2upGamers appeared to do things in twos this time around, or at least in multipliers of that amount.
It was the second event to be held at Trinity, but the day of the event was changes to the second Friday of the month. It then doubled the number of tournaments on offer. On the reverse it halved the number of speakers (if you exclude the always present Des Kurz from Mweb Gamezone), while more than quadrupling the celebrity count in the building. There was also twice as many PC vendors (well, two more than the zero from last month) in the venue. It also felt like there were twice as many monitors and consoles. Even the regular FIFA 13 tournament saw a doubling of entrants. We’re also pretty sure that the number of ladies in the building were double that of last month.
The event also marked an entry fee price drop and the introduction of “on demand” food rather than the regular pizza. All in all, it was a case of experimentation and expansion of an already well tested concept. In general, it appeared as if most of the changes were well received, even with a few issues creeping in here and there.
The entry fee was changed from the R80 of the past to R60 for the gentlemen and R50 for the ladies. The difference being that the food was no longer included, but rather available for purchase from food vendor Smiley’s. For R30, they offered a chicken prego roll or vegetarian meal, while R35 scored you a steak prego roll. Some feedback indicated that the wait for food was a little long, and that the vendor ran out of food earlier than expected.
This may have been down to the sheer numbers of attendees at the event. There were a total of 152 people in attendance, giving the venue and event a fantastic vibe, and conceivably setting an attendance record.
Prior to the assault on the food, the guest speakers climbed on stage to introduce themselves. Aamina and Zaid from Genshiken.UCT Anime Society were up first. The society – which was founded in 2006 – brings anime and gaming to the UCT students and have a number of events planned at the tertiary body’s premises this year. In July Organised Chaos will be hosting a LAN in conjunction with the society, while the big one will be UCON in August, which will be a gaming and anime convention.
EMA Technologies were up next. Or at least their spokesperson for the night was – Russell Fox- Magician Insane. Before he thrilled and entertained the crowd with some magic and humour, he did introduce EMA as a company who are just starting up but will be stocking a wide range of IT gaming equipment and more. They had some of the goods they stock on display for people to ogle and covet.
While TakeALot were meant to be there as speakers, they couldn’t make it, but did ensure there was goodies on hand to hand out.
The team that went to Los Angeles around a week ago were in attendance, and Glenn Alexander introduced the players to the crowd. Respect to Team XtaZ who went from a one million dollar tournament in the US to a community event in their own backyard.
The EFL – currently planned as an invite beta event, which will see an entire English Premier League season played virtually in one day – held its draw to allocate teams to players. Obviously, the luck of the draw meant for every Manchester United, there was a player who would draw a Reading. The league will run this Saturday (20 April) at ‘Lounge Relax Play’ in Canal Walk, and spectators are most definitely welcome.
Then it was give-away, competition and tournament time. Or eating, drinking and socialising time, if that is more your thing.
Mweb Gamezone played host to the ‘Celeb Challenge’ which featured – you guessed it – celebs challenging each other. It wasn’t restricted to celebs only, but to all the attendees of the event. Up for grabs was an advanced driving course for the celeb and attendee who set the fastest (clean) lap time in Forza 4 on the Top Gear track. The ladies from Good Hope FM – Geri Olwagen, TammyB, DJ Mixi and Ayanda – battled it out with Tammy B grabbing the winner’s podium. Joining Ms. B on the advanced driving course was Joey who set a blistering 1:18 time on his lap. Along with the ‘Celeb Challenge’, Mweb also displayed some of their Roccat products that are now available via their retail stores, with discount available for Mweb subscribers.
Cape Town Showdown were in the house, and operated both a Street Fighter and Tekken Tag tournament. Up for grabs in the Street Fighter tournament was a Mad Catz sponsored fightstick, which had the 18 competitors beating each other to within an inch of their (virtual) life. In the end, Sanib took the blows and emerged victorious to claim his prize. In the Tekken Tag tournament, 32 players went at it and it was regular Tekken Tag winner Di Lhong that walked away the winner.
eGamer were once again the hosts of the recently renamed ‘2up Cup’ which featured 32 FIFA 13 players playing their hearts out for a cash first prize of R1500. The games were intense and at times tight affairs (as should be expected with a prize value like that). In the end, the four semi-finalists were Morné who played Conray, and Nick who faced Mubeen. Mubeen and Morné ended up contesting the final, and in the end, it was Mubeen who triumphed 4-2.
Meanwhile, over at what has been dubbed the ‘Zombie Zone’, 18 two-man teams were doing battle in a Black Ops 2 Search and Destroy tournament. A number of the well known competitive clans in the SA gaming scene were in attendance, including XtaZ, Adios La Vida, F34R and Hi5. Played as a single elimination tournament, teams had to bring their ‘A’ game from the beginning or spend the rest of the night watching others play. The big names didn’t disappoint in the early rounds (played on one map). When the round of eight kicked off on ‘Slums’ the match featuring F34R’s CS1977 and SW4RLEY and Hi5’s HoldenZA and Google was the game to watch.
In the end Hi5 grabbed the match 6-3 and joined ALV’s team in the semi-final. The other semi-final saw XtaZ’s Eos and Radical face off against LeVeLzZ (from War Veterans) and Itz_eRa. The semi-finals were decided over a best of three maps scenario (Raid, Standoff and Hijacked). XtaZ took their semi-final 6-5 and 6-1, and were joined by ALV (who took their game 6-3 and 6-5) for a face-off of two players who a week before had been team mates in Los Angeles (ALV’s Hazzards had joined XtaZ due to age restriction requirements).
The final (which to be fair, got off rather late) started on the map Meltdown (which was the map featured as the decider in the Call of Duty Championship). Almost identical to the finals in LA, the map went 6-5, with XtaZ taking the lead in an entertaining display of competitive gaming. The next map was Slums, which ALV grabbed with an impressive 6-1 win. The decider was on Hijacked – a map not generally used for SnD – and proved to be another tight game, bouncing to and fro between the two teams. In the end, XtaZ held their nerve and grabbed the final round and the map to take the winner’s medals and vouchers up for grabs.
With the clock striking 2am, the April 2upGamers drew to its close and a number of slightly exhausted crew members started to pack up, while discussing the improvements that can be made for next month. We would suggest you get ready…
A few personal thanks. Thank you to all the teams and players that joined in and played in the Black Ops 2 LAN. Without your support, we can’t grow and convince sponsors to put up prizes for tournaments. Thanks to all the attendees that support the 2upGamers events, and a thank you to Glenn Alexander for planning and pushing the event forward every month. Thanks to all the other partners, sponsors and supporters. A very special thanks to my wife who has now become our official photographer (not by her choice either… 🙂) and part of the crew which puts together and breaks down equipment – making her more of a gamer than many gamers I know…
For more pictures of the event, please visit our Facebook Album.
**UPDATE**
The times from the MWEB ‘Celeb Challenge’ which saw 57 unique entries on the night.
Celebs:
TammyB – 1:29:420
Geri – 1:29:610
Ayanda – 1:39:113
Amie – 1:41:515
Mixi – 1:56:418
Public: (Top 5)
Joey – 1:18:700
Shaun – 1:20:160
Chad – 1:20:762
Clint – 1:21:149
Caleb – 1:24:602
