Having never attended an EVO tournament before, I was constantly surprised by the attendees's indie rock DIY approach to competitive gaming. While the majority of SFIV players are now rocking the excellent Mad Catz Tournament Edition Fight Stick (they better, since it was made specifically for their needs!), there were tons of homebrew joysticks on display. More (crappy Blackberry mobile) pics of just a few of the ones I saw on display in vegas this past weekend follow the button.

PlayStation Home community manager Jared Rea was on hand for EVO, flaunting his freshly-customized Mad Catz stick. Jared is a Chunster player, as you can tell from his awesome LittleBigPlanet-themed stick.

There was always a crowd of people giving Tatsunoko VS Capcom a workout throughout the event, but this guy actually made his own Doronjo joystick for the Wii. We'll expect to see you sideline TvC players on the big screen next year!

Protoman is cool. 'Nuff said.

Kids, make sure you leave the joystick modding to pros. You can't handle this level of packing tape & plastic stool crafting without years of training.

Not actually a joystick (as I'm sure you figured out), but Adam (aka "Keits") was sporting this jaunty Gold Lightan tie on the first day of EVO. His girlfriend also made a bunch of Street Fighter ties, which were promptly purchased and worn all weekend by the entire Capcom EVO staff, making us 30% more dashing than usual.

Also not a tie, this Canadian Mega Man fan showed off his hawt ink. If he was truly hardcore, he would have gone with the Mega Man 9 box art...

Not sure what the crazy doujinsoft PC game was that these dudes were playing, but I was amused to find PC gamers in the midst of EVO's console madness.

Seth is still in Vegas, helping wrap up the EVO weekend. He will undoubtedly fill Unity with all sorts of cool EVO-related stuff over the next few days (at least until Comic-con derails us), but in the meantime, I did want to congratulate Japan's Daigo "The Beast" Umehara. He took first place in the Street Fighter IV competition at EVO, once again besting top-ranked US player Justin Wong -- shades of the Gamestop tournament!. Daigo is known for his unmatchable skills with Ryu, but Justin brought plenty of fury to the match, choosing to challenge with Abel, Rufus and Balrog ("The Boxer," as he's known at EVO in order to cut down on regionalized naming issues) to try to shake up The Beast. Their battles are epic and worth watching. There's already tons of video on YouTube, but you'll want to keep your eyes on the official Evolution 2K website, where they will soon be adding all kinds of video, including a cool clickable bracket feature that will allow you to watch each match of the finals as they happened. Congrats Daigo and Justin

Ever notice how we're always trying to sell you stuff? Well, this chunk of Street Fighter goodness if free* for your finger-tapping pleasure, so: You're welcome! Capcom has teamed up with Gametap and Metaboli to unleash this play-in-yer-browser version of SFII' Champion Edition in celebration of the PC release of Street Fighter IV. See how long it takes you to figure out how to shoryuken your opponent using the arrow and SDF keys.

*Nothing in life is actually free, thanks to lawyers

There are a ton of PC gamers out there who tune in regularly to Unity, so you must be jumping out of your pants with excitement that Street Fighter IV is finally available in North America. You can get the game two ways:

1. Hitch your horse to your buggy and canter into town to purchase the boxed version from a retailer, contributing to global warming. Return home, churn butter.
2. Follow this link, drop in some pertinent info and immediately download the game. Begin pwning foolz stat.

If you hate Mother Earth and love to sit around and wait, you can find the game in tons of different retail locations. If you have no patience and want it NOW, digital is the way to go.

If'n you jest gotta own the box and the DVD, you might want to look at this groovy Mad Catz bundle deal on Amazon.

Good information to have: the 360 versions of the Mad Catz Fight Sticks are automatically recognized by SFIV PC/Windows XP as soon as they are plugged in. The game will even default to joystick as soon as it senses the stick!

You love this song, but it is not actually on the soundtrack:

Fortunately, all the other great music from Street Fighter IV is on the soundtrack! You can listen to the entire soundtrack streaming over on AOL's Game soundtracks channel fer free. Once you've fallen in love all over again with the chunez, you can choose to clutter up your living space with a peachy 2 disc physical specimen or download digitally and cram it directly into your iTunes stack.