South East Asia Major 2014: bigger, louder, better, best

South East Asia Major 2012 was held in an unsecured community centre hall. It looked like this.

South East Asia Major 2013 was held in the Alienware Arena. It was bigger and pretty hyped up, but it was also the first tournament of this scale organized by the Singapore fighting game community.

South East Asia Major (SEA Major) 2014 , however, brought the swag level up a notch.

SEA Major 2014, which concluded just yesterday, saw 230 players from a total of 12 different countries sign up for six games. There were about 500 on-site attendees, and a mindblowing 28,000 max concurrent viewers on its Twitch stream for the Ultra Street Fighter 4 Capcom Cup finals.

Arc System Works from Japan also sent down a representative, its first ever, to scout out the possibility of sponsoring future events. South East Asia Major 2014 was the first non-Japanese event to ever receive Arc System Works’ sponsorship, and had a booth at which limited edition Arc System Works merchandise was sold.

Also on the sponsorship train were Mad Catz, Razer, Bandai Namco, Twitch.tv, Xsplit, Arcade Shock, Xbox, and Capcom for the Capcom Pro Tour.

Evil Geniuses’ Momochi took first place at South East Asia Major 2014’s Ultra Street Fighter 4 showdown, earning himself a spot at the Capcom Pro Tour taking place later this year. In second and third place respectively were Kazunoko and Razer’s Fuudo, making the Ultra Street Fighter 4 podium finish at SEA Major 2014 an all-Japan one.

Blazblue: Chronophantasma was dominated by Blickwinkel (Philippines) and Rebel2’s Seo (Singapore) and Lulzicon (Singapore) respectively, while the top three placings for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 went to Book (Thailand), AK (Philippines), and KGB-Plus (Singapore).

Eita (Japan), IPT|Garrett (Philippines), and Kazunoko (Japan) swept the podium at Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Mad Catz’s Tokido (Japan), Razer’s Xian (Singapore), and Team DM’s Jackson (Singapore) rounded up the tournament with King of Fighters XIII. As always, the full list of winners and Top 8 placings can be found at Eventhubs, while the Hearthstone winners can be found here.

Organizer Tough Cookie TV also announced near the end of the major that 2015’s iteration would be held in Thailand in cooperation with Thaiger Uppercut.