Published , by Ozzie Mejia
Published , by Ozzie Mejia
There looked to be something missing from EVO 2020 this year and it's more than just the surprising absence of Mortal Kombat. While the biggest fighting game tournament in the world normally hosts nine games, Joey "Mr. Wizard" Cuellar surprised viewers of tonight's EVO Games Reveal Show by noting that there would be eight games featured at this year's event. The reason for that, as it turns out, is because this year's EVO is preparing to celebrate a special milestone anniversary by holding a special Marvel vs. Capcom 2 invitational to celebrate the game's 20th anniversary.
It feels like just yesterday when fighting game players were taken for a ride, but it was indeed 20 years ago when Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes was released on the Sega Dreamcast. So EVO will hold the Marvel vs. Capcom 2: 20urnament of Champions, which will bring together eight of the best players in the game's history. This list includes four former Marvel vs. Capcom 2 EVO world champions, with the full list of players to be revealed at a later date.
Long-time fighting game players are happy to tell younger generations about how much MvC2 changed the landscape of the Capcom crossover fighters. It was the first of the bunch to utilize the 3v3 tag format with two dedicated assist buttons. It also opened the door to greater bombastic combos that could wipe out entire characters in just seconds. And of course, it brought together every single character in Capcom's Vs. series to that point, dating all the way back to X-Men: Children of the Atom. It remains an extremely popular game to older generations and one that Shacknews has on our wishlist for any Dreamcast compilation.
This is also noteworthy because it marks a compromise of sorts for the Marvel fans that frequent EVO. This will be the first Marvel game to be played at EVO since 2017 and since there are no plans to resurrect the franchise anytime soon, the idea becomes to celebrate this milestone birthday for arguably the series' most popular game.
EVO 2020 is set to take place from the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada from July 31 through August 2. Registration is open on the EVO website. And if you want to know what other games made it (and which ones didn't) into the EVO rotation this year, be sure to check out our previous story from earlier tonight.