Evolution Championship Series, or EVO. Known to some as the Olympics of fighting games, some of the greatest players and moments have come from this event.
People who aren’t into esports, who don’t play fighting games have seen clips without knowing their names. Many of these timeless clips display beauty and are one of the many reasons I love esports. People who’ve never played a video game in their life can watch these and be impressed, even excited.
However, there’s one moment in particular I’d like to talk about. A moment where hundreds of people gathered around a small TV, on edge waiting for one opponent to be defeated, and then it happened. A combination of risk, excitement and almost inhuman reactions cemented this story into legend. The legend’s name: EVO Moment 37.
Inhuman Reactions
The reason why EVO Moment 37 is so well-known is because something so risky and difficult had never been done before in such a large gaming tournament at such a late stage in bracket, at least for Street Fighter.
Although the average human reaction time is a bit lower, top Olympic sprinters can improve their reaction to a specific stimulus, a starting gun for instance, with top reactions being about 100 milliseconds. According to track-stats.com, the fastest reaction time in the Rio 2016 Olympics final races was 104 milliseconds, with the slowest being 230. For EVO Moment 37 to be possible, you’d have to react within 130 milliseconds, a feat only seven out of 36 Olympians accomplished in the finals. You’d also have to do it 15 times consecutively.
Daigo Parry
EVO Moment 37 is also known as the “Daigo Parry” in honor of the victor of that game, Daigo “The Beast” Umehara.
Daigo was versus Justin “JWong” Wong in losers finals. How Street Fighter tournaments work is there are three rounds in a game, and the first player to win either three, five or seven games takes the match. This explosive moment happened in round three of game one.
The final round of game three began with both players backing off, something Daigo rarely does. JWong then lands one hit and immediately follows up with a special, taking away almost half of Daigo’s life. JWong doesn’t press the attack, and both players revert back to a neutral state. Eventually, Daigo tries to go in and gets punished by the same combination, going down to about a tenth of his health. At this point, Daigo tries something different.
Both players begin using safer attacks and blocking each others’ moves. Then, Daigo stars using long ranged attacks and following up with a few hits to chip away at JWong’s health. Although this gets JWong from almost full health to less than half, JWong landed a few blows, leading to Daigo being one hit away from losing the final round of game one. Any hit from JWong, even if it was blocked, would knock Daigo out.
JWong backs off and starts to fake attacks in an attempt to throw Daigo off and create an opening. A few seconds later, JWong decides to pull the trigger and unleash a 15-hit special. The safest option would be for Daigo to dodge the attack, either leading to a neutral state or with Daigo retreating, both of which would be advantageous for JWong.
During the wind-up animation, Daigo has less than a second to decide what course of action to take. He could take a riskier approach and try to jump in a way where he’d parry the last hit of JWong’s special, and follow up with his own barrage of attacks. Daigo decides to take the seemingly riskiest approach either player could think of, to parry every single hit of JWong’s 15-hit assault.
In Street Fighter, a parry is a specific type of block where the defending player has to move toward his opponent within a few frames of getting hit by an attack. This negates all damage, but is usually riskier than just blocking. The timing window in this version of Street Fighter was about 130 milliseconds, or one-eighth of a second.
Daigo made the split-second decision to go all in and attempt to surpass the average competitor. He had to tap into over a decade of training and surpass all previous accomplishments in fighting game history. The point of no return arrived: Umehara had to perfectly deflect the next attack, then 14 more.
The Assault
“Let’s go Justin,” exclaimed someone in the crowd as JWong’s attack charged up. Then, the onslaught began.
Parry, parry, parry. The crowd erupts in cheering. Parry, parry, parry, parry.
A brief pause as JWong’s character turns to unleash seven more attacks. The crowd gets even louder and the attack continues.
Parry, parry.
The camera begins to zoom in on the players in the middle of the second salvo of attacks. At this point, the attacks can barely be heard as the crowd is drowning out the game.
Parry, parry, parry, parry, parry.
Another brief pause. 14 of the 15 attacks have been completely negated. JWong’s final attack is a high kick. Daigo jumps in the air, parries the final blow and begins his counter with a jumping kick.
At this point, the crowd has lost all civility and erupts into cheers several decibels higher than before. They begin standing, applauding and drowning out almost any other noise. Milliseconds later, Daigo lands a hit and unleashes his own combination of attacks. He takes away chunks of JWong’s health with every hit as the crowd is losing control.
“K.O.” exclaims the in-game announcer.
The camera immediately pans to the crowd. Hundreds of spectators are almost unanimously standing in ovation. Some are running around the venue, some are gazing around in amazement and one can be seen covering their face in disbelief.
This was EVO Moment 37 – an event which shaped competitive gaming and immortalized Daigo “The Beast” Umehara.
“I was just focused and did what I could,” Daigo said. “I didn’t hear the audience roar even after I won the match. It was only when I saw my friend who was sitting on the ground by the table bouncing up and down and screaming that I realized what was happening in the room, people’s overwhelming reaction. I only learned two years later that the clip had gained so much traction and that people were still talking about it and us. I was just oblivious to what was going on around me.”
