like Alex Sanchez's Sanchez walking up and booting Mark “Mopreme” Rogoyski's Ryu right at the beginning of the round in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. But aside from these match highlights, notable videos premiere or events happen at EVO every year.

 

This year's combo exhibition video came courtesy of sonichurricane's Majestros. Before showing the video, he told the crowd the hard work he put into the video: a full year's worth of planning, recording, and editing. Knowing Majestro's record with producing ground breaking combo videos, the crowd awaited the video anxiously. As each combo passed, the crowd gasped at every combo, at every gameplay intricacy that Majestros took advantage of. The combos didn't wow the crowd with its a seemingly unending barrage of hits, but with smart, interesting exploitations of the game mechanics. The editting was also superb, seamlessly transitioning from one combo to another. It's hard to describe this combo video's beauty in words – check it out for yourself at Majestro's website.

 

Last year, fans got a chance to see Bang the Machine, a documentary following the community and the first ever US vs Japan exhibition. This year, fans got a different treat – a video interview with the legendary Tomo Ohira. Ohira was an active player from the original Street Fighter II until Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers. During that time, he was rumored to have only lost in four tournaments and did amazing feats like declaring and beating another player using only the light kick button. The interview was conducted by Mike “Papa Watts” Watson and filmed by Ross. An old friend of Ohira, Watson was the perfect person to conduct this interview. “When I saw Tomo again after so many years, it actually made me feel like a kid again,” Watson reminisced, “It was also a great honor for him to say I was his main competition back in the day.” It dove into interesting questions like why he quit, what his most memorable loss was, and his interpretation of the fighting game scene at the time. Like Bang the Machine, this interview opened up the eyes of many gamers, giving them a glimpse of what the scene was like almost two decades ago. When describing the importance of this interview to new gamers at EVO, Watson said, “I am very happy to bring the legend of Tomo to reality for the current, younger community of Shoryuken.”

 

EVO also treated fans with another interview; one conducted by Victor “dogface” Ratliff with Tony and Tom Cannon, two of the main organizers for EVO. Ratliff, known for The Dogface Show that combines both humor and thought provoking questions, said “I was lucky because I was able to tap into the crackling energy of the room. All us 'fighting gamers' are on the same wavelength, and speak the same language.” Questions ranged from, “What's the difference between Evolution and Super Battle Opera?” to “Would you rather your daughter date Justin Wong or Justin Long?” The difference between posting the videos online and doing the interview live was wild, Ratliff said. “Imagine, there were at least 1200 people there. So when they all laughed, it was a high. And when a joke fell flat,” Ratliff continued, “well, I'll just call that a learning experience.”

 

At the end, Ratliff asked the Cannons to go on stage, each standing on one side. “We're not going to make you two play against each other – that's just tasteless,” Ratliff said to the twin bothers. Instead, Ratliff presented them with the first ever Cannon award, in recognition of their contributions to competitive fighting games, through organizing tournaments like EVO, running Shoryuken, and creating the amazing GGPO netcode that runs games like BlazBlue and STHD. The entire room gave a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes. Considering how important EVO, Shoryuken, and GGPO netcode was to the community's growth, there could hardly be a more worthy recipient of the Cannon award. The name doesn't hurt, either.

 

Ratliff closed up his thoughts on the live Dogface Show by stating, “I would love to do more live stuff and hope to in the future.”