eSports don’t belong just to the realm of PC gaming and Smash Bros – there is plenty of competition to be had among arcades. Wahlap is delivering that across China as they have begun qualifiers for their 16th annual Wahlap E-Sports Championship 2025 (WEC 2025 for short) event. Let’s take a deeper look.
This is a sponsored post by one of our advertisers, Wahlap.
WEC 2025 – So Far
So far, Wahlap reports a staggering 650,000 players have participated in the WEC since it was conceived back in 2008, with the continued competition likely bringing in more players as it has grown. Two regions have already held qualifiers – Beijing and Wuhan – with Guangzhou up next, followed by Shanghai. The final qualifier will be held on August 23rd in a “West Region” city, then the finals will be held at the World Trade Center in Gunagzhou on Oct. 2nd-5th.
WEC 2025 – The Games
In the past, Wahlap have included games like the King of Fighters series, Sangokushi Taisen series, Initial D series, Wangan Midnight series, Speed Driver series, Hero of Robots series, Danz Base, Dance Core, Top Star series, and Groove Coaster in WEC. But what are they playing in these qualifiers? This year, the main titles are Maimai DX; Taiko No Tatsujin; Chunithm; Asphalt Moto Blitz DX; Kingdoms Fantasy; and Initial D: The Arcade.
As such, this makes it a broad mix of games that players are competing on, really searching for that “best of the best” kind of arcade gamer.
The company has posted a few more images and details here that you can read if interested.
On a brief tangent while we’re here, for competitions like this in the West, there is little exactly like this; the Big Buck Hunter Championships by Play Mechanix, and the MLeS World Championships by Alan-1 are the closest things we’ve seen to it, with the Big Buck event being focused on one game (several other Raw Thrills offerings are usually on hand at them, but not for competitive purposes). That doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon too, with it becoming “BuckFest” this year.
Over in Japan in the other hand, Sega, Bandai Namco and Konami of course do plenty of dedicated official tournaments on their games. Even Taito have also held a few ‘Toushinsai‘ tournaments bringing together games from different companies like Wahlap’s, although these seem to have ceased running after 2021’s. With Taiko and Maimai DX beginning to roll out in the States now it would be cool to see something done on those games like in Asia… but for that, we’ll just have to wait and see.
What do you think of Wahlap’s WEC 2025 tournament? Would you like to see something like this held on more arcade games out West?
