G4tv.com  and Capcom will be bringing fighting game fans some serious love this weekend when they stream EVO 2010, the premiere fighting game competition in the world, offering over 45 hours of coverage of the event. Fighting games are experiencing a renaissance with the recent success of Street Fighter IV/Super SF4 and some other notable titles like Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, and the Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 re-release for XBLA/PSN. The exclusive stream from Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas will feature tournament matches between top players from around the world with live crowd audio and expert commentary to explain all the onscreen action.  The stream will run from the start of the tournament on July 9th through the finals on July 11th.

EVO featured tournaments include:

Super Street Fighter IV

Tekken 6

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

Marvel vs. Capcom 2

Melty Blood: Actress Again

To follow up, On Tuesday, July 20 X-Play will air ‘X-Play vs. Capcom:  EVO 2010 World Fighting Finals’, which will delve into the legacy of Capcom’s legendary fighting games, and give viewers an all-access look at the history of EVO as it has developed from a fledgling format to a mega-successful fighting institution.

The Web site is now up and running. No idea why it was down for such a long time, but will update again when news becomes available.

And the Infinity Ward vs. Activision fiasco gets stranger.

G4TV.com, the Web site that broke the story initially, is completely inoperable. It won’t load and hasn’t for upwards of 7 hours now.

Just what the hell is happening?

Very good question. Could be a simple bug, or G4′s servers might be unable to handle the exponential growth in page views this week, or it could be something even more sinister. Either way, it’s intriguing.

Go ahead, try to load www.G4TV.com and see what happens.

LOS ANGELES — Last year, except for all the pretty publicists, the only booth babes at E3 belonged to Nyko, which had their customary red-wigged bombshells.

This year, with the Electronic Entertainment Expo being 3-5 times bigger, there was, we experienced, a return of the phenomenon known as the booth babe.

These are not gamers, but the girls are expected to know just enough about the product to direct expo-goers to the nearest adult.

There was one glaring exception: The G4TV miniskirt girls. They were idiots. They made idiots look smart.

They popped over to The Beatles Rock Band booth and took over one of the mini stages so G4TV could shoot a promo of hot babes playing The Beatles Rock Band. The MTV Games guys made sure to set the game to “no fail mode,” which is fine; it’s a promo video.

But what made me keel over laughing, and what I just can’t get G4TV get away with, was when — and did I mention this was at THE BEATLES ROCK BAND booth? — one of the girls (the drummer in the pics) screamed to the entire room, “YEAH Let’s do Guns N’ Roses!”

The room went silent, followed by laughter.

Viva la booth babe.

Steve Weibe, a Washington state native and professional Donkey Kong gamer attempted to dethrone Billy Mitchell from Donkey Kong glory yesterday in a live broadcast attempt at the staggering world record of 1,050,200 on G4TV at E3 in Los Angeles.

How did he do? Sadly, after 4 dramatic tries at the record, Wiebe ultimately fell short in every instance.‚  Was it the pressure packed scenario? Not likely. Wiebe has competed on live television before.‚  Was it a failure of mental aptitude? Again, not likely, as Wiebe is an advanced Algebra teacher and is known to break down the game to a mathematical base.

So what did the man who was first to break the 1,000,000 barrier in the legendary arcade game suffer from in his attempts?‚  Pure, cold, bad luck.

A first attempt yielded a mighty score of 923,400.‚  His second try garnered a tally of 653,700. A third attempt was disrupted by a brief power failure forcing the man to try again, and this time, believe it or not, the infamous “kill screen” halted Wiebe’s efforts at an impressive mark of 989,400.

This event marked the first time ever a Kill Screen was broadcast on live TV, and man oh man, what an unfortunate time for its occurrence.

A kill screen, for those unaware is, according to my main man Wikipedia, any stage or level, most commonly in Arcade games “that stops the player’s progress due to a programming error or design oversight. Rather than “ending” in a traditional sense, the game will crash, freeze, or behave so erratically that further play is impossible.”

Was legendary rival Billy Mitchell behind the power failure and happy to see the kill screen?‚  The world may never know. ‚  As far as we know the man resides in Antarctica perpetually practicing Donkey Kong only to arise when his record is broken.‚  Nah, he lives in sunny Florida, and is a respectable man, but we know Wiebe should be king.