Quote:
Originally Posted by ToonE156
Pardon? He won the first WHAT?
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So I didn't realize so little was online for these events. Players largely saw them as a failure; the ruleset was incredibly janky and stupid (only songs rated 8 or lower for the qualifiers, then rated 7 through 9 for finals before allowing 10s in the grands) and they changed the rules for their own conveniences doing the Grand Finales (It was 3 out of 5 until the ref wanted to go home, then WITHIN THE SET said fuck it whoever wins this wins let's go)
They also barely announced it ahead of time. I think (I THINK) Duk tipped EvilDave off like two weeks before the announcement which was like a week before the event. It was generally thought at the time that Konami wanted to see if the brand was strong enough to support a more or less spontaneous national championship. They also intended for the contestants to be kids and family members ( The oldest you were Allowed to be was like 35?) And not the athletic players they got.
Anyway the first year was 2009. Top two where Soul and EvilDave and I don't remember the other placements. Bemanistyle had the most coverage along with testimonies from the players on how stupid it all was but that site lost all of the old pages awhile ago. Here's the most post coverage I could find:
https://www.otaquest.com/north-ameri...championships/
There's probably an old thread here were I told this story but the night before I was suppose to leave to qualify in Miami my truck had to be put in the shop. I was Soul's ride, so he had to emergency grayhound down there from Tallahassee and sign in last second to play his sets dead tired. However by this point he has already AAAd all of the 8s, so. It was pretty much in the bag for him. The other NWFL players couldn't make the trip short notice, so he was free from his peers to dominate.
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By the way, Soul hada lot more going for him then just that. Dude was a machine and pushed the South East scene to be the best they could. He regularly placed in all of the Storm tournaments back in the day and had unreal timing. Lack of machine accessibility forced him out of the game though (that and old age, he would joke) and now he weight lifts competitively.