Just recently got back home after a very long travel day. If I attend the event next year I will have to seriously consider flying instead of driving.
The Kong Off 4 left me feeling a very mixed bag of emotions that is a bit difficult to explain. Somewhat unexpectedly, I am still super disappointed and bummed out about my tournament performance and result which was surprising to me since I wasn't taking the competition as seriously this year as I had in years past. I think it's been really getting to me that what I kept fearing would happen to someone in this format ended up happening to me in terms of bombing out really early in a head to head match and I obviously can't help but feel that it was at least 30% my own fault. Combine that with my near miss on my world record attempt which basically was choked away and it just becomes a very unsatisfying experience.
On the other hand, more than ever before I really enjoyed getting to see and hang out with my friends, talk shop about our hobby, cheer on the other players, witness some of the ridiculous drama unfold and just getting to participate in a terrific event.
The change in venue was an interesting choice and overall I liked the idea. Being part of a larger event, but not so large that we were unnoticed, provides the potential for really growing this Kong Off series in the future. It didn't seem to quite play out as Richie may have hoped in terms of the hype and the size of the crowds and so on, but that may have been due to how last minute the announcements were regarding this tournament's location. But, if it is true that Richie has already secured the same location for next year, a lot more planning and marketing and general hype can occur in advance of the next one and that could make a big difference. The physical building itself was enormous. There were hundreds of classic games all over the place, there was a giant area filled with all manner of retro consoles, there were dozens upon dozens of pinball machines and tons of vendors, bouncy houses, food and beer concession stands, and so on. The highly spacious setup allowed for the machines to be spread quite far apart from each other so that the players were not crowding each other. If there was a problem where machines had to be worked on or moved around it was quite a bit easier for that to happen than it has been in previous events which were set up in much tighter quarters. Between each machine was a giant flat screen which broadcast a blown up picture of the player's game in progress. For the most part, the physical setup for players and live viewers was impressive. One oversight was a lack of a viewable scoreboard for people walking by, but some tweaks like that can be easily solved for the next one.
In my opinion, the lack of streaming was a serious issue. I hope that is something that can be worked out with the venue in advance for the next event. I am of the opinion that live streaming within our community has been instrumental in maintaining and growing interest in this hobby over the past 7 years or so. I'm sure Richie would agree as he has routinely streamed general activity within his own arcade as well as producing his web based Arcade Culture show. This year, I personally have had people who I didn't even tell where I was going this weekend tell me that they were frustrated throughout the weekend by the general lack of streaming and the confusion about where to go when there was streaming going on. I hope that is something that will be more carefully planned for future events since, again, I believe that goes a long way towards keeping our hobby alive and active for the future.
As for my trip, I got a bit tied up here before getting on the road to attend the event so I arrived at the hotel just before 3:00am. At around 7:30am we were up, getting ready and heading into the city of Pittsburgh to hunt for some breakfast. We ended up at McDonald's for some greasy food and some coffee, which subsequently caused about a half day of bathroom related stress which does tend to create some extra challenge when trying to play a video game for over 2 hours straight with no pause button. Based on all of this, I pretty much knew that my best chance for being productive on Day 1 was to make something happen before lunch time.
Fortunately, I got on the board on my first quarter. Surprisingly, the game started off pretty well and I managed something like a 129,000 start. From there, I was playing a semi-risky style of my normal bottom hammer strategy, reduced risk in the transition, and minimal grouping up top in order to set up a favorable top hammer. I was going for the free pass pretty aggressively and I was skipping the 3rd elevator prize. This yielded a pace of slightly over 1.1 million points for about half the game. I can't remember the circumstances of my deaths but I remember dying on Level 11 and then again towards the beginning of Level 14, perhaps on the Pie Factory or something. I really wanted to get on the board early and didn't want to squander this game, and I also already had to use the bathroom. So, at that point, I made the decision to switch to top hammer only for the rest of the game, which was about 8 Levels of play. I ended up having one reserve man to cash in at the end which pushed the game up to 1,060,800 points.
It was a huge relief to get this game on the board so early. I knew that it was not going to hold for a first place score, but I was confident that it would hold for at least 8th place and a spot in the finals. At that point, my energy level already began dropping and I began pondering whether I was going to really play any more during the high score competition. The prize money for that portion was not especially significant, and the winner would not be considered the Kong Off 4 champion. I made a couple of half hearted attempts after this which didn't go very far, but I mostly began watching the other games and chatting with friends.
At some point, I noticed that Dan had just finished a lengthy (and frustrating) game of his own and was about to go on an extended break. I saw that he had been streaming and asked if I could borrow his setup while he went on break so that I could try for the world record on a stream. A huge thanks to Dan for basically giving up his stream to me for the rest of the high score contest. Without the stream, I might not have made any serious record attempts since it would be sort of tragic for it to not be on video if the record were to be broken, but with everything set up, I decided that I was going to spend the rest of the high score contest trying for the record instead of playing any "tournament strategy" games designed to give myself the best probability of finishing in first place. By this point Wes had already overtaken the lead with a somewhat epic effort on the last level which was amazing to watch and so I was pretty much conceding the high score contest at that point unless of course I broke the record.
On Day 2, I found the stream all set up for me when I arrived -- huge thanks again to Dan for that. Despite being incredibly sore, particularly in my lower abdomen, enough so that it woke me up several times throughout the night, I still did manage to catch up on sleep (it helped that I slept through the first 2 hours of competition), so my energy level was up. I managed one really big effort that day which ended I believe on Level 17 with maybe 900,000 points or so. Whatever it was, because things had started off so well, I actually had a pretty nice cushion beyond the world record pace, but of course I had a pretty horrendous 3rd death on Level 16 which was a total choke, and the game ended shortly afterwards. This was pretty disappointing since I don't get many opportunities to go for the arcade record and I knew that I was pretty close on that effort, but oh well.
After this, I decided that I was done for the day, I got a beer at the concession stand and came back to witness some serious last quarter drama. I actually feel bad for Steve personally since I feel like I was the one that sort of convinced Ethan to drop another quarter with less than 5 minutes remaining in the contest. Vincent also started a game at around the same moment. It was tough to watch since Steve, Ethan and Vincent are all good friends of mine and there was only room in the finals for two of them. Incredibly, both Ethan AND Vincent managed to top Steve's 1,005,900 point game, putting him outside the cut. I talked to Steve quite a bit throughout the weekend and I feel like probably the only player that felt as disappointed about how things ended up as I did was probably Steve. But at the same time I was very happy for Ethan and Vincent who both did something pretty special to earn their places in the finals.
On Day 3, I had gotten a mediocre night of sleep and again woke up several times with soreness (I guess I really should have hooked up that custom control panel at home for a couple of weeks -- not so much to get used to the controls since that was a non-issue this time around, but perhaps just to work out these arcade playing muscles in advance of the event!) but by the time I arrived for the compeition I was feeling quite good. Subway salads and vitamin waters are better on my stomach than McDonald's Sausages and coffee apparently.
Just before my first match with Mike began, I noticed that my arcade cabinet was very wobbly. I called Richie over and he began trying to jam various objects under the cabinet in an attempt to stabalize it. I had brought a change of clothes with me in a backpack and he opened it up, pulled out my pair of jeans (I played in athletic warm up pants) and stuck a pantleg under the back corner of the cab and voila! It worked! No more wobble.
The match with Mike was actually a great match. He played his game very aggressively to the point where I had some trouble maintaining any pace advantage despite my own somewhat aggressive strategy. I had an early death on the Level 2 rivets in a completely wide open situation purely due to nerves, but the rest of the game went pretty favorably for me and I only had one other close call which would have been my own fault for the next 5 or 6 Levels. He finally started losing men when we were in the 300,000s and I caught one extremely lucky break with a fireball on my 3rd man and shortly after that the match was over.
My match with Hank was the polar opposite. I was playing very comfortably in this match, not really feeling the nerves this time and things started off well with a first man start. I had a screwing on the Level 6 rivets which I was totally ok with and wasn't phased by at all. Then Hank lost two men over the next couple of Levels. My game seemed to be filled with a lot of bad situations this time as compared to my game with Mike which was very favorable, but I was surviving them. Then of course I had the two pie factory deaths for a total of 3 screwings over an unusually short span of screens. I feel like on my A game I may not have died all 3 of these times so I was perhaps only 70% unlucky, but it was still a nasty development for a head to head match and I was just unable to mentally recover and the game ended shortly afterwards.
My strategy in these two matches was likely unique among the competitors. I had a strong suspicion that all of the players would not be considering point pressing until Level 5. I began point pressing the barrel screens on Level 3. In addition, I made sure to leech the springs on the Level 2 and Level 3 elevators, grabbed the hammer on the Level 3 Pies, and tried to set up Kong leeches on the early rivet boards. These strategies had duel purposes. First, I felt like having a slightly higher starting score would help put some pace pressure on my opponents. In addition, these particular point pressing techiques are also relatively time consuming. All of the players made a gentlemen's agreement not to deliberately delay at the top of the barrel boards, but we agreed that any legitimate point pressing that happens to use up some time was fair game. By playing my starts in this manner, I felt like I could generally create a small scoring lead while also generally slipping approximately 1 to 2 screens behind my opponent. From that position, I could watch to see if they were grabbing bottom hammers on barrels. While Hank was grabbing bottom hammers I would then grab the bottom hammer on that same screen when I arrived on it 2 minutes later. When he decided to switch to top hammer, I also switched to top hammer since I knew I was ahead on pace and so it became beneficial to always match his level of risk. I only wish the match had played out longer to see how that would have gone over the long run. Even if I lost, I would have liked to make him earn it. Very disappointing result.
However, one of the enjoyable parts of the event for me was that I had the opportunity to provide some commentary for the last portion of the final match. This actually helped to get me out of the funk I was in after being eliminated from the tournament so I'm glad that I was invited to do it. The final match was interesting to me from a strategy perspective and it's too bad it didn't play out just a little longer to see how the last few levels would have been played. But it was still an exciting finish to witness. Congratulations of course to Hank on winning the tournament. Very impressive.
A bunch of us went out to dinner and then for drinks afterwards which was a great time as usual and then before I knew it it was the next morning and I was driving home. Overall it was an excellent event and I am glad to have participated. Huge thanks to Richie and everyone who helped him out for coming through and putting this event together. It's too bad that a few people that had attended previous events were unable to make it this time, it would have been great to catch up with those guys. But there's always next time! Thanks to the rest of the competitors this year for continuing to push the envelope and provide ever more fierce competition. The more we push each other, the more satisfying it is when we accomplish something in this hobby. I hope everyone continues to stay in touch.
See you all at the Kong Off 5!
