Evo 2019 Lineup: A Guide to the 9 Games of Evo

Since the early ’00s, the Evolution Championship Series has been like the Olympics of one-on-one fighting games. The three-day event will return once again and take place August 2-4 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Formerly called the Battle by the Bay, this will be the 18th official Evo tournament (not counting the recent Evo Japan). As usual, it will feature a lineup of nine fighting games. Several fan-favorite games will return for another year. Some older games got a shot in the arm, thanks to new DLC. But there are also a couple of games that got cut completely to make way for new entries.

First off, Super Smash Bros. Melee is no more! The game made waves when it was brought back 2013, staying on even after Super Smash Bros. for Wii U joined the tournament cycle. In 2019, the game has finally been laid to rest.

Watch Evo 2019 Live Right Here

Despite the fact that it was just released this year, Dead or Alive 6 is also off the table. While this roster was surely planned before Evo Japan happened, one can’t help but notice how its absence coincides with the controversy of what went down at that event. Team Ninja’s promotional stuff for the game played things up a little too raunchy for the Evo brass, leading to lots and lots of jokes when the Evo Twitter claimed the incidents were against the tournament’s “core values.”

The Guilty Gear Xrd series is also out, having finally run its course. Arc System Works has other games at the show, so the studio will be just fine.

Oh, and no Marvel vs. Capcom for the second year in a row. We miss this one. Anyway, here’s the official Evo 2019 lineup:

Over three days, thousands of fighting game fans from around the world will be playing these nine games. Of those titles, BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Tekken 7, and Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition will get the high-profile finals on Sunday.

So let’s take a closer look at what we have to look forward to…

STREET FIGHTER V: ARCADE EDITION

Despite its crossover brother falling to his doom, Street Fighter V tends to succeed quite a bit at Evo. Not only has it been the star of the Sunday Grand Finals for the last three years, but it’s also been featured on ESPN2. The game has continued to evolve over the years with a steady stream of DLC, keeping the experience fresh enough.

At this point, things are starting to really slow down for Capcom’s juggernaut, though. Since last year’s Evo, only three characters have been added and two came out the day after the show. While the Street Fighter name keeps this game going strong, this may be the title’s last year as the Main Event at Evo.

TEKKEN 7

Tekken 7 was released just a month before Evo 2017 and yet the game has been part of Evo since 2015 because it came out in Japanese arcades just in time for the tournament. Evo did it again in 2016 with the upgrade Tekken 7: Fated Retribution.

In 2019, this fighting game is at the tail end of its “second season,” and new DLC characters have been introduced. The game has shown its staying power and it will be a little while before it really runs out of gas. Part of the game’s charm is the guest characters it announced at each show. Last year, the big addition was The Walking Dead‘s Negan. It remains to be seen if Bandai Namco will announce a new guest character this year, but fingers crossed.

BLAZBLUE CROSS TAG BATTLE

BlazBlue is usually one of the more underrated franchises at Evo. This tag crossover game features fighters from BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth, and RWBY. The RWBY stuff was created for this game. Soon Arcana Heart will be joining the fray as well as at least one other property.

The game was announced at Evo 2017 and debuted the following year. Its debut came very shortly after its release, so it still had some rough edges. Regardless, people seemed to dig its frenetic nature and nice to see it return once again. A year of experience and a lot of DLC have added a new coat of paint for sure.

DRAGON BALL FIGHTERZ

And here’s the game that labeled Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite obsolete the moment it was announced. Arc System Works’ 3v3 tag team game made waves at Evo 2018, but its return wasn’t exactly a done deal. Fairly recently, Toei Animation made a big stink about sending out cease and desists to tournaments that wanted to stream Dragon Ball FighterZ, mainly because the studio thought it would take eyes off of its own official tournament. The game ended up not even being featured at Evo Japan.

It looks like cooler heads have prevailed and the blockbuster will make its return to Evo 2019. There have been plenty of updates and DLC since last year’s run, so it’s good to see that there won’t be any legal issues holding things back.

SUPER SMASH BROS. ULTIMATE

Even though it was only the second entry in the series and came out for the GameCube nearly twenty years ago, Super Smash Bros. Melee held onto a strong fanbase in terms of Evo, partially because of how poorly Super Smash Bros. Brawl did as a competitive game. In 2013, Evo held a charity-based vote regarding which game to bring in from the series and Melee won. It then smashed records and became a mainstay at Evo, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U be damned.

With Super Smash Bros. Ultimate making its first showing at Evo, it makes sense to finally do away with Melee. Ultimate features every character and stage from all of its predecessors, so even if the gameplay is different on some level, having Melee around would feel redundant.

SOULCALIBUR VI

It’s been a long, long time since SoulCalibur has been part of Evo. The franchises hasn’t been at the tournament since 2012, in fact. Bandai Namco’s classic weapon-based fighter made its long-awaited return recently, and its presence at Evo 2019 is a no-brainer. Even though it wasn’t out yet, Evo still hyped SoulCalibur VI to hell last year, even giving it a side tournament with the few characters available in a pre-release build. Now it’s a fully-formed fighting game with tons of content.

The series itself has been on life-support since SoulCalibur V‘s weak release and this entry is its last gasp of air, so hopefully, this sequel will get the same kind of love as its brother Tekken 7.

MORTAL KOMBAT 11

There’s no way Mortal Kombat 11 wasn’t going to be at Evo this year. NetherRealm Studios basically releases its fighting games like clockwork. The developer releases a Mortal Kombat game, and then some DLC and new character. Two years later, it makes another Injustice game. DLC and patches happen, the game dies down, switch back to Mortal Kombat, and repeat. That schedule certainly hasn’t failed NetherRealm at Evo, which has featured one of their games religiously for years.

Injustice 2 is in the past and now it’s all about Mortal Kombat 11, meaning it will have that right balance of newness and familiarity once it hits the Evo stage. It won’t be the most popular fighter in the lineup, but these NetherRealm releases get better and better as they come to us. It would also be a prime setting to let us know some future DLC.

SAMURAI SHODOWN

So this is huge! The Samurai Shodown series is one of those classic early fighters that spawned out of the success of Street Fighter II. There have been many installments and, being an SNK game, the series has a cult following. Yet, a SamSho game has never appeared at Evo until now. This current-gen rehash just came out in July, so who knows how it’ll play in Las Vegas. This is the Evo wildcard for sure.

UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH EXE:LATE[ST]

The ridiculously titled and generally obscure Under Night In-Birth and its upgrades have been around since 2012, and the series has earned a bit of a cult following since then. But the game is perhaps best known for being part of the BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle crossover. This 1v1 fighter had a side tournament at last year’s Evo and got enough attention to convince the Evo brass to give it a real showcase for once.

Gavin Jasper writes for Den of Geek and sighed upon realizing that King of the Monsters got passed over yet again. Read more of his articles here and follow him on Twitter @Gavin4L

This article was originally published by Denofgeek.com. Read the original article here.