Did you all care about BlazBlue? I know the answer isn’t yes for 100% of you. Probably not even 50%. That’s fine. But how many of you watched Evo?

At Evo, Sunday is a special day. The big hall where every tournament match is held is turned into a theater. Thousands of people take their seats, and watch the top 8 in the world of the biggest fighting games battle for global supremacy. If nothing else, it is raw emotion.

Since 2013, Evo no longer puts every finals on Sunday. Less popular games have their finals on Friday or Saturday. I happened to have nothing to do in the middle of Saturday as I saw the opening video for King of Fighters XIII finals. The problem here is that people’s attention is turned elsewhere. People have their own matches to play, and there’s still plenty to check out in the exhibit hall. I don’t know about the people watching at home, but if it’s not “Finals Day,” I don’t think people are even in the mood to tune in. I get the feeling King of Fighters XIII and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 won’t be coming back, with a slim chance of a return for Injustice.

That being said, all eyes are on one stream, one video source for Sunday. And even though BlazBlue started at 9 AM Pacific, enough people were watching by the time the top 8 was wrapping up just prior to 11am to see something special. Garireo, whose name I pronounce as Galileo (because, reasons), mounted an amazing comeback with his Litchi, defeating Dogura’s Azrael with some tense action. Here’s the last of it:

Another thing that comes to mind is Super Smash Brothers Melee, more specifically that Pikachu. You know, the one that won an entire match within SIXTY SECONDS, which requires 4 kills.

And then there was Justin Wong. Not the finals, but the match against Filipino Champ. Skip to the end:

A hype finals makes you want to play the game, and if you don’t own it, you probably will. I hope you got excited too.