Evo 2023 Tournament Reveals the Return of a Fan-Favorite Marvel Game
The Evo 2023 lineup in live and the world’s biggest fighting game tournament answers the most important question of all, “When’s Mahvel?”
The Evolution Championship Series, also known as Evo, is one of the biggest esports events in gaming. Starting in 1996 as a Street Fighter 2 tournament in California as “Battle of the Bay”, the event eventually started adding more games. Marvel vs Capcom 2 was the first non-Street Fighter game. The tournament eventually became Evo in 2002 and has been host to some of the absolute hypest moments in gaming history.
Evo also is known for being the place for fighting game news reveals. It’s practically its own E3 just for fighting games. The event has run into its fair share of issues with Covid much like many other events. This event, however, has come back stronger than ever before. Evo 2022 was the first in-person Evo since 2019 and brought such fantastic energy. There were some incredible matches there, like the nail-biter of a final match for Street Fighter V that had me on the edge of my seat. This year, Evo has announced its lineup–and it’s looking like it will be amazing.
Evo 2023
Evo announced its 2023 lineup and, for the first time ever, each game will have players competing for a prize pool of $25,000 minimum. The tournament will be held from August 4th to August 6th at the South Convention Center at Mandalay Bay in Nevada. There have been some other changes made this year as well–finals now go from Top 8 to Top 6. This change should hopefully keep things from running over time like they did last year causing delays for many games like Guilty Gear.
via Evo
The line-up this year is chock full of fan favorites with a ton of returning games and a newcomer.
IT’S MAHVEL, BABY!
The biggest surprise of the announcement was that Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is coming back to Evo! Originally supposed to be DLC for Marvel vs Capcom 3, Capcom released a separate title with 12 new characters and numerous balancing changes. The Capcom Vs game hasn’t been a main-stage Evo game since 2017 and many, many fighting game fans are incredibly excited. The Marvel vs Capcom series is a staple of Evo that cannot be ignored. It has been so long thanks to Marvel vs Capcom Infinite not going to any Evo tournaments due to poor reception of the game from both casual and hardcore fans of the series. The tricky part nowadays is bringing any of the games back to Evo is harder now that Disney owns Marvel. Which is why this is such a huge deal for many.
NOW IS MAHVEL
Rick Thiher, General Manager of Evo said of the announcement-
“We are excited to once again feature an incredible lineup of fighting games at Evo 2023 and are thrilled to be including our first Evo Throwback tournament with Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3,”
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The wording from it and the Twitter post indicates that this will probably be a one-time thing. The idea seems to bring back one older title to Evo each year to spice things up from just newer current titles. This means things like Capcom vs SNK 2 or Street Fighter 3rd Strike could come back to the main stage and that is incredibly exciting.
Street Fighter VI
New to Evo this year is Capcom’s big entry in their long line of fighting games: Street Fighter VI. Capcom has released a number of Street Fighter sequels, but they all were prequels to Street Fighter 3. This made it so that nothing really felt different for the characters in both story and gameplay since Bison just wouldn’t go down. This left Ryu in a constant state of getting some new things, but never that different from Street Fighter 3. Now that Street Fighter V put Bison down for good, Street Fighter VI has been shaping up to be the most ambitious Street Fighter game ever made.
The game will be incredible to watch since it will be chockful of new characters and old characters with brand-new moves, so it will be unlike anything seen before. The first year of a fighting game is always a great time since everyone is learning how things work and the meta will evolve over time. I personally cannot wait to see how each Evo after 2023 shapes up for Street Fighter VI.
The Returning Champions!
The other games on the lineup are all returning games from fairly recent Evo tournaments. This will be the 2nd year for fan favorites Guilty Gear Strive, King of Fighters XV, and Melty Blood: Type Lumina. Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate will also be making its 2nd appearance at Evo except it will be the 3rd time Mortal Kombat 11 will be featured technically.
Dragon Ball FighterZ will be returning for its 4th year with no word on if it will be the next-gen version since we have not heard anything about the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S releases since last Evo.
Last but not least, Tekken 7 will be making its whopping 7th-year return to the main stage. Tekken 7 has been a wild ride of guest characters and incredible mechanics that got people excited for Tekken again. Tekken 8 recently released a new trailer for Kazuya and it seems it is only a matter of time before Tekken 7 is retired from Evo. Just like Street Fighter V was last year for the new hotness.
There is no word yet on any rumored reveals or trailers at Evo 2023 since it is pretty early. The safe bets are Tekken 8 info and King of Fighters XV DLC will be shown this year. One can only hope for a big reveal like a Mortal Kombat sequel or a brand new Vs series game.
Let us know in the comments if you will be watching Evo live this year or if you would have liked different games to be on the main stage.
“Get ready for the fight of your life!” – Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 announcer
