The rules for this year's Evolution 2009 tournament were announced recently on Shoryuken.com. Among the most notable things was that Akuma is banned from the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix tournament.

Banning characters is not an uncommon practice in tournaments, but EVO is one of the biggest around and often the decisions they make regarding rules and eligible characters are followed by many other tournament organizers.

Also note there wasn't a single character from Street Fighter 4 banned, and people like Gill from Street Fighter 3 Third Strike remain ineligible for tournament play.

Should be interesting to see how the HD Remix developers weigh this when deciding how to tweak the game in the future. It's been stated a few times they want to wait for tournament results before they make changes.