No day at the beach for this July: EVO bans 2 Street Fighter V Stages

Ah, warm sand and clear water; the beach is one of the best trips during a hot summer season. Unfortunately for competitive Street Fighter players, a day at the beach is simply not to be, the Evolution Championship Series (commonly known as “EVO”) has banned 2 stages for July 2016’s tournament.

The first banned stage is “Kanzuki Beach”, due to the water effects making it hard to see character foot placement. Visual clarity is important to players at competitive tournaments, and EVO makes no exception for this year.

Hard to play footsies when you can’t see the footsies, right?

The next banned stage is a surprising change for this year’s tournament, for a completely opposite reason. Instead of poor visibility, “The Grid” is banned at EVO this year, due to “clear spacing indicators”.

In other words, instead of obscuring visual clarity like Kanzuki Beach, the basic training stage is banned for potentially giving opponents an unfair advantage through reading the placement of the characters via the grid-like surface — instead of unclear, the stage is too clear.

Fighting game community website Shoryuken has an additional explanation for the banning of the training stage. In particular, Shoryuken suggests the ban was to encourage players to choose more varied stages to “improve the spectator experience.”

Their reasoning is due to the SFV tourney being broadcasted on ESPN 2, a first for the grassroots-minded tournament located in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“Volcanic Rim” Stage (Click for Stage Musical Theme)

Previously in the Street Fighter series, Street Fighter IV had similar issues with the “Volcanic Rim” stage.

Though not banned, the stage was notorious for being ignored as a setting choice at tourneys due to its red lighting. This made various items on the screen harder to see, such as the ends of the life bars (also a bright red) at the top of the screen.

For those unaware, in less than 2 weeks is the 2016 Evolution Championship Series, commonly known as “EVO 2016”. At EVO, players from around the world compete in their favorite games.

One example is the popular PlayStation and PC title, Street Fighter V, a title according to Joey Cuellar has more than 5,000 players for this year’s competition.

The tournament will run from July 15th to the 17th, starting with elimination pools on day 1 all the way to grand finals on day 3.

What are your thoughts on the banned Street Fighter V stages at EVO 2016? Please leave a comment below!