Yesterday we packed up the Street Fighter IV cabinets, Street Fighter HD Remix test kits, and a whole mess of joysticks, and set the GPS for Gamespot HQ in downtown San Francisco. 

In addition to all of our gear, the room was packed with SF love, from OG SF posters , to an arcade SFII Hyper Fighting cabinet to an unapologetically hairy Blanka cosplayer .

 The competitors were a great mix of new challengers, familiar EVO faces, XBox Live champs, and SFIV padawans (who have been honing their skills on the gray-market SFIV cabs that have been popping up across the Bay Area). 

As a one-game, single-elimation tournament, with a wide range of strong players, the action was brutal.  I won’t give away the exciting conclusion, but with $1,000 in each game on the line, plus the $500 overall champion bonus, it was definitely put up or shut up, with a lot of exciting surprises.

Gamespot did an amazing job shooting the event, so stay tuned over there for the hot on-screen action as well as what are sure to be hilarious video profiles of all the competitors (both pre-match trash talk, and post-match face-palms). 

Thanks to everyone who came out, and big ups to Ryan, Ricardo, Amy, and everyone else at Gamespot for putting the whole thing together!

Click here for a few sneak peaks of the event (an exciting mix of my terrible photographic skills and Tim’s phonecam!).