Day 2: It’s Marvel, baby

My Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 qualification pools weren't until 2pm, which meant I had plenty of time to wake up, spend some time warming my hands up in training mode, grab a healthy breakfast, and make my way to the tournament at a leisurely pace.

Just kidding—the mechanic called and insisted I pick my car up that morning. I got all of 10 minutes in training mode, ate two donuts, and hustled down to the qualification pools just in time to see Capy Games' Nathan Vella pleading with the tournament official running my pool. "He's gonna be here; I just texted him. He's on his—see, there he is now." I checked my phone; he did text me. "Dude, you need to be at Pool 17 right now or DQ."

The TO looked at me and said, "You were 30 seconds away from getting DQed." Thanks for the assist, Nathan.

I parked my butt down in the chair and got to work; my first opponent was a young player named Fernando "Twod Nando" Ortega. My three-character team, made up of Zero, Doctor Doom, and Vergil, was about as dirty as you can get in a game that can get very, very dirty. But Ortega put up a great fight. We traded matches back and forth, both of us making some pretty awful tournament-stress-related mistakes. Eventually, I pulled out the win—three games to two. By the end, my hands were shaking so much that I needed to catch my breath and grab some water.

When I got back, I was ready for round two: a Wesker/Iron Man/Strider player named Bobby "Majin Bob" Ketterer. His team was unconventional, and I was poorly prepared to deal with Iron Man in particular. I quickly found myself fighting my way up the loser's bracket against a player from Mexico named Carlos Ramirez. He's got nothing on my Zero, who effortlessly rolled his entire team three games in a row. I almost felt bad for him.

Welcome to Evo, kid.

Next up was a player I've actually heard of before—Ryan "Fubarduck" Harvey, a Texas player who had a very solid reputation in Street Fighter III: Third Strike. There is little skill crossover between that game and Marvel though, so I was inclined to think I could take him. Then I saw his team of Nova/Doctor Strange/Spencer, popularized by a Japanese player named Nemo for its excellent inter-character synergy. This team gave me fits against others in the past, but I still got off to a good early lead with Zero. It went downhill quickly from there. Harvey put me down 3-0 without much trouble.

"We've got lots of great Zero players in Texas," he told me. "So I've got plenty of practice in this matchup."

"I played against a few of them at Arcade UFO in Austin last year," I replied. "They're really something."

"Yeah, that's my arcade."

That made me feel better, at least.

Harvey ended up qualifying from our pool, putting my unexceptional 2-2 performance in a somewhat better light. But I didn't let the early loss stop me from enjoying myself for a bit. Wandering the halls, I ran into a friend who works for the tournament every year, Andres "nothingxs" Velasco y Coll. I asked him what it's like working for the event.

"It's roughly two straight 20-hour work days that start and end in the wee hours of the morning," he said. "It's tough but ultimately rewarding and, to me, incredibly satisfying work. There's something great about sitting down in finals day looking at what you and your fellow crew have helped put together."

"I can't say I do it for the money,” he continued. “I've been volunteering at the event since 2008 with no expectation of reward other than the satisfaction of getting to say I did my part to help the community. I know what it's like to be a player, and I know and appreciate how hard it is to put a good event together. This way, all the people who play these games with us can focus on having a good time."

Next, I stopped by the Skullgirls tournament—they showed the Top 8 on a secondary stream—and chatted up two of the animators, Mariel Cartwright and Jonathan Kim. I never saw the Skullgirls community in person, but it looked just like any other fighting game group. "They're taking side bets," Cartwright said to me. "This is awesome!"

By this point, the Marvel tournament had reached the semi-finals. I found a few friends and spent the rest of Saturday making small bets on the outcome of the matches. Highlights included the tournament favorite, Chris "NYChrisG" Gonzalez, getting sent to the loser's bracket by Tommy "Windzero" Nguyen, a local SF Bay Area player I've had the privilege of getting wrecked by. Chris G later went on to knock Eduardo "PR Balrog" Perez out of the Marvel tournament, inciting Perez to retire from Marvel and focus on other games. Lastly, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 legend Justin Wong defeated last year's UMVC3 champion Ryan "Filipino Champ" Ramirez in a nail-biting 3-2 set.

That was great, but the best was still left for Sunday. And everyone knew it.

Day 3: The moment you’ve all been waiting for

I have an Evo Finals Day ritual: I drive over to Lee's Sandwiches, a Vietnamese sandwich (bahn mi) chain and stock up on coffee and grub for the entire day. The finals run more or less back-to-back starting at 10am, so it's not easy to run out and get food in between games without missing something (or giving up your spot).

By the time I got to the venue, King of Fighters XIII had just made it into the Grand Finals, where crowd favorite Reynald came up from the loser's bracket to take on Hee San Woo. Reynald won six straight games to take the title, inciting Hee San Woo to throw his arcade stick on the ground in disgust. The crowd went wild with chants of "U-S-A! U-S-A!" and a few people even waved flags around.

That's exactly how Finals Day should start.

Next up was the Top 8 for Super Smash Bros. Melee. It was the first year in a long time that Melee had come to Evo, and it happened because the community earned it. The community conducted a breast cancer research fund donation drive contest to the tune of about $95,000. But just a few days before the tournament, Nintendo demanded that Evo organizers nix the livestream for Smash—and then immediately reversed their decision after seeing the outpouring of outraged gamers of all stripes standing in solidarity with their Melee-playing brethren.

So Melee made it onto the big stage, and the crowd showed that it belonged there. Tournament favorite Joseph "Mango" Marquez took the finals in a commanding performance that cemented his own legacy and broke fighting game stream records, getting more than 100,000 simultaneous viewers online. I personally am not a huge Melee fan—I gave it a serious run for a month or two, figuring out Marth and Fox. Still, as someone who grew up with Nintendo games and familiar characters, it felt strangely important to sit in a room full of thousands of people cheering on Fox McCloud and the Ice Climbers as they brawled it out.

After Melee was the Injustice: Gods Among Us finals. While the tournament itself was big, the crowd wasn't nearly as interested as they were in the earlier games. Champion KDZ received a hearty round of boos for winning with Superman, a character that's widely considered to be overpowered.

Before Marvel finals started, Microsoft and Double Helix devs took over the main stage for a short demonstration of their upcoming Killer Instinct reboot. Again, Evo is a community event, not a trade show or press conference where people are expected to be professionally civil to you. Hence, the presenters were widely jeered and mocked whenever Microsoft's name or logo appeared. You can get your game in front of the fans, Microsoft, but you can't make them like it.

After what seemed like an endless succession of "C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER"s, it was time for Marvel. Street Fighter IV may be the Evolution main event, but Marvel vs. Capcom was arguably the more exciting finale this year. Before the final match, last year's champion Ryan Ramirez was knocked out by a relatively obscure player named Cloud805. Wolverine/Dormammu/Shuma-Gorath player Angelic also acquitted himself quite nicely, placing third overall.

This helped set up a grand finals that was easily the best story of the tournament. Crowd favorite Justin Wong lost early in the tournament to top Florida player Job "Flocker" Figueroa, 3-0. Wong then clawed his way back up the loser's bracket, getting past tournament favorite Chris G to reach the finals and face Flocker a second time. Wong needed to win two matches to take the championship; Flocker only needed one more win.

The pair played a series of ten nail-biting back-and-forth games. When the dust settled, Flocker just barely emerged as the champion. My words don't do it justice; you have to watch the series yourself.

With that, it finally was time for the evening's main event: Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition 2012. The Top 8 was a veritable who's who of worldwide SF4 talent. Infiltration and Daigo reprised their finals battle at Capcom's 25th Anniversary tournament last year, and Infiltration won once again. PR Balrog's played his eponymous character in an incredible back-and-forth set against Infiltration. It came down to the wire, but Infiltration ultimately eked out the win by switching to Hakan, an unpopular tournament character that appeared to just barely catch PR Balrog off guard.

By the time the grand finals came, two players clearly stood apart from the pack: Singapore's Kun Xian Ho (known simply as "Xian") and Japan's Tokido. Xian masterfully dismantled Tokido in a fantastic display of patience, spacing, and prediction. The crowd went crazy, and then it was time to go home.

The aftermath

Just 30 minutes after the event, the Bally's casino floor already returned to its normal self. Save for a few pockets of scattered Evo attendees noshing on Subway, there was little proof of what happened there over the weekend. (The Smash players camped out on floors and huddled around GameCubes to get every last second in.) Some players retired to their rooms to continue the money match action; I went back to my friend's house, sat on his couch, and opened up the laptop to unwind for a bit.

I wondered if there were any Marvel streams on. There weren't.

For a few brief days, Evo is a wonderful portal into an alternate world where Street Fighter is our NBA. You're surrounded by people who care just as much about the exact same things that you do. The feeling of validation is addictive to fighting game enthusiasts, but you feel it gradually start to fade during that last Sunday night into Monday morning. It's sad. You try to fight it, to hold on to each moment of hype as hard as possible by trying out new tricks you saw or re-watching the finals again and again. But eventually you have to wake up, shower, get dressed, and go to work. Sigh. At least next year is just around the corner. Then...

Welcome to Evo.

Patrick Miller is, among other things, a competitive games writer. Follow him on Twitter: @pattheflip.