Earlier this week, the MAGFest 7 Challenges were posted. This year is going to be interesting for a couple reasons. First and foremost, as compared to last year’s booth, there are a much higher percentage of games I’ve never actually played before (Though in talking to some other people, it seems a lot of us are in the same boat on that front). Last year, Metal Dream (You may remember him from such performances as “Taking second in last year’s Challenges Booth” and “beating my ass at Dr. Mario“) noted that I have an analytical play style when it comes to gaming. I suppose this is true, as it almost has to be to be a successful speedrunner (Where moreso than in ordinary gaming, you have to be ultra-prepared for every possibility and ready to adjust your gameplan on the fly depending on what you see), though I wasn’t conscious of it until he pointed it out. In any event, over the next two-plus months, we’ll see how true that really is as I prepare for this year’s Challenge Booth.
The other monkey wrench in the plans this year is a decided SDA presence. The administration decided to have an SDA gathering, and MAGFest was chosen as the gathering place. Put another way, there’s likely to be more competition than there was last year, at least as far as the top 10 went, where as few as 8 points was good enough for a shirt (As a reminder in case you didn’t click the above link, Kareshi had 51 points by the end, Metal Dream and myself had 50, and 4th place had 28). Or it should have been, had a series of events not conspired to ensure that we won’t get the shirts until arriving at M7.
Time to practice!
Loading tweets...
3 comments
Hell yes my friend, magfest draws near! Command?
I think that the disparity in the points will be even greater this year by the fact that last year, for some games, the player had the option to try an easier difficulty if he wasn’t able to finish the harder ones thus maximizing the point total.
This year, there is only one difficulty for each games (at the exception of 2 or 3) So for the people who practiced a bit, we won’t waste as much time on the booths compared to those who will desperately try to get more points on games they never played before, trying to understand the mechanics of obscure games on the spot ( kinda like we did last year :p )
I’d be dissapointed if The Shizz won’t get #1, 2, 3 this year also.
However, no matter who finishes where, no matter if someone loses in a tie breaker, no matter if we haven’t reached the goals we were trying to get, this competition is all in good fun, meeting people who actually care for the 8 bit era and an awesome opportunity for us to devellop our skills for future gaming projects.
On this, I wish you all the best and I can’t wait to meet you at mag again bro!
Metal Dream
Author
Woo, MAGFest!
I actually practiced a fair amount last year, as did Kareshi, though I admittedly wasn’t particularly scientific about it. I think I at least tried to practice each game a time or two, though I’m coming into this year much more prepared than I did last year. That and, like I said, I had at least played pretty much all of the games on the list last year even before the challenges, so even near the end when I was out of the stuff I could do easily and was sort of winging it desperately trying to get more points, I wasn’t playing the games completely cold.
As for the points disparity, I’m of two minds about it. Yeah, there aren’t nearly as many games where you have two and sometimes even three possible challenges, but on the other hand, I think there’s actually a wider variety of games than there were last year. I’m not exactly sure how the SDA presence will affect things on that front; it doesn’t sound like a lot of them will be putting in much time at the booth, but you never know.
And yeah, whatever the final results turn out to be, having fun is the most important thing. Can’t wait to see you, Kareshi, Sunny and everyone else again!
Man, sounds like fun… they never have anything like that out here. No love for the 8 bit :( boooo…