This year’s edition of the Evolution Championship Series, colloquially known as Evo 2024, was held this past weekend and served as the biggest fighting game tournament event of the year. As a result, a lot of fighting game developers showed up with exciting announcements. These reveals ranged from new titles to DLC characters coming to beloved fighting games, including some surprising guest fighters. If you’re wondering what you missed this past weekend, I’ve rounded up every significant announcement made during Evo 2024 and sorted them by developer.
The King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown developer SNK showed up big at EVO 2024. It shadow-dropped SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos — a rerelease of a classic crossover fighting game featuring online play with rollback netcode — for PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4.
It teased two more DLC characters coming to The King of Fighters XV this December: Vice and Mature. We also learned that Garou: Mark of the Wolves‘ Kevin Rian will return in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves as a playable fighter when it launches early next year.
SNK teased its future in fighting games and even other genres. During its Evo 2024 panel, SNK confirmed that it is working on the first new Art of Fighting game since 1996’s Art of Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior. Additionally, it is creating an action RPG set in the universe of the Samurai Shodown series. While the latter isn’t a fighting game, it’s clear we’re entering an SNK renaissance right now.
Street Fighter 6 was the marquee game of Evo 2024, and during the show, we got our first look at the fighting game’s next DLC character. That brings SNK back into the picture as it’s Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury, who will come to Capcom’s popular fighting game sometime this fall.
While we didn’t get a release date for Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics at Evo, it was playable there, and the reception toward it seems generally positive. Cacpom also turned heads when producer Shjuhei Matsumoto told Dexerto that Capcom is open to making more crossover fighters like Marvel vs. Capcom in the future.
Arc System Works is another premier fighting game developer, and it showed up with several announcements. The most shocking of the bunch is that Guilty Gear Strive will crossover over with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners in 2025 when Lucy from the Netflix anime comes to Strive as a guest character. Queen Dizzy, Venom, and Unika are the other fighters included in Guilty Gear Season 4’s season pass. New stages and a Team of 3 mode for the game are also in the works. We also got a reveal trailer for Uzuki, the next fighter coming to Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes, on July 25.
Arc System Works provided another look at Hunter x Hunter Nen x Impact, a fighting game based on the popular anime. It revealed the game’s opening movie, and we learned that Meruem is a playable character. That game will launch later this year on PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.
Tekken 8 was another hallmark game of Evo 2024 and it had its share of announcements at the event. We learned that iconic Tekken character Heihachi Mishima will come to Tekken 8 as a DLC character sometime this fall. His release will also come with a free story mode chapter. Nike-branded content will also come to Tekken 8 this fall.
Season 2 of WB Games’ crossover fighting game MultiVersus begins on July 23, and developer Player First Games gave us a deep dive into what to expect from it. When it comes to new characters, Samurai Jack will join the roster when Season 2 begins tomorrow. Beetlejuice will come next this season ahead of the theatrical release of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. A stage based on the Warner Bros. Water Tower is also coming in this new Season. Finally, Ranked Mode comes to MultiVersus on July 23 and it will support 1v1 and 2v2 matches.
Cygames showed up at Evo 2024 to reveal the next DLC character for its fighting game Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. It’s an “amalgamation of the divine and mortal” named Versusia. That new fighter will arrive on August 20 alongside Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising’s Version 1.50 update, which will bring the Grand Bruise! game mode, another online lobby minigame, a new stage, Grand Master Rank, new story episodes, balance adjustments, and more.
Riot Games’ 2XKO was playable at Evo 2024 and Riot Games live-streamed gameplay of it each day. No major announcements like a release date came with all that, but we got a much clearer idea of what 2XKO looks like in action. Riot Games’ also went on to confirm that all 2XKO’s characters will be earnable through gameplay and showed a “Dynasty” skin for Ahri. Game Director Shaun Rivera also confirmed in an interview with Dot Esports that there aren’t any current plans to add crossover fighters into 2XKO at this time.
Some indie fighting games also used Evo 2024 to get their time in the limelight. Aether Studios revealed that Orcane will be one of the 10 characters available in Rivals 2’s launch roster. All of Rivals 2’s post-launch fighters will be free. Maximum Entertainment revealed Damkina as a new character in its 2v2 fighting game Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.