EPTI remember flipping the channel and seeing Halo 2 on USA. Of course I'd known about Halo but my only real experience was watching some friends play. I think it was 2006 or 2007, where the top tier of Halo was Carbon and Final Boss. I'd pick a side, listen to Chris Puckett teach me about the game, and cheer in my bed whenever Carbon would pick up a kill, or a flag, or a win. This was when Sundance, the CEO, would cast games with Puckett! And when he had hair...
I remember watching Halo 3 with some forum friends I played with. It was around 2008 at this point, and I still remember watching the classic Str8 Rippin lineup demolish everything. When 2009 came and I went to the Anaheim event, it was tD that was big.
The venue was so much different. The WoW area was this small section in the corner, and the Halo section had bleachers! There'd be a guy to tell us "CHEER NOW" and we'd all scream at the top of our lungs as the teams entered from this hallway in the middle of the bleachers.
The stream quality then was so much different. There was no fancy player, it was pretty simple I think, just pause, play, volume. Different pages on mlgpro with octoshape for each game. Man, back when Smash was on the circuit. They don't air the old spice commercials anymore, with it was the buff black guy (I forget his name!) that broke your monitor. :[.
Back in the day, as I mentioned, Sundance would cast, with hair, Halo 2.
Here's the 2007 Halo 2 Finals.
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I'm pretty sure this one's Sundance, with Puckett.
Note the smaller crowd than today, the bleachers. However, you have to notice that more importantly, the hype is the same. You still feel the same nerd chills running down your back when the players come in and are introduced.
Of course that was Halo 2, but the format was largely unchanged for Halo 3. Imagine, though, that with the addition of Starcraft 2 in the lineup, MLG changed from what you see in those videos to what you see on the stream right now as Machine sets up against Nestea. In barely over a year, MLG has gone from a mostly American tournament, where the major attraction was Halo, to an international tournament with the best players from Korea. In less then a year, MLG went from having a maybe a thousand people, maybe, come to their event (and I apologize if this is incorrect), to, how many was it at Anaheim? How many at Raleigh, or Orlando?
MLG is amazing.
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i was having nostalgia when i saw the mlg commercial that showed a simulated arena before the nestea/machine interview.... so good...
I watched like 40 minutes of that vid lol way to go =p
