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Last night I played more FFX and went to sleep. My legs were ok when I went to sleep, but when I woke up this morning they HURT LIKE HELL. I guess that's what I get for hiking for 5 hours in the mountains yesterday.
So, despite being unable to walk, I put some mineral ice on my legs and drove out to Illusionz for the Standard Tech part of DDR Magic 4. (It was an all-weekend DDR tournament with like 6 events, but I only signed up for one). I got there at 11:55, and there were like 30 people standing outside waiting for the place to open. Most of them were DDR tourney people.
Ok, so I warmed up on DDR Disney because the 4th+ Solo was taken and the USA machine seems to have just disappeared. It was funny, doing 8-foot songs on Disney... a guy said "hey, can i shadow?" and he did and afterwards he said something to me like "do you know that it might be easier for you if you hit those left-down-right things by turning?" and i was like "dude, i've been playing DDR for over two years. i just suck." and he was like "oh. i've been playing for slightly over two months... but i play every day." bleh. I played some drummania while waiting, too. Yay!
Before they started the qualifiers, they were doing goofy stuff. One guy was putting on 1-foot songs, but putting them and playing them on both pads, jumping around. And for real jumps, he would fall down and try to hit them with his hands and feet. After that they had an edit called "Groove Twister", which was Let's Groove, edited so you have versus mode, but they were coordinated for two pads such that you could do about 8 bars as if you were playing double and after that you had to start putting your hands on the ground or you couldn't hit it all (lots of things with 3 or 4 arrows at once). About 4 people tried doing the edit, and it really DID look like you were playing Twister, with how they'd end up with their hands and feet all over the place. :)
The qualifiers were Sweet Sweet Heart Magic and AM-3P. Oh, so IZ has 2 7th mix machines, for those who haven't heard about it or been there. So they had people split up onto machines for the qualifiers. About 2/3 of the people did AM-3P. I got 146 perfects and 49 greats. The guy next to me got 150 perfects. I saw these two girls afterwards get like 180 and 168 or something. However, somehow I was seeded 8th out of 20. I guess I only managed to watch the really good people :)
So, they had 20 people and needed to get down to 16, so 12 of us got byes in the first round. They had four matches for the first round, and then started the second round. I went against the seed 9 guy. He was one of the few people that appeared to be over 20 (well, the guy who was running the tourney, Nykkel, is 35, I think, and is apparently one of the best DDR players in Seattle. He's also really nice!). So, we got a slip of paper with 5 songs on it - Burnin the Floor, Fantasy (7th), True radio mix, Era, and Still In My Heart. The other guy eliminated True, and I was like "uhh... uhhh... hmm... these are all equivalent to me..." so I eliminated Fantasy because I'm least familiar with it. We did Burnin' the Floor. I won, 239-220, even though I got 2 goods and he FC'ed. Then we did Still In My Heart. After the song the guy shook my hand like "good game" before we even saw the numbers and I was like "no way, I sucked at this" and sure enough, despite my FC, the other guy beat me by like 10 perfects. Then we did Era as a tiebreaker. I got 182. He got 201. I FC'ed, he didn't, but, oh well. It was funny because after Era he also went "aaagggh". So we were both like "damn, good match", and the judges even said "yeah, that was a really good match", and then we walked off.
So the moral of the story is - it doesn't matter if you FC if the other guy beats you on perfects.
However, since my legs were KILLING me I didn't really mind being out of the game. I talked to Nykkel a bit before leaving; he says the next tourney will be in November or December, and that they'll send me an Illusionz 500 credit card (which everyone gets for entering).
So, my main goals by next tournament are:
1) learn the 7th mix songs better
2) get some DDR friends here... it really SUCKS to go to a tournament alone.
All in all, though, it was an EXTREMELY well-run tournament. I can't stress that enough. They had four judges, two for each machine, to watch and write down scores. They had two machines, so they could even run matches in parallel. There was a guy running it and he had an assistant. There were lots of chairs and stuff so you could watch the game. And apparently there really were like 30 people in almost every category except this one.
After the tourney I came home and worked on stuff in the house. Megan made thai chicken curry for dinner, and we ate it, and people are watching Iron Chef, and I should go back to the new house and do more work, I think.
So, despite being unable to walk, I put some mineral ice on my legs and drove out to Illusionz for the Standard Tech part of DDR Magic 4. (It was an all-weekend DDR tournament with like 6 events, but I only signed up for one). I got there at 11:55, and there were like 30 people standing outside waiting for the place to open. Most of them were DDR tourney people.
Ok, so I warmed up on DDR Disney because the 4th+ Solo was taken and the USA machine seems to have just disappeared. It was funny, doing 8-foot songs on Disney... a guy said "hey, can i shadow?" and he did and afterwards he said something to me like "do you know that it might be easier for you if you hit those left-down-right things by turning?" and i was like "dude, i've been playing DDR for over two years. i just suck." and he was like "oh. i've been playing for slightly over two months... but i play every day." bleh. I played some drummania while waiting, too. Yay!
Before they started the qualifiers, they were doing goofy stuff. One guy was putting on 1-foot songs, but putting them and playing them on both pads, jumping around. And for real jumps, he would fall down and try to hit them with his hands and feet. After that they had an edit called "Groove Twister", which was Let's Groove, edited so you have versus mode, but they were coordinated for two pads such that you could do about 8 bars as if you were playing double and after that you had to start putting your hands on the ground or you couldn't hit it all (lots of things with 3 or 4 arrows at once). About 4 people tried doing the edit, and it really DID look like you were playing Twister, with how they'd end up with their hands and feet all over the place. :)
The qualifiers were Sweet Sweet Heart Magic and AM-3P. Oh, so IZ has 2 7th mix machines, for those who haven't heard about it or been there. So they had people split up onto machines for the qualifiers. About 2/3 of the people did AM-3P. I got 146 perfects and 49 greats. The guy next to me got 150 perfects. I saw these two girls afterwards get like 180 and 168 or something. However, somehow I was seeded 8th out of 20. I guess I only managed to watch the really good people :)
So, they had 20 people and needed to get down to 16, so 12 of us got byes in the first round. They had four matches for the first round, and then started the second round. I went against the seed 9 guy. He was one of the few people that appeared to be over 20 (well, the guy who was running the tourney, Nykkel, is 35, I think, and is apparently one of the best DDR players in Seattle. He's also really nice!). So, we got a slip of paper with 5 songs on it - Burnin the Floor, Fantasy (7th), True radio mix, Era, and Still In My Heart. The other guy eliminated True, and I was like "uhh... uhhh... hmm... these are all equivalent to me..." so I eliminated Fantasy because I'm least familiar with it. We did Burnin' the Floor. I won, 239-220, even though I got 2 goods and he FC'ed. Then we did Still In My Heart. After the song the guy shook my hand like "good game" before we even saw the numbers and I was like "no way, I sucked at this" and sure enough, despite my FC, the other guy beat me by like 10 perfects. Then we did Era as a tiebreaker. I got 182. He got 201. I FC'ed, he didn't, but, oh well. It was funny because after Era he also went "aaagggh". So we were both like "damn, good match", and the judges even said "yeah, that was a really good match", and then we walked off.
So the moral of the story is - it doesn't matter if you FC if the other guy beats you on perfects.
However, since my legs were KILLING me I didn't really mind being out of the game. I talked to Nykkel a bit before leaving; he says the next tourney will be in November or December, and that they'll send me an Illusionz 500 credit card (which everyone gets for entering).
So, my main goals by next tournament are:
1) learn the 7th mix songs better
2) get some DDR friends here... it really SUCKS to go to a tournament alone.
All in all, though, it was an EXTREMELY well-run tournament. I can't stress that enough. They had four judges, two for each machine, to watch and write down scores. They had two machines, so they could even run matches in parallel. There was a guy running it and he had an assistant. There were lots of chairs and stuff so you could watch the game. And apparently there really were like 30 people in almost every category except this one.
After the tourney I came home and worked on stuff in the house. Megan made thai chicken curry for dinner, and we ate it, and people are watching Iron Chef, and I should go back to the new house and do more work, I think.
