The EVO Championship Series continues to get bigger and better every year. It would be quite the understatement to say that 2011 was no exception. 1.1 million total unique views of an event that capped at 82,000 viewers (50,000 more than 2010). The Fighting Game Community is quickly rising and blowing up the Internet.

Highlights

8 year old Noah beating people left and right at Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Guaranteed to be a future EVO champion, Noah is on a level other 8 year olds could never reach.

I love the quote at the end by Seth Killian.

A pity it had to end but we'll see him again. Later on in the day Noah was given the "Rising Star" award, which I assume was invented on the spot just for him.

Aris commentates with, falls in love with, proposes to and then watches Kayo Police win at Tekken 6

Not many people may have seen this as it was on stream 2 which was doing the pools and semi-finals of BlazBlue, Tekken 6 and Mortal Kombat. But everyone who did agreed it was hillarious. You've got the English - Japanese barrier up front and then you've got the transgender dynamic. Childish people in the stream at the time aside, it was a perfect EVO moment. I certainly couldn't tell until it was pointed out to me. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Trish has manlier hands than Kayo Police does, speaking of which, once you see you can never unsee.

Tournament Finals

My personal favourites were the MK9 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Grand Finals, but the Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition matches leading up to the Grand final were amazing as the USA and Korea went up against Japan, including Daigo. I also enjoyed Tekken 6 despite the amount of Bob and after seeing BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II here for the first time I'd like to see it again.

Perfect Legend has been part of the MK scene from the beginning and has played Kung Lao from the beginning, never changing even after Kung Lao was nerfed. He took a back seat to Justin Wong's Kung Lao in the PDP MK9 Nationals (in which all players had to use PDP sticks) but at EVO were pads are perfectly legal Perfect Legeng won. His opponent RE0 was also a meber of the MK community and there was a fundraiser just to get him to EVO. Money well spent!

I was heavily emotinally invested in this match, under no circumstances did I want a Phoenix player to win. It isn't Phoenix herself that causes the problems, but the combination of her Dark Phoenix form and Level 3 X-Factor. Thank goodness it has been toned down for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

When PR Rog did what he did with Tron Bonne, wow. That's what EVO is all about. There was so much going into this with Justin Wong being beaten by PR Rog minutes before. And before that even we had friends Justin and Noel Brown havingto face each other. Noel even resorted to Phoenix and had a look of shame on his face when he won the first round using her.

I don't know if this will ever happen again, but as of Sunday, it's possible. Fuudo, Latif, Poongko and Daigo made a very memorable finals for SSFIV: AE. and with a level playing field post-patch, next year's EVO is wide open.

Make sure to check all of the finals matches online, they are out there.

Shout-outs

EVO Staff

Tom Cannon, Tony Cannon, Joey Cuellar and Seth Killian ran an amazing event this year. The new pool system and stream schedule they used worked perfectly, I hope it's used again next year. I don't know who was keeping the evo2k Twitter account running but they did a good job too.

Stream Production

Spooky and Haunts did as good of a job streaming EVO this year as I was expecting them to, was perfect. Team Spooky was who everyone wanted to get the Streaming job for this EVO and it was well worth it. Two groups who may not get too much praise who should are FinestKO and Offcast who ran Stream 2 on Friday and Saturday.

Commentary Team

A FLURRY OF PUNCHES! hahaha, no Adam Sessler wasn't commentating this year, he stayed far away from EVO 2k11, leaving only people who know what they're talking about to commentate. Seth Killian, James Chen, UltraDavid, Ryan Hunter, Aris, Skisonic, Keits, MarkMan, the Tekken community manager, the two dudes who commentated the BlazBlue finals and everyone who pitched in during the pools, consider yourselves saluted.

Giant Bomb Fighting Game Sub-Community!

16,000+ views and 1,150+ posts spanning across 58 pages is the current total for the Official EVO 2k11 Stream / Discussion thread. Not too shabby at all. It makes the 2k10 thread from last year look bare in comparison. The explosions in the Giant Bomb chatroom gave any Whiskey Media livestream a run for it's money. Well done to all. See you all next year!