Fighting games declined rapidly in the early 2000's and their glory faded from the collective consciousness, perhaps undeservedly for a genre competitive from day one and older than traditional established "eSports".

With no arcades, predominantly 2D graphics, troubling netcode and a sluggish 3D transition, their art barely shined through most of this decade. And when it did, many gamers didn't recognize the outlandish setting and reactions fell along these lines "What game is this?", "There was a Street Fighter 3?".

However the flame kept burning, mainly fueled by Japan (and Asia through extension), Shoryuken.com,
Daigo parry hype, emulators, GGPO and "Mahvel Baybee" (in no specific order).

Now, shortly arrived in 2009, Street Fighter4 comes along with a home console release (and eventually PC) resurrecting the genre it's synonymous with. SF4 attracts (mostly deserved) critical acclaim becoming a commercial success and the "new thing" to play.

The scene boomed with hordes of new players (leeched from other fighting games, veterans coming out of retirement, as well as new talent: nostalgic gamers or just plain 09ers), all of them dropping on top of the already established scene (caught somewhat by surprise).

Competitive Street Fighter4 could only benefit from this reception and the amount of activity throughout the year was impressive.
This was reflected in massive tournament turnouts for fighting games events, arguably peaking with 1024 players participating over 2 days at Evo 2009 in July. "Arguably" because tournaments like Gamestop Nationals or SBO 2009 branched in 3 countries with many qualifier rounds before the main event.

In turn, this competitive drive attracted massive interest from spectators. The live stream for Devastation 2009 (produced by the familiar faces of djWHEAT & LO3 Crew) accounted a total of 160,000 viewers over 2 days, paving the way for Evo 2009, whos live stream audience peaked at over 23,000 viewers at one moment. Also match videos uploaded on YouTube gathered thousands, tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands views. Many other fighting games gained traction from their exposure next to Street Fighter4, thus growing the overall scene.

All this newly sparked interest could only be satisfied and maintained by gradually more intensive coverage. The fighting games community was paradoxically reluctant to do live streams in the beginning (probably not realizing the growth of their audience) and other forms of coverage was lacking or hidden in SRK forums.

However passionate people (empowered by copious amounts of whining) started to make things happen and coverage improved radically. The second half of the year had live streams every weekend (sometimes overlapping) making it feel indeed like a season of something established you'd follow on TV.

So what exactly happened this year?


Additional media:
- photo gallery of all major events in 2009: http://karaface.smugmug.com/ESports
- Super Street Fighter 4 trailers: New Contenders, New Features And Online Modes