As I’ve said before, Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been eating all our brains. How much so? I actually talked with several Netjak staff who went to the launch events held at GameStop throughout the country, and it took me an extra week to come up with a column about said launch event. Supreme laziness or too much information to parse? You decide!
Well, not really. For each of us, the launch event began at different times. John “TheFurryOne” Zeitler had his start at around 8 or so, while I got started around 9:30 and Chris “WhiteRoseDuelist” LoBue got started around 10. To some extent, I imagine this has something to do with each going to different locations, John having picked the one in what is the most populous area and Chris picking the least populated area. However, given what I saw at my own location, it could just be that GameStop doesn’t know how to conduct an event if they have time to prepare.
Now, I can’t crack on everything. The lineup procedures were mostly sensible. At all locations, they let people pay for the game ahead of time, and those that did got temp receipts and those were marked with numbers. Once midnight actually hit, those with numbers got to go right in, ten at a time, and trade in the temp receipt for a game and a permanent receipt. After we all were done, those who didn’t pre-pay got to pay for them as well. This process moved rather smooth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and judging by the sheer mountain of copies there GameStop were quite prepared for everything short of the entire population of the Boston Metro area showing up for Brawl.
Well, I shouldn’t just say that. They weren’t prepared for the actual tournament being held. For those not familiar with the event, GameStop had the brilliant idea of having a tournament for the game on launch day, with winners advancing further until finals in a couple of weeks are held in San Jose. In theory, this is a great idea – everyone is pretty much even, as the game literally just came out. We’d be on the same learning curve, as everyone was forced to use the new control scheme for the game. And who doesn’t like the opportunity to win free stuff in a social setting?
Well, this assumes that the people organizing the tournament is even capable of it. The one at my location had to restart twice – you’d think filling out a bracket of 32 or 64 wouldn’t be that hard – write names down, have people play. But they tried to run it through the game, discovering the hard way that it takes forever to get that many names into the system. They also were working off a clean copy, which meant they had to go back and erase any character unlocks whenever one happened so that future players didn’t get scammed out of using a character later ones did. By the time the tournament got started in earnest, so many left that one guy got to have a bye round until we were down to just eight players.
I know that because he was the guy who finally eliminated me. I learned one incredibly valuable thing in that fight – never pick a new character (even if Lucas promised to be similar to Ness, my favorite in the previous incarnations). I was certainly able to hold off those who were less experienced in the game. But when dealing with a veteran using a character they know, like I did against the guy with Peach, you’re going to lose. It’s just the way things are.
But I managed to be the ninth person getting the game at my location, and even in defeat got to spend a good time talking with everyone there for the event. Of course, it’s my luck that I end up near the interesting folks to chat with. I knew it was just my luck when it turned out the gentleman next to me was David Cole of Infendo, who was there to cover the launch just as I was. He even made sure to mention my victory in the first round of the tournament – kind of odd to hear about my video gaming on someone else’s blog, I must say. We had a great time going over everything related to the games we were playing recently – from him giving me advice on where to find hidden puzzles in Professor Layton and the Curious Village to me talking about composing a MIDI version of “Still Alive” in Daigasso Band Brothers. Plus, of course, the joys of covering events like this, when we’re simultaneously reminded of how old we are and how young video gaming makes us feel.
Though I can only imagine how things would have gone if Cambridge, like John’s store in Pittsburgh, had done a trivia contest about Nintendo. David’s on staff on a Nintendo-centric blog. I’ve been video gaming since I was 2 – and started on Nintendo’s breakout game, to boot. We probably would have done Paper Rock Scissors to see who would answer the next one. Even if the prizes would have been lame (I understand it was just preorder chotchkes from other games), it still would have been fun to actually put some use to knowing things like Devil’s World being the only game made by Shigeru Miyamoto that has never been released outside of Japan.
David was hardly the only person that was good to talk to, just the one that I spoke with the most. And really, that’s why these events always feel like a success even when it’s clear that nobody knows how to actually organize them. Because deep down, spending that much time with other gamers, geeking out about games of all stripes, is so much fun that we often forgive people for not being able to actually put them together well. Maybe someday someone will figure out how it’s done and make something truly memorable. Until then, though, I can be content to spend time with my fellow gamers, remembering everything we love about what we do.
