EPTWritting all what happened 8 years ago straight up, has to sooner or later, start showing it’s limits and difficulties. As a matter of fact, the more I will have to dig within myself what at first could abruptly surface, the more my pick of events, stories, in other words, following the trail of these old experiences, will begin to shape and color through my present thoughts. It’s the finest ability of memory, to transform, as we more and more evoke it, a very old past that had until now remained at rest – its reminescence – to something suddenly perfectly familiar. As just a few moments ago, this record, that was almost not me, is now that close, and alive and clear, that my reasoning uses it just as a guinea pig.
I guess that’s the time where you have to be more picky and somewhat careful in the things you decide to expose. It’s not about make up, it’s not about faking. Just maybe refining, that sometimes weird and sometimes sharp intuition, of telling what is really worth of beeing told.
You know, I don’t carry any belief. I’m not even certain of what I can doubt, and Philosophy would be all I can explain about words with other words. However, from my stay in Korea, the way I lived there, and later the return in my own country, I noticed something. I can’t really explain it in a very structured fashion. It’s a really simple idea however.
It’s the feeling the human body has some kind of hidden battery. Not the biological common clock battery type. More of a life term one. A battery that you cannot replenish, and that, depending on how you use it, can deplete and feel so real fast. Maybe one would call it youth. Another, the simple fact that we age, or even the impact that events can have on oneself.
As I remember my life back then, never getting any proper kind of sleep, never eating something close a healthy meal, my horizon never beeing more than a day ahead, all this, washed away by human’s primal and best ability, wich is survival, I today know, my body wouldn’t be able to do it again. As I acknowledge this as sort of a fact, a huge feeling of tireness, just like a wave submerges me. I’m almost convinced that back then, I used a great deal of this “hidden battery” that every one carries, and that it was part of why things were so awesome and seemed shaped as a life’s time of true greatness.
Everything was so different that I’m stucked just telling you how cool it was.
I was having this nightmare quite often, the times I would actually sleep in a real bed. I would see myself going back to France, telling everyone there how great Korea was. But the more the dream was lasting, the more I was staying stucked in France, and at last, I would miss the plane I had to take to fly back.
As I would wake from these, the Korean morning sun dying through the window right on me, would animate my whole body with an impossible to describe feeling of joy. All my concerns as to answer my current’s situation difficulties, would not only vanish, they wouldn’t even dare to merely exist.
What’s more, this state of mind wasn’t of my exclusive property. It would actually reflect and enhance from a very exact copy of itself, that I could spot in the eyes of my great companions in this gaming happiness and misery. I even thought for some time, it was something unique to this country.
Grrrr...’s team had moved at last to N.E.T., and that’s when I met Jaeyong, who used to roam as the most feared terran entity for a long while, the online and lan grounds of Starcraft battle for skill supremacy. His game ID was IloveU and he was, let me tell you, employing the irony of his ID to it’s very extreme potent.
The atmosphere here, as about 10 pro gamers were now daily practicing, had changed alot. Of course Grrrr... who had moved before the rest, and basically dragged here the whole team, was some sort of phenomum for people coming to N.E.T. Of course word had spread that Grrrr... was playing at N.E.T. Of course a good share of the Pc room’s customers, was coming there to watch him. Grrrr... hated it. I loved it.
Han was soon assigned to a new task by the staff : make sure customers would stay at least 2 meters far from the Canadian champion when he was playing.
However, as N.E.T. wasn’t a cheap place, any given teen could not afford to stay in, and most of the people there were workers in their early 30’s. So they would usually not be such game maniacs and politly let the guy breath in peace. But soon, as his team moved in, this thing started to change.
That’s how one morning, as I had slept in Grrrr...’s hotel room last evening while he had spent the night playing at N.E.T., upon showing up kind of refreshed at the Pc room and hailing everyone I knew there, I headed toward a group of people hiding with their bodies and their cries of excitement, the computer where I was sure to find Guillaume playing. While walking the last meters, I heard Grrrr...’s voice in my back. Now something was wrong I thought. The voice shouldn’t have came from behind me. I then turn and see Guillaume with a drink coming to me and saying “You gotta see this.”
The person sitting at the crowded computer, was a skinny yet normal for this countrie’s standards I guess, Korean boy.
He was wearing a mid arm white shirt, and while playing, saying things in Korean everybody in the audience would laugh at upon hearing. What I could then peek at above everyone’s shoulders, of the game this guy was playing, had to be the most impressive thing I had yet to see of Starcraft.
I witnessed that day a display of skill I had no prior memory of. The main thing that striked me, was this sound, of keyboard and mouse bashing. The mechanical noise of the computer’s external hardware, paced at an inhuman rythmn. I then saw the source of all this :
Small, thin, agile white hands ; jumping, flying, tensed and unaturally curved – some kind of an ultimate gaming tool, designed and shaped by gaming.
It was so different than what I was used from Guillaume. Nothing there was calm, nothing was “flowing”. Nervosity, speed, agressivity, were the primal attributes of a way of playing Starcraft I would’ve never imagined.
Guillaume was laughing, kind of like a madman, and told me right away this dude was the best player he had ever seen. He knew him already, as the guy was on the team. “Jaeyong” he at last told me, is the name. “Heo Jaeyong”.
I had no idea then, how much I would love and cherish the human existence stamped with this name.
I remember one morning, one of “these mornings” where I would find a tired Guillaume and a tired Jaeyong in N.E.T., Guillaume telling me with a smile Jaeyong had beaten him 18 games to 1 last night. Guillaume would sometimes say that this kind of new player, was the reason he didn’t want and couldn’t “keep up” with the new gen of progaming. However, truth was, he actually kept up for a shit fucking while after he stated this.
Guillaume wasn’t getting raped by any mean. Games would always at least last for 20 or 30 mins. As I’d ask Jaeyong sometimes, if he was confident beating Grrrr... had he to play him on TV, he would then answer me laughing : “Are you nut ? It’s Guillaume we’re talking about.”. I will never stress enough, how much back then, a concerned Guillaume in an important game, had to be the closest thing there was to a reckless gaming beast to defeat.
Jaeyong, was a Terran player, 2 years older than me. He was from Busan and had left his hometown to give a shot in Seoul at pro gaming. His mother back in Busan was running a PC room, and one can safely assume that the guy had hardcored Starcraft back there quite a bit.
Now what made Jaeyong special and very unique, just like a thousand of other things, was his intelligence. It was physically radiant.
He never been abroad, graduated highschool in his city, and yet, was incredebly fluent with English. Unless you lived in Korea you wouldn’t understand how strange and rare this can be, especially back then.
He had no asian accent. His grammar was perfect. Not a word he didn’t know, not a way of talking he didn’t understand.
I never ever saw this guy talking without at the same time, providing his interlocutor with that true and natural smile of human brotherhood and contagious friendship. I guess you could call this actual charism. I somehow feel the word a little shy when it comes to picturing him.
Now he was of the gen of the pre 1.08 Terran players. Meaning that his actual aptitude at dominating any given player so easily, would be the trademark of this genuine Starcraft talent, at debuking the game’s possibilites. That would translate as watching Jaeyong, with some misregarded Terran material at that time, violently carving his way to victory in each game, without ever caring who or what race he was facing.
Playing against Jaeyong was nothing else than asking a mamouth for rampage.
This was the era of these endless epic TVZ games, when zerg hadn’t yet went through its last nerf, and gamestyle was revolving for the most part around massive ammounts of hydralisks, zerglings and lurkers, and a take and lose expansion hide and seek game for zerg.
Jaeyong was a fucking vaccum zerg cleaner. This sort of terran wouldn’t expand until the last mineral of the starting patch was mined out, and the only reason that he wouldn’t lift his starting CC and actually build a new one at his natural, was because he needed the scan. He was the kind of Terran who’s marine would be traded for at least 2 lurkers, and who’s tank would be at least worth 20 enemy supply count. Three barracks, on factory, one starport, fast eng bays – that is all he needed and asked to get the job done. Matrixed marines were what the vessels were for. He would force the zerg to virtually “dance” with him around any given tactical spot. If the zerg wasn’t fast enough, he had then to die.
See people, it’s much of a game of pushing the “thing”, more and more, until and to the point, the other succumbs or just breaks. That’s why when these Terrans were winning, you had that feeling you just saw them dismantle someone.
His practice gamestyle was however, very different of how he would play in tournaments. Tournaments were pretty much about executing one sole and perfected to the max strategy, that would just punish the opponent unless had he practiced just as much to counter it, than the Terran had trained to kill with it.
If all this sounds very common and obvious, it only means I failed at describing the unique essence of these terran’s gamestyle back then.
So, Grrrr... introduced me that day to Jaeyong and a girl sitting next to him. A very cute one. If you think Tossgirl is somewhat cute, then you have to know, next to this girl, she’s an ugly and vulgar bitch. Su yeon was somewhat Jaeyong’s girlfriend, on platonic love trip I thought for a while (I wasn’t sure ever, until I got them both drunk a night and forced all four of us (yeah, there was another extra for me), into a hotel and paid for their room.).
She was a protoss pro gaming chick on the team. She never really cared about Starcraft, she just enjoyed the progaming thing alot. She was studying astronomics however at the same time, so she wasn’t just spending as much time in the PC bang than we did.
She wasn’t either coming with me, Jaeyong and Cezanne (him and jaeyong were terran clones, exceptionnal player as well) – that I will tell later about –, on our lan tournaments countryside / smaller cities trips. However she was the feminin ace of our KGL team, coupled with a very tough late night drinker.
I think it took us about 1 hour to understand we would be good friends, and decide to spend most of our time together.
Gamei had launched about two weeks ago then I think, and it was sort of a revolution. This place was a progaming nest. Anyone you’d step across at it’s server’s early age, was potentialy a starcraft powerhouse that you had to give all you got to, if you were planing to stay more than 5 minutes in the game.
So we were all basically spending our entire time on Gamei. I have to admit, most of the time I was staying idle in the channel, as I would just watch Jaeyong playing next to me. As I’m much more of the contemplative kind, than the acting one, you can guess why I wasn’t practicing so much, in such gaming neighbourhood.
As Jaeyong, Su yeon and Cezanne will be increasingly present and mentionned in the later stories, I will stop there on the topic, and continue now, with a brief summary of the foreign slaughterfest the first GameQ world championnship turned into.
The first WCG had ended, and me along 7 other white boys (this included all the Xds crew that stopped by Korea for WCG, Maynard, Everlast and Grrrr....) were matched against the 8 hottest Korean starcraft players of the time. StEagle, Samjjang, H.O.T forever, Intotherain, Slayer’s_Boxer, freemura ? (bah ! my memory lacks again !) were called to join the fun.
Maynard, who had forgotten the day we were all supposed to show up, forced gameq to postpon his game, thing that gave him enough time I guess to perfect the new found and mortal strategy, he would use every single game he played in the tournament : AKA 4 POOLING YOUR ASS NO MATTER WHO OR WHAT RACE YOU ARE.
It actually worked for him quite well, as he passed the two first rounds when all others failed to win a single game.
To end this entry I will give 3 battle reports, of the 3 games I remember well. Me against Samjjang, Everlast against Boxer, and Killa against IntoTheRain (wich was btw the closest thing foreigners got that day, at legitly beating a Korean in the real world).
I’ll go first, as the game I played is the least interesting one, but maybe the funniest because of how bad of a rape it was. All the first round games had to be played on Lost temple btw.
Now, since we knew the draw, all the noisy canadians in the room were bugging me saying how lucky I was to play Samjjang that was for sure the weakest player ever. Now I wasn’t particulary sad or happy to have to play him, I didn’t have any idea what race the guy would play or what he would do.
Somehow, for some very unexplicable reason, I was convinced Samjjang had picked Zerg before the game was started. I spawned Protoss at 3, he spawned terran at 12. My plan was to make a kind of early gate with a very early zealot of course, go and divert the zerg while I would canon expand my natural and go for a macro fest. That’s what I did and sent my scouting probe toward Six as I would have seen his overlord if he was 12. That’s how I had a zealot warping and and a new pylon with lots of probes, but no sign of gas yet, when my scout discovered a supply wallin at 12.
I somehow broke his wallin with my dragoon and 2 zealots, went in the base, killed a few things before getting repelled by very early mines. I went for an expansion before robotic and 2nd gate thinking I had an advantage and that he would expand. Samjjang went for 3 factories vultures and taught me two different things : Why 1 gate dragoon fast expansion would get me dead. And why he had a very good micro.
I lost alot of probes in vulture raids, while expanding at 6 and having to dodge the mines with my low dragoon number, while he was free to roam splitting his vulture squads cuz he had many. Meanwhile he had expanded himself and just killed me with his first push that I couldn’t break. I basically quit after failing to unlock the tight passage between my cliff and the right upper center map wall. That spot is a bitch.
Anyway, as every single of my white friends upon me coming back would tell me how bad I sucked and how Samjjang was the only player in this tournament any of them could’ve owned (thanks guys, as I didn’t know already), the later fact that Samjjang won rather easily the whole tournament, beating H.O.T. in the finals 2-0, cheered me up a little. Only Intotherain came to confort me later that day before leaving the place, saying Samjjang was a very dangerous player.
Everlast had practiced only one match up and one case scenario : Boxer. And that’s what he got. Needless to say, Boxer was the man everybody was afraid of and nobody actually expected Everlast to win. Only Guillaume and me I think, thought he actually had a chance, because he had been practicing against the strat Boxer would use in PvT 100% of the time.
What you guys might not know, is that Boxer at first was famous for his TvP. Not his TvZ. The dropship fan mania would come far later. He was very feared for his monstrous TvP macro strat back then, wich was the 1 tank / cc fast expand you all know today. Back then, this openening was very new, and he’d basically do that while going for 4 factories from wich he’d pump tanks in continuous stream, until he felt he had enough to just run over you. Might sound weird now, but it was incredebly hard to stop. He would usually move with about 18 – 20 tanks and loads of scvs, and beeing the micro beast he is, scratch any last hope you had at delaying the fatal instant of the GG.
However, we briefly thought in the game, Everlast would actually be able to halt the first tank wave.
Boxer was 12, Everlast 9. Boxer trademarked 1 tank exp while everlast went for a reaver rush, closely followed by two nexus upon seeing boxer’s opening and dealing minimum damage with his reaver.
Everlast landed about 7 gates, got zealot speed and a templar archive. When boxer left his base, everlast had about 8-10 dragoons, 8 or so zealots,1 or 2 dark templars and 3 templars and a shuttle. We really thought he would be ok. We really did, espacially as he executed a very nice pincer attack right out the upper left corner center’s map wall. We really did, until we saw boxer microing very well, and all the fight proceeding with the 3 templars, sitting right there, just in the perfect range, but not casting any storm.
Everlast, of course had forgot to upgrade psi storm. Game over.
X’ds~Killa spawned at 6 zerg, Intotherain 12 protoss.
Killa handled the 9/10 gate rush rather easily, even with a 12 / 12 hatch pool. Killa was a good player. He then went for 3 hatch hydralisks wich seemed to work very well as he set his contain, dogded the first storm perfectly, and expanded twice. It was looking all good.
Then Intotherain decided this had to end, and stormed his way out of his base, and marched straight onto Killa with a unit number none had really expected.
It was often like this in the early days. We all knew the main patterns, and didn’t really think that, with a perfect execution from one side, the other in that very case could get away. But pro gamers back then, because there were no replays, all had their own secret tricks, that nobody would expect and suddenly show up doing things that looked like they had the game debunked.
We all left the GameQ office in our loser shoes that day. Grrrr... went drinking with his countrymen and I took a cab back to N.E.T, knowing I wouldn’t be the GameQ world champion, and that I had yet again, missed another important chance.
Next entry will contain a big deal of Jaeyong and Su yeon and how life was. Jong Min trying to help me out. And about a girl named So jee.
PS : It somewhat was a little more difficult than the previous entries to write, so I hope you’ll enjoy it. Again always feel free to leave a msg. Support is all that will keep me going !
Thanks for your time. Mark.
. As in: don't write just to write if you don't come up with something.
