So over New Year me and my friends got drunk and talked about video games began reminiscing over the old classics we knew and loved. I floated the idea of a small-scale tournament (plus beer and pizza) in the name of fun and good times at someone’s house. This was keenly received.
So thinking about it, what would you be your best way of doing this? What games, and what winning conditions?
I’ve had a few ideas:
Tetris: fastest time to 50 lines, with gold, silver and bronze
Super Mario Bros: fastest to 100 coins
Street Fighter II (what version?) - elimination tournament
Super Mario Kart (what version?) - battle mode elimination
Goldeneye 007 elimination
Bomberman (what version?) elimination
Obviously pretty basic in concept; but have you guys come across any novel ideas? What games would rock for tournaments and how would they be played?
Doom (or any classic shooter really) is well suited to this kinda thing. Fastest time to beat one of the larger levels. E1M5 or E2M4 might suit, turn the difficulty up to Ultra-Violence, and if you want to make it more interesting play it on a computer with the classic control scheme so they have to fight decades of muscle memory.
Screw Madden Tournaments, hold an Atari 2600 “football” tournament! Nothing like a 3 man team that moves in unison with interlaced graphics to get your blood pumping for some pigskin excitement!
I’ve thought about this a lot, and the best way to do it:
2 or 4 computers, probably desktops would be easier than laptops, as you want the old school 9 pin joysticks so you need some old school sound cards that still have that port.
Kaillera for each computer, with one acting as a local host (you might need an odd number of computers for this, as the host computer might not be able to play.)
With each pair of playable computers, two people can go head to head on any number of old games, like joust, WWF smackdown, Mario Brothers, TMNT, Street Fighter, etc.
Then, just have a typical playoff bracket format. I would say top score in 10 minutes or beating the other person.
And then, just for the coolness factor, everybody brings a computer in a briefcase and then assemble them at somebody’s house like Voltron.
Curious as to the need for this; Since all of these titles are either designed for local (aka “same PC”) multiplayer or are not actually multiplayer at all except on the “compete for score” level, why not play them as they were meant to be played, with two players at the same screen?
No, read what I wrote again. What I want to know is why you would WANT this if, as the OP suggests, this is a small scale “event” at someone’s house (or even if it weren’t.). I’m not asking “can you do this?” I’m asking “Why would you want to?”
The solution you propose gives everyone their own monitor, and I don’t understand why you would want to do that. These games were designed to played on one screen. Everyone is already in the same house/building/location. Why would you want to add this extra layer of space consuming complication?
