Fierce fighting game competitors from around the world headed to the Dominican Republic this weekend for 2019’s Game Over Tournament. The relatively small nation has been making big waves in the competitive Street Fighter scene and is the home turf of Capcom Cup 2017 winner Saul “MenaRD” Mena. The Dominican community is incredibly passionate, and their enthusiasm was in full effect during the event. The Dominican Republic is home to world-class players who got a chance to prove they could hold their own against the game’s tournament circuit tyrants.
MenaRD used part of his $250,000 in prize money (he also won a DLC costume for his main, Birdie, themed after himself) from winning Capcom Cup to help strengthen his community and grow eSports in the Dominican Republic, and this tournament is positive sign of growth and power in the scene there. Game Over and the fighting game community in the Dominican Republic impressed a lot of professional players who traveled out to compete and found extremely skillful opponents.
Game Over 2019 is a Capcom Pro Tour Premier event in Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition. Twitch channel Capcom Fighters hosted the stream for the Street Fighter V event, along with streams GameOverDR and Top Siete Games. The tournament also held events for Mortal Kombat 11, Tekken 7, Soul Calibur VI, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, among others.
Being a Premier event meant the Street Fighter Tournament was stacked with killers looking to earn some rank points towards the Capcom Cup, but Dominican hometown heroes really showed why the world should be seeing their community as a genuine global threat. Tournament players MenaRD, Christopher “Caba” Rodriguez, and Lenny “CrossoverRD” Almanzar all placed in the Top 16 at Game Over, and the crowd was absolutely wild for them and for Street Fighter in general.
It really seemed like the whole of the Dominican Republic was behind their players, showing and telling their support from the audience. In this Akuma mirror match between José Rafael “Jochy” Flaquer and Chinese player Xijie “Jiewa” Zeng, you can see how hype the crowd got for Jochy’s early success in the first match.
Victor “Punk” Woodley made it out for Game Over this year, and talked about how crazy the Dominican audience can be when they support their local players.
At the end of the day, not even MenaRD could stop the ever-dominant Japanese player Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi, also known as “The MurderFace,” from destroying everybody. He didn’t have to do it, but Tokido hit MenaRD with taunt combo into a reset as a bit of payback for some previous tournament encounters during their match.
Tokido took Grand Finals at Game Over 2019 with his indomitable Akuma, beating out Arman “Phenom” Hanjani who finished in second place. The rest of the Top 8 for the Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition event is below.
3. CO|Dogura (M. Bison)
4. CYG|Fuudo (Birdie, R. Mika)
5. iG|Jiewa (Akuma)
5. FAV|Sako (Menat, Kage)
7. Rise|Smug (G, Balrog)
7. UYU|OilKing (Rashid)
The final results from all the events at this year’s Game Over can be found on smash.gg.