Ladies and gentlemen, here are your Evo2k9 winners:

Street Fighter IV
1) Daigo Umehara (Ryu)
2) Justin Wong (Rufus, Balrog, Abel)
3) Ed Ma (Akuma, Zangief)
4) Sanford “Santhrax” Kelly (Akuma, Cammy)
5) Long “ShadyK” Tran (Akuma)
5) Eduardo “Vvv scrub” Perez-frangie (Balrog, E.Honda)
7) Takashi “Dan from Japan” Hukushi (Ryu)
7) Ricky Ortiz (Rufus)

SSF2T HD Remix
1) Hung “Afro Legends” Nguyen (Balrog, Dee Jay)
2) John Choi (Ryu)
3) Damien “Damdai” Dailidenas (Ken, Zangief)
4) Graham Wolfe (Balrog)
5) David Sirlin (Fei Long, Cammy, M.Bison)
5) Louis “Thelo” Paquin (E.Honda)
7) Alex “CaliPower” Valle (Ryu)
7) Alex “Sin” Salguero (Dhalsim)

Marvel vs Capcom 2
1) Sanford “Santhrax” Kelly
2) Justin Wong
3) Michael “IFC Yipes” Mendoza
4) Bill “Deus” Wellman
5) Marc “Madbooface” Ansay
5) SooMighty (Magneto/Storm/Psylocke)
7) Jay “Ytwojay” Son (Magneto/Storm/Psylocke)
7) Erik “SmoothViper” Arroyo

SF3 3rd Strike 2-on-2 Teams
1) Justin Wong (Chun Li) and Issei Suzuki (Yun)
2) Jimmy “Emphynaps” Tran (Urien) and Rommel (Yang)
3) Mark “Mopreme” Rogoyski (Ryu) and Ryan “Fubarduck” Harvey (Chun Li)
4) Alex “CaliPower” Valle (Ken) and J.R. Rodriguez (Akuma)
5) Lee Cephas (Dudley) and Starboy (Ken)
5) Amir (Chun Li) and Thomas (Ibuki)
7) Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont (Makoto) and Sanchez (Alex)
7) Hsien Chang (Yun) and Ricky Ortiz (Chun Li)

Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core Plus
1) Latif (Eddie)
2) Marn (Eddie, Jam)
3) FlashMetroid (May)
4) Hellmonkey (Baiken)
5) Elvenshadow (Faust)
5) Senkei (Faust)
7) Wuku (Testament)
7) Joe Higashi (Chipp)

Soul Calibur 4
1) malek (Ivy)
2) KDZaster (Cassandra, Astaroth)
3) thugish_pond (Amy, Hilde)
4) Ceirnian (Hilde)
5) Omega (Zasalamel, Nightmare)
5) RTD (Hilde)
7) AlphaMale (Voldo)
7) Dreamkiller (Amy)

Street Fighter IV Regional Team Exhibition
1) Team East Coast
2) Team Wildcard
3) Team Southwest
3) Team SoCal
5) Team Midwest
5) Team Northwest
5) Team Southeast
5) Team NorCal

In perhaps the closest final matchup in Evolution history, Daigo Umehara’s Ryu defeated Justin Wong’s Balrog 2-3, 3-2, to take the Evo 2009 Street Fighter IV title. After some early struggles, Justin surprised everyone by switching to Balrog. The move paid off, as Justin was able to win the first set of the finals, avenging his earlier loss to Daigo in the tournament. The final set of the match came down to the final game. In the end Daigo’s strong positional play allowed him to squeek by and take the title.

Top L.A. player Ed Ma, who placed second in the recent U.S. Super Battle Opera qualifiers, proved that he’s still got the stuff by placing 3rd.

If you missed the action, you’ll be able to download HD videos of all the top Evo matches on IGN starting this Friday, July 24. Not all the matches will be up immediately but will be posted over the next few weeks. Once they ready for download, they can be easily found on the IGN homepage. As an IGN Insider, you will get unlimited HD downloads of all available matches as well as other IGN benefits.

If you’re not lucky enough to be here in Vegas with all of us, you can catch all the action from your own browser. Check the Evo live broadcast site throughout the weekend for live streamed matches, bracket updates, and photos of the event.

Evo traditionally produces a DVD capturing the highlights of our annual festivities. Instead, this year we’re really excited to bring you a faster, better way to relive your favorite Evo moments: we’re teaming with IGN Insider to produce and host the post-tournament matches that we would normally ship to you on a DVD.

Basically for you guys this mean higher quality Evo content at a quicker pace and cheaper price. Match footage will of course be direct-feed in HD with crowd audio and commentary, and will go online with clickable brackets and other fun stuff. You get all this not for our usual DVD price of $30 to $60, but for just 15 bucks (I’m doing my best Billy Mays here, does it show?), which is a 25% discount off IGN’s usual rate. Who loves ya? Finally, on top of all the EVO juice, you’re still an IGN Insider for a year, which means you get a bunch of other stuff for free all year. That’s not just “cheaper,” that’s just straight up cheap–no brainer for any big fighting game fan.

We’ve been working really hard for nearly a year to make this the best, most visible EVO ever, so get hype, and tell a friend, and show IGN that fighting games DO still matter (and that they should be doing more coverage of them) by signing up.

Here we go people.  I hope you’re ready because this is going to be a wild ride.  One weekend.  6 tournaments.  50,000 matches.

On July 17th, the world’s largest and longest-running fighting game competition returns to Sin City at the Rio Resort and Casino. The heart, history, and unbelievable skills of the fighting game community will be on display as the planet’s top fighting gamers assemble from around the globe to duke it out on today’s hottest games, including Street Fighter IV, Soul Calibur IV, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, and a special BlazBlue exhibition.

EVO 2009 World Finals will feature:

• Special appearance by Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono
• The world’s largest live Street Fighter IV competition
• Tekken 6 playable on console
• Watch all the action streaming live, for free, featuring top players and expert commentary
• The best players from around the US and the world, including Japan’s legendary champion Daigo Umehara
• The newest build of Tatsunoko Vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars
• First publicly playable Marvel Vs Capcom 2 for X360 and PSN
• Complete coverage from IGN Insider, recording HQ, direct-feed tournament matches available for download following the event
• And more!

Spectators can attend the event for free, and are welcome to play at one of the dozens of freeplay stations.  For those who can’t make it to Vegas, EVO 2009 will also be streaming live all weekend.  The live stream will run all day from July 17-19th, and feature non-stop tournament matches between top players, with live crowd audio accompanied by expert commentary to explain all the onscreen action.

The stream can be found at http://www.evo2k.com/live , http://www.shoryuken.com and http://www.capcom-unity.com

The 2009 EVO Championship Series is powered by Capcom, Namco-Bandai, and PlayStation 3

Welcome to Evo-week!  The tournament is just a few days away and the brackets have been set.  Here are two important updates.  First, if you’re playing in the tournament, you must check in at http://evo2k.com/2009/checkin to get your pool assignments.  Remember your pools so you know where to go on tournament day.

Second, the Evo Live Broadcast site is up and running.  You’ll definitely want to bookmark this one for live Evo updates all weekend long.  Over the course of the week we’ll share some of the fun things we have in store for all of you who can’t make it out to Evo in person.

Its July. You have 2 days left to register online for the biggest live fighting game tournament EVER! Online registration is MANDATORY, and there will be no in person signups. This might be new information to alot of you, so we thought it should be posted up for the masses.

Head on over to www.evo2k.com/register to secure your place in history as one of the competitors for the Super Bowl of fighting games.

Remember, legendary player Daigo will be in attendance to take all of your monies. Yes, that Daigo!

AKSYS GAMES AND EVO CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES BRINGS FORTH BLAZBLUE TOURNAMENT!

Get Hyped Once Again!

AKSYS Games, a leading publisher of interactive entertainment products, is very proud to announce the partnership with Evolution Championship Series! To commemorate the partnership, AKSYS Games will be holding its first official BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger exhibition tournament! The tournament will be held from July 17-19 within the beautiful confines of Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. Are you ready to take on the world?!

 More after the jump.

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