STsung’s Blog

This weekend a European Championship was held in Norway. It was held along with the world largest LAN party - The Gathering.

I went there with Halfling and T_Bone_X_Zeo from the Netherlands. At the airport in Oslo we waited for T_Bone as he was there bidding for PNM controller (if I understood correctly). We also played some BeatMania IIDX on the way and could see that we won’t miss playing PNM too as T_Bone had a PNM controller with him too (just KOC).

In the train to Hamar where the LAN party was held we were quite bored. T_Bone played some invisible BeatMania with his hands and we tried to enjoy the Norwegian country. After some time we started to sing some DDR songs together and I think people had us for some silly people. But anyway we managed to get to Hamar a city where the Winter Olympic Games were held.

There we had some problems finding the Olympics Game Hall but we found it after some time.

We arrived there when the network didn’t work that well. It was overflooded with the newcomers. We registered and went to find our spots for our computers. I find mine but there was someone sitting there. So I asked the security guy who wondered what’s wrong. I asked him about that so he went away to find out who the person is. Later on I asked someone about the numbers and he told me that the sticked numbers don’t count. That there are actually new numbers which lay on the tables. So I wandered around and finally found my number. Then I went to find the security guy and tell him everything is alright.

After this small problem we went together to play DDR. The machines were on the other side of the hall so for me it was quite far away. There we found out that one game will cost us 10 Norwegian Crowns which is a lot for a Czech student. But anyway we played as everyone else around.

It was my second time standing on a machine and I have to say that I was deceived and depressed. My scores were really bad and I thought that I had to be the worst DDR player at that place so I started to freestyle. Some people crowded in behind and were watching me without understanding.

Later on we started meeting all the other BEMANI players there.

Pop’n Music was played on ASC, BeatMania IIDX was played on KOC and of course DDR was played a lot. Many people played DDR on a keyboard and most of the players at the LAN party who tried this sucked badly at the game. But anyway it was fun.

The European Championship started the next day and there were 62 players. The seeding was done by a computer program. The seeding was supposed to be the following: let’s say there would be 3 groups and in each there would be 3 players. The computer was supposed to take the first three best players and put them in each group. Then he would take the fourth and put it in the first group, fifth in the second group, sixth in the third group etc.

After I got into my group I knew that there was something wrong I was in a group with 3 almost the best players at the event and Amegon (who is better but not that good to match those we were pitted against).

Anyway we played as we were told. The ones before us all played Max300 and got AA on it. Amegon played Max300 too and got an A. I said to myself ‘Ok, I’m out in this round so why not play any song I want’. So I choose Paranoia KCET and got a pretty bad score on it. Me and Amegon were out.

In the third round the organizators of the event found out that the second round was seeded wrongly and thus they said they would continue in seeding in hand. So it took some time and we had the time to chat with each other.

I have to say that there were real differences in total our group got 22k but there were groups which got 17k or 19k. If I would end up in one of those groups I could go on. But 22k was too much for us to muster.

The tournament continued on and I was watching other players play. Especially I watched Eric from Belgium and Erik from the Netherlands. There were some other players I put in my mind - Stelisevil from England who was really nice to me, Snute who was really nice and good player, the Izraelian player who showed us that age does not matter and who showed us how to SDG Max300 (8 greats), Jukeboksi with his dreds and other people…

This event was a great experience for me. Both the LAN party (and demoparty) and the DDR tournaments. But I have to say that I felt like a noob when I was there. It was difficult to adjust to the arcade machine from not really good working softpad. Anyway it was worth the money.