Over last weekend we had a Laser Storm regional tournament at the Skate Zone in Austintown, Ohio. Will “Ebay-Freak” decided to take it upon himself to schedule this tournament, this was due to me telling people that we can have another tournament in Austintown, as long as someone else sets it up. While I think the Skate Zone is great, their arena is only slightly larger than Jester’s, they don’t have as many barriers, and fewer options in making a good arena design because of a single entry way, and fixed base units above the grid. So it generally doesn’t seem worth it for me to take extra time to setup their arena and run their tournament when it could be done much easier at Jester’s. There is also the fact that they don’t have any regular players to make a home team.
With E-Bay setting it up, all I had to do was show up and help run the tournament, that’s great! But then E-Bay found himself without many people to change the arena (welcome to my world), so I decided to go up and help him out the night of. But due to a lack of communication (make more phone calls), I showed up at 7pm with E-Bay to find out we had to wait until 10pm (about the time everyone will show up for the tournament). To be fair, I knew this in advance, as Ray, the manager of Skate Zone stopped by the coffee shop and told me this, but as I was very busy and had other things on my mind, I forgot… ooops.
So at 10 pm I went back up to Skate Zone with Doc Mike to start the arena. Since the layout was pretty much the same as the previous tournament, we decided to at least make some slight modifications to make the pod run a little shorter. After we were done with the force shield, Darkside came in and I pawned the rest of the work off on him. After we got the arena setup, we tested the pods to find that one of the sirens didn’t work. Oh fooey. I can’t believe the number of things that worked out after that, the really old game computer had a sound card, that was working, we had an extra cable to attach to the sound system, and I was able to find some wav files to play. This never happens to me. Whenever I try to get the sound to work on a game computer, usually the sound drivers need updated (no internet connection at Skate Zone), we NEVER have the right kind of cable, and 1-3 other things usually go wrong. The one problem we did have was a lack of sounds. By scowering the computer I was able to make a pod hit give you “You’ve Got Mail!”. It was a very fun 15 minutes of finding other sounds and making other people laugh at the prospect of hearing “TADA” for a pod sound. We were also able to find some start and end game sounds in the voice of none other than Barry Franks (KIX) from back in the day.
As the games were about to start, I was able to pawn yet more work off, this time on Gumby as I asked him to enter all the players into the database, to my surprise, he said yes! And to my great delight, after the first few games, Gohan and E-Bay from Pittsburgh started dragging all the players in, getting people suited up, entering the game scores, and pretty much everything else that I normally do. That was awesome! I was able to talk with my team, play my games, ref a few, and lounge around a bit. This was one of the BEST TOURNAMENTS EVER… for me (.
Onto the games! The three top teams ended up being my team Pimp something or another (I’ll just say Pimp from now on), Centipede and Phoenix’s team Fizz City Ganstas (Fizz), and Dump Truck less Zalgax, plus The Phantom. Yes, that is right, the mighty tall one himself, from way back in the day, Fred “The Phantom” Astey! It’s been so long! Ahh the memories… Anyway, for the first time in just as many years I found myself worried about the 6 foot barrier positions, and wouldn’t you know it, he found a nice spot to go all god-like on. Good times.
My team had to face Fizz in the second round. We were beaten by 1 point (96-97), but we were not too happy, because Centipede got a good 7 (Yes SEVEN) hits on us by firing over the e-pod. “Seven?” you say? My team swears by it, but even if you only give us 1, that made the game tie. I asked my team if they wanted me to ask Fizz for a replay, but they said no, they would rather fight their way back up to them and beat them twice (I love when they get mad!).
Well we would get the chance to face them again, but not twice, because they would go on to lose to Dump Truck. This was a little bit of an upset as Dump Truck usually has a better chance with a short pod run (Miza), and they were lacking the Zalgax, and The Phantom should have had about 3+ years of rust built up. But Dump Truck pulled out a 37 point victory (135-98). During the game I was a ref, and Fizz was getting quite upset about Dancer, as they could not hit her. So I went over to see, Gumby was already watching her. I watched her the rest of the game and must say, there was nothing wrong with that pack. Anyway, The Phantom kicked ass from his spot which really made me worry for out next game.
My worries were ultimately put to rest, I had forgotten how much we practice the Wilson-breaker. The first game we pulled out a victory of 7 points (103-96). We switched sides and won by 42 points (127-85) thus giving us a victory at Skate Zone (it’s been a while).
On the 18th we are back in Pittsburgh where I’m sure Fizz will be itching to re-prove themselves, and Dump Truck will be there to say what’s up. Unfortunately there will not be an arena change, so the home teams will have more than a slight advantage, which is fine by me because it makes a loss less painful and a victory more sweet!
