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Photos for this event: http://lansmash.com/v/album/2009/OzHadou2009/

Youtube clips here: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=80389EA68EEB356A

I’m not much of a fighting game competitor. Truth be told I’m terrible at fighting games, but I love them so, so much. With our new partnership with OzHadou and the introduction of competitive fighting tournaments such as Street Fighter 4 at our events I thought it would be a good chance to meet up face to face with our mates in Sydney!

Meeting up with Slapper Joe in Sydney CBD early Saturday morning we took a Bus to the University where OHN8 was held. A bunch of consoles were setup with screen for gamers to play throughout Saturday, and were free to play any game they wished. I’d have to say 80% of the machines were running Street Fighter 4 though, all practising for the Sunday tournament.

It was great to meet up with the organisers that make these events possible and to chat with them about the same issues and woes we’ve faced up in Brisbane in LanSmash. So many friendly and awesome people in Sydney.

I was toting the LS Capture box to capture HD footage at the event to try and capture some gameplay. It mostly survived the trip via Qantas baggage handlers, and was back in action after some strategically used gaffer tape. The OHN8 venue is a converted Uni food court and was quite spacious for the guestimated 120-150 gamers rock up. Luckily, I scavenged a trolly and with a bit more tape constructed the LS Mobile Capture Rig of Doom.

Saturday night I was giving the task to record the SF2:HDR finals as best I could. There was a minor issue arise that the PA system used to play to the audience was only in Mono, and only having one channel made it quite frustrating to watch. Luckily one of the organisers had a soldering iron handy, so I cut together a Stereo to Mono converter which held up long enough for the final 8 matches.

Such a long day on Saturday… Street Fighter 2 finished at around 23:30 and the the Tekken6 1v1 finals went on to around 1AM. Exhausting because there was SF4 finals to be run on Sunday!

The national aspect of this event was awesome, with gamers representing their states and proud of the rivalry. Of course being in Sydney there was quite a bit of heckling against non-NSW players. It was great to see though, very entertaining to watch.

From Queensland I saw quite a few familiar faces that come to the LS events. Haichii, Colin, Kumar, Tom, Tyrone, Vlad, and Murete were all representing their state.

Unfortunately for QLD we were only able to have one of us make it in the Top Eight for the Street Fighter 4 finals which was Kumar. He fought hard against HumanBomb but was knocked out (youtube video here). I have no doubt though with more training and more players here in Brisbane we’ll be able to do better in future national events.

No doubt that Melbourne has definitely one of the most competitive scenes in Australia. With regular events such as Couch Warrior’s run in VIC we’re seeing quite a few players with high skills learning from each other.

I had to catch a flight at 9PM on Sunday so I missed out on the SF4 finals. It was between HumanBomb (Sydney) and ToXY (Melbourne); both highly skilled and respected players. Check out this Youtube clip of their finals match.

Ultimately it was HumanBomb who seized victory. Overall I’d have to say it was a victory for Victoria though as they claimed 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place in the SF4 top 8.   

Thanks to OzHadou for letting us in to capture this event!