I know there is the Midwest Classic and the Portland Retro Expo (the bigg'un), but has anyone considered an East Coast Tetris Classic? Perhaps an East Coast Classic could be a satellite competition for the Portland Championship - maybe 1st and 2nd in the East Coast gets you a seed in the Portland Championship? Is anyone interesting in putting one together?
At MAGfest you can setup an attendee-Run Tournament. Details here: http://magfest.org/gaming If somebody sets one up and pulls my arm I'll help out, but I would also like to compete.
Thanks for volunteering! January isn't much time though to get consoles and CRTs together. I was thinking more along a March/April time frame. How much interest do you guys think there would be for an East Coast tourney? I know that the Tetris players in the US are heavily weighed to the West Coast, but I would expect at least New York would have a good field of Tetris players.
I think the number of players and the size of the prizes (or lack thereof) can really only support one big tourney a year where all the major players are willing to go. Speaking only for myself, I probably wouldn't fly to more than one a year, so long as money and vacation time at work are issues. But I'm certainly supportive of the *idea* of more tetris tournaments. I don't think the results of one should affect the results of another though - fresh starts each time.
Right Chad, I'm with you. My thought is not that people would fly out - rather that relative locals could drive to the D.C. area for what would definitely be a smaller tournament. I'm thinking along the lines of Evo - how they do their local tournaments that lead up to the "big" tournament in Vegas. Not to discourage people from flying out of course, but the prizes would be smaller intentionally to make it a more intimate venue.
IMHO I think this needs to be part of a larger game show. ie MAGFest, Louisville, PAX, etc. Not many folks will show up, especially if the money payout is low. Who knows you might find another one button mad flipper or left sided well-er at one of these shows. lol
This is a great idea Don. mikewiz makes a good point with attaching this to a larger show, at least as far as advertisement. Not being familiar with gaming shows in the east, we would have to do a little research to formulate something. I can start networking to find others who might be interested in this area. Just today a friend of mine told me she used to play NES Tetris alot and her higher scores were 300K plus. Hopefully BDCrowe has some input as he is not terribly far away. Even if it gets put together as "friendly competition", I would be willing to make the trip somewhere.
Mike: I used to be a one-button player. True story. I remember hitting the other button on accident one day and going "WTF?!" Jason and Mike: Agreed - attaching it to a larger event definitely makes sense. MAGFest would work, but time is just too short to get it together (this year at least). If anyone knows of any other East Coast events we could hook it to, post 'em up. I'd have to find a place to store CRT's - if I put them in the house my wife is likely to kill me.
If you have an event at Magfest, I'll attend. I'll even help out. If your goal is to raise interest, just find a way to get a TGM3 cabinet out there. The incredible challenge and hardcore styling would interest a lot of people in that crowd.
