With EVO, the world’s largest fighting video game event, comes excitement and everything you need to know to enjoy it.
For fighting game enthusiasts, there is no event more important than EVO. Short for Evolution Championship Series, it is a fighting game tournament that has been held since 1996 and has evolved into a global benchmark for the genre. With massive prize pools, pitting the world’s best players against each other, and major company announcements made during its celebration, EVO is the place to be if you’re a fan of fighting games.
This year, EVO will last for three days, starting on Friday, August 4th, and concluding on Sunday, August 6th. The event can be followed through both YouTube and Twitch. However, there are several things to consider during EVO.
Firstly, there will be seven different stages, each with its own streaming channel, ensuring that no parallel events are missed throughout the tournament. The games featured in the event include Dragon Ball FighterZ, Guilty Gear: Strive, The King of Fighters XV, Melty Blood: Type Lumina, Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 7, Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising, and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. The top 6 of the four most prominent games, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Tekken 7, Guilty Gear Strive, and Street Fighter 6, will receive the most visibility during the special day 3 event.
Indeed, before all the exciting tournament action, there will be much more information to unveil. Both Capcom and Bandai Namco will be showcasing new content for Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, respectively. Hidden Variable Studios and Aether Studios will be discussing Skullgirls and Rivals of Aether 2. Moreover, among other surprises yet to be revealed, Arc System Works will have a surprise conference to kick off EVO, even though they already have another conference scheduled just two hours later.
This EVO promises a plethora of emotions, surprises, and probably unexpected release dates and announcements. This is the essence of the tournament and why it is so immensely enjoyable. EVO is a true celebration of fighting games and everything they mean to their passionate player community.
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The Capcom Home Arcade Machine comes loaded with 16 classic Capcom games.
Ever since Nintendo released the NES Classic Mini, a nostalgic ripple has spread throughout the games industry. We’ve since seen classic mini-consoles come out from almost all the major players from Atari to Sony. Some have been excellent, spurring budding DIY enthusiasts to build their own, while others like the PlayStation mini haven’t really caught the public’s imagination.
Now, a new retro console has been announced. This one, however, is a little different to the mini consoles we’ve become accustomed to. Capcom is entering the fray with its Capcom Home Arcade machine.
The Capcom Home Arcade Machine is housed in a dual joystick arcade machine setup and comes loaded with 16 classic Capcom games
Capcom’s foray into the mini-console market immediately stands out from the rest due to the size of the thing. OK, technically it is still a mini console if you’re comparing it to an arcade machine, but it dwarfs all other mini-consoles, coming it at 74 cm in length and 22 cm wide. As the tagline “Play, Compete, Cooperate” makes out, the machine is built for multiplayer use and these dimensions ensure two players will be able to stand side-by-side without bothering each other’s play.
This all makes sense when you consider that Capcom is trying to recreate the days spent down the arcade playing games on your feet. All the mini-Capcom needs to tap into those days is power via USB and an HDMI cable running into a TV. With larger HD screens being the norm these days, this could create an arcade-like experience on a much bigger screen than the games were originally played on.
Capcom is behind some stellar arcade games like Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting and Megaman: The Power Battle. Both come loaded on the mini-Capcom alongside 14 other titles spanning various different gaming genres. You can see the full list of all included games below:
The mini-Capcom also sports onboard Wi-Fi so your high scores will go directly into a “Worldwide High Score Leaderboard.” This means even if you can’t find anybody to play against at home you can still go up against players from around the world.
All of this makes the Capcom Home Arcade Machine a very attractive prospect. The only downside is the price and availability of the thing. The Capcom website says the machine will be available in Europe on October 25 and will cost around €230 (about $260), which it puts it in a considerably higher price bracket than other mini-retro consoles. On top of that, it is currently only available for pre-order via the Capcom website, although Capcom says other retailers will come on board soon, and as yet there is no news of a North American release date.
Some characters just aren’t fair. And some are absurd. Here are the most unbalanced fighting game characters in history.
Cheap characters have been a thing as long as fighting games have existed. Your friends will scream and whine at you for picking these characters, accusing you of being unfair, spammy, or a cheater. While sometimes your friend is just acting like a sore loser, there have been many fighting game characters that have been so overpowered that they completely break the game. Oftentimes, the only way you can beat these characters is by pausing the game and beating up your opponent IRL. Here are some of the most hilariously cheap characters in fighting game history.
Top 5 most overpowered fighting game characters in history
5. Akuma – Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Goldeneye has Oddball, Pokémon has Mewtwo, and Street Fighter has Akuma. The OG cheap fighting game character, Akuma debuted in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo as an unlockable boss and hidden playable character. He makes his startling debut by killing the already overpowered final boss character M. Bison. Provided you are the Devil himself and you want to put your friends through hell, you can play as Akuma using a cheat code on the character select screen.
Akuma’s moves are basically Ryu’s on steroids, plus an air fireball and a teleport. His Shoryuken can take off a third of your health. His air fireball is the only aerial projectile in the game, and its diagonal trajectory makes it extremely difficult to dodge. His only real weakness is his sub-par mobility, but he can easily mitigate that with a super-fast teleport. For the cherry on top, Akuma has the strongest Super Combo in the game, plus it’s unblockable!
In most competitive tournaments, Akuma is flat-out banned, and if he isn’t, most players choose not to pick him as an honor rule. He’s consistently been a high tier in every game he appears in, including games outside his own series like Marvel vs Capcom or Tekken. Thankfully, Capcom at least toned him down by reducing his health and turning him into a glass cannon.
While Brawl is a fantastic game with loads of content, it’s something of a black sheep among the competitive Smash community. It’s very slow and floaty to play, lacking the blistering speed and combos of Melee and the quality of life improvements and balanced roster of Smash 4. And while each Smash game has their overpowered characters, Brawl’s Meta Knight makes Melee Fox look like a Nintendog.
Even in a game with plenty of overpowered characters like the Ice Climbers, Snake, and Diddy Kong, Meta Knight still stands head and shoulders above the rest of the cast as the best character. His moves are extremely quick on startup, and he’s the only character in the game who has standard moves (A moves) with transcendent priority. This means that these moves cannot clash with other moves, going right through them and beating them out.
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If that wasn’t bad enough, Meta Knight has not only one, but two of the unquestionably best special moves in the game in Mach Tornado and Shuttle Loop. The Mach Tornado is a dreaded hurricane of death that protects Meta Knight, helps him recover, allows him to get vertical KO’s, and is a safe approach option. Shuttle Loop is Meta Knight’s recovery move that functions as a glide and a kill move, being relatively brain-dead to spam off stage to edgeguard your opponents and make it back to stage safely.
The debate on whether or not to ban Meta Knight caused a civil war within the already small Brawl competitive scene. Some tournaments banned him, but most didn’t. However, in the places where he was banned, an arguably even more horrifying character dethroned him: the Ice Climbers. These Eskimos from Hell could chaingrab you back and forth and the only counterplay was divine intervention.
3. Marvel vs Capcom 2 – Sentinel
Marvel vs Capcom 2 is arguably the most imbalanced fighting game that Capcom has ever made, but despite this, the game still has a special place in gamers’ hearts as a fast, chaotic, and technical fighter. Part of the game’s charm is that the top 5 or so characters are so overpowered that learning how to play them becomes a game in and of itself. Even among those characters, Sentinel stands out as the most broken character in the series.
The mutant-hunting machine of death has one of the highest health counts in the game, making killing him a war of attrition. Though his hitbox is huge, all of his attacks are surprisingly fast and have enormous range, allowing him to shut down opponents and trap them in the corner.
Additionally, he’s the only character in the game whose normal attacks cause chip damage, which means they damage opponents even if blocked. He can even fly, chasing down pesky top-tier mutants like Magneto or Storm and pummeling them back into the ground with his aerial combos. Even on the bench, Sentinel has some of the best assist attacks in the game, filling the screen with missiles and shutting out the opponent. Every MVC2 player has had nightmares at some point about a killer robot screaming “ROCKET PUNCH ROCKET PUNCH HYPER SENTINEL FORCE”.
Eddy – Tekken 3
Eddy Gordo is a Brazillian Tekken character who fights using capoeira, an Afro-Brazillian martial art that combines fighting with rhythm and dance. He is one of the most polarizing characters in fighting game history due to his extremely simple fighting style. And by “simplistic,” we mean “press both kick buttons over and over to win.” Eddy’s stylish kicks send him flipping and spinning across the screen, changing stances and keeping the opponent locked down. Tekken is already known for being a button masher among casual players, and Eddy’s acrobatic antics only cements this further. While pro players have a significantly easier time dealing with Eddy, picking Eddy while playing against your friend casually is an easy way to get a PlayStation controller thrown into your face.
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While Power Rangers may not come to mind when it comes to iconic fighting games, Power Rangers: Fighting Edition on the SNES is infamous for featuring by far the most overpowered character in fighting game history: Ivan Ooze. Ooze is the final boss of the game, and can be unlocked by winning the story mode on the hardest difficulty.
In most fighting games (especially SNK ones) if a boss character is playable, their moveset is significantly toned down in order to bring them in line with the rest of the cast. The developers, assumedly in a fit of temporary insanity, forgot this basic tenet of game design and left Ooze untouched as a playable character. What resulted is the most hilariously broken and frustrating character to ever grace a TV screen.
Seriously, we don’t even need to say much here, just watch the video. Ooze can fly, rendering him completely invulnerable to low and throw attacks. Nearly all of his moves feature no startup and allow him to fill the screen with fireballs, pillars, and other nonsense. He even has a move that gives him a force field and fires a bunch of homing projectiles which he can activate at any time, even while being hit. Ironically, Ooze is the only character in the game who can’t block, but even that doesn’t hold him back from being the most unfair character in fighting game history. As they say, the best defense is a good offense.
Did we miss a character? Let us know in the comments below!
