EVO 2017 Sunday Finals

With EVO's Friday and Saturday being mostly lighthearted days of competition and convention-like time with a few finals matches thrown in, Sunday Finals feels like a completely different event. Once again, the Sunday Finals graced the stage of the Mandalay Bay Events Center, with some of the matches being streamed on actual television. The atmosphere was electric, not unlike seeing a more traditional sporting event, and I could not be happier to be there in person.

The MBEC is a huge, daunting arena, capable of holding 12,000+ people. And sure, while the arena wasn't completely full, I'd easily put it at 75% capacity, no small feat considering 1) this is still an eSports tournament and 2) Sunday Finals were a separate ticket on top of the regular EVO pass. 8,000 attendees might not be DOTA2 Worlds numbers, but they're nothing to scoff at, especially with Disney XD televising the Smash 4 Finals, ESPN televising the Street Fighter V finals, and the various Twitch streams around the world. The finals for each game are set up as an almost double-bracketed affair of winners and losers, with the potential of someone coming up through the losers bracket to make it all the way to the grand finals and taking the prize, leading to interesting match ups and amazing fights.

I'll be upfront and honest with you all: I didn't catch near as much of the finals as I would have liked. The Injustice 2 finals started at 8 am, and plans with visiting friends took me away from the entirety of the Smash 4 finals. But you know, I'm okay with that. I got to see most of BlazBlue, a good chunk of Tekken, and the SFV finals, along with the various announcements that took place between games.

Announcements, you say? Sure. EVO's a good time for fighting game companies to make all sorts of announcements to a receptive crowd. One of the biggest announcements is Acr System Works' big old crossover fighting game BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, combining BlazBlue, Persona 4, Under Night In-Birth, and RWBY. Other announcements were more along the lines of upcoming character DLC for various games, along with a summer beta for Dissidia NT from Square-Enix.

Despite there being 5 games worth of finals throughout the day, the biggest was easily SFV. It had the most entries, the most money on the line, and the most Americans in the Street Fighter finals that we've seen in years. By the time the SFV finalists took stage, the finals had been going on for nearly 12 hours, but people were ready to cheer on their favorite fighters, or just watch the events unfold.

Tokido, the EVO 2017 SFV grand champion

I won't bore you with a lot of the details about the various finals, but I do highly recommend you catch some of them on YouTube; there's very very good fighting game in there. I will say that I am proud of Punk Da God, representing the USA all the way to the grand finals, at the tender age of 18, and that he did very good. But sometimes youth falters under pressure, and to watch seasoned veteran Tokido finally take a grand finals, coming up from the losers' bracket, was stunning to watch. Plus, hearing the crowd yell "USA, USA" was a wonderfully weird thing to be in the middle of.
-Janette G

Check out the gallery and videos below! (Sorry for the audio quality, I was right up against the speakers)