Anticipating its largest attendance ever, the Superbowl of video games is offering semifinal slots to the top players in regional championships across the country.

Having proven their skills at prior tournaments, Hawai'i gamers have been reserved one seat in the semifinals. Tasked with finding the best player to fill Hawai'i's slot is the Hawai'i Video Gaming League, which has launched the Street Fight for Hunger tour, a 12-stop championship across O'ahu — held at Blockbusters across the island. The winner will be declared at the July 5 finals at the Loft and sent, all expenses paid, to Las Vegas for the Evolution Fighting Game Championships, or EVO.

The tournament is open to the public and has allowed Hawai'i Video Gaming League Commissioner Jeff Young to witness the quality of players hidden in remote parts of the island.

"I think that at least two of our guys — at least — it could be all of them, could go into the finals. Every one of them has trained very hard, they've watched the match videos and they know their opponents; they've just never (fought) them," Young said.

The semifinal ticket allows the victor to skip the preliminary matches and represent Hawai'i in the semifinals at EVO's Street Fighter IV tournament, considered by many to be the main event of the championships, July 17-19.

EVO was formed, informally, in the streets of New York in 1995 when 40 top players walked into an arcade on Broadway to put an end to months of trash talk and hurt feelings by determining the true champion of Super Street Fighter II Turbo — a fighting game many fans considered the purest fighting game available.

Forty played that day, but many more came just to watch, so the competition was held again the next year, and the next. For a decade, EVO sold out every venue from New York to California until finally settling in the only town big enough to hold it — Las Vegas.

Hawai'i players have previously ranked among the top eight in games like Capcom vs. SNK and SSFIIT.

Semifinal tickets allow players to go head-to-head with the fighting game scene's best, players like Mike Ross and Justin Wong, whose April matchup at the Gamestop National Tournament filled the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

Many games played competitively at EVO are titles mainstream players consider obsolete. It took 16 years for Super Street Fighter II HD Remix to replace the 1993 original in competition.

For fans, the fighting genre is much like chess, played at Bobby Fisher-type speeds. Graphics are a secondary concern as long as beneath the simple fun lies an ocean of complexity.

A $30 entrance fee is required for competitors, or $20 with 40 ounces of canned food for the Hawaii Foodbank. Players who lose at one location are allowed to compete at another.

"Not all gamers are lazy; we're (HVGL) out there trying to make a difference. We are not just there to sit on our butts, we also go out and do things for the community. We're trying to change that stereotype about gamers sitting at home, drinking Mountain Dew," said Young, while pulling out a bottle of Mountain Dew from behind his chair and laughing.