The 2012 Evolution Championship Series (commonly referred to as Evo 2012 or EVO 2012) was a

fighting game A fighting game, also known as a versus fighting game, is a genre of video game that involves combat between two or more players. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as blocking, grappling, counter-attacking, and chaining atta ...

event held at

Caesars Palace Caesars Palace is a luxury hotel and casino in Paradise, Nevada, United States. The hotel is situated on the west side of the Las Vegas Strip between Bellagio and The Mirage. It is one of Las Vegas's largest and best known landmarks. Caesar ...

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish language, Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the List of United States cities by population, 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the U.S. state, state of Neva ...

on July 6–8. The event featured a major tournament for six fighting games, including '' Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition'' and '' Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3'', as well as various smaller-scale competitions.

Background

Held in Caesar's Palace,

, Evo 2012 featured over 3,500 entrants among its six major tournaments. The tournaments held at Evo 2012 were

livestreamed Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but n ...

through the

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online video service. A "Road to Evo" tournament series started in January 2012, in which competitors could earn seeding points for the main event.

Games

Six major tournaments were held at Evo 2012. The games played were: *'' Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition 2012'' *'' Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3'' * '' Street Fighter X Tekken'' * '' Mortal Kombat'' * ''

The King of Fighters XIII ''(KOF XIII)'' is a fighting game in '' The King of Fighters'' series, developed and published by SNK Playmore originally in 2010. ''King of Fighters XIII'' was released for Japanese arcades on July 14, 2010, while ports for the Xbox 360 and Pla ...

'' * '' Soulcalibur V'' Evo 2012 was the first event in the Championship Series to include a major ''

King of Fighters ''The King of Fighters'' (''KOF'') is a series of fighting games by SNK that began with the release of ''The King of Fighters '94'' in 1994. The series was developed originally for SNK's Neo Geo MVS arcade hardware. This served as the main plat ...

'' tournament. The 2011 reboot of the ''Mortal Kombat'' series benefited from multiple balancing updates after its release, allowing the game to be popular among the

fighting game community The fighting game community, often abbreviated to FGC, is a collective of video gamers who play fighting games such as '' Marvel vs. Capcom'', ''Mortal Kombat'', '' Soulcalibur'', '' Street Fighter'', '' Guilty Gear'', '' The King of Fighters'' ...

where earlier games in the series weren't. The ''Mortal Kombat'' tournament featured the second-largest prize pool at Evo 2012, after ''Street Fighter IV''. Spin-off ''Street Fighter X Tekken'', meanwhile, was unpopular among the fighting game community at the time. The game featured various

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and unbalanced aspects. The event also featured various smaller-scale competitions, such as an exclusive '' Super Street Fighter II Turbo'' tournament, and side tournaments for '' Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown'' and ''

Skullgirls ''Skullgirls'' is a 2D fighting game developed by Reverge Labs and published by Autumn Games. In ''Skullgirls'', players fight each other with teams of one, two, or three characters, attempting to knock out their opponents or have the most cumul ...

''.

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

showcased a playable demo for ''

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale ''PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale'' is a 2012 Crossovers in video games, crossover fighting game, fighting video game developed by SuperBot Entertainment, in conjunction with Bluepoint Games, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It f ...

'', while

NetherRealm Studios NetherRealm Studios (stylized as NetheЯRealm Studios) is an American video game developer based in Chicago and owned by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Led by video game industry veteran and '' Mortal Kombat'' co-creator Ed Boon, t ...

revealed gameplay footage of '' Injustice: Gods Among Us'' at Evo 2012.

Tournament summary

While the recent release of ''Street Fighter x Tekken'' caused players to juggle between more familiar aspects of the characters and the game's more unusual features, the ''King of Fighters XIII'' tournament was praised by commentators for its high-level play, unexpected for such a new game. Meanwhile, Brenna Hillier of ''

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'' described the ''Mortal Kombat'' tournament at Evo 2012 as a "mixed bag", featuring plenty of unusual play styles. Though there was a lot of discussion regarding whether the character Phoenix in ''Marvel vs. Capcom'' is overpowered compared to other selectable characters in the game, competitor Filipino Champ won the tournament with the characters

Magneto A magneto is an electrical generator that uses permanent magnets to produce periodic pulses of alternating current. Unlike a dynamo, a magneto does not contain a commutator to produce direct current. It is categorized as a form of alternator, ...

Dormammu Dormammu () is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in ''Strange Tales'' #126 (Nov. 1964), and was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Debuting in the Silver Age of Comi ...

and

Doctor Doom Doctor Victor Von Doom is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and first appeared in '' The Fantastic Four'' #5 in July 1962. The monarch of the f ...

. The final match at Evo 2012 was the ''Street Fighter IV'' finals, in which Infiltration defeated GamerBee to claim the title.

Results

References

{{Evo Evolution Championship Series 2012 in sports in Nevada 2012 in esports Caesars Palace