After a very busy and tiring day yesterday exploring the Vegas strip; today is a bit different in pace in that we will be going to EVO on it’s last day which is where the finals will be held as well. Today will be mainly hanging out, buying stuff and watching fight game matches so let’s see how things went down in one of the biggest fighting game tournaments/conventions in the world.

After a pretty short ride from our hotel to the vegas convention center, we entered and were welcomed with this nice big screen welcoming those coming to EVO, noice.

We came pretty early, at around 8:30am since that is when they are open for badge pickup, I only brought ourselves Sunday badges, only as spectators in advance and just picked them up without much hassle. At the time it was pretty dead, I am assuming because the actual vendors/industry floor opens at 9am and tournament finals begin at 10am and everyone only wants to come later in the day as the majority of people who participate in the tournament have already been eliminated and are coming as spectators anyway.

After a quick line to get into the hall before open, you see alot of industry booths from like Playstation, which is an official sponsor and more fighting game related industry booths like Hitbox, showing their warez and such to buy for those looking for leverless fighting game devices.

This particular shop/booth sold officially sanctioned merch for Arc System works games like Guilty Gear and all the main games featured at EVO such as SF6, Tekken 8, Grand Blue Fantasy VS and the latest Unib. Among other things, it was one of the first stores we brought shit from, pretty cool merch like shirts and another items.

The floor also had an area with a fairly large selection of cabinets of Japanese style arcade machines, arcade music games, driving games and dance games. Even more niche stuff like Bombergirl and Kancolle arcade too, noice.

An example of this is that they even had a setup of Metal Slug 6 with retro CRT monitor connected to arcade buttons and joystick. We couldn’t resist and ended up playing the first level and beat the boss, good shit. Good ol arcade games is the shit.

One of the vendors sold this nice pixel frame display thing of the famous EVO Moment #37, the legendary moment when Daigo parried Justin Wong’s Chun Li’s super for a comeback win in SF3: Third Strike; one of the most famous moments of EVO in the early days which still persists today in memory. This particular piece was signed by Justin Wong apparently, only a few days ago when he was browsing the area as-well.

M.Rage booth selling their cool looking collab windbreakers and jackets. Their designs are pretty cool and badass. I couldn’t resist and ended buying a black Guilty Gear Ramlethal wind breaker from them lol. Not sure when I will wear this but man, I just kind of have to since I’m here at EVO.

The bag that you get from them when you buy stuff is also very cool looking with art of Baiken as well. This bag would basically serve as our merch bag for the rest of the day because it is quite large. Good shit.

While a fighting game tournament, that doesn’t stop the usual convention stores and vendors from showing up as well. Noms Cafe is here, I suppose only a few weeks fresh from AX as well in LA, makes sense I guess.

Since we were early, the Arc System Works booth were having a play test of their newest unreleased game a Hunter X Hunter 3 vs 3 tag team fighting game. I ended up giving it a play and I can say that I don’t really like it, mainly because I have no idea the source material and the character designs are butt ass ugly in my opinion.

Another artist which I brought from in the past is also here, they don’t have much fighting game stuff which I find interesting, I ended up buying more from them but I am surprised they were at EVO since yea, Hololive and artists go well you know.

This artist was pretty busy, had lots of interesting fighting game characters and unique style, good shit.

This artist had none or very little related EVO warez and leaned heavily on Hololive and popular vtuber anime stuff, hmm. Nice card wallets, pretty cool.

After walking around for the bulk of the morning and seeing that it was closer to the time we had to go to the arena area for Guilty Gear Strive finals, we went outside to the main convention hall space. They had something of a food court cafeteria with some decent offerings. For instance, overpriced pretzels.

And fancy grilled chicken burger and fries combos just ready to pick up and pay at the register to eat in the food seating area. Overpriced and decent but what can I say about this for my lunch, it was a meal, it wasn’t amazing but it wasn’t bad either; curly fries were good.

After our quick lunch we headed back inside and headed to the arena area. Saw this pretty good Gold Lewis standing round, asked him for a photo. Good shit.

As the largest fighting game tournament in the US, there was alot of relatively famous streamers and youtubers just around doing their thing. The guy with the hat in this photo is Hotashi, one of the previous years Guilty Gear Strive winners who is also a streamers/youtuber just playing around and doing casual matches with people. I think he got knocked out early this year and is just chilling before finals. Noice.

Proof of existence combined 2, before entering the arena edition.

Inside the arena and it’s pretty cool and big looking. At the time it was not quite filled but by the time matches began it was, noice.

Proof of existence, EVO arena edition.

Before matches began they showed a trailer of the newest stuff for season 4. Dizzy, Venom, Unika and a new guest character from CyberPunk, Lucy, wow. Also 3v3 mode coming in, lots of good shit.

After a very exciting bracket Nitro won with Jack-O doing a reset against a JP SOL and coming back from losers bracket and was very hype in the final match, really good to watch and the crowd was into it as well.

We had been sitting for roughly 2.5 hours and needed a washroom break and wanted to continue browsing the hall area for merch and artists but we noticed as we exited there was a line to get into the arena. Uh oh, looks like getting back inside is not going to be easy and or impossible, damn.

Capcom booth showing their new collection that features marvel and other classic titles.

2XKO, Riot games League of Legends fighting game using the same characters and such which has been in development for like 5-6 years I think. I hope they release it one day, damn.

SNK booth showing Fatal Fury City of the Wolves and play demos. I wanted to try too but at this time the line was just to big and not worth the wait, I am only here for 1 day, I don’t want to spend like half an hour to an hour waiting to try playing the game for 5 minutes.

They had an area showing all the main games historical past art and character stuff, this here being just one wall and frames of Guilty Gear artwork. They also had Tekken, Street Fighter, King of Fighters etc, good shit.

They also displayed the sticks they give out to the winners of each game. Nice.

EVO background and pose. Objection!

EVO background and pose. Peace.

Nice Bridget cosplayer, very committed to the cosplay indeed with the shoes too.

The line to get back into the arena area became insane and the organizers basically said give up guys and then converted all the existing large screens on the floor to just cast the finals there. They brought out spare chairs and yea, you just had to watch the matches like this unfortunately.

Me bringing over the chairs that they brought over for people to sit outside the arena for those that couldn’t get back inside. Sadge but what can you do.

My sister was hungry so got some Poke bowel. It was not very good and left alot of rice left over.

We took turns going back to the food area to get food and I brought back some very overpriced generic pizza for myself and my sister, since the Poke wasn’t that good and some onion rings. Rings pretty good, pizza just base. Each slice is roughly $10, yea, it’s that overpriced.

SF6 trailer for Terry in the game, wow, he looks so different in this game. His face at least that is.

This SF6 match had the guy on the left’s stick break in the middle of the match. There was a delay for like 15 minutes to get him a new stick. He still lost nevertheless lol.

Justin Wong was around doing some bit beating people in the audience at rock paper scissors on stage and giving them PS5’s and replicas of the winners sticks as well, nice prizes. He won all his matches until the last one, 5/6, it was jokes.

Outside waiting for a taxi cab back to our hotel once SF6 finals was over lol, noice.

Overall I really enjoyed my first EVO as an attendee, I had a great time shopping and buying merch, all of the finals matches I watched were great; Guilty Gear Strive, Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6, all excellent exciting matches with hype moments and good winners. I am a bit sad that they didn’t have enough space to have everyone in the arena and many had to resort to just watching outside but I guess they need to make the venue even bigger next year. From what I hear, they had 10k participants and a total of 20k in attendance which is probably the largest ever for a EVO to date. Noice, lots of room to grow. I am just glad that I was able to watch Guilty Gear finals in the arena at all, some people I’m sure never even were able to get in at all.

Tomorrow is another day in Vegas so let’s see what’s going to happen for us then. Still living and live, for now.