EVO 2011 International Fighting Game Tournament starts today

The Evo International Tournament, the fighting genre’s largest tournament of the year, begins today in Las Vegas. Games featured at this year’s Evo include: Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat 9, Tekken 6 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift.

The Evolution Championship Series (Evo for short) represents the largest and longest-running fighting game tournaments in the world. Evo events bring together the best of the best from around the world in a dazzling exhibition of skill and fun, as players and fans gather to honor the competitive spirit in an open format and determine a champion. In addition, the community at large has long considered this a meeting place for folks that primarily play online or at local tournaments. It’s a great place to network with players from across the country. As if this weren’t enough, developers (such as Capcom and Namco), treat this an opportunity to get feedback from their fans and offer public demos of upcoming games, such as Street Fighter x Tekken from Capcom, or Tekken Tag Tournament HD from Namco.

Below, you will find that we have embedded the streams of the competitions being played at this year’s Evo. Today’s action is well underway, but you can catch the tail end of pool play leading into the 64 player quarterfinals for SSF4:AE and MK9 on stream 1 and stream 2 respectively. Tomorrow’s action will center around Marvel vs Capcom 3 on stream 1, with Tekken 6 and Blazblue on stream 2. If there’s only one day you can catch however, try to make it Sunday – the finals of all games featured take place then. The full schedule can be viewed here.

Stream 1

Streaming live video by Ustream

Stream 2

Free live streaming by Ustream

Dustin Steiner is a new Gamezone freelance contributor! Follow him on Twitter @SteinerDustin