Using the last week to prepare for the East Coast Regional tournament qualifiers the Empire went on a rampage to sharpen their skills for what SRK had on the horizon. See: East Coast All Star Weekend 5. Now it’s that time again everyone! Fighting game enthusiasts from all over the east coast came together and competed for qualifying seeds to Evolution World 2007 Fighting Game Championship Series. This time the roster had two new additions in Virtua Fighter 5 and Super Smash Brothers Melee. With a full fighting game roster available this year the east coast showed up in great numbers to show what they’re made of. Different gaming crews and organizations were on hand such as Tokyo Game Action, Team Hate, Team New York, Team Maryland, Empire Arcadia and even the West Coast all came to represent the east. In the end only one can claim the top spot.

Seth Killian, Joey “Mr. Wizard”, JetPhi and company worked tirelessly to put together such a spectacular east coast event for the gamers. The response to that was an intense 72 hours of non stop competition. Before official registration even began gamers started to set up their own gaming equipment to play casual games to get warmed up for the real battle.

Super Smash Brothers Melee Community finds new home

One gamer by the name of “Dark Geese” hosted a multitude of side tournaments to give gamers a real taste of the competition to come later that day. With over twelve (12) different side game tournaments no one can say that they were not able to get all the rust off by the time the competition had started.

First up was Virtua Fighter 5, the most technical fighting game of the event. To be honest, it is the most technical fighting game in the commercial world. NYC’s Denkai and Empire Arcadia’s Rodney “Konjou_Akira” John were but a few on deck to compete and were also the favorites to compete against each other at the Evo East Finals on Sunday. Surely enough they qualified for top eight (8) winners going 3-0 each. The second game on Friday was Capcom vs. SNK 2 which had a full 64 man bracket. Some of the east coast most dangerous players rose from the grave to compete in the game. Just to name a few Jeron, Arturo and Sanford Kelly.

New younger players to the game such as Steven Harrison met fierce competition as he was knocked into the loser’s bracket by Min Masters only to then face off against Sanford Kelly.

With his precision based parry groove in his arsenal Steve was a favorite to win against Sanford’s raw skill and experience. It came down to the final game with the final characters Sagat and Cammy. For a great part of the match between the two competitors Sanford had shown Steve H. his attack style and pattern which put Steve H. in the best position to win. However for far too long Sanford has played fighting games to know that his opponent knew what he was going to do next. Thus Sanford switched up his style at the last minute and counter anticipated Steve H. short hop attack with a level three (3) Tiger Cannon which sealed the final seed for CvS2. Exhausted and hungry gamers filed out of the game room to get some food and rest to begin the final six (6) games for Saturday.

This community of fighting game professionals hosted the first “B” series tournaments. From it’s origins it progressed into SRK which then hosted the final set of “B” series tournaments which then evolved into “Evolution 2K Championship Tournaments Series.

Matching the senior date of ten (10) plus year’s game the players that compete in it are just as old. Gamers like Seth Killian and Henry Cen still compete to keep the tradition alive. While new school young bloods like OSK, TechMonkey, Justin Wong and Dark Side Phil all look to bring change to the way the game is played.  Each of the mentioned players all qualified for the finals on Sunday.