Final Round 20 or Final Round XX was a

fighting game A fighting game, also known as a versus fighting game, is a video game genre, genre of video game that involves combat between two or more players. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as Blocking (martial arts), blocking, grappli ...

event that took place in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

on March 10–12, 2017. Being the first of the eleven ''

Street Fighter V ''Street Fighter V'' is a fighting game developed by Capcom and Dimps and published by Capcom for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows, Windows in 2016. An Arcade game, arcade version exclusive to Japan was released by Taito in 2019. Similar to th ...

'' Premier Events of the

2017 Capcom Pro Tour The 2017 Capcom Pro Tour was the fourth edition of the Capcom Pro Tour, an annual season of ''Street Fighter V'' tournaments that are officially sponsored by Capcom. The 2017 Capcom Pro Tour followed several months after the "Season 2" update of '' ...

, the winner of the tournament automatically qualified for the Capcom Cup in December 2017. The event also hosted an ''

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a crossover fighting game developed by Capcom in collaboration with Eighting. It is an updated version of '' Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds''. The game features characters from both Capcom's video game franchises and comic book se ...

'' tournament after the game was absent in 2016, and the first major ''

For Honor ''For Honor'' is an action game developed and published by Ubisoft. The game allows players to play the roles of historical forms of soldiers and warriors such as knights, samurai, vikings, controlled using a third-person perspective. The game w ...

'' tournament.

Background

Final Round 20 took place on March 10–12 in Atlanta, Georgia and featured various fighting game tournaments. As staff and participants of

Final Round 19 Final Round 19 was a fighting game tournament that took place in Atlanta on March 18–20, 2016. Being the first of the eleven ''Street Fighter V'' Premier Events of the 2016 Capcom Pro Tour, the winner of the tournament automatically qualified fo ...

encountered issues regarding the size of the venue, Final Round was held in a 37,500 square foot exhibit hall, with all games being played in one room. Online registration for the event was handled by Smash.gg. In celebration of its 20th anniversary, Final Round hosted an ''Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3'' tournament, which was absent in the previous year due to the game's lack of popularity. After a "somber" display of the game at

Evo 2016 The 2016 Evolution Championship Series (commonly referred to as Evo 2016 or EVO 2016) was a fighting game event held in Las Vegas on July 15–17. Being hosted on the twentieth anniversary of the Evolution Championship Series, the event offered to ...

Capcom is a Japanese video game developer and video game publisher, publisher. It has created a number of List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil' ...

and its community of fans worked to get ''Marvel vs Capcom'' back in the spotlights, resulting the Curleh Circuit, a series of fighting game events Final Round is part of. Final Round also hosted the first tournament of the 2017 Capcom Pro Tour, and thus kicked off the second season for ''Street Fighter V''. The tournament attracted a large variation of international talent – among which

Fuudo , better known as , is a Japanese electronic sports player specializing in the ''Street Fighter'' series. Fuudo entered the fighting game scene in 2005 playing ''Virtua Fighter 4''. Fuudo has won various fighting game tournaments, including the ...

Yusuke Momochi Yusuke Momochi, better known as Momochi, is a Japanese professional fighting game player, particularly of ones in the '' Street Fighter'' series by Capcom. Momochi won the Capcom Cup 2014 championship, as well as winning the EVO 2015 title for ' ...

, and

Capcom Cup 2016 Capcom Cup 2016 was a ''Street Fighter V'' video game tournament that was held in December 2016. 32 players qualified for the tournament by winning one of the eleven Capcom Pro Tour Global Premier Events, Evo 2016, one of the four regional event ...

champion

NuckleDu Du Dang (born May 12, 1996), more commonly known by his nickname NuckleDu, is an American fighting game player known for playing Guile and Decapre in Ultra Street Fighter IV, Guile and Zangief in Street Fighter X Tekken, and Guile and Rainbow Mi ...

– as its winner would take a sizable advantage for the rest of the season. Final Round 20 was the first major event to hold a ''For Honor'' tournament. Competitors played

Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry'', '' ...

's open world fighting game, which was released one month prior, in two-versus-two matches.

''Street Fighter V'' tournament summary

Final Round 20 continued the rivalry between Joshua "Wolfkrone" Philpot and Kenneth "KBrad" Bradley, which started at Frosty Faustings two months earlier when Wolfkrone harshly taunted KBrad after winning 2–1. Both players had won their respective pools when they met in the winner's bracket of the top 64. KBrad defeated Wolfkrone 2–0, not losing a single round during their matches, followed by KBRad literally putting his head inches in front of his opponent's face while the crowd went wild. KBrad eventually took fourth place in the finals, while, Wolfkrone came in at 13. The top 8 featured a larger variation of

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

than usual, as the

metagame Metagame, Hypergame, or game about the game, is an approach to a game that transcends or operates outside of the prescribed rules of the game, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by th ...

was still catching up with the gameplay changes of the new season. Three players made a comeback by finishing in the top 8, two of them being Hiromiki "Itabashi Zangief" Kumada and Gustavo "801 Strider" Romero. The third was

Kun Xian Ho Ho Kun Xian () (born 15 September 1990), better known as Xian, is a Singaporean professional fighting games player. Xian is currently part of Team Razer. He was the winner of ''Ultra Street Fighter IV'' at DreamHack Winter 2015. At Capcom Cup ...

, who dominated the tournament with Ibuki and defeated

R. Mika , known as and more commonly as , is a fictional character and professional wrestling, professional wrestler from Capcom's ''Street Fighter (series), Street Fighter'' fighting game series. She was introduced in the 1998 game ''Street Fighter Al ...

in the grand finals. Xian became known for playing the low-tier character

F.A.N.G. is a character in Capcom's ''Street Fighter'' series. He made his first appearance in ''Street Fighter V'' as one of sixteen playable characters at the game's launch in 2016. Within series lore, F.A.N.G. is an assassin who uses poison techni ...

, having told ''

Compete Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, indivi ...

'' that he "never think about high or low tier ut insteadlike playing characters that look cool and hype." When Ibuki was introduced in ''Street Fighter V'' around the end of the 2016 Capcom Pro Tour, Xian was looking to change his game, noting that he "had some matchups I just couldn't figure out." Some fans have speculated that Xian was only able to win the stacked tournament by switching to a mid-tier character.

''BlazBlue'' upset

During the pool play finals of Final Round 20's '' BlazBlue: Central Fiction'' tournament, low-seeded player Glyn "Doza" Mendoza defeated top-seeded Japanese player and Evo 2014 finalist Ryo "Dogura" Nozaki. When Dogura offered Doza a handshake, Doza initially turned it down, thinking their winners finals set was supposed to go to three wins rather than two. After asking tournament organizers for confirmation multiple times, Doza jumped out of his chair, enthusiastically celebrated with his friends, and accepted Dogura's handshake. Video footage of this scene went viral. Dogura went on to win the tournament, while Doza landed on fifth place.

Results

References

{{Capcom Pro Tour 2017 2017 fighting game tournaments 2017 in sports in Georgia (U.S. state)