EVO 2024 Roster Revealed; 3rd Strike On The Main Roster To Honor 20th Anniversary Of The Greatest Evo Moment Ever

This week the EVO Championship Series, which is currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corp., announced its full lineup of games that will headline its main event and stage this year. The games are:

• Street Fighter 6
• Tekken 8
• Guilty Gear -Strive-
• Granblue Fantasy: Versus Rising
• Under Night In-Birth II: Sys:Celes
• Mortal Kombat 1
• The King of Fighters XV
• Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

Some have remarked on the disappointing lack of Melty Blood: Type Lumina and Dragon Ball FighterZ, but overall it is an incredibly diverse and compelling mix of games with all of the bases of the fighting game genre covered. And before you ask, yes, I support Smash being shown the door considering the community associated with Smash has been rocked by credible reports that its top players have historically engaged in domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and pedophilia as well as Nintendo perpetually communicating that it wants to have nothing to do with the competitive Smash scene.

Nonetheless, the biggest surprise to the lineup has to be Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Evo have made it abundantly clear that they are including 3rd Strike in 2024 as a commemorative move to honor the 20th anniversary of Daigo vs Justin at Evo 2004, widely agreed to be the single greatest moment in the history of Evo and possibly one of the most well known moments in the entire history of competitive fighting games.

So, what are your thoughts about the decision to include 3rd Strike in 2024? I think it is the right kind of stupid and if anything, paves the way for Evo to explore having a "historical" slot to its main roster. Who's to say they cannot have another Melty Blood tournament in a hotel bathroom?

I think that having Third Strike on there is a good call. I'm always in favor of making older games relevant and honoring what's good about them, and here there's a special connection. Plus in modern times these older games are more accessible than ever. It used to be that there was no easy way to get your hands on older games outside of buying retro hardware and hunting down the carts, but now anyone watching the tournament can get a credible copy of Third Strike on basically any platform.

I am, however, against removing Smash. Smash is such a huge part of the fighting game scene and constantly gets shunted aside as "something else." The fact that a lot of its top players are bad actors doesn't reflect on the game or even necessarily the community as a whole. Ban those people and let fresh blood circulate at the top. A tournament like Evo is the perfect place to let newer, less problematic, people shine on a big stage and get the attention they need to break out.

Nintendo's opposition to the Smash competitive scene is another story and might make this more difficult, but I think Smash should be there.

Something I always note with Evo is how pathetic the Western developed fighter scene really is. On the Japanese side you always have tons of games from various companies, and even more excluded because there just isn't room. On the Western side you have Netherrealm if they have a new game out and...nothing else. There are Western studios making fighting games (such as the various Smash clones that have come out recently) but they are much fewer and generally not very high quality. Killer Instinct from 10 years ago (with a recent update) was good but there's just not a lot out there.

I wonder why that is. The fighting game scene was always Japanese focused, but it's not like there weren't a lot of Western developed games back in the 90s and early 2000s. Midway made a ton of them but pretty much every publisher tried with something. Some of those games like the wrestling and dinosaur fighting games were even interesting, if not necessarily good. Now fighting games are a big genre again but all the developers are either Netherrealm, indie, or Japanese. You'd think that someone else would give it a shot but other than Killer Instinct there hasn't really been another try for a long time.

Sadly, I understand them not including DBFZ as part of the main lineup. Those matches can go on forever and take up way too much time, because the characters have bullet-sponge like life bars. One competitive match can literally last between 15–30 mins, if it's really close. I've seen DBFZ tourney's last well into the mornings hours because of this, and the players insist on a 3/5 match up during Top 8. One common theme I've notice over the recent years, is that people want to get shit done quickly and go home before it gets too late at night, for obvious reasons. The other fighting games included, including 3rd Strike go by a lot quicker, making for a more timely tournament. And sure, DBFZ might still be there as a side tourney, but the point is, it's not one of the main ones taking up space.

As far as Smash not being there. I don't mind, either, because Nintendo pretty much gutted that competitive scene anyway. Also, I never liked how Smash players would talk smack about the FGC, while at the same time still using their events to hold tournaments, which for the most part they still do at other events. Frosty Faustings for example was a couple of weeks ago and they had a Smash tournament.

I think part of that has to do with most western fighting game expertise outside of NRS being on the indie end of things. God bless the devs of that game for still supporting it, but the five people who are into Skullgirls are probably not the critical mass needed to warrant a main stage presence at EVO. Same goes for Them's Fightin' Herds and Idol Showdown. It feels a lot closer to the doujin side of things, and I'm just happy that end of things exists in the side booths and hotel bathrooms of EVO.

Quite frankly, I don't think any of the increasingly risk-averse western publishers have the stomach to invest in the kind of talent, infrastructure, and player base needed to sustain a major fighting game. Maybe Microsoft will get Iron Galaxy to do another KI at some point, but outside of that I wouldn't be surprised if Riot's Project L ends up being fucking huge.

@arbitrarywater: I think there's something to this, but I also think that there is at least some expertise in the US (Iron Galaxy is one example but there are lots of competitive fighting game players and some older developers floating around, in addition to the aforementioned indie teams) and I'd think one of the AA publishers, like maybe someone at Embracer might have taken a shot.

They sort of have with the various Smash Brothers clones, but those have been a different kind of thing and not really intended for anything like serious play.

It's just interesting to me because a lot of studios did try in the 90s and 2000s, and then they all moved on or closed, except for the one, which has the highest selling franchise in the genre, and routinely puts out games that are in the top 10 at the end of the year, yet nobody in the West wants to compete with.

And then the last time a Western publisher did put out a major traditional fighting game it was a modest critical (and I believe commercial) success. So you have a genre that has done pretty well but that nobody even wants to try with outside Japan and that one Western studio.

There are reasons for it, of course, it's just interesting. Maybe Riot's game will change things.

I hadn't heard that about Smash. That's nuts and good for them for not including it.

Imma be honest, i thought 3rd Strike was there every year.

It was, as a side tournament for a good while. Now its featured on the main stage again.