November Community Events Schedule - 2024
Our Community Events for November are here! We have a huge range of titles, there's something for everyone this month with NSE.
last year
Each year, one of the biggest announcements in the fighting game community is the EVO lineup. The Evolution Series has run since 2002 and is the largest fighting game tournament of the year, consistently bringing in thousands of entrants over multiple games, and last year peaked at nearly 200,000 viewers on Twitch. With such a long legacy and some of the most iconic moments in the history of fighting games, EVO is the event of the year.
While many games may have community-led side events, the games that are played on the main stage are chosen by the organisers. The lineup for 2019 is as follows:
Getting your game into the EVO main lineup is a huge deal, and truly makes or breaks a game (for better or worse). One of the longest running games at EVO was Marvel vs Capcom, but after the failed release of Infinite and its absence from the EVO 2018 main lineup, the game was quickly abandoned by the majority of players. Some games only get one year in the spotlight such as Pokken, but franchises such as Street Fighter and Tekken are absolute mainstays in the lineup, and are often supported directly by the developers, so it’s no surprise that Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 will both be appearing this year. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the shiny new title, so there was never any doubt that it would be appearing in the 2019 lineup. The same can be said of Dragon Ball FighterZ, which held the highest number of entrants in 2018, returning alongside BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle to satiate our tag-team fighters hunger.
The inclusion of Mortal Kombat XI and Samurai Shodown represent games that have yet to be released, so the EVO main stage will be their first chance to show off. Though Mortal Kombat is a well known franchise, and has had previous titles appear in the EVO main lineup, Samurai Shodown is a legacy title that is unknown to many younger players, including myself. Finally, the dark horse of French Bread’s Under Night In-Birth has finally graduated from side event to main, much in part due to the community consistently attending events and supporting their scene in true grassroots fashion, and is likely to be the surprise showstopper for those unaware of the game.
This of course means that Super Smash Bros. Melee will not be appearing on the main stage for the first time since 2013. Melee has quite a legacy when it comes to EVO, and was generally considered to be as much of a lock-in as Street Fighter (at least in previous years). Though Super Smash Bros. for Wii U coexisted alongside Melee on the main lineup since it’s release due to low crossover between communities, Ultimate has a fairly healthy crossover of players from both, which may be part of the reason Melee was dropped. Of all games to lose their spot, however, Melee does well enough for itself outside of EVO to feel little concern for the health of the community, which would probably not have been the case several years ago.
EVO is also the time for big announcements for fighting games, such as new seasons, characters, or new titles entirely. Personally, I’d say this year will give us a first look at the new Guilty Gear title, laying the seeds for its appearance at EVO 2020, and (more tenuously) a new Street Fighter title.
Though EVO 2019 is a fair few months away, make sure to keep an eye on UFG, as we’ll very likely be doing something in the runup to the event!
