. The sixth
Evolution Championship Series was held at the
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona,
Southern California on July 29 to August 1. Evo 2004 featured approximately 700 participants from over 30 nations, each competing in one or more of the nine tournaments held at the event. In order to create an easier situation for staff and increase the average play time of participants, the
double-elimination-style tournaments of previous Evo events was replaced with a
round-robin/double-elimination
pool system. In the old system, some players would find themselves being eliminated from a tournament after losing two games, but because of the newly implemented system each participant would face off against at least nine other players during the preliminary pool. 2004 was in the middle of what Tom Cannon would later describe as the "Dark Ages" of the fighting game community, when fighting games were largely abandoned by game developers. However, the Evolution Championship Series grew steadily every year, and had become the largest fighting game tournament of its time. Up until Evo 2004, every Evolution event relied almost entirely on
arcade cabinets. However, arcade hardware has always been relatively difficult to get a hold of, especially for games that do not run on
Capcom's
CP System II system boards. Furthermore, arcade hardware would commonly offer up technical issues. Lastly, competitors often complained that the arcade hardware available at Evolution was different from the hardware they have trained on. In order to solve these issues, the Evolution organizers opted to switch to using
video game consoles only at the tournament, where participants have to bring their own
game controllers. Only the
Street Fighter III: Third Strike tournament held at Evo 2004 was played on arcade hardware, because the
Street Fighter Anniversary Collection release date was pushed back to August. Tournament organizers opted to turn the
team tournaments, which were traditionally
exhibition matches, into a main part of the event. Two specifically
seeded team tournaments in
Capcom vs. SNK 2 and
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and a Pair Play tournament for
Tekken Tag Tournament were held at Evo 2004. Evo 2004 also featured a "Bring Your Own Console" area, where people were able to set up smaller-scale tournaments of games not on the main roster. ==Evo Moment #37==