My first Evo was all the way back in 2003, when it was held at Cal Poly Pomona. It was a ragtag yet passionate operation where a bunch of weirdos crammed into one of the university’s big halls to play fighting games and watch the best of the best from across North America (and the Japanese players they convinced to come attend) duke it out. There were a bunch of PlayStation 2 consoles and arcade machines, a few projection screens, and some seats if you wanted to either watch or play some games. There were no ads or major announcements–the entertainment during downtime consisted of fan-made combo videos and somebody playing the overhead levels of Contra III. Despite all of the tech hiccups and the obvious drive to run things as cheaply as possible, we all loved it there.
Never would I have dreamed that, almost a quarter-century later, Evo would become one of gaming’s most-talked-about annual events: a celebration of love and community in fighting games that even people not really into the genre would tune in to watch online. Evo now occupies an entire, massive hall in the Las Vegas Convention Center, where thousands of players from around the world come for a chance to compete and share their passion for fighting games in a variety of ways–be it entering tournaments, running side events, drawing and selling art in the Artists Alley, cosplaying, or just playing casual sets all day with people they’ve never met before. In a way, the main Evo event has morphed from a tournament into a full-blown fighting game convention, where the tournaments are now just a major part of the show, not necessarily the sole reason why many of the people are there.