WE HAVE EVO AT HOME

 

Texas Showdown 2025 in Houston Texas

So I've been attending my local fighting game nights off an on for about a year now and it's been pretty insane. I've always known that Texas has its own big Major tournament but I had never been. I caught the fighting game bug back in 2006 when the Daigo Justin Wong parry video went viral on YouTube so I naturally gravitated towards playing Street Fighter 3 Third Strike. I had just finished highschool and hadn't decided on college yet so I had a lot of time to kill. Back then I used to go to my local japanese import arcades like Planet Zero with friends on the weekends. It wasn't really anything too serious though, I hadn't really joined "the scene" yet and I was just more or less playing casually. I was still printing out FAQ's on character matchups and frame data at home though don't get it twisted. Anyways, I picked up a lot of new games I would have never known about like Melty Blood,Arcana Heart,Hokuto No Ken, but Third Strike was always the game I felt the most comfortable with.

Lucky for me I was able to squeeze some practice in even while in college. One night I drunkenly stumbled upon a Third Strike cabinet hidden and tucked away in the animators quarters in an empty cubicle. Some of the animation students would meet up there at night and get some games in. It was funny cuz nobody knew who I was since I was in the film school in a totally different part of the campus. After dropping out of school I finally invested in my first arcade stick and went full FGC mode. I got good at stick with by playing the ps3 port of Third Strike and Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 which had just released at the time.                                                                                                          

The Super Turbo and Hyper Fighting tourneys were so hype! It really made me want to learn how to play. The scene is full of really chill ppl.

Erica taking a break from Third Strike to play some ST

I don't remember taking this picture at all and it's so good lol

On the right is the champion of Super Turbo this year from Mexico, don't remember his name. I think he also won Hyper Fighting as well if I'm not mistaken. He plays Claw which everyone hates but I love it!

Joe and Key-On taking turns getting their asses beat

Over the years I have tried getting my close friends into fighting games pretty much to no avail except one. He even bought a stick and everything. But when I moved back to Texas I was pretty much all on my own again and we gradually stopped playing online alltogether. More time goes by and I still enjoy watching evo every year and keeping up with the latest games but never really found my place in the scene. So I did some digging one night and started going down the Houston fighting game scene rabbit hole. I found my locals and started going. One night a player asks me if I had gotten my ticket to Texas Showdown already and all these memories came rushing back to me of when I had seen that tournament live on twitch back when I was living in LA. It was the last night to buy tickets so I bought a spectator pass since I was not planning on competing. Funny thing is I got an email a day before the tournament saying that there was an error processing my payment. They had already given me the confirmation code though after I made the initial purchase so I was just gonna try my luck at the tournament. When I got there they just glanced at my phone and handed me a Competitor pass XDDDD

Gems Chen the legend in the flesh

ST Grand Finals Mexico Vs. Mexico

A young GuileWinQuote on the right

Claw takes it

The pop off was filled with a sense of vengeance as the crowd had been booing and taunting the Mexican in jest 

Let the festivities begin!

Joe hit a blinker mid combo

Sebastian the GOAT

Accidental Hipster? You decide for yourself.

Don't know what the hell I stumbled upon in this room

Hyper Fighting Grand Finals

I had met the player on the right before at all nighter event a few months prior to this and in that span of time I remember seeing this tweet of a picture of a dude wearing a kimono standing with his wife on FGC twitter. I thought like oh this must be that dude and he went on a trip to japan with his wife or something. Then I started seeing that photo being spread around more and I was like deng he must be really famous! So naturally when I ran into him here at Texas Showdown I was like hey I think I saw you on twitter, a picture of you and your wife both wearing kimono's. Is that you? And he was like laughing like "No what are you talking about???" I was like "oh I saw it on FGC twitter so I thought it must have been you" Anyways that shit was funny as fuck and dude is a really chill guy. A few weeks later I see a video pop up on my recommended feed titled "The Legend of Ken-Sama" and it had that picture of that guy in the kimono. Little did I know this mystery person had a whole internet lore about him. Doesn't it look like him tho?