The 2008 Iron-Man of Gaming: The road to the top 16

So, what's a total newby G1 to say? I would think his experiences at the 2008 Iron man of gaming would be good, and they would probably make a good first blog entry too. So here goes.

Pre Iron-Man:

My adventures at the IMOG actually started three days before the competition began, I had to leave my humble home in Canada along with the rest of the This Week in Geek crew, Mike "Birdman" Dodd, Steve "Snowball" Saylor, Ashley "I-Candy" Pawliw, and Erik "Floor boy" Horton, and make our way to buffalo to hop on a bus for 36 hours.

The bus trip was both good and bad, good because we met a self proclaimed redneck in Columbus by the name of Pee-Wee. He was traveling to little rock, Arkansas, so he was with us for the majority of our trip down to Dallas. He would carry some of our gear for us and also watch over it if we all needed to make a trip to the rest room or get food. So here's to you Pee-Wee!

So, after 36 long hours we Finally Arrived in Dallas, and still had a small ways to go before reaching our hotel and being able to unpack and relax, so we hired a cab that drove us to the super 8 Motel in Grapevine. So we checked in, unpacked and then went for a swim and ordered some pizza, at this point Steve, Mike and myself decided to go seek out another G1 that we knew was in the hotel with us, so we went and met up with Righteous Brian, we spent the next few hours talking about video games, ghosts, etc. After that it was time to turn in for the night.

Our group awoke the next morning to the sound of Ashley's phone ringing and mike saying "Turn of those *bleep bleep* Happy Cakes!" We later came tot he conclusion that if a pineapple could make a sound, that ring tone was it.

Now, since the Iron Man didn’t begin until the next day, we took this opportunity to take in the local area and see what Grapevine had to offer. The Hotel Shuttle would only take as 5 miles in any direction, so we decided to pay a visit to the Grapevine Mills Mall. We spent about 3 hours walking around and looking through various stores. We found a few that had some authentic looking pellet guns and some sharpened swords, things we can't even import up here in Canada.

After our trip in the mall we decided to head over to the convention center for the pre-game registrations. I ended up with competitor number #40 and Mike with #42. We hung out at the center for a few hours practicing some of the first days games and just chatting with other G1's and some of the Screwattack crew. We also met up with Gunslinger Fox with whom we went out to dinner with. We sat there eating and talking about various screwattack things for about an hour. But our night didn't end there, because just as we were about to leave we ran into the Screwattack crew on our way out as they were coming in, and they asked us to sit with them, so we did. Honestly, who would refuse that kind of invitation?

So with roughly 11 of us all crowded around a Texas shaped table, we got to talking about pretty much anything related to video games. The topic of conversation crossed a few subjects such as Too human and Silicon knights, which is where we learned Daily Destin is Canadian, and also the subject of pokemon. Now at one point our conversation crossed another game that I can no longer recall, but High school Ben said something everyone at the table booed him for, so we all started throwing fries and stuff at him. I even landed one inside his shirt which got some laughs from the rest of the table.

At that point we went back to the hotel and turned in for the night. The next morning we awoke and it was now officially...

Day 1:

Mike and I awoke and got ready for the competition, we both looked at each other thinking we weren't going to make it very far in the Iron Man after the skills we saw the previous night, but we were determined to at least give it our all and put on a good show for everyone.

Now mike has covered his adventures during the iron Man in his blog, so I'll let you read his blog to find out his side of the Iron Man adventure. As for me? Let’s get down to the details.

The first game on the Docket for me and the Iron Man was Super Mario bros: The Lost Levels. I scored a total 107,000 points. Before and after my heat I was looking around to see how everyone else was doing, the majority were scoring at least 100,000, so I thought that I was going to be somewhere in the middle of the pack and not earning myself any Iron Man points. After my heat at Station 8, it was the reigning champ Chris "Kumachine" Delp's turn at the same station, so I stuck around and watched his run to see what I was up against. He scored an impressive 193,000 points if I recall correctly. So he was off to a good start while I felt like I wasn't going to stand any chance in the competition.

At this point I needed to hit up the rest room, but when I came back Mike and the crew were yelling for me to come over. Asking them what was up they tell me the scores were posted and that I had made the top 16 for the game. I was ecstatic to find out I was in 14th place after only one game.

So now it was clear what I had to do, keep myself ion the top 16.

The next game of the day was Mario Kart Wii, we had to run time trials on Coconut Mall, DK Summit, and SNES Ghost Valley, in that order, with our total times for all 3 tracks being what would decide the standings for this game. My heat was one of the last ones to take place so I took the opportunity to watch others and see if my strategies for the tracks differed from theirs and to see if I could learn anything I didn’t already know about the tracks.

Most of the tactics the competitors used I already knew and was using myself, but there were a few smaller things I had never thought of that I learned by watching, so I added them to my bag of tricks and ended up with some pretty good times myself. My total time for all three tracks came up to roughly six minutes, 10 seconds, with Chris Delp's Total time beating mine by no more then 20 seconds. I knew after watching his runs in the first two games of the day I had no hope of beating Chris in the Iron man, but it was still fun to watch his heats alongside everyone else.

With Mario Kart my total time earned me 14th place, so I was happy as my main goal after playing Lost Levels was to just end up in the top 16 for each game and stay on the leader board during the Iron Man.

Later on in the day was our next Game: Hydro Thunder, during the free play period I got in as much practice as I could, I did well on Arctic Circle and Lake Powell, but New York Disaster was giving me no end of trouble, I just couldn't make it past the halfway mark in the track. Once it came time for the heats to begin, I was worried that I would fail the track again and be left with a five minute penalty to my score which would crush me in the scores. But I didn't let that stop me from watching the other players before me to learn some more about the game and see how well they did.

Everyone was pretty much already doing the same as me, using the shortcuts and boosts effectively. Sadly though, fortune wasn't on the side of one of the people whose heat was before mine on my station, they did well in Arctic Circle and New York Disaster, but failed in Lake Powell, so they received a five minute penalty. I'm sure if they had cleared the track they'd have been in the top 16 for that game in the Iron man.

Yet again it was time for my heat. I cleared the first two tracks in an average time, but my biggest worry was New York Disaster. I had Ashley there cheering me on midway through the race where I almost failed out twice, but thankfully once the time hits zero in the game it give you 2 or 3 seconds of coasting time, so I was able to get through the checkpoints by the seat of my pants and finish the track in just over 2 minutes, but not before my heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. My heat finished, I set down the controller and stepped aside so Chris could run his Heat after mine, but not before he personally congratulated me on my run.

Yet again I earned 14th place in the game, which left me happy.

Our 4th and final game of the day was Smash Bros. Brawl. I felt like I stood a chance, so I went in confident. My first match was against Dan Mareno. My character was Ike, his was Kirby. The match was very tight with both of us getting only one KO each forcing a sudden death. In sudden death we continued to keep a good match with neither of us being bale to score and easy kill, I landed the first blow, almost killing him, he returned to the platform landing a blow of his own on me, nearly killing me as well. Upon my return tot he platform I charged up Ike's Side+B slash attack as Dan jumped away, just as he was about to land, I unleashed the attack which would have surely killed him, but unluckily for me, the sudden death bob-omb's began to rain down and the first one to appear landed smack dab on my head as I was sliding across the platform killing me.

I took the loss gracefully as it was a fair fight. With that loss though I earned no points in the iron man for that game but had already set myself up well for the next day because I had ended the day in 14th place.

Throughout the day we had a few events take place between games, we had a get to know session with Jose El Mexicano and High school Ben where the G1's where able to ask questions and find out what makes them tick. There was also the AVGN who did a live session in front of all of us by playing the Silver Surfer and Top Gun.

So that nearly wraps up my adventures for day 1, the only thing that was left was to go back tot he hotel and party with the G1's Righteous Brian and Gunslinger Fox. And a new G1 we met that day at the Iron man Wade "TexanOtaku" Dearing. We also had the Screwattack crew show up later, but not before they checked into the neighboring room and made us think someone was getting the crap kicked out of them.

After everyone was in the room, Fox told us he had bought a case of Rolling rock beer for the AVGN was who staying only a few doors down from us. So we all went to his door with the gift, but found out he was down stairs hanging out with the PBC crew who was also staying at the hotel. Upon our arrival we presented him and his Wife with the case of beer and we all returned to our hotel room, the AVGN and PBC crew included and talked and played video games and just generally partied for a few hours before we turned in for the night. Before anyone left thought, we took a quick count and found we had 17 people in a room no bigger then 13 by 10 feet across. It was a fun night. But sadly, Mike and I needed some sleep that night to be able to compete during...

Day 2:

We awoke that morning once again to the sound of the happy pineapple as we had come to call Ashley's ring tone. Mike and I Wolfed down a fast continental breakfast and headed over to the convention center ready to compete.

The first game of the day was Halo 3, in which I got my butt kicked by the other three iron man contenders in my heat. So sadly, I got no points in that game. But somehow my standings in the iron man only dropped to 15th. As long as I stayed in the top 16, I was happy.

By this point in the competition, Mike knew he wasn't going to do well, so he started rooting for me a lot, but he never gave up either.

The second game of the day was GoldenEye, a game I had played plenty of back in the day but hadn't touched until a few days prior to that day. The knowledge of how to play the game all came back to me pretty fast. My matches were all one after the other just because of how fast the heats were, so I never had the chance to watch other people competing to see how well they were doing.

My first heat however was against one of my friends that I made at the Iron Man, Bigg Lou. I really didn’t want to have to face odd against a friend of mine in the first round, but we still shook hands and went at it. I Beat Lou down 6-1 because I managed to lay my hands on the RC-P90 and body armor first, but we both had fun I assume and that's what matters.

My second heat was incredibly tight, me and my opponent both found RC-P90's and body armor and killed each other once. After we had killed each other once, my opponent had gained the upper hand, he had whittled me down to less the a quarter of my health, so I made a tactical retreat, picked up body armor and began to think on how I could turn the match around in my favor. After a few seconds of running around the game flashed the one minute warning, so I knew that regardless of how or when, the next kill would win the match for either of us. So I decided to force the sudden death so I could get a fresh health bar, because the ruling on a sudden death match was the first kill determined the winner.

At this point Craig had also walked over and was giving the crowd a play by play. It was also at this point that Craig may or may not have purposely given me the nickname of "Stefan the Canadian" because he was having trouble pronouncing my last name of Pelletier.

So now sudden death had begun for me and my adversary. I made a scramble for the nearest RC-P90 and body armor and then tracked down my opponent who had found a shotgun and body armor. Now if you've played GoldenEye in the past, whether it was at the iron man or not, you most likely know that the complex level has a ramp that is lit yellow with body armor in it. That's where I had tracked my opponent to. Now at close quarters a shotgun is more lethal then an RC-P90, so I was wary of putting myself in his line of fire that close to him. So I decided it was in my best interest to just pop around the corner and fire a few shots and then retreat, it worked as his shot missed me every time. I eventually tore his body armor to shreds and began to chip away at his health.

He retreated around the corner at the top of the ramp, and it was at that point it clicked in my head that the body armor had respawn there, so I needed to prevent him form getting a fresh vest, so I chased him up the ramp. All this while Craig was over our shoulders giving the color commentary the entire time.

So as I ran up the ramp my adversary had repositioned himself at the entrance of another hallway near that ramp exit, but I knew that in his current state I had the upper hand with full health and fresh body armor, so I just ran right at him firing my RC-P90 at him while he tried to hit me with the shotgun. His demise led to a roar from the crowd that had gathered and my victory in the second round. So it was on to my third match of that tournament.

This is where the first round against Lou happened, but this time in reverse, I was beaten hands down 6-1 by my opponent, some kills it was because I couldn’t find a gun, others it was because I couldn't find enough ammo to go with it. Either way, in my mind it was a fair fight that I lost, so I shook my opponent's hand, congratulated him and walked away to find out how Mike did.

My third round finish in GoldenEye earned me 12th place, which pushed me back up to 14th place in the overall standings. So I was still happy with my current performance in the Iron Man.

It was also at this point that Craig announced to everyone that only the top 16 would advance to the final day of competition, so at this point I was a little worried, so worried I started to look at the people ranked above me and figure out how well I had to do in the upcoming games in order to maintain or improve my rank. So long as the 4 people above me earned no points in the next two games, I needed to at least win one round in each game to stay on the board. This was also when Mike said that he knew he was not going to be advancing.

Moving on to our third game of the day, we had Boxing from Wii Sports. My first heat was against Randy Shick Jr. The match began with me clobbering him down to half health, and then he managed to turn it around and get me down to 2/3 health before I turned it back in my favor and knocked him out cold. It was at this point we both thought he was going to get back up and we'd continue pummeling each other. But it wasn't going to be like that, he was down for the count. I was mildly disappointed because I really wanted the match to go on, but a win is a win, so I took it in stride. We shook hands and went our separate ways.

My second match in the boxing tournament was against Ryan Bird. It went well with a hands down victory against him, we both shook hands and then moved on. My third match was an impressive match that took only 10 seconds to knock my opponent out cold. Stuttering Craig walked over to check in on the match. Seeing that neither of us was playing at the moment he asked the attendant how we were getting on in the setup, but the attendant told him we were done, so Craig asked him how fast the match went and who the winner was. When he found out the match was over in 10 seconds he announced it to everyone. It was one of only two 10 second knockouts in the entire tournament.

My fourth round was a real slug-fest; we knocked each other down twice, with me being the first to knock the other man down. It was exchange after exchange with my adversary’s friend cheering him on while everyone watched. In the end my opponent fell to the mat with me as the victor.

This was when I was called over to the main scoring table to determine who of the final three competitors would get a final round bye and who would have to fight to get into the final round. Since we only had 52 competitors at the Iron Man, we only had enough players to make of 3 of the 4 brackets of a 64 man tournament, that's why we were drawing for the bye. To my misfortune I didn't get the bye, so back to the ring I went against Dan Mareno. But not before he asked if I was back to get revenge for our brawl match, to which I chuckled and happily replied with a "yeah." So we shook hand and then went at it once again. This time the match was completely one sided with Mareno Landing five straight crushing headshots which knocked out cold.

So with a third place finish in boxing my standing had jumped up to 10th in the overall Iron Man standings. But it wasn't over for me yet, I still had one more game to go that I had only ever played once and could never even beat the CPU on the easiest setting, so I was already scrambling around in my mind figuring out how the matches would need to play out in order for me to stay in the top 16 and make it tot he final day. Again, I needed to make it past the first round while someone in the six spots below me didn't earn anything.

So with the final game of the day looming, I began training and asking anyone willing to train me for some advice, so that when it came time, I would at least have a fighting chance. And then it began, it was time to start the Killer Instinct tournament.

My choice of character was Cinder, a choice made by many competitors. All I knew was how to turn into a fireball, shoot a fire stream, and do a back flip kick. But it was enough to get me past the first round on a 3-2 win. The match began with me winning, and then my opponent taking the next, we kept exchanging wins until the 5th round where I took the final win of the match. That matches I won were pretty even, but the ones in which he won he just slaughtered me, so at this point I'm assuming I won those matches with a fair bit of luck and button mashing, I won't lie, Killer Instinct is not my game, most fighters aren't, and it showed in my next match.

The next fight had both me and my adversary playing as Cinder, with him winning hands down 3 rounds straight, with one supreme victory. So with my run in KI done, I started watching other matches looking for the other 6 below me in the rankings checking if they had made it past the first round or not. When I found out that one of them had been beaten in the first round, I was mildly relived because my hopes for the top 16 weren't out the window yet.

So as the KI tournament advanced, there was one man in particular that almost all eyes were on. That man was Angel Rodriguez. He had the entire crowd pumped up. If the energy in the room died down, he would get up between matches and yell "Come on guys. Let's make some noise!" he had the entire room pumped up just watching his matches, people fed off his energy and he fed off ours. He and Mike had a match against each other in the second round; Angel won, but not before the two of them put on a good show for everyone, in and out of the game.

The killer instinct tournament was definitely a very huge highlight point of the Iron Man, regardless of what your standing was because of Angel, who won the KI tournament.

Pardon me as I sidetrack for a moment or two, I just want to mention what happened in between the games during the day.

We had an eating contest between Jose El Mexicano and Mike "Birdman" Dodd, as for the results, I'll let the video that screwattack has show you the results though. Later on during the day between boxing and Killer Instinct there was the Screwattack Khallenge, in which the G1's were tasked with trying to beat 5 of the Screwattack crew at their own games. I took on Daily Destin in Killer Instinct, and got my backside sliced apart by Saberwulf. At the end of the day we had a performance by Vertex Guy who performed some killer video game songs on a guitar; we even got a sneak peek at a song that's going to be in the new Bionic Commando game coming out in the future.

Now time to get back on track with my Iron Man adventures. With the KI tournament wrapped up, Mike and the rest of the Crew decided to leave, but I wanted to stick around to find out whether or not I was still in the top 16, so they returned tot he hotel while I remained at the Convention center. Many of us stayed behind, so there were plenty of people around to talk to.

This was also a Prime opportunity to get some signatures for what the TWIG crew has dubbed the Screw-A-Shirt; I already had some as I had been collecting many of them all day long.

For pics of the shirt, just visit: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4299&l=aff5d&id=1071862700

The idea behind the Screw-A-Shirt began when I had the AVGN sign the shirt the previous night and upon return to the hotel room Ashley told me in the hotel room that I should get everyone to sign it.

After about 20 minutes of score tallying and chatter amongst themselves at the scoring table, the Iron Man staff made the announcements of the final 16 finalists in the Iron man, my standing was 11th! I dropped one spot, but it didn't matter to me as I had made it into the final day of competition and the one reason I dropped a spot in the rankings was because Angel had passed me in the standings, I would gladly concede a spot in the standings if it was for him.

So with the day over, I returned to the hotel with Bigg Lou and Jason. Upon return to the hotel I immediately returned to the hotel room. As I entered the room the crew asked me how I did. I told them I had fallen into 17th by only 5 points. They were shocked with Wade handing me a soda as consolation. It was then I cracked a grin and told them all how gullible they were. We all had a laugh and Wade still handed me a soda, but this time as a way for us all to celebrate the night.

Even with competition in the morning, I didn't turn in early; instead well all had another party in our room, this time with 22 people crammed into our hotel room. We talked, played video games, etc. like the night before. But at one point of the night I had to head down to the lobby to talk to the front desk. But as I was making my way back to our room, I got into a conversation with Chad who was part of the Iron Man staff and we went back to his room instead of mine. Now I had only thought I was gone for 20 to 30 minutes tops, but as it turns out, I was gone for nearly two hours and a search party had been formed in search of me by my room mates and the ScrewAttack members who were partying with us.

I never meant to worry anybody, but it seems I did, but in return for my vanishing act, Gunslinger Fox returned the favor by promptly sacking me once I had been found.

So we all returned to our room to continue the festivities a bit more before turning in at 3am as the majority of us had to be at the convention center in the morning. Which now leads me into...

Day 3:

I awoke that morning once again to the Happy Pineapple, and made my way downstairs to eat breakfast and the head off to the convention center at 9:30am to get there early.

The first game of the day was Mutant League Football, a game that not many have played before the Iron Man, and it was called the hardest game of the entire Iron Man by the staff, rightly so I say after playing that game.

My first match was with James Stupplebean who had never played the game either, so we both had a blast just laughing at how we were playing. Early on into the match the Ref had begun cheating on me by calling unfair penalties, namely vomiting and unnecessary kindness. That was when I needed to kill the ref, to which both me and James laughed like crazy. Early on in the match James had also managed to score a touchback on me and take an early 3-0 lead, but I turned it around pretty fast with a touchdown of my own. The fact we were both having so much fun led me to just yell out "TOUCHDOWN!!!" So with the match ending 7-3 I moved on to the next match, to which I lost 14-0 to someone who had some experience in the game, but now that it was the last day, I didn't care how badly I lost as I had made it all the way and would play until the end of the day.

So with Mutant League Football over, I was a little surprised to see I had retained 11th place in the overall Standings.

It was now time for the final game of the Iron Man, one that no one in the world had ever played before. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith! The game was so new that we were actually playing it on a developer console, how cool is that? So, the song of choice for the final showdown? Ragdoll on expert, played in Pro Face-off mode to ensure no one would fail-out. We all had to draw numbers to see who was paired up with who. We were then shown one single play through of the song by someone on the screwattack crew before being escorted out of the room where we would wait our turns at the game.

I drew number 16, so I was up last, and better yet, one of the finalists didn't turn up that day so we were only 15, and I was the lucky person to not be paired up with anyone since number 15 wasn't drawn.

And so, I waited, and waited... and waited. Until it was my turn at the very end to take my stab at Ragdoll. Before I began though, Craig interviewed me as he did everyone else. He asked me if I felt confident. Considering I can really only play Guitar Hero on medium, I was already a fish out of water, but having seen the play through of the song we were shown, I felt I could try it on expert since it seemed fairly simple and wasn't a fast song, and that's how I answered Craig.

Now since I was alone I asked Craig if I could have a G1 from the crowd join me. Craig almost, almost said yes, but instead I played the song along side one of the Screwattack crew. I didn't do great but I didn't downright suck either. I just downright had fun playing the song knowing that no matter how bad I did, I was one of the first people to ever play Guitar Hero: Aerosmith outside of the development team.

So, with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the final game of the Iron Man done, it was all over but final scoring tally. While the final scores were being tallied, we were escorted outside to the lobby once again, but this time, for a photo shoot of the top 16 and to give us some final congratulations on making the top 16.

After that we all returned to the gaming floor to the main stage where we had played Guitar Hero where the final rankings were revealed to the masses. My final rank was a very pleasing 11th place. Coming from someone who barely trained on any of the game in his years Iron Man, 11th out of 52 is a very nice number.

Craig continued to whittle the field down from 16, to 10, to 5, 3, and then 2. It all came down to Harrison Fluster and last year's champ Chris Delp. By only a difference of 10 points, Harrison took home the belt and the money. So my congratulations go out to him, Delp and the other top 13 finalists. A word of acknowledgment also goes out to everyone who came to the Iron Man this year, whether or not you competed, volunteered or just turned up to attend the event, and a very large thank you to the Screwattack crew for putting on an amazing event!

After the Iron Man was wrapped up, Mike, myself and the crew all said our goodbyes to everyone at the Iron Man and went back to the hotel to get some rest and pack to get ready for our long trip home...

But the adventure wasn't over just yet, there was still one final dinner to eat, and who better to eat it with, then 8-bit Mickey, Perfect Liz and Handsome Tom! We ate at the local Cici's Pizza and talked for a few hours before returning to the hotel to crash for the night, but when we got back to our room, we noticed there was some writing on a sign we put up on the door to let people know who ws staying in the room. It was an idea we got form Righteous Brian.

IT seems the members of the screwattack crew that were staying next door to us had left us some nice parting words on our sign. to check it out, just follow the link: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=616920&id=504684933#pid=616920

Post Iron-Man:

We awoke the next morning, wolfed down a quick breakfast and checked out. We then headed back to the Dallas bus terminal for our 36 hour bus trip back to buffalo.

We met another couple of nice folks on our trip back. Gordon and a fellow gamer Alex with which both of them we had conversations with.

The trip was pretty uneventful coming back, but we were all happy and somewhat exhausted when we crossed the border back into Canada.

I may not be the Iron Man of Gaming, but being the only international, namely Canadian competitor to make the top 16, I can take some pride in calling myself “The Canadian Iron Man of Gaming" at least until next year. It's what Mike and the rest of the crew has been calling me anyway.

...

So, how was that for a newbie G1's first blog post? Rate, Hate, Comment, it's all I ask. For now though, I'm off, Catch you guys later.

~Stefan "The Canadian" Pelletier