The Street Fighter 6 tournament for the Esports World Cup began with the Last Chance Qualifiers bracket. I actually wrote a piece criticizing the Esports World Cup, or EWC for short, and their Last Chance Qualifier presentation. There was indeed a lot of room for improvement. Well, I’m guessing the EWC didn’t really bother to put a whole lot of money because it was the Last Chance Qualifier bracket as they really seemed to up the production values for the actual Street Fighter 6 tournament.

The entire Street Fighter 6 tournament at EWC lasted for three days and each day was a sharp contrast with the Last Chance Qualifier tournament. I watched all three days live and all the way to the Top 8. I will say the entire tournament was good. They even added their own flavor. However, I still have a few criticisms on the show itself.

I do have to mention that I never watched the EWC’s predecessor, the Gamers8 festival, last year. Gamers8 had a Street Fighter 6 tournament as well but, since I didn’t watch it, I can’t really say if they carried over a lot of the stuff they did there over to the EWC. I’m just going to be looking at the EWC Street Fighter 6 tournament on its own.

Probably the most noticeable change was the stage itself. I remember watching the Last Chance Qualifier last week and the stage looked incredibly sad. Not only did the stage during the Last Chance Qualifier look very empty, but there was definitely a lack of pizzazz as well. Sure, they had the classic oversized display in the background and they did get some graphics up there when the people were entering. But they were still just entering into a vast open plain of a stage with a very lonely table setup in the middle! It looked like a person with claustrophobia designed the set as it looked like they wanted to have as much open space as possible!

When it came to the stage they used during the actual Street Fighter 6 tournament, the folks at the EWC did put a lot of work to fill in the empty stage with a lot of fancy accoutrement. You still had the lonely looking face-to-face gaming setup right smack dab in the middle of the stage. But the floor now is also part of the display. They also had everything in an angle, closing off the sides of the stage and making things look a little bit more filled. They also did the smart thing of actually raising the stage to really separate the competitors from the live audience. I do have to say, though, the EWC kind of mimicked the EVO stage. That’s not a bad thing as it’s more familiar for those who regularly watch fighting game tournaments.

Unfortunately, there was still a sadness that permeated throughout the entire tournament as the sound from the arena came off as very muted. You could hear the color commentators clearly as they definitely made that the main focus for the audience. Everything else, from the live crowd to the players to the in-game sounds, came off as very faint and hard to hear. The only real upside is that you could still hear the game somewhat but the mixing could have been better. They just could have tuned the game sounds just a bit higher.

I also did enjoy how brisk things moved along. The EWC did a good job of hiding all of the annoying but important things that hold up a regular fighting game tournament. Even in EVO, they simply can’t avoid all the pauses that comes with a regular fighting game tournament. Usually, they show everything on the stream, including the players plugging in their controllers, setting up the buttons and doing a button check, among others. Not in the EWC!

I did notice the players never carry their controllers to the stage so I suspect they had the incoming players plug in the controllers immediately after the previous competitors leave the stage or after the interviews. There’s also the throwing it back to the studio, which was weird to have a commentary team and then have a separate team talking about the match after the match is done. Seems unnecessary.

Then again, it’s more likely they had the players do all of the setup while they cut to the back and they have the winners crush the loser’s metal thingie with the hydraulic press. I really loved all of the pomp and circumstance from it. Like I said, it was mostly there to hide all of the setting up from the players but I do like the drama of it all. It’s also fun to see the pile of broken metals strewn on the stage as it’s a visual way to see how many players have been eliminated as the tournament went on.

I do have to question the elimination rules, however. Up until the Top 8, the tournament follows typical fighting game tournament elimination rules as they follow the traditional double elimination setup in a Best of 3 session. This means a player has to lose two matches before he was sent packing. All of that is scrapped in Top 8 as it then becomes a single elimination tournament but you have to win five games to proceed.

While this does move things along and allowed for some really hype comebacks, it didn’t sit well with me as, despite some players making it to Top 8 without losing a match, they were on the same level playing field as the ones who did lose a match. I do see the logic somewhat as, usually, the loser of the earlier match would have to immediately compete right after thanks to the way the brackets were set. The loser would have to shake off the loss and reinforce their mental attitude just to move on. Having the Top 8 play a Best of 5 set also does kind of balance things out a bit. Still, I just prefer the good ol’ double elimination way of things. Call me a traditionalist but that’s just how I feel.

Ultimately, I do think the Esports World Cup did a good job with their Street Fighter 6 tournament was they recognized a good throughline with Xiao Hai‘s journey, who ultimately won the entire thing. Xiao Hai is a good player but he was the lone player from China and he had to go through a gauntlet of Japanese players. He also made an amazing comeback on his way to the top. Those aren’t enough for a good story. What does make it a good story is Xiao Hai brought his wife to the tournament. They made the good decision of cutting towards her throughout the tournament as Xiao Hai as he kept on winning. To see him celebrating with his wife on stage was a great feel good moment.

Overall, I enjoyed the Esports World Cup Street Fighter 6 tournament. Here’s hoping the Tekken 8 tournament that’s coming up in a week is going to be as good.

Did you watch the Street Fighter 6 tournament from the Esports World Cup? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments section below!