LAS VEGAS—The night before I left for Evolution 2013, I mentioned to a few friends that I wasn't going to be around for the weekend because I was heading to a big Street Fighter tournament. I'm used to having to explain that a bit: yes, people still play Street Fighter and other fighting games. Yes, people travel from all across the world to compete. And, yes, this is basically the Olympics for fighting games. Before I could launch into my spiel, one of my friends responded:

"Oh, you're going to Evo. Hey, how about that Infiltration, right? Could you believe he beat Daigo?"

He paused and looked a little sheepish. Almost apologetically, my friend looked at the other guy in the room—a 40-year-old man who came to the gym with his kids—and said, "Yeah, we're all nerding out over here."

The older man looked back. "Naw, I play Street Fighter X Tekken online with my son."

I first started attending Evolution (though everyone just calls it Evo these days) in 2003, fresh out of high school, back when it was held in the main ballroom at Cal Poly Pomona. To the best of my memory, attendance that year barely broke 1,000 people total. That felt big back during the peak of Capcom vs. SNK 2 and the nascent Street Fighter III: Third Strike revival, which would soon be fueled by the infamous Evo Moment #37 (video below).

But this year saw more than 3,500 competitors and thousands of spectators packed wall-to-wall in a pair of massive Las Vegas ballrooms. The place was overflowing with people playing just about every fighting game you've ever heard of (and many that you haven't). It felt like bearing witness to a movement. For one golden weekend, practically everyone walking around Bally's and the Paris was wearing Street Fighter shirts, carrying 10-pound arcade sticks, swapping tips, and talking about who we like to win it all this year.

Welcome to Evo, 2013.

Day 1: Enjoy your complimentary butt-kicking

My first day at Evo got off to a rough start. I drove from Oakland to a friend's house in Las Vegas, and my poor car broke down about two miles from my destination. After troubleshooting and a tow, I didn't get to sleep until 4am and was up three hours later to catch the mechanic as he opened the doors. But there's no time to be tired at Evo—especially when your Street Fighter IV (SF4) pool starts at 10am—so I made it down to Bally's in a borrowed Prius (thanks, Manya!). I got there just in time to see... oh my God, this line (right).

Get excited, everybody. At this point, I was lucky enough to catch the eye of long-time fighting game community organizers Tom "inkblot" Cannon and Seth "s-kill" Killian. They kindly handed me my competitor's pass and sent me on my way to my SF4 pool.

Now, SF4 isn't my main game. I'm a Marvel vs. Capcom devotee. But I figured I should enter the “main event” anyway. My first opponent was an El Fuerte player named Jose "GordoRlz" Moreno who came all the way from Mexico. He absolutely destroyed my Ryu with non-stop mix-ups that I simply couldn't deal with. I was sent packing into the loser's bracket after two games. As I unplugged my arcade stick, one of his friends came up to me, said, "With love, from Mexico," and gave me some candy.

Thanks, guy.

Next up was an E. Honda player named Joon "Jdok" Dokgo. He was a younger guy, and this was his first time at Evo. Ryu is a tough matchup for E. Honda since a smart Ryu player can dictate the pace of the match with fireballs to slow Honda down and chip away at his life—which is exactly what I did. In the end, he succumbed to tournament nerves (I threw him four times in a row). I put him away. After the match, he grudgingly shook my hand, frustration clear on his face. After a few minutes, he opened up a bit. "Sorry," he said. "I got salty."

No problem, Jdok. Welcome to Evo.

Sadly, I was the next player to go. An Oni Akuma player named Chris "Chrisz" Zelenka took me out fairly easily. Still, I managed to win a single match. Considering I don't play SF4 very seriously, I wasn't terribly disappointed with my performance. And since I wasn't due to compete in anything else until Marvel vs. Capcom the next day, I decided to check out some indie games.

Fighting gamers, an untapped resource

Evo isn't just about fighting games anymore. Capy Games President Nathan Vella (Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery, Super Time Force) and Seth Killian collaborated in 2012 and 2013 to set up an official indie showcase where independent game developers can show off their works-in-progress to Evo attendees. Games in the showcase are selected with an eye towards deeply competitive gameplay, a satisfying feel, and (mostly) local multiplayer, all of which are game design virtues that the fighting game community has kept alive since the days of arcade Street Fighter II.

At this year's showcase, Aztez drew a lot of passer-by interest, in part due to the really bold black/white/red visual motif and in part due to the fact that the developers were demoing it with an Oculus Rift dev kit. Samurai Gunn got a lot of love because it was so easy to pick up and play, and the idea of a multiplayer dueling platformer was easy for people to immediately pick up on. And Spy Party returned from last year's showcase with a very large group of players—no doubt because creator Chris Hecker was excitedly explaining to anyone who would listen how to play the game.

Evo isn't just another trade show for these developers. They bring their games for publicity and free, high-quality playtesting. The average Evo attendee has an unrivaled ability to quickly learn a new game and suss out the easiest path to victory. I was chatting with Noah Sasso, creator of BaraBariBall, and he kept noting that many of the newcomer players we watched looked like they were due to put on a good show at Saturday's BaraBariBall tournament. TowerFall creator Matthew Thorson concurred: "Evo is different. People who played TowerFall at E3 weren't as good, and you kind of have to pretend to be bad when you're showing them how to play."

The showcase was accompanied by a panel talk, too. Vella joined Chris Hecker (Spy Party), Beau Blyth (Samurai Gunn), and TowerFall's Thorson for an entry-level discussion on breaking into indie game development. It's not a bad fit for a place like Evo. After all, the way a fighting game player methodically dissects a game is not so dissimilar from the theoretical work a game developer does to build a game and make it balanced and fun.

So how do you start? "Just start making stuff," said Blyth. "I thought of Samurai Gunn when I was at a party watching The Room one too many times." Which programming language should you learn first? "It doesn't really matter," Thorson said. "Use GameMaker."

Should I quit my job to go indie? "Make your mistakes on someone else's dime," Hecker said. The crowd nodded along, dutifully taking notes. Maybe I'll see some of them presenting at next year's showcase.

Closing out with quarterfinals

The first day at Evo closed out with tournament finals for two of the smaller games (Mortal Kombat 9 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2). But for most people, all eyes were on the Street Fighter IV quarterfinals. The top two players from each qualifying pool fought each other until only eight players remained to fight for the title on Day 3. The culling process typically takes at least three or four hours, and the excitement in the hall only grew until the main screen had everyone's undivided attention. After a certain point, the hall hype passed the threshold of no return. The crowd reacted to every excellent play with a rippling ooooh and ahhhh that you can't help but take part in. It's an amazing feeling, and it's why I come back every year.

The first day's SF4 competition had plenty of amazing matches. A Japanese player named Haitani came out swinging with Makoto. This is a fairly unpopular tournament character pick, but Haitani managed to pull off several upsets with excellent reads and unrelenting aggression. Drama only grew as Japan's Street Fighter legend Daigo "The Beast" Umehara took an early loss to Hajime "Tokido" Taniguchi, another longtime Japanese player with a storied Evo history.

Then, Eduardo "PR Balrog" Perez sent last year's dominant SF4 champion Sun Woo "Infiltration" Lee to the losers bracket in an unthinkable upset. Infiltration went on to meet longtime friend and training partner Ryan "Laugh" Ahn in the loser's bracket, eventually knocking Laugh out of the tournament. Afterward, neither player was willing to make the customary post-game handshake—they wouldn't even make eye contact with the other. The crowd didn't seem to know what to make of it.

But my favorite moment from Evo Day 1 was much smaller. Two drunken game devs off to the side were commenting on American veteran Alex "CaliPower" Valle's advancement into the semifinals in between sips of some awful-looking margarita-in-a-can:

"It's so great that he's gotten this far," one said.

"Why?” the other said. “Because he's old? Are you saying old men can't play Street Fighter?" (Valle's age is a bit of a running joke in the Street Fighter community, even though he's only pushing 35).

They continued for a while. "Do you know why it's important?"

"I know. Do you?"

It reminded me of the endless days I had spent as a kid watching Spring Training baseball in the Arizona heat, overhearing a dozen similarly dumb boozy chats while wishing I was somewhere else. We've made it, I thought to myself. Street Fighter has made it.

I headed back home shortly afterwards. Had I been staying in the tournament hotel, I might have mustered up the energy to try to find the “Salty Suite”—an after-hours unofficial hotspot for top players and up-and-comers looking to challenge top players to high-stakes money matches. But the day's events left me drained. I repaired back to my friend's house for a sandwich and some sleep.