Well, that's it! Ben Jos, the man who himself repeatedly said 'Oh, just one more round' wound up winning it all. Congratulations on a tournament well played! Congratulations to Sampras as well for his accomplishment in the final, being the first to push past the difficult twin mice stage.

Really, thanks go out to everyone for playing in the tournament. It was MARP's biggest event and I'm glad to have been a part of it. But now I'd like to hear from all of you as to what you thought of the format itself. Was it a worthwhile way to compete? We tried to adjust the numbers at the beginning so as many folks as possible would get to play several games before facing elimination. Should we have cracked down more in favor of a shorter tournament? Should there even be an MC3 in the future? I know Gameboy's been sitting on the Olympiad forever and is eager to get that one rolling. :) But I'll leave it to everyone to say what you think about it here, I'd be interested in seeing your feedback.

Cheers, Brian McLean

-- Brian McLean (bmclean84@hotmail.com), May 16, 2001

Answers

Congratulations to Ben Jos for winning MC2 and thanks to Brian, J.D and Lagavulin for running the competition. I thought it was run very well, much better than the disaster that was MC1/King Of Arcade :)

Definitely there needs to be an MC3! Maybe the elimination process could be shortened however. 3 months is a long time for a tourney and it did seem to drag on during some games. Also maybe the games themselves need to be looked at more closely before they are chosen- I realise a different genre of game was picked for each round (where was the fighter BTW!) but Goalx3 and Roc 'n Rope had issues with bugs and leeching respectively. It wasn't much fun playing these games for 2 weeks each :) Neo Drift Out however was a great choice- the competition was very tight with the #1 position changing many hands often, and some great times resulted.

-- JSW (usagi@dingoblue.net.au), May 16, 2001.

Just wanted to throw my own comments in, seeing as how I do have the right :p

First, I second Brian on all statements. MARP as a collective has been ever so kind to host this tournament, and I don't think we could ever repay them. Second, I want to add on to his thanks, by thanking both him and Lagavulin. These guys are the kind of guys you would want if you were stranded on an island...and..um, had to run a tournament :) Seriously, these guys put way more work into this than you can imagine, and I know that there are few people out there that I would rather work with.

Third, to address JSW quickly; we debated having a fighter in there. You can't go wrong with Final Fight, imo. However, I guess we just voted it out. I can't remember the exact reason for the life of me right now, but I'm sure we had a semi-valid reason.

I want to close this by once again focusing on Brian's statements. Did we do enough? Too much/little? We had a debate over going 1 on 1 at either 16 or 8. Should we have done 8? Etc.

Once again, thanks for all the support from everyone, and another shout out to Brian and Laga :)

- J.D.

-- J.D. Lowe (jedidrunkenllama@hotmail.com), May 16, 2001.

Bah....typo. I meant "Should we have done 16?". Lousy logic...

-- J.D. Lowe (jedidrunkenllama@hotmail.com), May 16, 2001.

You are excellent player present you with points!

-- TJT (tiihoto@hotmail.com), May 17, 2001.

congratulations, BenJos. :))

-- INNUENDO (funit@bol.com.br), May 17, 2001.

yeah BenJos is indeed the man. Getting to the double gophers is a terrific feat!

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), May 17, 2001.

Just 2 congrats ... First for the organisation of this tourney : everything was perfect! I'm not sure that shortening rounds is a good thing, 10 days is the good period IMO ; but maybe announcing the new game faster (just at the end of a round) can gain 24 hours per round ? I don't know why waiting 1 day

Second to the 2 finalists : THE FINAL WAS SUPERB ! "Bravo" to Sampras and congrats to Ben Jos : you seem to be a specialist in tourneys number 2 (k2 & t2, correct me if I'm wrong) ; even if I also won twice (t3-k1) there is always a challenge nobody had successed here in Marp : winning 2 tourneys of the same kind

So .... to all ... "rendez-vous" at k3 !

-- Phil (plamat@club-internet.fr), May 18, 2001.

Taken from Twingalaxies.com (TG):

5/18/01 - Ben Jos Walbeehm of Florida Breaks MAME Record

A MAME Championship conducted at the MARP page has crowned a new champion on Penguin Kun Wars. J.D. Lowe, one of the organizers, reports: "Starting with 102 people, every round eliminated about half of the people. The final round has just ended, with the game of choice being Penguin Kun Wars. I have talked with Mark Longridge, Twin Galaxies' referee for MAME games, and he says that the top score is indeed a world record. It was by Ben Jos Walbeehm, and the final score was 1,471,500, which eclipsed the previous MAME world record of 1,000,800 by Martin Conroy of Leeds, England." Walter Day, Chief Scorekeeper confirms that this new world record will be recognized by the upcoming Book of Records and also notes that the second place score of 1,339,300 points achieved by Sampras has also won a listing. ------

Ben Jos has Donkey Kong record also...

-- Tommi (tiihoto@hotmail.com), May 21, 2001.

you are the man Ben Jos! Congrats again my friend!

Regards

QRS

-- QRS (qrs@telia.com), May 21, 2001.

Firstly , congrats to Brian , JD , and Laga for a brilliantly run Tourney. No need to change the format for MC3 IMO.

Secondly , well done to Ben Jos . Also well done for getting recognised by TG , and apparently not having to travel to New Hampshire in order to do so :- ))

Cheers,

AL

-- AL (alexweir@indigo.ie), May 22, 2001.

Thank you very much to JD, Lagavulin, and Brian for organising this tournament very well.

Thank you to everyone for their kind words.

Congratulations to Sampras on a great tournament. I am still impressed by your "perfect" against the twin mice. Until I saw you do it, I thought it was impossible.

Congratulations to everyone else who had great performances during this tournament.

I know I have said a lot of what I am going to say now on IRC already, but here goes:

I have not had as much fun in a tournament since T2, and I am not saying that because I happened to win both. Of course, the fact that I had a lot of fun, made me put more effort in. Because I thought K2/MC2 (what should I call it?) was fun well before the final few rounds.

The seedings worked out a lot better than I had expected. Of the 8 seeds, the top 4 seeds advanced to the semis, and the top 2 seeds advanced to the finals. I guess the seedings were ALMOST perfect. ;-)

I was surprised the seedings worked out so well, because, unlike seedings in tennis, for example, the game changes every round. It's almost like seeding people according to their tennis rankings and then make them play each other on other sports.

Of course, there's always the chance that the number 8 seed plays against the number 1 seed on a game on which the former one is an expert and the latter sucks. Well, of course, there's always luck involved. Based on the fact that each of the top 4 seeds won at least one round, it looks like by simply shuffling the games in a different order, any of the top 4 would have won. There is no way I would have beaten Sampras on Goal! Goal! Goal!, or Phil on Anteater, or BBH on U.N. Squadron.

Although the one-on-one rounds are fun, I do not think they should be extended to the final 16. It gets more frustrating sooner, then. Get a game you're not good at, or oppose an expert, and you're out. At least until the one-on-one rounds start, you can wing it. I liked the one-on-one rounds, but starting them at the final 16 already seems a bit too early to me. The seedings probably would be less accurate too, then. The seedings in K2 were based on 5 rounds. If one-on-one had started at the final 16, then they would have been based on only 4 rounds.

I don't think the tournament was too long. I don't think rounds should be less than 10 days per game. Some people learn games faster than others, and at least 10-day-rounds don't automatically eliminate anyone who happens to be gone for a few days. The tournament could be made SLIGHTLY shorter by not waiting one day in between rounds. I'd've preferred that. The only problem is that not all the submissions may have been verified as soon as the round ends. Either way, I think the next game could be announced immediately after the previous round has ended. And within the next few hours hopefully, or one day at most, after the end of that previous round, everything should be official.

Eliminating half of the competitors in the early rounds is not much fun, I think, for the 75% who are out after having played just one or two games. So I liked the "relaxed elimination" in the early rounds.

OK. I think that concludes my remarks, except for something slightly related to this: T6. There are some issues that need to be resolved first. I hope to make an announcement regarding T6 soon.

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), May 22, 2001.