1996 · Super Street Fighter II Turbo / Street Fighter Alpha 2 · Tom Cannon, Tony Cannon, Joey Cuellar and Seth Killian · Golfland, Sunnyvale, California, USA
Forty players in a Sunnyvale arcade, organised by a handful of enthusiasts from the Street Fighter community. Six years later it changed its name to Evolution, and became the biggest fighting game event in the world.
In 1996 fighting game competition in America had no national circuit. It happened in arcades, among regulars who knew one another by initials on high-score tables and by reputation. B3: Battle by the Bay was an attempt to bring the best of those players together in one place. It was organised by Tom "inkblot" Cannon, his brother Tony "Ponder" Cannon, Joey "MrWizard" Cuellar and Seth "S-Kill" Killian, and held at the Golfland arcade in Sunnyvale, California. The competition featured Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2, and drew 40 entrants — mostly from the United States, but with players from Canada and Kuwait as well. It was a small event by any later standard. What it established was the format and the community: an open tournament, run by players, where anyone could enter and the best player on the day won. The tournament was held again in the years that followed, and in 2002 it changed its name to the Evolution Championship Series — Evo — holding that year's tournament at UCLA in Los Angeles. Evo 2004 took place at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and in 2005 it moved to the Green Valley Ranch casino and hotel in Las Vegas, the city that has been its home since.
Most early video game competitions were promotional events, run by publishers or television producers to sell a game or a show. Battle by the Bay came from the community itself. Its organisers were players, and the event reflected that: the goal was not to showcase a product but to find out who was actually best.
That grassroots origin is the thread that runs through Evo's history. The event grew from an arcade in Sunnyvale to a university campus to a Las Vegas casino, but the open-entry format — anyone can sign up, and a stranger can knock out a champion — came straight from the arcades where it started.