Each year, the fighting game tournament Evo takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada and brings in the best fighting game players in the world to compete on the genre’s biggest stage. This year will be no different, as the tournament brings together both traditional and new choices for its main stage roster with its newly announced picks.
While some games are mainstays, a lot of titles are more fluid, and may be up to the whims of the community, the organizers, or even whether the publishers or other rights-holders want the game to be at the tournament. Here’s the list of nine games Evo has announced for this year:
- Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition
- Tekken 7
- BlazBlue CrossTag Battle
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Dragon Ball FighterZ
- Soulcalibur VI
- Mortal Kombat 11
- Samurai Shodown
- Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]
This is the first year since the 2013 debut of Super Smash Bros. Melee at Evo that it isn’t present on the Evo mainstage, usually pushing Super Smash Bros.’ newest game to the background in terms of stream schedule. Evo head Joey Cuellar explained that the game had a great run, but won’t be making a return.
Samurai Shodown is also a fairly big surprise, as SNK promises to try to get the game in player hands at big fighting game events before its release in early summer, which SNK says is worldwide. It, along with Mortal Kombat 11, are both Evo mainstage games that have not been released yet.
The yearly fighting game tournament takes place August 2 through August 4.
What game are you looking forward to this year? Are you excited for another hype Dragon Ball FighterZ final? Or do you think Under Night is really going to show its stuff this year? Let us know below in the comments.