What Is the Daigo Parry at Evo 2004?

Fifteen attacks, fifteen taps forward, one pixel of health: the thirty seconds that made 3rd Strike immortal.

The facts first, because the legend needs none of them enlarged. The 3rd Strike finals of the Evolution Championship Series 2004 took place at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, on 1 August 2004. Uniquely at that event, Street Fighter was still played on traditional arcade cabinets while the other games had moved to home consoles. Daigo Umehara of Japan and Justin Wong of the United States, the two leading players, met in the losers final, having never played each other before.

THE MOMENT

What actually happened

The setup

Final round of the first match, one round apiece. Wong's Chun-Li had played conservatively and chipped Umehara's Ken down to a single remaining unit of health, at which point any blocked hit would still kill him by chip damage.

The super

Wong activated Chun-Li's Super Art, a fifteen hit attack. Blocking meant death. Umehara's only survival line was to parry every hit.

Fifteen parries

He parried all fifteen, including the final hit in the air, each tap timed to the frame of contact, in front of a crowd whose roar is part of the recording's fame.

The finish

Umehara answered with a full Ken combo into a Super Art and took the round, then the match.

The honest ending

He did not win the tournament. Kenji "KO" Obata beat him in the grand final, a fact the legend often drops and this page does not.

The name

The sequence is catalogued as Evo Moment 37 in the event's own numbering of great moments, and widely called the Daigo Parry.

WHY IT ENDURED

The record and the echo

The moment has been described across the press as the most iconic in competitive video gaming, and its influence on the fighting game community is a matter of record rather than sentiment: it is the clip used to explain the genre to outsiders, the standard exhibit for what parrying means, and a documented driver of 3rd Strike's long afterlife. Its timing closes this wing's circle. One month later, on 31 August 2004, the Anniversary Collection put this game into American PlayStation 2 owners' hands, and a generation went looking for the game from the video.

THE GAME ON THE SHELF

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike · Japan · PlayStation 2

The full cast around Chun-Li on the Japanese box for 3rd Strike, the game that produced the Daigo parry at Evo 2004.

The full story: the history of 3rd Strike on PlayStation 2 →

What Is the Daigo Parry at Evo 2004?

THE MOMENT

WHY IT ENDURED

THE GAME ON THE SHELF

THE FIRST WORD