I know most of you reading this have absolutely no idea who I am or why what I'm about to write is even worth reading.
I'm old, I'm a family man, but after reading that StarCraft Remastered was released, I felt something in the center of my chest, a NEED to tell this younger generation about what made the original StarCraft beautiful.
I was already irritated with the StarCraft II kids and that was .... what? Seven or eight years ago? I had no interest in StarCraft II, that 3D bullshit was threatening my Brood War. And I wasn't going to allow that to happen. I was the biggest Brood War nerd. Actually, I AM the biggest Brood War nerd currently alive on this planet. I stayed as far away from that shit as possible, it was destroying everything I grew to love, and I just ignored it. I pretended like it didn't exist. Some generous members of TeamLiquid even offered to provide me with some sort of "CD Key" (if that's even what it's still called anymore) for StarCraft II. I can't quite remember what started that, but it was a contest of some sort. I never accepted it. I just didn't want to look at anything other than my first love.
I even remember there was a (at the time) viral video of a girl tearing apart her boyfriend's StarCraft II package, including his CD key. This was serious shit to normal people at the time.
However, I'm not here to speak of StarCraft II, I'm here to speak of the legends of the original Brood War. Interest in this sport has SURGED after the release of StarCraft Remastered. For all of you youngsters reading, I'm going to give a list of what we used to call "The Four Kings". These men were the absolute, undeniable truth when it came to professionalism in this sport.
Lim Yo Hwan (SlayersS_`BoxeR`): He was the first to have sponsors flock to him. He was the first to demand contracts. He was the first to lay the foundation for the modern progaming team as we know it today. He paid money out of his own pocket to support this sport. Do you watch team events? He paid to kickstart the very first team league in 2003. If you need to ask about his professional performance, then all I have to tell you is that he was called "The Terran Emperor" for a reason. However, since I know you new kids will criticize him, I will say this: He didn't have what we used to call the "Sense of Star" (a term coined by former progamer King Dong Soo aka GARIMTO). He was terrible at macro-managment, but the most amazing at micro-managment. But this only proves that he did not have warm blood flowing through his veins. It wasn't blood at all. It was IRON. Though he had no natural instinct or a predispositioned mind for this sport, he earned everything he achieved through raw, rough, distressing practice. Watch how he was demolished by Seo Ji Hoon (XellOs[yG]) and then watch how he carved all the new KTF up-and-comers apart during the team leagues. These are two completely different Lim Yo Hwans: When he's caught off guard, he cannot rely on instinct because he has no instinct, all he has is brutally abusive practice.
Then look at what happens when that brutally abusive practice pays off. I've seen this man turn around matches which I thought were already lost. I've been late to my first class in eighth grade because I was curious as to what Lim Yo Hwan could POSSIBLY do to reverse his dire situation. He wasn't naturally talented, he wasn't gifted, he was disciplined and determined. Here are two anecdotes about Lim Yo Hwan: During his earliest days with his first team (IS - Ideal Space), his practice partners complained that they had to beg him to stop training since he wouldn't stop trying out his build orders until they ingrained into his subconscious. The other anecdote is that Guillaume Patry (Grrrr..., the first foreigner to win a Starleague) said that he only has about ten numbers in his phone. Guillaume said Lim Yo Hwan never allowed anything to distract him, he gave up everything, including his personal life, to become a champion.
Lim Yo Hwan is StarCraft.
Park Jung Seok ([Oops]Reach): Like Lim Yo Hwan, Park Jung Seok didn't have the "Sense of Star". He even admitted that strategic games like StarCraft made his head spin. However, he pushed through each and every match like a fucking man. I will not make the claim that he was the best with macro-management, however, I will say this: There has not and will never be a Protoss who could macro like Reach. To this day, at the age of 29, I still go back and watch some smug, snot-nosed rookie who just signed with a pro-team try and out-macro Reach. Then I see the observer pan to a row of Zealots and Dragoons rushing to the battlefield to end the match. Reach ALWAYS looked as if he were ABOUT to win the match even when it was obvious he was going to lose. Remember IntoTheRainbow? He always prioritized expensive units (the most famous being the Reaver, he was the Reaver King) and just let his other units pile up until the very end. Reach was the opposite. Reach pushed. Reach fought.
Park Jung Seok is StarCraft.
Lee Yun Yeol ([ReD]NaDa): NaDa is the only player of the Four Kings who TRULY had the "Sense of Star". I have to make a confession: I HATED NaDa when I first began to follow him. His big claim to fame was that he defeated Guillaume Patry. I just thought to myself "Wow ... you defeated an alcoholic compulsive gambler who doesn't give a fuck about StarCraft anymore. Good job!" Now, when I tell you this kid dominated, you're not actually understanding what I'm trying to tell you. I was DEAD FUCKING WRONG about my initial assumption. This kid had the longest win streak in televised progaming history when I stopped keeping up. I will never forget watching his matches against Lee Hak Ju (Dongrae[S.G]) during the Shinhan Starleague. That was a masterful performance, one of the finest Terran vs Terran matches I've ever seen (given the stupid fucking maps,I mean).
Lee Yun Yeol is StarCraft.
Hong Jin Ho ([NC...YellOw]): I will say this once and for all of time: Hong Jin Ho was the most intelligent player ever to grace this sport. He was known as "The King of Second Place" and the "Silver Collector" because of his constant failure to achieve the gold. You may know him as the "Storm Zerg" because he had the most orgasmic use of both land and ground units. His macro and micro were always insanely brilliant, however, he would send the "gg" first and you would just sit there thinking "What in the FUCK did he do wrong?". He wasn't technically gifted. He was slow. He used his mind, not his hands. So, if any of you youngsters watch his matches, keep this one thought in mind: "If he were technically gifted, he would have gone down in history as the greatest progamer of all time." Being intelligent and possessing the "Sense of Star" are two completely different things. Of all the Four Kings, only one had the "Sense of Star" (NaDa), the other two relied on raw determination and practice. YellOw didn't need the raw determination and practice and he didn't need the "Sense of Star", he was just a naturally smart person interacting with an intensely complex sport. And this is why it was so fucking heartbreaking to watch him lose.
Hong Jin Ho is StarCraft.
You kids have fun with the new StarCraft: Remastered and be sure to study the matches of the Four Kings because now we're moving on to a new generation.
You are StarCraft.
Be good to this sport and study its' legends because if you ever let this die ... I don't know.
Yup. I really recommend people go and torrent the "All MSL Finals" folder and watch through them, so legendary games in there. Oov vs. Yellow on U-Boat Nada's BCs vs swarms of scourge on that twilight island map. Crazy crazy games on Ride of Valkyries July vs. Best drone drill on Troy.
His big claim to fame was that he defeated Guillaume Patry. I just thought to myself "Wow ... you defeated an alcoholic compulsive gambler who doesn't give a fuck about StarCraft anymore. Good job!"
Bahahaaha!
We're definitely in a different era of StarCraft now. I never realised how much I loved the joke of people making money and becoming minor celebrities off of StarCraft in a far away country until eSports became a real thing and it suddenly stopped being funny. I think we got lucky to experience StarCraft that way. Probably no other scene got so out of control and huge and unleashed as SC:BW. This generation of fans won't get the same feeling of novelty we did.
I'm not sure how to quote, this site has changed so much. Last Romantic? You're the Chinese guy who loved Yellow and had his laptop stolen? You're still here? I really liked you when I was active here! I never forgot about you!
Bitman, Gruss Gott! Meine landsman! I remember you from when I was about to go to Austria to visit my family. Or was it before? It has been years, I can't quite remember.
Chef, I agree. When we were young, progaming was so niche and confined. These days, I see progaming featured as a general interest piece in Reader's Digest, Al-Jazeera, CNN, what have you. It's so insane that what was only known to a few has now exploded and made the headlines. It gives me a strange feeling when I pick up a paper or switch to some 24 hour news channel and see them reporting on something I haven't thought about in about eight or nine years.
JieXian, you came here right when I started to lose interest, I remember your screen name even after all this time!
It's so odd, I haven't visited this site in so long, but just came by to share something and I'm running into all these old members. It's actually kind of jerking tears from my eyes.
And goodness gracious, did I make some typos. King Dong Soo? Ground and land units? I'm embarrassed. I'm busy and don't have much time to navigate this new TeamLiquid.
I just wanted to tell this new generation of kids about who I looked up to when I was their age and ended up fudging it.
Anyhow, the nostalgia is smothering me, I love all of you!
Awesome write up Pubbanana. I only started following the E-sports scene when SC2 came out. Before then I didn't even watch Lets plays and the like. I was to busy at work or playing Brood war UMS like 'a day at school' or 'HGMA'. Of course I was hooked on WoW at the time to.
But it's been great following brood war since ASL 1. I wish I was following the scene back in the Kespa era.
"we're moving on to a new generation.", that's a slight understatement, so many generations have changed already. Flash is baby generation, and he's a veteran at the same time already.
(I'm still getting used to the new site layout, so I don't know how to quote and all that shit)
Hi, Craig, nice to hear from someone who started following e-Sports with SC2. I stopped following it when SC2 was released. I don't know what "Let's Play" is and I don't recall any UMS called "Day at school" or "HGMA" and I also have no idea what an ASL is. But I'm happy you're on board with Brood War! Actually, there could be some active Brood War scene going on right now and I wouldn't know about it, I haven't kept up with anything in almost ten years, so maybe I sound stupid trying to inform newcomers about the Four Kings. I was expecting comments like "I've heard of Boxer, but not those other three, this was really interesting, I'll be sure to check them out.", but that hasn't happened.
Actually, not much has happened, where is everyone? I thought with the release of StarCraft Remastered we'd see new people trying it out and curious as to what made it so popular in the first place, but the blog section is kind of dead. When we first introduced the blog feature, it was insanely popular. But I guess the novelty wore off and everyone stopped caring or you're all busy with some type of tournament for some game I've never heard of.
And nice to see you niteReloaded! I remember you were asking us to ... donate? Or something? For some series of DVDs you wanted? God, that was so long ago. And yes, that was an understatement. I didn't realize how much the e-Sports scene had changed.
In my mind, this is relevant to our world: That Arab from France who was good at SC2 and ....I guess that's all. That's literally the last piece of news I remember digesting about e-Sports.
Anyhow, nice to see everyone, I was pleasantly surprised to see old members, I figured you guys grew out of this and moved on like me, but it warms my heart to see all of you here!
I went inactive until SCR was announced, I didn't post for years I think hehehe yeah, I asked people to sign up for some newsletters so I could get big discount for those DVDs. Ended up finding them on torrent lol. hehehe
niteRealoded: So you've been inactive as well? That's nice to hear, so I don't feel like such an odd man out. I wasn't teasing you about those DVDs, I was just saying that's the main thing I remember. I still remember reading "There is no way that I, living in Croatia, could afford this." and it really did make me sad.
By the way, I was the BIGGEST douchebag around back in the old days. I felt as if I this site were my personal stomping ground. I snapped and cursed at people left and right, I would fly into full-blown rages if anyone tried to argue with me, believe me, I'm coming out of my "inactive" status with MUCH more embarrassment than you.
Someone should do a series on the SCBW bonjwas. JulyZerg and iloveoov are another two that I feel deserve mention, and personally I was always a fan of Nal_rA (perhaps BW's sOs).
On November 01 2017 02:06 bITt.mAN wrote: Hi Pubbanana! Long time no see!
Yup. I really recommend people go and torrent the "All MSL Finals" folder and watch through them, so legendary games in there. Oov vs. Yellow on U-Boat Nada's BCs vs swarms of scourge on that twilight island map. Crazy crazy games on Ride of Valkyries July vs. Best drone drill on Troy.
Which torrent? I found one from 2010 but no seeds =(
After ASL I really want some good old starcraft games. This is the best game ever made.
On November 23 2017 23:14 Sero wrote: If Yellow was so smart, then why did he lose to bunker rush so often?
Because stopping a bunker rush required the zerg player to be proficient at buying time with drones, and that was a micro-management skill capacity that few zerg players had at the time. Silent_Control was famous for taunting his future zerg opponents in advance that he would go for an early barrack build against them, and had tremendous success despite the fact that he gave away his strategical intentions.
July was the best zerg at countering bunker rushes during that time frame, and it had little to do with his gaming intelligence, but his proficiency with drone micro-management, as seen in the clip below. The more proficient you become at drone micro-management, the more tactical options you have in the early game against bunker rushes.
This level of micro-management was unthinkable for most zerg players at the time, which is why the commentator can't stop praising July for his unmatched micro-management ability.
Once again, this is more of a technical proficiency issue, rather than an gaming intelligence issue. It took zergs some time to deal with bunker rushes from a micro-management perspective, and unsurprisingly it was the best micro-management zerg player in July who was by far the best at stopping it. It's just like how terran players took some time to adjust to the new mutalisk stacking micro-management trickery. This is like asking why iloveoov was so shit at stopping stacked mutalisks when July used it against him in the semi-finals of Gillette OGN StarLeague.
In terms of tactical awareness, YellOw was superior to any other zergs in history, especially once you factor in relative superiority compared to his peers at the time. Most of the tactical movements used by the zerg race were all perfected by YellOw long before sAviOr got known for it, partly due to the excellently written God of the Battlefield.
Instead of having the right number of units, or flanking at just the right angles, YellOw used his tactical ability to lure the terran army into traps, and often defeated technically more sound players with amazing regularity. Watch this segment where YellOw forces kOs to defend his main base with his counter-attack, but leaves behind three lurkers in the expected path of retreat of the terran army.
Or how YellOw fakes a mass overlord drop to lure TheMarine's main forces away from the ramp to finish him off with his main army. This was a game that was played in 2001, years before the debut of most of the legendary zerg players that we know of. Feints, and luring the opponent into advantageous tactical positions was something YellOw had perfected early into his career.
Or here's another match, where YellOw suffers early damage from NaDa's bionic forces, but YellOw keeps buying time with smart zergling movement, cutting off reinforcements and threatening backdoor attacks constantly to buy himself time as well as opening the map, which allows him an opening to morph two hydralisks into lurkers outside of his main base, which he uses to backdoor NaDa to defeat him in what was most likely a certain defeat.
YellOw used his awesome tactical awareness to buy himself time to set up expansions, hit critical timing windows for his army, as well as using his trademark stop lurkers to cut off reinforcements. He understood the power of hiding information, and tried his best to force the opposing terran player to guess where his expansions were by cutting off scouting SCVs, which gave the terran player no option but to waste his scans, which in turn increased the likelihood of his surprise lurker attacks succeeding.
It was the superlative nature of YellOw's cunning that allowed him to compete in the highest of stages versus the very best terran players from numerous eras such as BoxeR, NaDa, XellOs, iloveoov, and Casy. Most of the time, YellOw was only one game away from defeating these players (YellOw, being the king of special events, would frequently avenge his foes in stages that would unfortunately be largely forgotten by the public as time passed by) despite being arguably much less refined from a pure technical stand-point.
Couldn't he have opened with pool first every few games to prevent it? That shuts it down completely and makes terran hesitant to try it in other games where you 12 hatch.
2004-11-12, Ever OSL Semi-Finals Bo5, SlayerS_`BoxeR` vs [NC]YellOw
He opens 12 hatch three games in a row and loses to the same thing every time. The second map with the reverse ramp is an obvious choice for something like 9 pool.
On November 24 2017 05:36 Sero wrote: Couldn't he have opened with pool first every few games to prevent it? That shuts it down completely and makes terran hesitant to try it in other games where you 12 hatch.
2004-11-12, Ever OSL Semi-Finals Bo5, SlayerS_`BoxeR` vs [NC]YellOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYLhOXn5rTw He opens 12 hatch three games in a row and loses to the same thing every time. The second map with the reverse ramp is an obvious choice for something like 9 pool.
Everything becomes obvious with the benefit of hindsight. Unless it is a re-occurring problem throughout somebody's career that you have discovered, you're really picking holes for the hell of it.
Should I question the intelligence of sAviOr for massing mutalisks every single time against Bisu in the finals of GomTV MSL Season 1? Bisu literally went for mass corsairs every single time, and sAviOr did the worst possible strategical move by going for the one unit that mass corsairs are most effective against.
Should I question the intelligence of Flash for leaving himself susceptible against two factory timing attacks every single game against fOrGG in the semi-finals of Arena MSL? If he was paying any attention, Flash could have seen fOrGG doing a similar two factory timing attack versus Sea early in that very same tournament.
You can literally take any embarrassing best-of-five series where a player gets completely schooled despite being exposed to the same line of attack throughout the entire series, and question the intelligence of the player in question. Have a career plentiful, and long enough to be given multiple opportunities to either impress, or disappoint the audience, you'll eventually have a series that will make you want to slap yourself silly.
The games played in the semi-finals of EVER 2004 OGN StarLeague captured one of the most embarassing performance by YellOw both from an execution perspective, and strategical perspective. However, an early spawning pool is a difficult pill to swallow from a zerg point of view, especially since it is countered by a wider range of build orders from the terran race, and BoxeR could have been faking YellOw out in the first game with a well executed bunker rush, in order to counter early spawning pool builds in games two, and three.
There's a reason why so many great zergs have fallen to strategies involving early barracks throughout the ages, and why even the greatest protoss players have such diffculties against players who are cheesy in nature. Sure you can mass cannons specifically to counter a hydralisk bust, but it is such a suboptimal strategical choice against anything else, that players frequently decide to roll the dice and hope that their on-the-spot response is good enough to deflect any potential oncoming attacks.
If you limit the conversation to the semi-finals of EVER 2004 OGN StarLeague, sure YellOw looked anything but smart. However, the number of instances where YellOw out-smarted his opponents were much more numerous, and pointing out a particularly shameful series to characterize a player is a flawed approach that can be done to nearly every single great legend in existence.
So much history in this thread.... It's good to define generation by the peak players in that era. I'm a bit newer compared to you guys so when I first started following BW it's guys like July, Iloveoov, Nada, Nal_rA, Chojja, Anytime Reach that are dominating the scene. Savior was on the rise though...
Another way to tell is by the maps. I started in the era just between Lost Temple/Luna..
EPT
hehehe
