The annual Evolution Fighting Game Championships (aka EVO) just took place over the weekend, and in a matter befitting the biggest fighting game event in the world, we were treated to a huge slew of new announcements and releases from fighting game developers that will keep fighting game fans busy for weeks and months to come!
Here’s a quick rundown of all the big announcements that were made over the weekend!
ArcSystem Works – ArcRevo World Tour
At long last, after years of requests by the ArcSys fans and playerbase, we are finally getting an official world tournament series for all of the major ArcSys games including: BlazBlue Chrono Phantasma Extend, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2 and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle.
The Dragon Ball World Tour was announced a little while ago but this is great news for fans of older ArcSys games as it means that they still have a reason to stay competitive and keep watching tournaments before the next major iteration of Guilty Gear is released.
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle – Remaining Season 1 DLC Characters All Announced and Released Simultaneously!
After a series of leaks revealed the remaining DLC characters ahead of time, ArcSys decided to address the issue in the best possible way by officially announcing all of the characters and releasing them simultaneously right after EVO.
All of the characters are now officially available in-game and there’s plenty for fans to explore. The deluxe version of this game on Steam is extremely cheap (only around RM100 to buy the game with all of the DLC characters), so now is the perfect time to pick up this accessible yet fun crossover game!
Dragon Ball FighterZ – New Balance Patch released along with Base Goku and Base Vegeta! Next DLC Character – Cooler Announced!
Dragon Ball FighterZ was the game with the most entrants at EVO this year, so of course there had to be a big announcement for the game on the main stage. Base Goku and Base Vegeta were officially announced last month, but this was our first time getting to see their full movesets in action, while Cooler being announced as the next DLC character was a nice surprise for all the fans.
Base Goku and Base Vegeta are now available in game along with a brand new balance patch that has made some significant changes to most of the cast. There’s a lot of new things to discover with both the old and new characters now so players will have their hands full trying to figure out the new meta for the time being.
Street Fighter V – New DLC Characters Sagat and G Released Simultaneously!
Fans have known about Sagat and G since Capcom revealed all of the season 3 DLC characters last year, but hardly anyone was expecting the surprise announcement that came before the Street Fighter V finals.
The normal pattern would have been for Capcom to reveal G’s moveset and announce his release date, but to the delight of all the fans, Sagat’s moveset was revealed simultaneously and Capcom dropped an enormous bomb by announcing that both characters would be available the day after EVO.
This is the biggest surprise we’ve gotten from Capcom in a while and there’s a ton of excitement going round the community as players are pumping out new videos showing the awesome potential of both these characters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f55TUsFPaEQ
Tekken 7 – Season 2 DLC Characters Announced! First Announcement Includes Anna, Lei and Negan from “The Walking Dead”!
Finally, this announcement was possibly the biggest surprise of the entire weekend. While all of the above announcements were confirmed and/or hinted at prior to the event, there was no official mention of a new Tekken announcement up until the moment the trailer was revealed on stage. Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada even went as far as directly telling fans on Twitter that there would be no announcement, going the extra mile to ensure that the eventual surprise would have the maximum impact.
It worked. The reveal trailer had fans going crazy, with many people claiming that they would start/get back into playing Tekken 7 because of the new characters. With the initial announcement being this absurd, we can only imagine what is in store for the 3 remaining unknown DLC characters.
And that wraps it up for all of the latest fighting game news post-EVO! Which announcement were you guys most excited for? As for us, we’ll be busy in the lab trying to figure out the latest characters in Dragon Ball FighterZ and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle before the tournaments at AniManGaki 2018!
(Registration and details for the DBFZ, Tekken 7 and BBTAG tournaments at Animangaki 2018 can be found here!)
