This past weekend, I attended the Penny Arcade Expo. It was absolutely incredible. There were PC, console, and tabletop game tournaments, panel discussions, an exhibitor room (think E3 lite), concerts, freeplay, prizes, and the OMEGATHON II.

I went to see how truly large game tournaments are run, specifically to get some ideas on how to handle our recent influx of new players, and to do a little of what adults call 'networking'. Also, to play some games. Read on for complete details.

Friday, I arrived in Seattle, checked in, and joined the stream of geeks flowing up the street toward the Meydenbauer Center in downtown Bellevue. The doors were supposed to open to preregistrants at 3:00, and it was about 2:50. There was a line stretching down the street and around the block, past a Dairy Queen that must have thought it died and went to heaven. A guy next to me waiting to cross the street looked at the line and said, "I'm glad I preregistered," thinking it meant he got to skip the line. He figured out soon enough that the line was only for people who had preregistered, and hiked back to the end of the line somewhere around Vancouver.

While waiting for the doors to open, I made my first PAX discovery: the Nintendo DS becomes something truly awesome in a DS-rich environment. There were pictochat rooms going all the time, no matter where you were... in the line, in the theater, at lunch, even during the concerts. Pictochat became a sort of live commentary track for the whole event, with people getting downloadable games together on the fly (Meteos was most common). You could just put your DS into download mode and see 2 or 3 games people were offering for wireless play. I played Meteos, Bomberman DS, Advance Wars, and something in Japanese I later figured out was Puyo Puyo Fever. You could also see many people 'petting' or making baby talk to their newly-acquired Nintendogs.

I registered for the Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart Double Dash tournaments... by writing my name on a piece of paper. It was so quaint and refreshing... given the way we IT geeks do things, I can honestly say it never before occurred to me. However, they have some approaches at PAX that we really can't take at AADL-GT Tournaments, for example, they close registration completely up to an hour before the event begins to give them time to do the data entry. If you miss the registration deadline, that's that. Also, most tournaments are pool-based, single-elimination, reducing greatly the need for the kind of record-keeping we do during a tournament.

For example, for Super Smash Brothers, each of the 24 stations was assigned a 16-person pool. After filling the empty pool spots with standby players, they made brackets for each pool and players played a 1v1, best 2 out of 3, 4-stock, 6-minute time limit match, with items set to low, some banned items, and some banned stages. Only the winner of the pool advanced to the next round. I got eliminated in my first match against a master Ness player. I was DK first, then Link, and both times I had him down to his last life when I lost.

Friday Night's concert, after a showing of the 1989 Fred Savage and Super Mario Bros. 3 Vehicle The Wizard, included The Videogame Pianist, Transformers-obsessed hiphop band Optimus Rhyme, and the The NESkimos. Lovecraftian Rock Band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets canceled at the last minute.

Saturday morning, the exhibit room opened, and we stumbled in to find a real, genuine, E3-style Nintendo Booth, with 10 DS stations, 4 GBA stations, 6 small gamecube stations and 2 Huge ones. All sorts of unreleased games were playable, including Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess! It was the E3 demo, and while I love the Wind Waker style, the new realistic Zelda look will undoubtedly be less reviled by the legions of 'mature' rabid gamers with poor taste who think that bright colors are only acceptable for children. Regardless, the game is naturally amazing. Also playable were Super Mario Baseball and Super Mario Strikers (Soccer), both of which are an absolute blast and are outstanding additions to the Mario Sports lineup. Advance Wars: Under Fire for Gamecube is cool, 3rd person squad-based cartoony warfare, and looks fun, but very very different from the Advance Wars formula. If you like Advance Wars, Fire Emblem (the game Marth and Roy are from) for Gamecube is on the way; it's fantasy turn-based tactics battles, very in-depth, but a bit dry. Mario Kart DS was playable and is absolutely great, featuring great new tracks and best-of-breed weapons; rotating shells, the banana train, and jumping are all back, and the graphics look great on the DS's top screen. The lower screen shows you a zoomed-in overhead view that you can use to dodge shells! You can play 8-player wireless, and rumors persist that you'll be able to play over the internet via Wifi. One guy even said there would be Halo-style stat tracking and ladders, but I think he just made that up. We'll see.

In contrast to Nintendo's booth, Sony had 4 toys-r-us-style kiosks and a couple of card tables, and Microsoft had two tables and a single big TV. Ubisoft actually had a better XBOX booth than Microsoft, showing off some new combat games, a King Kong game that was fun but with a maddening fixed camera, and appearances by the Fragdolls.

Also exhibiting were NCSoft, best known for City of Heros, and Turbine, whose Dungeons and Dragons Online was a fan favorite, especially with all the tabletop gamers in attendance. The Army was there pushing America's Army, complete with Humvee, and Flying Lab Software was exhibiting their new MMORPG, Pirates of the Burning Sea.

On Saturday, we got to watch Gabe and Tycho make Monday's strip after a 'pitch your game idea' panel with several industry veterans. The best idea to come out of that session was probably "France France Revolution". Saturday was also the Mario Kart Double Dash team tournament. They had the 24 stations broken up into 6 4-station Lans, splitscreen, so they had the capacity for 96 simultaneous players driving 48 carts in 6 races, plus 2 extra pools that went after the first round for a total of 64 teams, 128 players. They had planned to have each pool of 8 teams play a 4-race cup, and the top two places from each pool would advance. However, as we know so well, the game does not keep track of any scores in LAN mode. I talked to Zig21, the head of the console tourney room about it, and was able to help them get a quick paper-based scoring system so they could record the scores of 4 races. It was great to have the opportunity to share our Kart tournament expertise, and help out a truly large event, and I think the event went very well, other than the fact that my randomly-assigned partner (because I didn't bring one) and I got knocked out in the first round. The competition was very intense. I actually did play-by-play on the mic for the finals, a set of 8 races, and last year's winning team, Sparkimus Prime, won again. Prizes for all the tournaments at PAX were different numbers of 'tickets' for the prize booth, Chuck-E-Cheese style, only with cool stuff like PSP accessories, games, toys, t-shirts, etc. I saw a brand-new set of Foster's toys that I REALLY WANTED. Oh well.

Saturday night's concert was absolutely amazing. First, Nintendo, on the ball as ever, had handed out little blue flashlights that project the nintendo logo, so the entire theater was filled with dancing Nintendo logos projected onto the walls by the audience. That was the best money they ever spent. The concert started off with Round 4 of the OMEGATHON. The OMEGATHON is an intense tournament for 32 randomly-selected players through all types of games, including tabletop, PC shooters, doubledash, Katamari Damacy, etc. Each round a few people are eliminated. Round 4 was Karaoke Revolution, which is like DDR, only you sing. In front of 2000 people. It was hilarious. The audience cheered the most for the players who sung the worst, and I can sense a surprize round game here.... just kidding, I wouldn't do that to you. However, I do want to try it at a DDR tournament and see if anyone would be interested in a Karaoke Revolution tournament.

After the OMEGATHON sing-off, Pianist Conney Lin played several beautiful, but dull, arrangements of music from Final Fantasy. Then, taking the stage by storm, came the world's 579th greatest rapper, MC Frontalot, inventor and proponent of Nerdcore hiphop, with his band, and personal hype machine, Gelatinous Cube. Front launched his new album at PAX and performed several new tracks, including 'Click Close' about pop up windows, and 'Got Message #419', about Nigerian email scams. MC Frontalot was simply awesome, high energy and suitably geeky in his short sleeve dress shirt, tie, and thick glasses. Next came a rapper who I don't think I can directly mention in this forum. I'll just say that he's the voice of Hesh from Sealab 2021 and MC PeePants from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. He was great, and led the crowd in a rousing chant of 'Nerd Power'. Also notable was his DJ, who pressed one key on his Mac at the start of each song and stood there while it played. Awesome.

However, the best band and the highlight of the evening was the all-powerful Minibosses, whose straightforward power-guitar arrangements of classic NES music stole the show. They closed with Metroid, which was just incredible. These guys are extremely talented players and they know the repertoire well, picking out lesser-known gems like Goonies II for their treatment.

Sunday began with a 'beat the pros' event, where Soul Calibur II Master Zig21 took challengers from the audience. If they could beat him in a single round, they got a $50 gift card. His main character was Astaroth, but after a few wins, he upped the ante and would beat players with their own best characters. He did get beaten a few times, but I think his final record was something like 28-17, and the whole event was just a blast. They then moved onto Halo 2 Team, and challenger teams could attempt to beat some high-ranking Halo players.

The end of Sunday, and of PAX 2005, was the OMEGATHON final round. The Omega Collection was the prize, a $10,000 collection of essentially every NES game, system, and accessory ever produced. Even the obscure and rare ones. It was kept on display in the exhibit room, locked in two enormous cages. Last year, the final round of the OMEGATHON was pong, and as we filed into the theater for the final match, there was lots of buzz, especially in pictochat, about what the game would be. Tycho and Gabe took the stage and revealed this year's final game.... it was COMBAT, for the Atari 2600, first to 2 wins. The match between omeganaughts Coreside and LeRoy was extremely intense, especially with such an amazing prize on the line. In the first match, the older Coreside showed his roots, skunking LeRoy 15-0. The next match, LeRoy got the hang of it and stormed back to tie 8-8. Then LeRoy won a match, setting the stage for an insane finale. The final match started off with Coreside taking a 6 or 7 point lead, but LeRoy came back with several shots in a row to tie it at 10 just as the scores started blinking, which in the old days, meant that your match was almost over. Finally, with the crowd going crazy, Coreside scored a final hit, and won the match, the OMEGATHON, and the entire Omega Collection. WOW.

So, what did I learn? I learned that there isn't a much better way to do Mario Kart tournaments than what were already doing, other than to have more stations or to turn people away. I also learned that if a videogame tournament smells bad, that just means you're doing it right. I learned that if you use Pictochat on your birthday, your DS announces your birthday to every chatroom you enter. I also learned that only Nintendo appreciates how powerful the hardcore can be. I saw Twilight Princess, a Game Boy Micro, AADL-GT DDR master Aaron S, Adult Kart tournament regular Omokusaki's name on the list, Mountains, Nerf capture-the-flag played across the entire hotel, and cases and cases of BAWLZ overcaffeinated soda (it's nasty). I gave AADL-GT Season 1 Grand Championship DVDs to Gabe and Tycho, Zig21, a team from 1UP magazine, the winners of the PAX doubledash tournament, and a few other random people. It was a total blast, and I'm already looking forward to PAX 2006.

Sweet!
Hey Eli I had an idea for the whole thing about it being to crowded. Have all the stations on the same sime side and even one on top of the stairs and then have 8 chairs at each station 4 for playing four for viewing. Also I would just like to metion two things that happened at the tourtaments that were not sporting. #1 I am not going to metion names but, if it happens again I will #2 There Is a unnamed person who tried to team up with the best person at each battle. If you don't attack somebody in your clan thats O.K. but, this person was not in a clan with the people he tried to team up with. #3 In the final round of single player melee someone got out and there were three players who were very close to eachother in damage and it was anyones game and when the guy got out he blocked player 4's view and he fell off. You know who you are you. Just clean up your act.

lol bad driver u and tp2 teamed up on me in the final ssbm match and i STILL beat u guys. yea i hate the noise makers too they should stop that. and in the match at Onett where i played u 2 and michael song but he got out he was young link i killed both of u with smash attacks and we were not close in damage we each had 1 life i had like 124% and u 2 had probably 50%. the person who i teamed up with is my friend and i got 2nd in that match anyway. the whole PAX thing sounded cool especially this zig guy in soul caliber 2 did he use the guy with the big sword cuz i heard he was really cheap. do u know who won the halo 2 tournament and their gamertag online so i can look them up to see their skill level compared to me. in july leinad asked me to team up with him and i said ok and we finished the match 1 and 2(i was 1st with 2 lives left yippee) and he had to play me again and he didnt want to team up so he got 3rd just like ur brother in icicle mountain BTW that stage should be banned. eli i just wanted to get other people's opinions about which system i should get and i DO want ssbm2 for the revolution cuz i belive it has online play. i just got back from my first day and i was sleeping for about 3 hours once i got back and i had to help all these new kids who didnt have a clue what they were doing. bad driver if it offends u i wont do it again promise but i will do it i there is someone in my clan who is in the match like galen or joe. black shark and i are working on a diabolical plan to annoy the noise makers like they did to us.
muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Wow, “The Omega Collection was the prize, a $10,000 collection of essentially every NES game, system, and accessory ever produced. Even the obscure and rare ones." That is the coolest prize I have ever heard about. That sounds amazing and while you were gone I thought of having people that show-up early sign a list.

The DS rocks when owners get together. I was at a FIRST robotics competition and there were many people with them and the DS telling people it's your birthday is pretty cool. I hope to go to U-Con in Nov. and hope to see you there Eli. I know it won't be PAX but it is still good fun.

Eli are you going to Ban Items and Stages? If so I still think Items should be on Med. For the Teaming up thing I would say it is perfectly fine to team up you still will have to fight each other in the end and backstabbing happens. The smart people wouldn't try and team-up with the best players.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

duck is right i teamed up with flare cuz he is my friend though. lets start coming to a consensis on what items/stages should be banned. as for items i think we should do tomato and heart. stages we should do termina,hyrule temple, icicle mountain, rainbow cruise, big blue, brinstar depths, and flat zone. when someone contradicts me i will explain my reasoning for now i gotta do my hw.

Eli - wow, sounds awesome. very, very cool.

bad driver - Sravan and me teamed up once at the preseason. I say there's nothing wrong with it. IMO, those "best players" should just kill that guy first.

"There is no spoon." -Neo

Sravan - I disagree. Eli - please play all stages. There's a certain commonly banned stage that I really really really hope to play on in September. I'm saying no more until the tournament.

"There is no spoon." -Neo

So Eli, got any new ideas, and info on the new leaderboard that ejk was talking about?

"Chunks does the Truffle Shuffle"

eli can your clan symbol be anything other than the currant choices. could i email u a pic and u put it on?

leinad u lier u asked me to team up with u and i said yes and i asked if u wanted to do it again u said no.

cool...my schools sweet...freakin sweet...good teachers and ppl in my classes...

There are only 3 stages I want Banned Hyrule Temple,Yoshi 64 and Brinstar Depths.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

I find that Temple is my favorite stage cause it has together we ride as the secondary music but i agree with duck it should be banned with the other stages he listed

Sravan, I don't see how that makes me a liar. I teamed up with you once and I don't see anything wrong with it. Which is exactly what I said. The second time I felt as though I might have better chances in a free for all. That's all. No lies involved.

"There is no spoon." -Neo

leinad i sincerly apoligize i misread your comment i thought it said sravan made me instead of sravan and me. btw isnt it sravan and i but whatever. hyrule,brinstar, and yoshi N64 are ok with me but i also want icicle mountain and rainbow cruise to be banned but if rainbow cruise isnt then i am ok with that. lots of people think big blue should be banned but u stay on the yellow falcon shaped car for the first 30 seconds right and then only u move to other cars. other people like it cuz half the pokemon are useless there like the ones that fly except for starmie i think. so who is going to the next tournament? so far i know that duck's clan is, our clan is, black sharks clan is, and thats it o yea plus flare. actually joe u never told me if u and derek were coming to the september tournament so can u tell me please so i can tell the subs that i have to come or not(flare and this other kid). flare if and only if joe or derek dont show up will u sub for my clan?

im going to ceder point tommarow i am so happy.

I.M. could be banned but I don't think Rainbow cruise or big blue should be. They might be annoying but they don't give an unfair advantage to any character like Hyrule temple or Yoshi 64 and they don't make it terrible bad for any character (I.M. and brinstar depths can be really bad for bad jumpers).
"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

I think the only stages that should be banned is brinstar depths, pokemon floats and battlefield. But they are kind of okay. So we might not have to ban any. We should lower the items and take away some cheap items like the home-run bat...

oh yeah...i also think 100 %ly that the noise makers should not even come to the tournament...let alone make noise...also i think there should be a limit for players...because last time it was just too many people...you could barely move in that crowd!!! I f ur going to make a limit, i think it should be about 75 people. Also, it got really hot in there so maybe you could raise the air conditioner or put some fans. And also i think you should like do something about the noise level when people are playing. People just keep talking and talking...it's really annoying and it can get mess up people's conversations. You should like have the audience also look at the big screen instead of having them around the competetors. I sometimes lost my concentration.

oh yeah, we should absolutely NOT ban hyrule temple, because that is like the second best field. Also, i think we should keep icicle mt. because it is fun and challenging and is also short so sometimes people lose lives.

Battlefield isn't unfair in fact it is one of the most balanced stages there are. Pokèfloats is also a well balanced stage it doesn't require amazing skill to fight and move I.M. can move so fast that certain slower characters get die even if they weren't in a fight. The home-run bat may seem cheap to certain people but the bat requires a long time to swing and can easily be stopped by any hit with knock back and can be very bad for the user. Hearts, Tomatoes, Stars, Hammers, Cloaking Devices, Metal Boxes, Red Koopa Shells, Bob-ombs, Pokeballs, Party Balls, and Mushrooms are the ones we would probably ban if we ban at all.

Hyrule temple is unfair because a good fox can avoid damage and combat all together and then be cheap in sudden death by sitting in the pavilion area while everyone gets bombed.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

ya but like the only good fox is sravan and maybe sravan wont do that and oh yeah...eli could we do 4 stock-6 minutes melee? 1 stock is just to little and the time...it's okay. Actually battlefield is okay with me.

Were you at the last tournament Prince Marth there is no way we could do 4 stock 6 min melee.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

Prince marth? if you play as marth, you are one of the last people i would expect to want home run's banned, ever try countering, marth can counter home run bats very well, and hammers, and beam swords. TRy countering a home run..... its very useful

BCL you still on.

Don't ban items or stages. Duck you probably don't like Hyrule Temple or Yoshi 64 because, you play as a character without range moves. That's why you like battlefield.

I don't understand why anyone would want to ban brinstar depths it punishes campers.

As BCL said marths are incredible against bats and hammers. Hammers aren't as good in this game. You can get hit by ranged moves that might knock you back. Once knocked back you are vulnerable unless you can wiggle really fast. (you can't tech w/ a hammer). You will then be smashed and will watch as you helplessly fall to your death.

Bats are really slow. It is shameful to be home runned.

yeah i am still on, i got to do phy sci though you still on, feel sorry for the hurricane victims

by the way, there is no point to wave dashing, especially with my character

Yea, I'm still here. Are you reading the packet over the weekend I probably will. Do you want Kart over the weekend.

sort of reading it now, pretty boring. If i have time i will be glad to take kart, since i only qualified in ssb. but, i plan on doing my precalculas homework for week this weekend, so maybe not

so, which phy sci article are you doing?

1 stones = 5.70735888 × 10 to the 17 joules

you know how to use google calculator right,
and you know about google mirror too RIGHT?

I'll bring kart over sometime.

I don't know about the phy sci yet (hopefully it will have nukes).

BCL what is google mirror? (tell me later.)

TurtlePerson2 (really) signing off.

"TORTURIS EXUVIAS EUNT"

there is plenty point in wavedashing with luigi and mart and mewtwo but not so much with other characters.

omid how can u say battlefield is unfair its my favorite stage and i think its the most balenced stage(final destination doesnt have platforms so ur character doesnt have to be airel). mini blin is also a good fox i want to give him credit. tp2 i know depthes kills pansees and campers but if kraid tips the stage when u are about to come back then u are screwed. i dont see much of a character unfair advantage but i do see it in flat zone even though i like flat zone. DK can grab someone walk really fast to almost the edge and throw someone and they die, marth and roy have really good finishing moves so they can smash u out. tp2 u said ducks character doesnt have any projectiles and u used the same guy as him does that mean u changed? u guys know the advantage for fox at N64 right?

items i dont know why u have red shell and bomb omb please give reasons for banning these items and fox and falco can reflect bombs and if u dont use them then thats too bad 4 u, they can also reflect red shells but eventually it will be a shield breaker. starman is what noobs need for like a big break so that stays on the banned list. hammer i dont know why u have it its an advantage to ur character *cough*counter*cough*. poke ball isnt that bad half the time u dont get a good pokemon and 7/8 the time if u get a good one then the other players will some how dodge it unless there are noobs.

haha i used paragraphs cuz i feel this post is really long

Marth can reflect bombs.

TurtlePerson2 (seriously this time it is for real) signing off.

"TORTURIS EXUVIAS EUNT"

by the way..... there is no point to wave dashing, yes you can float across the screen and it looks "cool", but it is mainly for confusing noobs and it is no real benefit that is why nintendo left it in the game even after the debuggers figgured out this flaw, L canceling is much more useful

Anti snowman logging off.

"TORTURIS EXUVIAS EUNT"

i need to get that phrase in a different language

party ball is ok there is no problem with it i dont know why its on the list. metel box is actually a little bit unfair to someone who is stalling to either go into sudden death or they have 2 lives and everyone else has 1 cuz its harder to kill a metel guy. cloaking devise isnt bad either u should be able to see the person or at least know where they are or else u havent had this game for a long time. its just the no damage thing that helps stallers. mushrooms arent that bad cuz its a 50-50 chance that u will succeed with a giant mushroom.

most of the items on duck's banned list are probably there for special situations where someone has an unfair advantage and thats what items are basically for to give people an advantage if they are losing.

"Some say the glass is half full, others say its half empty, I say are you going to drink that"

anti snow man u dont know what wave dashing is useful for then. there are special things that u can do when u wave dash that i'm not going to say then u have to figure them out on ur own. L-canceling is useful. fox's reflector rocks. flare told me that when u counter a bomb u explode is this true cuz i have never tried it.

i am a computer geek hellooooooooo. I know a lot about wave dashing, just go to google and type in wave dashing and you got all the secrets, but it is not useful for my character.

wave dashing only works with light characters, very light characters, they get killed so easly........

by the way Sravan... you are acting like a dishonest realtor since you only tell people what you think they know.

okay anti snowman logging out (this time for real)

LANG LEVENDE SKILPADDEN

ha ha i got it in NOrwegan, I am a google master

Bob-ombs are banned because they move on there own, have you ever noticed that right when your in a fight a Bob-omb will activate off screen and come and kill you. Plus, Right when your about to do an attack a Bob-omb pops up right in the line of your attack and blows up in your face.

Red shells I would think are banned because when there start moving they juggle people like no tomorrow. if you're in the air and you foe is on the ground then you will just get a horrible beating.

Metal Boxes, Mushrooms, Red Koopa Shells, Bob-ombs, Stars would be banned because they act without player input or by accident. If the computer wishs all of a sudden a poison shroom pops into existence right above your character.
Cloaking Devices because if you pick it up at low % it means you near invincible.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

lol a dishonest relator that cracks me up. i totally forgot bombs move on their own so then they should be banned but u should sometimes know if a bomb is coming so u have to get prepared. if u are in the air then u wont get a beating cuz i will fire fox to the place where there is no redshell and if it ever comes to me i reflect it. when they juggle u just use ur recovery move(up B) and go somewhere safe, also fox can use reflector and belive it or not the reflector is fox's best move and its the fastest move in the game so i could do it in between ur rapid A attack except kirby,falcon, and shiek i think.

omid dont worry about the noise makers noah and i got a plan sorta. noah if u read this u can tell omid the plan and maybe he can help out.

is PAX a televised event i think it should be cuz i have dishnetwork and one of my channels are called PAX.

I added some stuff to my last comment.

Not everyone uses fox a bowser or ganon has a hard time avoiding a redshell right below him.

You guys should try figuring out why I say they are banned instead of just asking questions, you’re making my grammar worse.

Oh and I like Hyrule temple and Yoshi 64 and hate Battlefield.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

PAX isn't televised, although they do film it and release a multi-dvd set. PAX the Penny Arcade Expo and PAX the cable network could not be more different... I think it's safe to say they occupy opposite ends of the cultural spectrum.

I've seen good arguments for banning bob-ombs and red shells, but it seems most people are equivocal on banning stages. My inclination is to not ban any stages unless someone can make a really strong argument for it. Brinstar Depths has got to be in, it's one of the most exciting levels in the game, IMHO. Banning Hyrule Temple because people can hide doesn't make sense to me. It's not like you have to look for them. Plus, if you've seen my tattoo, you know I'm biased. Banning food doesn't seem to make sense to me; it's not like they give you a huge boost. I'd even want to keep the tomato as it makes things so interesting when several players really need it.

I never said anything about banning food. And I don't really care about banning anything so this works for me I was just giving the typical banned items & Stages.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

Really eli, i really think you should have a limit so this tournament can be more fun. We could have improvements like more lives or more time...

eli no one said anything about food i want to keep food. icicle mountain mainly because of hiding but more importantly sudden death. galen was playing john durski and he was under a rock sitting there as kirby and galen was outside dodging bombs and when galen goes to attack him john does a runing attack and kills him. same with hyrule temple in sudden death there is that arc at the left hand side of the course and if u stay there the bombs can't hit u. yoshi N64 because unfortunatly on the farthest cloud if u are fox then u can keep jumping and shoot ur laser and no one can do anything about it.

i dont think we should ban the bomb because there are only special situations where it is cheap and those situations never happen to u unless u dont know what ur next move is. catching the bomb is one of the advanced skills in melee and lots of people should be able to do that. someone said homerun bat but that shouldnt be banned cuz its really slow and if u get homerunned its a shame. we can all agree on banning starman right? also banning the heart maybe not the tomato because the heart heals 100% and then the game will take longer thus resulting in sudden death or the player who got the heart most likely winning.

eli, the reason why hyrule temple is so bad is because if someone is not as skilled as the other players he/she can go to the bottom of the stage and wait till someone comes for him and he can keep avoiding people until sudden death where he has a chance of winning. who does anti-snowman use i'm just curious?

in conclusion the only banned items should be heart, and starman. the banned stages should be yoshi N64, hyrule temple, and icicle mountain. eli what will the rules be at the ssbm only tournament in october and will there be team play there?

if the people we refered can't come on the blog, in the next tournament can we bring them up to u so they can tell u that we reffered them?

we definitely have to ban the metal box, the star, the cloaking device and the mushrooms. It is going to be more fun that way. Oh, and also i think we should use bomb ombs because you can easily give a lot of damage to people back if they got something like a tomato or something. and also for fields it is a must for no poke floats and no battlefield and a yes for hyrule, because you can run and hide to stall as much as much as you want, and then you can have more sudden death time and easily dodge the bombs and have lots of space to move.

actually banning nothing but the noise makers works for me but i am only suggesting that we ban these to make it fair but since its ur tournament u can do w/e u want.

i think we should keep starman so we can have an advantage to other people. also yes hyrule it's really fun.

hey duck, who is ur charachter? just curious.

omid when u try to ban something u always think of the worst case senario like if someone else got a starman. i know u are not a noob and if a noob gets a starman and has a big break then u might loose. hyrule is bad cuz i already told u on AIM. lets just talk there. duck uses marth.

the noise makers were really bad. it messed up my concetration and lost 4th place like twice cause they were right behind yelling in my ears!!!!>(

we totally have to ban pokefloats because you can die accidentaly and it's just cheap. Also we need limited entrance.

you can die accidentaly in all levels.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

ya but pokefloats is like picking which pokemon you want to fall of of, and you can easily fall off a small pokemon if you get hit by anyone or anything.

hey eli, are we gonna have a lot of improvements in the next tournament? I want this one to be a good one because it is two days after my birthday and i hope to get lucky.

tell me if i'm wrong eli-

so we are going to have a seprate room for the people who arent playing, the commentators, and the equipment. also the space behind the big screen will be used for food. pre registraion will be an advantage even though we still have to check in at the tournament we will have a limited number of players for each event 64 or 56 is a good number.

we will each get 3-4 races for single mario kart and team mario kart and then we will do elimination where the top 4 players move on in each race and for team we will do the top 4 teams. the point system is granprix scoring except its multiplied by 10. we will also be doing split screen so we can run 2 races at once but i dont think we should do split screen team. since team is half the people it should take half the time and its just like doing a split screen except u and ur partner are team mates. the only down side to split screen and we can work with this is the commentators they have to follow both people but since there are 2 of them 1 for each racer wont be a big deal.

in single melee we will get 4-6 matches and then the top 16 scores move into march madness style 1v1 and then the top 4 people qualify for the prize round. the banned items will be so far are the bomb and red shell which i dislike as i said in my other posts. the scoring is as such- 1st is 100 points, 2nd is 60 points, 3rd is 30 but it should be 20, and 4th is 10. also there are no banned stages so far. and it will be 2 stock, 3 minutes, items on medium, damage ratio on 1, handicap off, and random stages.

in team melee each team will get 3-4 matches and i reccommend that because the winner gets 100 points. then we will choose the top 8 teams i think and do either a random elimination like mario kart or march madness with 8 people which isnt that complicated. then we will make the top 4 teams go to the prize round. the scoring is winner-100 loser-10 or 20 i forget. the prize round depends on the game so i cant say anything about that. team melee will be the same rules like single melee except friendly fire is off.

now for my suggestions. if and ONLY if we have enough time i strongly recomend having best out of 3 for the finals if we have more time then the semis and the 3rd place match. the reason behind this is since we are probably not going to ban stages if you lose u can have a 2nd chance at getting the gold or bronze. if you beat someone 2 times in a row then u are truly better then them. bombs and red shells should NOT be banned cuz catching bombs is a skill its too bad if u dont know how to do it and red shell u can easily dodge and it wont kill u just bounce u up and down and thats wen u use ur recovery move.

can we please just ban one stage at least and thats hyrule. more sudden deaths happen and people can hide in the arc when its raining bombs. icicle mountain too uz that tends to have sudden death a lot because people are trying to stay alive and not kill each other hence the name last man standing which is what stock is. yea thats basically it eli if u could tell me if i'm wrong about the events could u please tell me.
this post might be longer then toms.

eli what did red vs. blue say in PAX?

Eli, can u please tell us who will be the permanate commentators?

"Chunks does the Truffle Shuffle"

Well, Sravan, close, but missing several key things and still just speculation. Anyone can be in the room, whether they are playing or not. Registration will be outside the room at the bottom of the stairs, and there will be places to sit and a TV outside the room. We're not going to go through the hassle yet of moving Geek Central outside the room, although we're planning it, I need to see if the August tournament was a fluke or a new standard level of turnout before we go to those lengths (of cable).

I will DEFINITELY NOT be limiting the tournament to 64 players. I know you guys like the smaller tournaments, but as a library, we cannot justify providing more races to fewer people. I want to include as many people as possible. Because of our qualifier model, we don't need to have a power of 2 as a maximum for the tournaments, so as I was said before, I was thinking about a maximum of around 125 attendees, maybe 75 pre-registrants and 50 walkins. With the changes we've got in mind, I think we can handle that. Don't quote me on any of this, it will be formally announced in a post soon.

I would like to have as many as 3-4 matches in qualifying for each event, it all depends on turnout and how quickly everyone gets registered. We've got improvements planned to that process as well, and with going split-screen for single player kart, I think we'll have more time for everything. I'd like to go back to full screen for team kart, we'll have to see how it goes. I'd also like to do 1v1 elims in Smash Bros, and perhaps best of 3 in the finals, it all depends on how things go.

Sravan makes some good arguments on not banning any items. Anyone care to disagree? I need a stronger reason to ban stages too.

I didn't go to the Red vs. Blue panel, although Burnie was on another panel I went to and he was awesome.

thanks eli. i guess u can work 125 people in mario kart with the split screen it should take half the time it did last time cuz there were about 100 ppl playing single mario kart. yay we might have best out of 3 for the finals. i cant read any of ur guys' disagrees until later this evening cuz i'm going to CEDAR POINT early lol. i still dont know how to put a link on this blog the formatting options has all this weird stuff.

you know, i don't think that we should ban any items because items are there for fun and advantages and they help you a ton sometimes, so we should not ban any items. Also i was wondering if battlefield was banned in the last tournament, because i never saw it show up and i think we should have it because it's like the perfect field, after corneria. But i don't think we should ban any stages even hyrule. so we shouldn't ban any items or any stages. But if we are going to ban something it should be the noisemakers.

also when are we going to have a permanent commentator.

We are not going to have permanent commentators. Eli said he was going to cycle thru commentators and have certain people commentate certain events.

well at least we shouldn't ban anything.

I agree with Prince Marth, there is nothing cheep about any of the items, if you don't like bombs, then just get out of the way, they don't explode instantly so you have time, stars, cloaks and mushrooms are not cheep, if your open gets them, just practice rolling, there is no item in the game that you cannot avoid, you just have to watch the whole field,

by the way tp2- google mirror is just the mirror image of the search engine made by some geeks, just go to google seach google mirror, the search quarry is right to left in stead of left to right on mirror.

DONT BAN ITEMS OR COURSES

LANG LEVENDE SKILPADDEN
(i think it sounds better in the other language......
italian is "pretty" but not "cool"

I would like to commentate Mario Kart, and I'm sure Tom wants to as well.

I think you should not ban any items or courses. Reasons:

- Eli has repeatedly said that increasing randomness is a good thing. More items and stages does just that.

- I'd be willing to bet that with practice any of us can overcome most of the main difficulties that people mentioned with certain items or stages

- More variety makes things more interesting :-)

"There is no spoon." -Neo

i have an idea: stop posting 50 comments a day. its driving me crazy. dont ban anything...it worked fine last tournament...maybe icicle mountain just cuz if you are the ice climbers or bowser and the stage goes up real fast it is next to impossible to live...nana(or w.e.) will die and the ice climber cant jump as high

sravan, every time you get the urge to check on this blog, i want you to go play melee or mariokart instead...youd be like a world champ if you would have been doing that all this time...im tryin to practice a lot too...pz

actually i've jumped all the up with all the carachters on icicle mountain and who ever dies cant really do good jumping...no offense.

oh yeah, also i agree with leinad because the more randomness we have the better it's gonna work out.

A couple points. <_<

First, there was discussion about good foxes on the previous page and no-one mentioned post. He got first place in every SSB (team or single) match except one qualifier, and is number seven on the leaderboard purely off of his ssb scores since he didn't get any significant place in the mkdd races or prize round >_>.

Second is banned items. Basically any item that gives you a damage % advantage should be banned. Cloaking devices, hearts, tomatoes, food fall in to this category. There is ZERO skill involved in using these items and there is NO way to counter their use. You might argue like eli sorta did that the skill comes in to play with the brawl to be the first to get the item, but honestly getting to the item first is going to be 90% how close you are when it appears (luck) and 10% being able to fight to it (skill). =P

Duck made the case for banning to player input items like the mushrooms/starman/bomb so I'll leave that one alone.

As for banned stages, we haven't seen anyone do ridiculous stalling, which is the reason stages like hyrule temple would be banned, but can we count on that remaining the case? People might just do cheesy stalling to prove that the stages should have been banned at this point, and once that's been done they really do have to be banned. In certain situations your best chance at winning is to stall out, and since you can't make a rule against taking you best chance at winning, if you want to prevent stalling from happening you need to ban the stages that the SSB community have discovered over the last several years to be too conducive to such tactics.

A couple of comments on the last post.

banned items - randomness is a good thing and they toned down the health recovery items from old SSB (hearts used to be a full recovery) so they aren't really as extremely helpful anymore. Again, I'll say, randomness is good and makes matches more interesting. A player is behind and then gets a heart to even things up! IT's exciting drama.

stalling - what's wrong with stalling. I say if you can successfully, go for it. It's a legitimate strategy in stock matches. It changes the game a bit, but it's not a bad thing.

"There is no spoon." -Neo

for real u guys, we should just keep it like old school with no changes whatsoever, period.

The main reason other tournaments bans stages is because you pick stages. Here at our tournament we go with random stages. So people that can stall on larger stages have to deal with the possiblity of having to play on a small stage. If say your foe was playing C. falcon And you got to choose the stage you could pick Mushroom Kingdom I because most of his moves will hit up and the blocks stop you from being KOd easily. Here since we have random stages it is only a lucky/unlucky break if Mushroom Kingdom I is picked. You only have about 4-5% chance that anyone stage is choosen. So 2 things here one stalling shouldn't be a problem because cronic stallers can get stuck with moving stages and there is no need to ban stages.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

i agree with duck

Well, cycling commetators is fine, but Eli should arrange it so nobody fights over the commentating job like last tournament. The commentators should be we veterans. Anybody who has never been on this site shouldn't commentate(In other words, people who don't pre-reg.) It should at least be Me, Sravan, Galen, Duck, Muffincat, Leinad, Prince Marth, Flare, Ugo, and whoever else i'm forgeting. I think 4 commentating, we should have a small TV rite in front of us so that we don't have 2 rely on the big projector screen where everybody stands in front of it. Capiesce? O, and anybody who is a "noob" should do the truffle shuffle when they get there at the tournament, JW. I can't wait 2 unleash my secret weapon on those noise makers, it will make them wish that they never made noise at the tournament, muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahaha.

"Chunks does the Truffle Shuffle"

what's ur plan? bring a boombox and play over them? huh...i think there should be no noise level except the constant mumbling of the audience and the yells of victory...

omid... i have nothing to say to u. anyway cedar point was FUNNNN. i went on basically all the rides except the dragster, the power tower, and the demon drop. the mellenium force was the best cuz it goes 90mph and i didnt want to go on the dragster cuz it goes 128mph. i'm too tired to post anything right now so i'll post tommarow. peace

In response to leinad, whether or not randomness is good is a matter of opinion I suppose, and I'll leave that at that. But you should realize that although health items can even out and make more exciting a game, it is also able to turn an already even match into a far more one sided ordeal =P.

And I imagine if one doesn't take particular exception to stalling there's no reason to ban any stages =p

the only thing we should ban is the noisemakers.End of Discussion.

i didnt really mean end of discussion...

ok now i am awake and fresh. jlgenilas y would u ban food???????????
i can understand hearts and tomatos sorta but food only heals like 5% average. i belive leinad said this before but i might be mistaken but if u are the best player at melee u must be the best to handle any and i mean ANY situation. that means u should be able to play with any items but not nessarily stages.

we should keep all the items but ban hyrule and icicle mountain just incase someone doesnt go on a stalling rampage and to avoid sudden death. the main reason we havent seen any major stalling going on is because we havent had hyrule yet. maybe someone has but they were playing noobs. jlgenials or whoever said the thing about post i asked like 5 times which character post and corey used but no one would tell me so now i know he uses fox.

omid u havent given a good reason not to ban hyrule and icicle mountain u are just so mad at the noise makers.

if anyone here ever goes to cedar point tell me how the dragster was and if u want to ride it dont sit in the front cuz when they tested it with manikins their heads popped off! joe i didnt post a single thing yesterday and school hasent like formally started yet we still dont know our teachers well enough and i have an essay due on wednesday.

okay i don't care about if we ban any stages or ban any items, but one thing i'm sure about is the noisemakers. They should be gone forever.

Sravan - Cedar Point rocks my world. I live to go there several times a summer. Anyways, I didn't ride the dragster when it was new becvause of the line, but I finally got to ride it this summer, and it was amazing. It was perfection embodied in a roller coaster. It was probably close to the best 14 seconds of my life.

"There is no spoon." -Neo

cool.

didnt someone say before that in single melee lots of people got 3rd and 1st and they got 130 points but when someone got 2 seconds they got 120 points. they should be the same but there will be a lot more ties. usually they will tie for the higher places like 6th or 5th but we should change 2nd place to 65 points. if we do that then a 1st and 4th would be 110 but 2nd and 3rd would be 95 points. maybe we should do 1st-100, 2nd-70, 3rd-40, and 4th-10. this system works out fine so there is no unfair scoring.

I'm pretty sure Sravan that I said the thing about being the best means you need to be able to handle any situation. And I meant that you had to be able to do anything compensate for items the opponent uses and the obstacles the stage generates.

Oh and I don't find Cedar Point that fun.

"My next clue came at 4:15, when the clock stopped. And another came 2 hours later at 4:15 when I discovered the murdered body of Amy's dead, deceased corpse!"

cedar point was voted the best park 7 years in a row(according to them) and it has almost all roller coasers and the power tower rides and especially the mantis cuz u stand up so duck i dont know what u are talking about cuz it was FUN.

Has anyone here seen the thirty minute zelda trailer.

who does antisnowman use?

This is strange. I checked on the AADL-GT site and I looked at my clan info, it shows me, Nilofar, and Nick11(Nick), but where The Loser (Omid) should be, it says N/A, y is that Eli?

"Chunks does the Truffle Shuffle"

Where r u Eli? When r these blogs that u can't post on anymore be deleted on this site? ejk said there would be a new leaderboard, when will it come?

"Chunks does the Truffle Shuffle"

ok the thing is people hearts and stars should be banned because of time we get three minutes stars give you like invinibilty for like 20 seconds and hearts let you recover 100 damage making it harder to kill you therefore letting you survive longer if there was no time limit it would be fine for these items but there is a time limit as for stages the only stages we should ban are hyrule temple and yoshi island 64 because a lot of people like 60% of the people run away and hide on yoshi's place and in hyrule its a matter of luck so you can be at 367% and survive up to 462 or something this is all i have to say right now so read it and understand or the world as you know it will be destroyed mwahahahahahaha

flare has a good point.

how about only banning star and heart and as for stages we should ban hyrule temple, yoshi N64, and icicle mountain. yoshi N64 because of the last cloud where u can do numerous things, icicle mountain and hyrule because of unfair sudden deaths and stalling. THERE IS NO PRIDE IN STALLING IF WE DONT BAN THESE STAGES AND ONE OF THEM COMES UP AND A PERSON STALLS THERE THEY MIGHT WIN THE MATCH BUT THEY WILL LOOSE THEIR DIGNITY.

i feel so happy i just got 160 points in all cup tour 150cc. my biggest difference between me and 2nd place was probably 14seconds in yoshi circut but i got hit by lightning and a master shell but i got a 9 second difference in daisy crusier even though i fell to the cargo area but i also got 9 seconds in DK mountain cuz i did the half pipe thing bad.

hey eli, do u know when the ddr tournaments are gonna take place?

The last cloud tactic doesn't really hold up with Items since people can throw Pokèballs and all sorts of other stuff at you without you being able to retaliate. And at high % in hyrule even in the enclosed space people can kill you with throws and spikes easily. So I don't see much need to ban them.

I think Antisnowman uses Marth.

Oh and the V.M. clan is still occupied by the subs.

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

GOD U GUYS!!!! THE ONLY THING WERE GOING TO BAN ARE THE NOISEMAKERS!!!Y DO WE HAVE TO KEEP GOING OVER THIS!?!?!!?!?!?!?!!?

Omid, that is only your opinion, others think otherwise, so yes, we are going to have to go over this

Omid, that is only your opinion, others think otherwise, so yes, we are going to have to go over this

wtf Galen? One post of the similar comment is all we need. Sravan, how do u do it? I, for some reason still have some trouble getting quick mini turbos, which is why i can't win. I MUST WIN! DAMN THOSE NOISE MAKERS! KILL THEM ALL!

"Chunks does the Truffle Shuffle"

BS (Black Shark) - It's called a double post. It happens sometimes. Live with it.

And I've already made my opinion clear about items and stages being banned. Every time you hear someone make a case the other way, just hear my voice in your head pointing out how stupid they are.

"There is no spoon." -Neo

would that be the voice of Leinad or of Daniel?

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

i just saw transporter 2 and it was a really good movie with all the action. there was less driving in this 1 then in the first one.

duck whats the difference leinad is daniel backwards. omid banning specific players is unfair and we want our revenge right? they didnt get into the prize round anyway so take that u annoying little pests. duck what do u mean ur clan is full of subs are leinad and tom not coming again?

lets see leinad and omid say dont ban anything i say ban some stuff and i dont know what duck,black shark,tp2,galen, or anti-snowman think but tell everyone if u want to ban something or not and if so say what u want banned.

noah i told u before to read the insturction booklet and look on the page where it says mini turbo. if u cant do it fast enough then u need something called practice.

BTW tp2 if anti-snowman does use marth 2 marths on a team is stupid but thats only if anti-snowman uses marth. no offense

the only reason we didn't ban stages before is because we didnt get to pick them...in other tournaments u get to pick them so i don't think that we should ban any thing and keep it old school.:)

Here's my opinion, everybody shut up about banning everything, I think that that we should live life as it is. Play SSBM as it should be played. U guys do know that Eli decides everything, rite? I think Eli already said that we shouldn't ban anything, even though PAX had rules of banning stuff, but I bet Eli will not ban anything. Just live on and practice with all items, food, and stages. There are certain buttons(Z, L, or R) 4 a shield and a certain "in-air" dodging button(L). Ok? Jesus Christ, when will this argument end, it is totally pointless. And Sravan, my name on this post is Black Shark, u can call me by my real name on AIM and in the real world, but not on this site, OK? Nothing Personal.

"Chunks does the Truffle Shuffle"

the air dodging thing is totally off topic NOAH. that shows how much u know about it u can also use R to do an air dodge and u probably dont know about rolling dodge or side dodge. does anyone here use side dodge i know people use rolling dodge and air dodge cuz of wave dashing. i can call u NOAH if i want there is nothing u can do about it OK? are u saying that dodging is cheap?

what omid said inspired me to leave everything as it is not what black shark said. oops i meant to say noah. also duck said that since there are 30 stages there is like a 3-4%chance the stage u hate will come up so there is nothing to worry about. if one of those stages does come up and someone wins by stalling then they lose their dignity.

eli the guy who won the melee tournament at PAX, what character did he use? we are still doing the cup thing right? the cup thing might take a long time so maybe we should stick to the normal setup that we do but have split screen. team mario kart there is no split screen right?

i found out that the upcoming DDR tournament is the sunday after the tournament from 1-4pm at mallets creek. do they have the open play mario kart and melee and other games like pikman and 1080 and kirby's air raid? if so i might go.

HA NEW PAGE

sravan...sighs...stop posting so much. Secondly, in unrelated topics, can I have everyone's opinion on which of these two shoes they like better?
1st Shoe: http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/3347142/c/1001.html
2nd Shoe: http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/5632935/c/6556.html

hey eli, do u think we could have more stock for ssbm? i thought 1 stock was a little cheap...and too short

oh ya, sravan r u any good at ddr? if u r i hope to see u there. and eli, is the tournament gonna be ddrmax2? or some other game?

I don't want to ban anything. Joe you’re such a hypocrite saying not to post stuff about unrelated topics and then asking which pair of shoes to buy.

We are going to have 2 stock not 1; the last tournament was a time crunch so we had to have it be 1 stock or nothing.

"Mime is money"

If you honestly think I use Marth you must be crazy.

if cost isnt an issue joe then i like the 2nd ones the first one is really long and is pure white with no logo or anything. omid i'm not that good at DDR but i got 4th place of the people doing light mode. i feel that that is better cuz u can play for 3rd and 4th prize. duck how does that make him a hypocrite? there is nothing to say until eli says something. joe i only posted 3 times yesterday...

sorry snowman duck just said u used marth so i assumed u did. who do u use?

Where is everybody? This is an all time low for posting in one day. Eli hasn't showed up for like, a week. How do u make links? it says something below about it, but i don't know how 2 make that certain "character" that it shows.

"Chunks does the Truffle Shuffle"

This is an all time low for posting in one day.

good.

"There is no spoon." -Neo

Wow. So much has happened since I was last here.

First of all, the tournament happened. Good job to everyone who won.

Second of all, I would like to make a suggestion about commentating. I would like to request that Leinad and I stay color commentators for Double Dash, and that we get two all-time color commentators for Melee. It would be a better idea to have two people set for each type of event, because it would be less confusing for all involved. The best example that I can think of is the X Games, where each different sport has it's own set of commentators. (And yes, the X Games are really sports.) As for the SurPrize rounds, we could either have all four commentators doing it at once (though that might become a bit crowded), we could have a team from just one of the games do it, and then alternate, or we could pair up one person from each commentary team and they could do it, and then the pairs would alternate.

Thirdly, I think it would be a horrible idea to move the video production and commentary booths outside. I think it would be easier for the video production team to be inside because they also happen to be the technical support, scorekeepers, etc, for the whole tournament. I think it would be easier to have the commentary team inside the room as well, because unless we've come up with some sort of notification system as to who is playing at what station, it is a lot easier if the commentators can look out over the stations and see who is sitting where. This would be especially helpful for Mario Kart, because unlike Melee, there is no player identification system in the game, other than the characters, and that won't help at all because the characters are random (duh). It would also be a better idea to keep the commentators in the room because it would take them less time to get from the commentary booth to their station if they get called in to race. And seeing Eli's insetred comments in the tourney recap, apprently time is something that is of the essence at these tournaments. (91 people in the melee tournament? Wow.)

Fourthly, I think we shouldn't ban any items, stages, characters, or whatever. There aren't any items that give any specific character an unfair advantage, and like Eli, Leinad and a whole bunch of other people have said, it add more randomness to the game, and in Melee, randomness=good. As far as banning stages goes, I think that if someone is caught stalling, it's not like we won't be able to tell who it is, and that person could be assessed a points penalty, or disqualified or something.

Fifthly, the **REAL** Vaccinated Monks team is going to be at the September 24th Tournament, so ya'll better watch yourselves, cause this time we aren't going to get some 1300 points or whatever we got last time.

Yeah for the longest comment today. w00t!

tom u werent there at the last tournament so u didn't know how crowded it was. it is a good idea to move everything outside and the commentators will have a special tv in which they see and commentate. we should have a pool of comentators such as last time except we can't let those 6th graders commentate. we can have 8 players and we start with 2 then when 1 of the 2 play the next person in line comes and commentates. we should have a specific list of 8 people who will commentate such as me,galen,duck,tom,leinad, and 3 others. these 5 have already claimed being commentators so there should only be 3 spots left. the suprise round should be commentated by eli or black shark cuz he never makes it in LMAO.

also i am so glad the last tournament wasent telivised thank u CTN for the mix up.

You are absolutely correct, Sravan, I wasn't at the last tournament. If there were really approximately 100 people there, it probably would be a good idea to move stuff. Although, I just had a thought; we could take away the tables in the middle of the room, since they probably take up more space than they provide. I'm not against moving stuff as long as everyone is willing to work with it.

The problem with your plan for commentating, Sravan, is that say one person has their battles spread out over a long period of time (within each round). Then that person gets to commentate a lot more than anyone else does, which isn't really fair. I'm sure if he really wanted to, Eli could throw some part of his program together to stop that from happening, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't really want to do that. Also, as far as I know, Duck only proposed his name for commentary in replacement for Leinad and I while we were gone (if he said it somewhere else, please forgive me), so if we did it my way, it wouldn't be a problem. Leinad and I could commentate for Mario Kart (and Duck could as well maybe if he really wanted to), and you and Galen could commentate for Melee, since frankly, I know a lot more about Mario Kart than I do about Melee. I'm hesitant to having more than 4 people commentate, simply because of logistics as far as consistency over the course of all of the tournaments. I think since we don't have 30 people or whatever lining up wanting to be commentator, we should pick the four of us who are among the most experienced as far as these tournaments go, and let them do it. Of course, Eli has the final say and I won't go against what he decides.

I also think that we should pick some separate commentators for the SurPrize round, simply because the two color commentators can handle the play-by-play duties, while Eli handles the logistics, such as who's at what stations, etc. I don't know, i say we leave it up to Eli to decide, since he is kinda sorta in charge of the whole thing.

"Caboose: Look what I found!
Donut: Hey, *I* found it!
Caboose: Look what I took credit for finding!"

yea tom my idea has a hole in it so ur idea is better. u and leinad can do mario kart and me and galen will do melee. tom just incase u don't know we have split screen so u have to keep track of 2 people at once. maybe u,leinad, and duck can do mario kart and switch off each itme one of u has to play but if all 3 of u play then eli commentates.

I find it highly unlikely that all three of us will be racing at the same time. If that does happen, or even if two of the people have to race so there's only one left, then you or Galen could come commentate for one race; I wouldn't have a problem with that. We could do the same in case you and Galen get into the same match in Melee.

Yes, I do know about split-screen, but as long as we get something that tells us who is who, I have no problem with that.

Also, Duck or Leinad, has anyone registered us as a clan yet? I'm guessing probably not, because our 4th person hasn't been on here yet, but I want to check. Oh well, I'll just talk to you guys aboot it tomorrow.

I just had another thought: Would anyone be interested in having an AADL-GT podcast? I easily have the tools to make one, but I won't waste my time if nobody will download it and/or listen to it...

"Caboose: Look what I found!
Donut: Hey! *I* found that!
Caboose: Look what I took credit for finding!"

whats a podcast?

before since we had 2 commentators if one of them are racing the guy would do it solo but ur idea is better. u guys will probably commentate more then us cuz a race is usually longer then a melee battle and there are 32 ppl at once playing melee and 16 ppl playing mario kart but i'm ok with that.

the main problem now is the number of people at the next tournament eli said he wants around 125 but this time we should make pre-registration an advantage. eli said 75 ppl could pre-register online and 50 ppl can come there and register and that sounds good. tom we are also using the space behind the big screen cuz we never use that space. if we are looking for 75 ppl to register online then it should say in the flyers and advertisments that u can pre-register online for a garunteed spot in the tournament. if they walk in and all the spots are filled then we can say sorry but first come first serve.

GO RED VS BLUE!!!!!

Anyway, I have a great idea.....................................LET'S BAN EVERYTHING EXCEPT FINAL DESTINATION!!!!!

Tom, I registered our clan but it is currently just me for real primaries. The subs from the last tournament are listed in there, but Once we get the subs out we can put the rest of the clan in.

Yep, I'll be just the sub commentator. I think Tom idea is the best so far so anyone that is decent at commentating can do it for a surprize round.

Galen your Idea is up there with cardboard for one of the worse suggestions ever.

Oh shoot now I have to try at the next tournament because everyone is coming.

Oh yeah about Stalling it is a legitimate strategy. Consider the game Go as an example the player that is losing has to be the aggressor or else he doesn't stand a chance and the player that is winning tries his best to stay there. The winner isn't required to defend/counterattack until he/she is under attack. So stalling goes all the way back to before 200B.C.

Oh yeah Eli can I wear a badge That says I'm technical support so people stop trying to say they know the rules and format. I can make my own badge it’s just I want your or Elk’s or someone with authority permission to wear it.

"Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"

i dont mind stalling i just feel bad for people who do cause 1 i will almost always kill that person 1st and 2 cause they cant play i really just hate people who stall and then try to beat people by using links up b and other pathicly cheap attaks oh and whoever hears leined's voice calling us stupid you can hear my voice calling him immature for saying that others are stupid for disagreeing with him oh BTW im all for randomness until it starts taking over fairness think about that for a while would you rather have a tournament based on luck where you lose to a n00b or a tournament of skill where you crush the n00b oh and 1 more thing all you people talking about not banning anything and all you people talking about banning things (including me) GROW UP AND COMPRIMISE LIKE ONLY BANNING 1 THING CAN YOU ALL LIVE WITH THAT INSTEAD OF BEING LITTLE BABIES BICKIRING OVER EVERY LITTLE THING I MEAN COME ON oh yeah omid shut up about the noise makers you are being more annoying then they were and black shark eli hasent posted because he likes wacthing us argue and because people are asking him questions he doesnt want to answer dont ask how i know this just accpet it OK EVERY BODY UNDERSTAND WHAT I JUST SAID WELL IF YOU DIDN'T PLEASE SAY SO NOW....... OR ELSE!!!!

"Peace out"

oh on a side note this is from a long time ago but not only is a pansy a type of flower it is also a derogatory term for gay men anyways all you people complaining about there being 20 commments a day thats just sad you cant read 20 comments a day i can read our longest blog in under 40 min. if you dont have like 15 min. to read these commments then you shouldnt have time to complain and if you cant read them in 15min. cause you are to slow a reader you need to read more seriosly so people STOP COMPLAING ABOUT THINGS AND GET ON WIT YER LIFE YA DIG G

"Peace out"