The largest fighting game tournament in the world, Evolution Championship 2016, is live. Over 35 hours of competitive fighting games across the next three days.
In case anyone had plans for the weekend, it's time to put those aside. That's because this weekend's required viewing is the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, EVO 2016. The annual Evolution Championship Tournament features the most popular and competitive fighting games currently in the scene. In 2016, that last includes 9 different games including the latest titles in both the Street Fighter and Super Smash Bros. franchises. Best of all? It's live, right now.
EVO 2016 began this morning at 8:00am PT and will end its first day tonight at 10:00pm PT. After that comes two more full days of fighting games, with Sunday featuring a single livestream with back to back finals for five different games. Today and Saturday will be the ice cream to Sunday's cherry on top, with five different livestreaming channels necessary to capture all of the pool play and semi-finals building up to top 16s and top 8s.
The question on everyone's minds now should be what to watch. To start out, it's probably best to pick a game that fits your interests. There are a total of 9 games to pick from, too:
- Street Fighter V
- Super Smash Bros. Melee
- Super Smash Bros. Wii U
- Pokken Tournament
- Mortal Kombat XL
- Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator-
- Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
- Tekken 7
- Killer Instinct
After picking a game, it's time to find out when said game will be featured on one of the EVO streams. Remember, there are five concurrent livestreams, so scheduling what players want to watch is important. Also note that not every match is played live on stream. EVO does the best it can to show as much as possible, but if fans want to follow the tournaments even closer, then it's best to check out the brackets (or go watch EVO live in Vegas).
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The surprise of EVO 2016 is yet again the popularity of Nintendo's line-up of exclusives. Certainly Super Smash Bros. Melee will draw out a crowd, but seeing Super Smash Bros. Wii U also pulling out a similar sized audience is startling to some. Top that off with Pokken Tournament, which is also pulling out a huge crowd that's larger than Marvel, Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Guilty Gear – all mainstay fighting games from EVO past. Pokken Tournament looks to be a new mainstay in the tournament.
Above even Nintendo's gargantuan turnout, however, reigns the king, Street Fighter V. Some may have thought that with Street Fighter V's rough initial launch window, its console exclusivity on PlayStation 4, and the popularity of Street Fighter IV, that it might have a rough initial EVO turnout. This is not the case, as more players have turned out for Street Fighter this year than ever before. That's why Street Fighter V will be running full-time Friday and Saturday before taking the headliner spot at the end of Sunday's finals gauntlet.
For Street Fighter V fans, don't miss those finals on Sunday. The past several years Capcom has taken the stage to make big announcements during EVO, so it'd be surprising if it didn't do the same this year. At the least, expect release dates for Urien and Juri, but maybe Capcom will tease some new DLC characters, too.
EVO 2016 is live right now and will air all the way through Sunday evening across five livestreams. Check out the main livestream embedded above, or look at the schedule below to find exactly what game and stream to watch.