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In this new episode, “We never forget our first tournament!”, the author takes us on a journey into the past of videogames.
Video game tournaments before FIFA
Today, the day is for chilling. We really do deal with a lot of stress playing this game, so let’s take a little break and listen to one of uncle Silvio’s stories. As some of you (loyal) readers know I used to run a video game rental store, and that went on for many years (we’re talking about the tube TV decade). That time certainly gave away some curious stories like that one I’ve already told you guys; or, if you haven’t seen it, check out The Day Allejo Cried.
The fact is that I’ve always loved electronic games, ever since those telegames came out (with those little sticks), even before the atari. Then the opportunity for me to have my own video game store arose and that seemed like a great idea, after all I would be able to (and should) spend the whole day playing and still earn money with my job. In the end, taxes showed me that life isn’t a marvellous bed of roses, but that’s another story.
It was such different times, magazines were few and amateur, mainly aimed at the younger public. The imported ones were extremely expensive, and having them on the rental store was a sign of great status among the concurrence. Not everyone would go there to play, some people would arrive early, just as the store would open. They’d come in and just look at the box of each game, each magazine and poster, then more people would arrive and they’d mainly talk about games, showing each other their favourites and which ones they had played the day before, while also feeling their pockets to see if they could maybe rent one together. I used to always turn on the equipments just to leave a showcase of some games and just that would already be everything to them, it was a magical atmosphere.
In order to offer my clients a differential the rental store would need to have someone who understood everything about every game that could be found there, so this person would give them tips when they got stuck at some point in a game, for example. After all the rental was only paid by hour, so spending 30 minutes just to get past one objective was something you really wouldn’t like. So because of that I remember I would play everything I liked and also a lot that I didn’t like just so I could be that person. And to get things worse, saving the progress was one hell of a rare thing for games back then, so many times when I’d die I would have to simply restart from the very beginning. None of this save-as-you-walk thing was there to make the game easy, and you couldn’t simply go back 10 seconds to correct something you did wrong. This way I never got to be an expert in a single game, there was always someone better than me because they would play the same game all the time, but in general you could say I was good.
The rental stores were responsible to hold the tournaments, and sometimes these tournaments were even among themselves. Now, the “real” tournaments were rare. So when they announced one in the city of Porto Alegre I naturally became interested. Unlike today, back then the most common kind of tournament was the one where you would have to play several different games within eliminatory systems. For example, you start competing in a race game, if you win you advance to a fighting game, then football, indeed something strange like this. Point being, although I was never a “beast” in a single game, maybe I had a chance in a tournament like that, and after all, if I won, the rental store would look good, I could already imagine the sign saying ”Silvio Teixeira – Porto Alegre Videogame Champion of 1994” showing in front of Spider Games. I had nothing to lose, I assumed.
First video game tournaments back in the Atari decade
When the day finally came I decided to go by myself. Although I was feeling confident I decided not to make any announcements (thinking “in case I do really bad, no one needs to know”, of course). The problem is that I’m the kind of guy that ends up forgetting things, I have a whole history of losing stuff. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached to my body. I only realised I didn’t have my glasses on when I got in the bus, still half asleep. I have relatively high level myopia, which still doesn’t stop me from walking around in the everyday life, but I also have a history of waving to people on the street and not actually seeing who they are because of this. When I arrived, I was under the impression that every school bus in the city had just dropped the students in the same place and at the same time. It was nothing compared to what it’s like in video game conferences today, but in the year of 1994 it was really surprising to see all those people (not just kids) together for video games.
I walked around for a bit to get to know the place better and tried to find any hints on what games would be chosen for us to play, however the tournament area was closed, and the remaining “TVs” were just showing really random games. There wasn’t much to do, there weren’t any brand promoters or even stands, just people chatting, trading Magic and Spellfire cards and ferociously disputing the few equipments that could be found functioning. I tried to see if I could find anyone that I knew, “squeezing” my eyes to identify the ones that were far away, I had the impression I did know some people there but as I got closer they weren’t actually who I thought they were.
Anyway, there wasn’t much time to chill around, the tournament was going to start early and there I was signing my name on the book of participants. On the first round we would play some Mega Drive game, no one knew exactly which. When all the televisions were turned on simultaneously a random game shows up and I’m like: what game is this?? It was one that we didn’t have in the rental store and I had never even heard of back then. Arrow Flash. And to get things worse it was a single player game, so the ones with the lowest scores would be eliminated. I thought about taking a peek, see how people were playing first to have an idea of the game but, of course, I had to be in the first round, alongside other 13 people. The game was pretty simple, a “shoot everything that moves” style, dodge everything that comes in your direction and take the power-ups to get stronger. I even got to start off well but with many power-ups and many enemies coming out on the screen at the same time, in a few minutes I wasn’t able to tell them apart. The distance between myself and the TV was small, the controllers had wires anyway, but my vision of the screen was still blurry. Attempting to control the small character I’d keep moving the controller as if that helped. I knew I couldn’t lose on the first round. It took me a long time to lose my first life, but then I lost the second one in a few seconds, and the third only didn’t slip away because I had just gotten an extra life power-up. My death was caused by my ego, I went to get a bonus I didn’t even know what was for and ended up embracing the enemy ship. I quickly looked both ways and saw there was still a lot of people playing, which was no good for me. I confess I had the urge to get up and act crazy walking in front of the others to block their visions so that they’d lose concentration, but I knew that would disqualify me as well.
Round ended, several long minutes until the result came out, and surprisingly I was classified for the next stage. If not the last I was one of the last, but at that moment I probably should just be focusing on doing better on the next game. But yeah, I must have been the last.
There was a second round with a different game that I didn’t participate, which was fair because those that were watching at first weren’t favoured in the end. It was another unknown game, with subtitles and everything in Japanese but it followed the same “spaceship” style.
My second round was about to start on the Super NES. I was hoping it would be one of the difficult ones that I happened to be good at, like Battletoads, Indiana Jones or Star Wars. Naturally things aren’t always what we imagine, so when Nigel Mansell’s face appeared on the screen I knew it would be tense. I liked this game a lot although I was better at Monaco GP, but I did participate in some tournaments of this game against concurrent stores so I thought I would be fine. Besides, it was a game where my myopia wasn’t going to interfere much, I was familiar with the stages and there weren’t other racers to bother me, since it was time trial style. It was really going great for me, the chosen circuit was Kyalami, South Africa. Only the time of the first lap was going to count, when you have to actually know how to start the car at an exact time, which I did so I also held that advantage. No surprise this time, although the classification list wasn’t announced I’m sure I did one of the best times, since I saw that I finished the circuit way before my opponents.
And there I was standing proudly on the third stage. I was hoping it wouldn’t be Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter or Killer Instinct because these were the games for those guys that keep playing it on and on. I did know how to perform all the moves and specials, but I wasn’t as quick as these fighting game-addicted guys. Unlike Arrow, which I wasn’t good at but the others probably weren’t as well, everyone was good at these. This time it would be different, it was going to be multiplayer so we would play against each other. I got lucky, turned out it wasn’t any Street Fight kind of game, International Super Star Soccer (Deluxe) was the chosen one. One of those that I liked the most and played well, and I didn’t even have to be the best among everyone anyway, I only needed to beat my opponent to get to the next stage.
My opponent was a short guy, almost half my height and one third of my age, if I had lost I’d be embarrassed to have been beaten by someone that skipped kindergarten class to be there in the tournament. There were 8 people remaining in the tournament, 4 doubles playing. The game starts and I can’t help but push my chair closer to the TV. By the time I first got to the attack I had my body leaned forward, while Denilson (I saw it on his name tag) was sitting completely still with his feet not touching the ground. At some point I almost hit the opponent with my controller, I’ve always had this difficulty to keep my hands still while I play. But then, just a few minutes after the game had started, the power went out. My game was still 0-0 but others weren’t, although you could see it really wasn’t predicted, just complete amateurism by the organizers.
But out of nowhere some chubby guy gets mad claiming he had just taken the scoring shot when the power went out, that the keeper had already been beaten and because of that he wanted the goal to count. His opponent was already starting to yell and it looked like things were gonna have to be settled by fist (or slaps). On the TV at the corner another player that seemed trouble, the kind that when you see them on the street you hold on to your wallet, yelling and cussing his throat out trying to offend the one responsible for supervising the games at that moment. I don’t know exactly what he wanted, but he wanted it bad. As if that wasn’t enough he had his “bro squad” standing with their arms crossed next to him, and for the thug look on their faces I actually thought that wasn’t going to end well. The place was dark, only the street lights were coming in through the windows, and the discussion was getting uglier with time, so the organizers must have been afraid of possibly some vandalism, or maybe stealing since part of the games was accessible. That’s when I saw some weird movimentation on the street, I kept squeezing my eyes but I couldn’t identify what it was. I acted naïve and asked if I could go to the bathroom since there was no power anyway. Almost everyone was distracted by the discussions so they didn’t even notice me leaving to see what was going on. Peeking through the window, I could see that two militaries were dropping off their bad ass bulletproof riot van and there were two more on the back seat. It’s not like I’m that much of a chicken, but I thought it was a good time to tip toe my way out, I came back real quick to get my stuff on the chair I was playing at and I even gave Denilson the warning
“– Mate, let’s get the hell out ‘cause shit’s gonna get Islamic ‘round here!”
In like 15 minutes we were heading out and at the same time the policemen were coming in, at some point I feared they would try to stop us, but they had their eyes fixed on the tournament’s organizer, who had called for them. A few moments passed by until we saw the truncheons started to sound. It was 94, this “not allowed to beat minors” thing is recent stuff. With all the yelling in there we started running like there were 3 cheetahs after us with machine guns attached to their backs firing 900 rounds per minute each. We only stopped after we took the turn on the third corner and couldn’t hear anything from that mad hubbub any more (I wanna see what words our translator will come up with to get these things to English). (lawl). Chatting with Denilson I told him I ran a rental store and invited him to come by some time, after all we wanted to see who would pass to the next stage, to the semifinals or whatever that would be.
Uncle Silvio back in the time of neat stylish glasses and Spider Games
A shared coke was the goodbye to my newest friend-opponent. In the next day some small newspaper headlines covered the disorder caused by some “children” which led the police to “gently” escort a few juvenile offenders into the police station for the embarrassment of their mothers, who certainly prohibited them from playing video games for some time. The tournament never ended but stays in history and in our memory, and there I was the next Saturday telling people what had happened for the hundredth time when he showed up! Denilson accepted the invite and came in for our game in the end. It was the moment of truth!
Bye!