GSA Overview 3

GSA Overview 3

I’m back! This time 2 days, I wont be able to catch up before the end of the season, but so be it. It’s fun to write and I got to start somewhere, right? For the record I’m going with the same formula as last time, it was the easiest to handle and organise in terms of notes. I got some positive feedback, so I guess people are interested.

February 25^th

First match of the day, Celeste Any%. No. 1 in the league Fladervy vs Psyched_SR. Because of Smash.gg I can’t see clearly what position Psyched was in at the time, I apologize for this. Under the commentary of Troyofathens, Fladervy took the first game with a 28:41. Psyched landed a time of 30:03. The next game ended with Fladervy nailing a 28:44, against Psyched’s 30:34. The win was already Fladervy’s at this point. In Fladervy's area there was a heavy storm raging, therefore he asked Psyched if the last game could be rescheduled. Psyched agreed, the last game was postponed. To the best of my knowledge the last game did not yet take place, but I could very well be mistaken.

The second race of that day was in the Sponge Bob: Battle for Bikini Bottom Any% league. Organised by WR holder SHIFT, the league was set-up to raise awareness for the game and give the community a tournament with a prize pool. The prize pool was roughly 725 US dollars, which is a big prize pool in any speed game. The race was between TowerTV_ vs RingoTongo, battling in the losers bracket. CurtisJK and Jared commentated the match insightfully, when TowerTV took the win after 59 minutes and 23 seconds. Ringo’s internet went out in the last minute of gameplay, when the timer was about to hit 1:04:XX. I would recommend watching some of these matches if you’re new to the game, it’s a very entertaining run.

The third match of the day saw Rockchalk19 battle LiamKings in the first division of the 70 Star league. Rockchalk took the win with a 52:38. Funnily enough Rockchalk thought the match was over when entering BitS, and was surprised Liamkings had had even more unfortunate luck throughout the match. The latter clocked in a minute and 3 second behind Rockchalk. Therefore Rockchalk was awarded 40 points for the win and an additional 7 points for the time difference. Liamkings brought home just 13 points.

The fourth event of the day was the premiering GSA show ‘The Rundown’, hosted by ALTInsider and Cheese. I have yet to watch these episodes, so I can’t make a verdict yet on it’s quality. However I am positive the show’s hosts are able to carry such a program easily, with production quality being steady and professional. That said it was on to the last race of the day.

Liamkings returned to action in the last race, seeking redemption over his previous loss, this time he raced V1RO. Sadly Liamkings had to bite the dust once again as V1RO took the win in 49:47, which is an amazing time for a race. Liamkings finished in 51:43, a time that would have won him his previous race. The time difference awarded V1RO an additional 12 points, on top of his 40 points. Liamkings was awarded 8 points, not enough to elevate him out of the danger zone in the division.

February 26^th

The day started off with Super Mario Odyssey, a game that hadn’t been raced the day before it. Former WR holder Nicroveda took on Stravos96. Before I go into the results, I would recommend watching this match, the commentary is amazing and the hype is enormous. With sub one hour still on Nicroveda’s mind and his undefeated streak on the line, the tension was high. Stravos on the other side had only lost one match, against LilKirbs, this meant he had a good chance of overtaking Nicroveda in the brackets if he could topple him in the race. They were nearly tied to the second through the first kingdom. Sand came along and Nicro won 15 seconds on Stravos. By the time Nicro entered metro kingdom Stravos was behind 50 second. The match ended with Nicro maintaining this lead, only letting 20 seconds slip. Nicro’s time was 1:01:16, Stravos’ was 1:01:45. Less than 30 seconds difference meant that Stravos still got 17 points. Nicro stayed in second place, still followed by Stravos, however the gap had been widened through this match.

After this another new league debuted, Diddy Kong Racing Time Trials. This league is set-up likes this (shout-out to Milo for helping me with this): 16 contestants start out in 4 pools of 4 people. Three games are played per person, the top 2 continue to the single elimination brackets. The race was between Peegstheprez vs Bandow2000, commentated by Tridenttail and Prakcity. Personally I haven’t watched a single race yet, which should be punishable by law for someone who grew up with this game. This first match was decisively won by Bandow2000 with a final score of 10-3. That landed him at the top of his block, but no other games had been played, so there’s little significance. Still the order in which Bandow won was pretty defying. We’ll see where this goes as time progresses.

After this was ‘the battle of the underscores’ as it was dubbed by Limcube, who was joined by Ganonslayer for a match in the Super Mario Odyssey Any% league between Fir_ vs Equan_. Both contestants were in the middle positions in the standings, regardless the match was still pretty hype as former WR holder Equan and Fir were quite evenly matched. Fir took the win with a 1:02:32, Equan finished his disastrous run with a 1:07:02 which awarded him only 1 point due to the time difference. Sadly Equan set the record for worst time so far in the Odyssey league, a title nobody really deserves on this level, but regardless has to be awarded to someone.

Immediately after we take a trip in time and visit a 20 year younger Mario in Super Mario 64 70 Star Division 2. The matchup between BroMario and Pete was one that could pull either men out of the danger zone on the bottom of the rankings. BroMario had achieved his first win in the league over Gainai a month and 8 days earlier and was in need of more points in order to leave the danger zone. Pete had won the week before this over Cartoonbuffoon and won another week before that over Xein64. We can’t be sure if it was skill, luck or the momentum carrying Pete in this run, but he did it. He played consistently and composed for 53 minutes and 51 seconds before grabbing the last star. BroMario’s console died in a unfortunate series of events when entering the bowser fight on BitFS, and continued in a debug mode with his Gameshark to play the upstairs part of the run. The commentators brilliantly called out this move by saying: ‘It’s very unfortunate, unfortunate error and a player with a lesser mentality would be inclined to log off’. JKJ and Badroenis, props to you two, you carried that masterfully and very professionally.

The match after this would not yet leave this time period as we stay at Super Mario 64 for a 16 star match between Rochchalk and Anti_. Anti won the first game with a 17:26. Rockchalk finished his run roughly a minute later with a 18:42. The second run was won by Anti in 16:48, when Rockchalk died on BitS and didn’t bother to continue a run he had already lost at that point because Anti had already finished. The last game was awarded at 13:13 to Anti, not because this was his time but because the win was Anti’s from DDD clip onwards, which Rockchalk tried to perform because Anti was already in DDD with 15 stars. 3-0 for Anti, 4 points awarded. Not enough to topple Binny, as he has yet to play 1 more game at the time of writing and is 1 point ahead of Anti.

Finally Mario could take a break, for just an hour, or so he thought, from his castle to his kart, the Mario Kart Time Trials were up next. Riqbic raced against OuterHalo1, as he tried to stay in 9^th place to be assured of a spot in the league next season. The first 10 games were OuterHalo’s before Riqbiq won his first by 0.5 seconds. The last two games were once again OuterHalo’s. With 2 games to play and 7 wins already under his belt, Halo might be aiming for 3^rd place this season and even higher in the post season.

The hour was over and Mario returned to his quest. The match for the #1 spot, WR holder vs. former WR holder, and the battle for Puncayshun’s undefeated streak was here to finish off the night. Cheese and Puncayshun went head to head, finishing with a 49:16 and a 49:32 respectively. Cheese broke the streak and earned 2 points, on top of his 40 point win. However this was not enough to throw Puncayshun off first place, as his lead had cemented him as #1, a spot he still holds with a 70+ point gap between him and #2 Dwhatever. This race was amazing and is definitely worth your time, JKJ and Badroenis are on commentary during it so enough insight in the race for newcomers as well.