Tournament games

[celerystalker]

I'm holding a video game tournament for some friends in a little over a week, and could use some ideas. There will be one player games set up throughout my house for high score, and team games for which I will be holding tournaments for 2 on 2 play. The top 4 scores/teams in each games will get points Mario Kart-style (7, 5, 3, and 1, respectively), which will be used to seed the team and overall finals, which will be bracketed tournaments. Winner gets a Wonderswan w/Buffer's Evolution, second gets a copy of Tengai Makyou: Kabuki-den for PC Engine, best team gets an Earth Defense Force 2 PSP 2 player double pack, worst player gets a copy of Math Gran Prix for Atari 2600, and the overall winner will play me at the game of my choice for a shot at winning a copy of Makaimura for Wonderswan as a bonus prize. Also, the player that is arbitrarily the most awesome in skill, shit-talk, and otherwise being amusing, will get a secret prize, the Shaquille O'Neal award of dominance, which is a copy of Shaq Fu for Genesis, a copy of the CD Shaq Fu: Da Return, and a sealed in package vintage Shaq Attaq action figure worth upwards of $3.

I have some ideas, but was hoping to get some suggestion for good 2 on 2 games and high score challenges. I have a couple of thousand games and some arcade cabinets, so if anyone has any cool ideas, I'd love to hear them, as I've been wanting to do something like this for years, and hope to make it a yearly event.

Games I currently plan on including:

Single player high score:
Time Soldiers (arcade)
Popeye (arcade)
Centipede (arcade)
Metal Slug (arcade)
Sega Rally (Saturn)
Border Down (Dreamcast)
Black Tiger (Xbox)

Team 2 on 2:
Super Spike V'ball (NES)
Warlords (Atari 2600)
World Champion Dodgeballer (PS2)

I hope to add 5-6 more one player games and 3 or 4 more team games, then some good one on one stuff for the finals. I'd like to represent a lot of different systems and types of games, and preferrably not the completely obvious like Street Fighter, as it would be too biased toward a couple of well-practiced friends. I also just ordered a WWF Wrestlefest PCB to put in my Sunset Riders 4-player cabinet for 2 on 2 tag team play. Any ideas/suggestions/whatever would be awesome!

[Tron 2.0]

Saturn bomberman it can be hectic when it's a 10 player vs match.

[Nebagram]

Micro Machines 2/96 for the Mega Drive (not 100% sure whether or not they're Genesis-compatible) are always hilarious fun, as is V3 on the Playstation, but MM2 & 96 have the added advantage of being J-carts so you can plug the controllers directly into the cartridge. I'll second Saturn Bomberman any day of the week. For sheer fun, Sensible World of Soccer is one of the greatest multiplayer sports games of all time, and despite being strictly turn-based, any Worms games would also make for fun team events, with Worms Armageddon probably being the best of the bunch.

[bb_hood]

Instead of Centipede, do Millipede. Much better game, and make sure you have a trackball. Its worth it.

Also you need at least one pinball game. Devils Crush or Digital Pinball Necronomicon would be 2 good choices.

[celerystalker]

I like the idea of team Worms. I'll probably use Worms: Armageddon for Dreamcast, as I think I have all of the weapon sets unlocked on that version. I like the idea of a pinball game... I'll probably go with Alien Crush, Ruiner, or Galactic Pinball. Thanks for that idea! On the Micro Machines for Mega Drive, is that a Euro exclusive? I have a Japanese Mega Drive/CD/32X setup if it's available there. I'll be sticking with Centipede over Millipede, though, as I like it better, and I have a cabaret cabinet for it. I have cabinets for Centipede, Popeye, a Neo Geo that I'll use for Metal Slug, Time Soldiers, and I'm converting my Sunset Riders to WWF Wrestlefest for this for 4 player tag team action. I could feasibly do other arcade games, but they'd probably need to be jamma for a quick conversion and affordable pcbs.

Bomberman could be good for team setup. I've set it up in the past at parties, but it always seems like Warlords takes over. It'd be a good excuse to get out my Saturn Bimberman head multi-tap that is all-too neglected.

Thanks for the ideas, and by all means, keep them coming!

[bb_hood]

You should have Duck Hunt for sure. You need a gun game somewhere in there.


It'd be a good excuse to get out my Saturn Bimberman

Never heard of it..

You could also do 4-player Gauntlet and see who lasts the longest.

There is also Mario Party, which alot of people like.

[celerystalker]

You should have Duck Hunt for sure. You need a gun game somewhere in there.



Never heard of it..

You could also do 4-player Gauntlet and see who lasts the longest.

There is also Mario Party, which alot of people like.

Ha! That's what I get for always using my phone for posts. Bomberman.

I do like the suggestion of a gun game. I'll probably do a Sega gun game, as I favor those... Maybe Virtua Cop 2 on Saturn or Gangster Town on Master System. I'd love to do one player, two gun mode on Scud, but it doesn't track score... Confidential Mission might be good, too.

I plan on staying to games that can be played fairly quickly until the finals so I can get through a lot of mini tournaments for team games and a fighter tournament with fighting games drawn at random, as I have a
over a hundred, and it'll keep the Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat guys from having an advantage.

[Steven]

Can't go wrong with NBA Jam (TE), Looney Tunes B-Ball or Saturday Night Slam Masters!

[drunk3nj3sus]

Sports Games; Tecmo Super Bowl, NBA Jam TE, Nintendo World Cup, NFL Blitz are all pretty good for quick play with no real learning curve. Instead of doing random fighting games the Smackdown games on the ps1 or the first 2 for the ps2 would be good combat based games that don't require combo or move memorization wrestlefest is obviously a great game but the early smackdown games are a bit more fast paced and "arcadey" if that makes any sense. 3D World Runner for the NES would be a pretty good for a single player high score contest.

[MachineGex]

Micro Machines 2/96 for the Mega Drive (not 100% sure whether or not they're Genesis-compatible) are always hilarious fun, as is V3 on the Playstation, but MM2 & 96 have the added advantage of being J-carts so you can plug the controllers directly into the cartridge.


Second this! MicroMachines is a great party game!

[celerystalker]

3D World Runner could be a funny one. I won't be doing Smackdown, as I already bought a WWF Wrestlefest PCB for 2 on 2 wrestling, and I may include Slam Masters and Fire Suplex in with the fighters. I just have so many good fighters on Neo Geo, Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2, etc. that a random round seems like a good way to get a lot of games involved and keep the players on their toes. Most of the guys only know Art of Fighting and World Heroes as mediocre to crappy SNES games, so my hope is that playing them on original hardware might rekindle some old-school interest and rivalries.

NBA Jam is a good possibility. I do love that game. My only fear is that it may severely favor one player in particular who plays it with me somewhat tegularly on SNES. Maybe if I make it TE on Jaguar it'll throw it off enough to be competitive. I think NFL Xtreme may get a nod over Blitz. Less players, weirder plays, dumber taunts. Thanks for those suggestions. They'll probably be the only sports games unless I put in some Kunio or as a final game against me I may use Super Baseball 2020 on Neo Geo, as I'll be a tough game in that.

Any ideas for unconventional rhythm games with odd play styles? I'd like a good rhythm game for variety like maybe Um Jammer Lammy, but the stranger the better, as my brother is a drummer professionally and can do stuff like 2 player Taiko Drum Master by himself, so I'll only put one in if there's at least a chance somebody could beat him.

[Nebagram]

Any ideas for unconventional rhythm games with odd play styles? I'd like a good rhythm game for variety like maybe Um Jammer Lammy, but the stranger the better, as my brother is a drummer professionally and can do stuff like 2 player Taiko Drum Master by himself, so I'll only put one in if there's at least a chance somebody could beat him.

Samba De Amigo springs immediately to mind here, though it has a fair disadvantage as a) the Dreamcast version is really expensive to acquire, and b) the Wii version is crap.

[Gentlegamer]

You wouldn't happen to be a reader of videogamecritic.com?

The tournament you're running sounds almost exactly like Video Game Mania: http://videogamecritic.com/extras/vgm/vgm9/vgm9_home.htm

[celerystalker]

Nope, but now that I see it, I'm starting to read through those recaps for ideas. Thanks!

I've been wanting to something like this for probably at least 10 years now, but I didn't have a big enough house to get everything out, displayed, etc. until about 3 years ago, when thanks to advancement at work I was able to let my wife scale back to working part time and buy a large home with 5 bedrooms so that she could have a lot of common area to decorate and convert a bedroom to an office, and I could take over the finished basement to finally get all my dork stuff out of totes and onto shelves, and get some arcade cabinets like I'd wanted to since I was a kid.

It actually started out for me as a play on the King of Fighters tournament in Fatal Fury, where I was going to send invitations to participants and play all fighting games, but has slowly evolved as I've thought about it over the years and had trouble scheduling it. This year, I decided to plan out a date during the summer a couple of months early so my friends could plan ahead to be off of work (one in particular is an executive chef and has to work a lot of events and weekends, so he's the toughest to get) and plan for their kids, because now we all have families.

[celerystalker]

Any last suggestions? Tournament starts tomorrow. The Wrestlefest board is having a control issue, so it's out unfortunately, but I did get a good friend to bring in his copy of Windjammers for the MVS cabinet, so that'll be freaking awesome. Micro Machines has yet to arrive from the UK, so I've got Moto Roader on standby. Definitely doing some Twinkle Star Sprites, NBA Jam, and Super Spike V'ball. And Warlords.

Definitely using my cabinets for Time Soldiers, Centipede, Popeye, and Metal Slug. Was planning on Wrestlefest in my Sunset Riders, but I'll just leave that one as Sunset Riders and not use it, as score doesn't reset after continues. Black Tiger on Xbox (Capcom Classics vol. 2), Virtua Cop 2 on Saturn, Final Soldier on PCE, Um Jammer Lammy on PS1, and Cosmic Smash on DC are all in, as well as 1 on 1 fighter roulette. Oh, and Saturn Bomberman.

Thinking maybe Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for 2 on 2, and maybe a really weird tennis game like Davis Cup on Turbografx. Any really awesome or underappreciated games to expose everyone to in the head to head rounds? I'm thinking maybe something like Sugoi Hebereke or Firestriker might be fun, but I'd love to hear some ideas, as sometimes I overlook good ideas, having been so heavy into imports the last 15 years. Any thoughts? Starts at noon tomorrow.

[Nebagram]

California Games, maybe? Also, the mini-games from Monkey Ball are always hilarious fun.