The Schedule section below will add video links as they are uploaded as well. All audio issues from the first batch of uploads have been fixed!
Overview:
With Starcraft Remastered about to be released, I figured there might be some interest in a new installment of BW Nostalgia! A look into some professional level games from the past... and I mean the distant past. I'm talking about the top players of 2002 when the game was only on patch version 1.09. The focus of this particular installment will be replays from the $20k CompUSA GameFixx ladder. Come join me in learning about all the killer old school strats you can pull up in the graphically updated Starcraft!
As these are my personal replays from this time, they feature myself (Bluewolf) or my younger brother (Wizard) against various other American competitors. Both of us qualified for the bracket stage (top 64), my younger brother finished in 5th place, and he qualified from the USA for the World Cyber Games world finals later that same year.
What was the CompUSA Gamefixx 20k tournament exactly?
Mentioned in the 1.09 patch notes, it was a big deal at the time. Some of its history will be talked about during the broadcast and other bits will come out later after vids of this event are posted. (IE. I'd like to reference footage when talking about its history in a more detailed form).
I'm someone who played in this ladder and have a good memory of 2002's BW scene! Could you use some help casting one or more of these games?
I could indeed! I'm far from a professional caster and remembering all of the details of 15 years ago is no easy task... so additional help would be appreciated! Send me a PM!
The replays you are showing don't have the same handle you have listed in the matches?
For various reasons, smurfing was common, with one primary example just being that using a new alias meant no one knew your play style initially. As the ladder progressed, we would all figure out who each other actually was since it was a small scene at this time. A full handle list lookup is posted at the end of this post.
Previous BW Nostalgia events (#1, #2, #3) also used replays from other events at the time as well. What about those?
Depending on how well this encore event goes, I may do ones that focus on other events I still have replays of in the 2001 - 2002 timeframe. So spread the word around to check this out if you would like to see more of these in the future! For now, limiting it to CompUSA keeps things simple and I don't need to worry about switching BW patch versions.
Other questions you might have this hasn't covered?
Post them and I'll either respond in the thread or edit the FAQ with the information.
How will you make this work? I thought you needed a version switcher to watch old replays, and as far as I know remastered hasn't mentioned anything of sorts?
On August 05 2017 02:39 B-royal wrote: How will you make this work? I thought you needed a version switcher to watch old replays, and as far as I know remastered hasn't mentioned anything of sorts?
You are correct that I do not believe it is possible to watch these old replays in the latest Starcraft Remastered codebase. This event will be done in the original Starcraft: Broodwars engine and thus the graphics experience will be the same as when we old geezers first played these games out.
Additionally: this event is happening the day before Starcraft Remastered is released and Blizzard doesn't love me enough to have given me access to the closed beta. :p
CompUSA Gamefixx Wiki Page created Want to know what the prize breakdown for the event was? Or perhaps where different players ended up finishing? All of those details are now available now at: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Compusa_20k_Gamefixx. Of note, this was an event limited to North America which means you won't find any European or Korean handles there. But it might be interesting to compare the size of the North American competitive scene at this point with that of the upcoming Starcraft: Remastered. Even I'm surprised by how few of us were willing to pony up an entry fee to play in this event as judging by the individual in 100th place on the ladder, there couldn't have been more than 200 total players for the online event.
Oh and I've purposely left who won the finals vague in this wiki page. I'll update the #1 and #2 positions after the grand finals are broadcasted.
FINALS HYPE! While doing research to refresh my own memory of certain details that occurred, I discovered two of the three replays from the finals still had valid links online. This means that the majority of the grand finals of this event can be broadcast for the first time ever! I'll expand on the player bios for this matchup:
uG)Whear: Despite having represented the United States at three World Cyber Games grand finals (including the very first one held in 2000), this player still doesn't have a Wiki page here on Teamliquid. Those of us who are truly old school remember his name though - and how strong he was among the best of the USA SC:BW gamers at the time. A race picker of a sort, he would play Terran against Protoss and Zerg opponents, but would switch to Protoss against those playing Terran to avoid the mirror matchup.
SuperCondomUser: A 110 APM player by the name of "Kevin" who was never top tier... but he found a shortcut to fix this problem. After a few days of the CompUSA ladder, his APM shot up to the 150 - 200 range with different hotkeys as he had found a non-North American person play for him! Who became the man behind the account was never fully discovered: most evidence pointed to it being Elky and I was absolutely convinced it was him at the time since he had no problem abusing in the KBK Juju ladder a few months prior to this event. Some others claimed it was the Swedish player Kenka based on sources they didn't want to reveal. Regardless of who it was, it was a top tier international player... that was further likely aided by a maphack. A year after this event was when the first programs to detect a maphack in a replay based on a player selecting a building they would not have had vision. This showed SuperCondomUser to have been using such a hack in the grand finals and there was never any pushback of there being some type of detection error.
Conclusion: So that is your matchup from the high stakes finals of this online tournament! One of the best North America had to offer vs one of the better international scene players with their skill augmented by a maphack. Should be some interesting games!
Other Stuff:
I was curious as to how many people did maphack in this event but sadly none of the current tools work on the 1.09 replays that I have. At least, all of them claim that there were no hackers out of hundreds of games, which I'm sure is inaccurate. Wasted several hours getting stuff to work since most of these things like BWHF (Brood War Hacker Finder) were coded against 32-bit libraries that were a pain to get to function. Unsure if anyone has a PC with some of the older hack checkers on it that could likely detect clicks under the fog of war in 1.09 replays?
Still have no offers for a co-commentator that was around during this time period. Do feel free to PM me in the next day or two if you want to help me with the casting of these games!
While I'm sure all these guys could have easily destroyed my noob D+ ass with their 2002 skill level playing with one hand, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess these games are all strategically hilarious like the TheBOy vs Grrrr... showmatches.
Old school SC before oov is funny because everyone tried to be like Michael Jordan and do all kinds and-1 fancy micro instead of being like Yao Ming and expanding faster making tons of units.
A test broadcast will be done tomorrow, Saturday at 7:00 PM EST. It will contain one or two short games. If you want to give feedback on audio / video quality and the broadcast overlay at that time, I'd appreciate it!
Additionally, I got in contact with Whear who had retired in 2003. He is willing to give casting of his finals games with me a try and give his insight into the 2002 BW scene at the time. Recording those games ahead of time to meet his schedule and not a guaranteed thing until late tomorrow since I'll give him final say on using the footage.
One last reminder about this event that starts two hours from this post at 1:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time! Don't miss out on seeing the game as it was a whopping 15 years ago!
Included will indeed be the first time the grand finals of the 2002 CompUSA $20k Gamefixx has ever been broadcasted! One of the two original finalists (Whear) kindly co-casted the games with me yesterday and gave a brief interview. Tune in to see what strats won the very lucrative for its time $10,000.00 grand prize!
EPT
Tasteless vs 
Bluewolf on Lost Temple
Day[9] vs 
