I was back at it again in Syracuse with admittedly a low turnout and a poor performance in battling in Pokémon Emerald Double Battles. I would like to go over the event there in order to focus on lessons learned + a small bonus.
To start off, I first was able to get ahold of the staff within the RGC discord nearly as soon as it went up. I made the case that not having any Pokémon stuff seemed a bit strange and it would be cool if the opportunity came up to do a meetup for what I would consider a “retro” generation. I decided on generation 3 because it was somewhat at a perfect intersection of having enough features, not being new enough to support online play in any capacity, and had a stable enough metagame to reasonably host that. I would also have the equipment needed as both me and a friend had ways to launch XD Gale of Darkness and link cables for battles.
The actual pitch for the event went off with a fair amount of success as I could not have imagined that they’d upgrade both me and my friend Zack as staff. For that, I was very grateful and I tried to assist people where I could during the course of the entire convention. Unfortunately, it’s not as if I was privy to any meetings or anything of the sort on what things were happening where. I don’t think anyone from the convention (or, well, anyone for that matter) will actually take the time to read this, but for those who I guided to random shit without actually knowing, my apologies. Genuinely was not my government; mine was merely the one table setup that was allocated for me outside of the freeplay zone.
Moving onto the actual event itself since we technically were only scheduled for 2 days, the turnout as I had mentioned was fairly low. We had a couple of people say that if they had known that something like this was happening, that they’d have brought their GBAs. I was able to trade someone the entirety of the Johto starters I met in the 3DScord, so that ended up working out nicely. A lot of people also showed up to get gen 4 and 5 events from the “DS Jail” that I so proudly marked.
Nothing to the effect of a large tournament, however. I incorrectly also misunderstood the meta when saying that this was happening in the Orre Colosseum discord because I thought that Orre Colosseum was played at level 50. For the event program, I was sure to include that everyone battling should have their Pokémon at level 50, but unfortunately someone showed up with all level 100s. Which brings me to my first finding…
Lesson 1: Next time, have live injections via laptops w/ PkHex in the event things need to be edited on the fly.
I’m not TPCi. I’m not handing out bans left and right for Pokémon that don’t pass checksums or that do have null HOME IDs. The only reason I tend to not inject is because I believe it ruins the spirit of the game, but something else I have learned especially after having a full time job for so long in addition to other responsibilities (let’s be real, this is mostly just other games I play) is that many people simply do not have the time to play at a competitive level as well as train their own Pokémon, especially in the older generations. It’s one thing to have casual/semi-serious battles amongst friends but it’s another thing to travel hours to a location and commit that much if you are running an imperfect team.
Lesson 2: Being next to the open bar is a double edged sword.
Maybe this is a more personal issue? AlcoholWood came out a bit. Look, there was something who I think was there that I hadn’t seen in like, 7 years who I still have feelings for I guess, so much so that there’s some messed up dependency I was working on in my mind where when the going got really tough during my professional education during COVID, my mind would immediately go to in order to power through. It’s genuinely unhealthy. I don’t really think anyone’s gonna read this but if they do, they have the executive right to message me and say “you absolute buffoon, you joke of a human being” and they’d be right, because in my mind Hank Thompson was on loop and it was 100% beer o’clock from any source findable (on tap, in the can, in the bottle, that whole thing). So I said that any time I’d lose, in a meta that I have not practiced whatsoever and would have a stat disadvantage, that I would get a beer.
This dissolved quickly after 2 in rapid succession, as I had a extremely small 8:00 AM hotel breakfast and was running off of two hours of sleep from being mostly awake the night before thinking about said person. I was not going to spend the rest of the day sick in the public bathroom, I instead hopped onto a StepMania setup to sober up and to make more of a jackass of myself.
Actually, not even joking, apparently the CF pro pads I own at home have been paying off because I played on the harder difficulties and people even clapped occasionally after my songs.
Actual Lesson 2: Plan earlier.
This one seems fairly simple but I feel as if I had planned sooner, I would have probably had a better turnout. I originally heard about this event all the way back in May from my favorite game store owner, so there was no reason to tell people in September that this was happening. I think I got empowered to really go to this after Long Island Retro Game Expo in August (oh yeah, I went to that too) so in the future I think it’s just worthwhile to be consistent and announce it early enough to where if people want, they can participate and prep for it too.
Lesson 3: Have enough setups.
This was actually something I was prepared for as we had two setups run during the entire weekend, although with as many people turning out as they did we actually didn’t need to use them. This devolved into us basically just being a GameCube freeplay station most of the time. A lot of kids came up to our stations to play XD Gale of Darkness in the Battle Mode only for them to ask how you catch Pokémon in this game. That sort of killed me on the inside, but I wasn’t going to just turn them away or anything like that. Also with two setups since one was free, I was able to both play and finally beat F-Zero GX on Master Difficulty.
That was wild because of all places, it happened there. I was so pumped that nothing else mattered for the next few days. Eventually the high wore off and I went back to testing my patience and sanity in phone calls at work. I believe they call that post-con depression, but I’m actually more angry than anything else. That may be only partially related and a separate blog post, or even better some therapy.
Lesson 4: Learn the meta if I want to continue this.
I owe it to both GrandmasCookin and MosquitoVGC to actually know the intricacies of gen 3 double battles so that if they travel again and it is the three of us, I can actually put up a fight. I lost so bad for forgetting/not knowing various things and generally being predictable to the point of being read more than when a road has a funny name and corresponding sign. Truth be told, there’s only a handful of metas I am good at outside of being generally a decent player. But regardless, I should be an actual contender if I want to host events like this if only to be able to entertain the people that do show up.
Bonus: Oh yeah AT was there, too.
I want to thank everyone who came out and especially thank Zack for putting up with the event for three days, holding down the fort while I occasionally went off to play other games, as well as driving. My vehicle right now is basically rust on wheels and needs to be replaced this spring. I still have one more winter to drift around in it, slip zone style. Still haven’t learned how to momentum turbo slide IRL.
Jeez, watch it be the death of me somehow in the next few months and this be some sort of messed up foreboding post.
To AT- dude if you are reading this, thank you for being a real one and helping me through what otherwise was a really awkward spot during the convention.
Sucks we couldn’t see that comet, oh well.
Thanks for making it this far; I am not doing too well but I am hanging in there and trying to be more honest with myself for better or worse. My friend and LAN LORDS teammate JoSka told me talk is cheap, so I’ll leave it at that and continue on.