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I posted a rough copy of this on bw.com back when the community was somewhat decent, I figure with 4 days to go till the next ongamenet starleague match it might be a good idea to spark up this thread again.
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I've been following SC since 1998 when I ripped it of my College's LAN and played on Kali for 20 bucks. I have since bought the game (actually bought it 3 times!) and started following the pro gaming scene about a year and a half ago. My knowledge is sparse about much of it so if you can help please do.
Basically, there are snippets of events that I remember regarding SC Pro-Gaming. Here they are . . .
Blizzard releases Broodwar around Christmas of 1998. They hold a Broodwar tournament a few months later and XDs'Grrrr wins. Meanwhile, SC is such a huge hit in Korea (selling over a million copies in the first year) that Grrrr decides to visit Korea. During Grrrr's 3 or 4 week stay he manages to win a tourney or two and come in 2nd in another. His winnings from the tourneys totaled about 5 to 10 thousand dollars. Grrrr heads back home and I'm assuming thinks, "Holy shit. I just got payed some major mullah to play games. Could I make a career out of this?"
Meanwhile several Koreans are already making careers out of pro-gaming. (Unfortunately, I don't know who or what tournaments they won, help anyone?)
At about this time the KPGA starts and Blizzard even incorporates support for their league in patch 1.06? The KPGA runs pretty well, but it is soon overshadowed by Ongamenet.
GhemTV and Gembc also enter the mix.
The World Cyber Challenge happens in 2000. An international tournament won by Go_Rush. The following year the WCC becomes the WCG, the World Cyber Games, with participants from about 40 differenct countries. Prize money of $20,000 is offered for the winner of Broodwar (and Quake 3, CS, AOE, and FIFA Football too). In Broodwar, Slayers_Boxer defeats Elky somewhat decesively 2-0 in the finals. The first match was on LT with Elky (went Terran) winning the resource war but losing after Boxer switched to BCs. Elky being a true competitor wouldn't quit until Boxer nuked is island expo. The second match was on Hall of Valhalla, a map designed by a Korean who has been since hired to design Ongamenet maps. Elky chose Toss this time and Elky tried a goon/zeal rush, Boxer's counter of 4 Gols was lethal and showed off excellent micro.
The win by Boxer was yet another championship in a long string of impressive victories. During this time Boxer was seen as nearly invincible . . until Garmito defeated him 3-1 in the Ongamenet finals.
Back to Grrrr he eventually decided to move to Korea to pursue gaming as a profession. He received several endorsements and won several tournaments. At one time he was considered one of the top players (arguably the top player for awhile) in Korea. He received sponsorships, prize money and endorsements for over $100,000 in one year.
Elky, another foreigner (French) placed 2nd at the WCG 2001 and moved to Korea full time. He's been doing well, recently placed 2nd in Ongamenet's first War3 tourney winning $8,000 and 4th in Ongamenet's Fall 2002 tourney.
Boxer reportedly made over $150,000 last year and is considered in many minds to be the best BW player of all time.
Currently, there are a number of challengers to Boxer's crown as King of Broodwar including: HOT Forever, Red Nada, The Marine, Yellow, Chnrh, Elky, Chojja, and Ooops Reach to name a few.
Please feel free to add to this history of SC pro-gaming, including information about the PGL, IGL, WG Tour, CPL, and whatever else I left out, I'm sure there's plenty.
Cheers. 
--Sword_Siege
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damn i will think about this and post something tomorrow ^_^;
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Your missing a great deal before that including a couple pgls I think gad won the first one, grrr won the 2nd with d22-soso placing second, also you forgetting the i2e2 tourneys. There was also a stint where
)DL(October was considered the best gamer
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I just started follow progame when i heard about the 2001 WCG. You guys think the WCG is what made most people outside of korea aware of proGameing(As most people i see on bw have at least heard of it now)? I also think Reps did alot for it. People see boxer reps, and are like omg who is that? Then they become more interested in it. Thats how i started following proGameing anyway. Yes im also aware this got very 
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theres a 30 min interview with grrr.
link on bw.com
some new stuff along with the usual stuff that u hear from grrr...
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you also forgot the last 1.07 match between boxer and grrrr. was one of my first vods (i think grrrr vs theboy were the first matches i saw D: ) and the start of boxers run. ^^
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I started getting into progaming from Game-q, my Korean friend on useast told me about the website and that Hot was best zerg, Rain/Grrr best toss and boxer upcoming best Terran(think boxer was fairly new then to the scene) Was the first I had heard of any of them, was game-q 1 I believe..(the one where Rain wins)
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Canada398 Posts
first game I seen of boxer was from game-q, him vs maynard TvZ, maynard dominated him pretty hard back then.
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Greetings:
While I am not positive the names of the tournaments these chaps participated in, I do recall them from the early days, such as Zileas, Larry-the-Weird, Agent911, SCVGod, Ghost1, and the rest of the gents. I am positive I recall tales buried on a few SC sites (this was long before replays, where screen shots, and story telling had to suffice) about these fellows (as well as getting seeing them on ladder, until KBK started, especially XD's Insane~ (Grrr..'s other alias I believe, whom my friend, at the high point of his SC obsession beat Grrr... when he played a little lax with zerg, and then vehemently accused my friend of cheating, most amusing in fact). Once again though, I am not positive if they would be considered "progamers" in the context they did it for money, as SC wasn't quite "Real Art" at that point, and tournaments seemed exhibitionary only.
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Canada5062 Posts
On December 10 2002 00:00 Grudge wrote:
Your missing a great deal before that including a couple pgls I think gad won the first one, grrr won the 2nd with d22-soso placing second, also you forgetting the i2e2 tourneys. There was also a stint where
)DL(October was considered the best gamer
Yes. October beat Grrr in the finals of the Sports Seoul Tournament (the largest of its kind back then) in 1999. After that tho it was all Grrr - until some fellow named Lim Yo-hwan came along and took gameplay to the next level...
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Canada5062 Posts
Thx for the post sword_siege. Maybe we can get a decent thread started with new info being added every day.
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Canada5062 Posts
FYI, Shin Ju-young (aka [SG]Honest) is often considered the first SC pro gamer (i.e. a person who gets paid to play SC) in Korea. He was quickly followed by Lee Gi-seok (aka Ssamjjang aka Larry-the-Weird), a clanmate of Shin's and also the first genuine SUPERSTAR in pro gaming, getting his own TV ad (for the "Kornet" ISP company), doing game commentaries on various shows and just being generally recognizable.
Sadly, Shin's career got cut short at its apex when he had to do his military service (it happens a lot here in Korea - promising careers being cut short that way). In his day, he was the best Protoss user on the planet and influenced Lee to switch races to toss. Lee (originally Terran) was one of the first Terran gosus to appear back when people considered the race impossible to play at a high level - Lee demonstrated the possibilities with the Terran race like no one else before him. Both have recently tried to revive their pro gaming careers, but I don't think it's working out for them. The Game's just changed too much. Not sure about Lee, but I hear Shin's going to (or already has) open his own PC Bang.
Man, I'm getting all nostalgic now...
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hey mensrea Ask naz if u can add a section to the site. Like the history of progameing mayb.
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Canada5062 Posts
Working on that, one league at a time. GOGO Articles Section!!!
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holy cow i bin posting on this forum since day 2 and i never seen the article section lol
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Honest[SG] was zerg player though. He played in the early BW ladder tournaments and was known for his gosu muta-control. Many western players thought he hacked, and Larry-the-weird actually used hack at some point in the tournament just for fun.
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Canada5062 Posts
Well, Honest played both races, as far as I know. Even played the first widely-publicized "mega match" between himself and Ssamjjang with toss.
Dunno about the hack part tho so won't comment...
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On December 10 2002 02:11 InToTheWannaB wrote:hey mensrea Ask naz if u can add a section to the site. Like the history of progameing mayb.
I think stuff like that will have to come in the Articles section.. else the site would get a bit too crowded maybe? atleast that's what I think
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I dont know if any of you have seen Ssamjjang vs grrr on lt (tvp) it was from a while ago but it has some of the best macro ive ever seen. btw, i think its only fair to add the practically unnoted zileas to the list of great players. his micro is fantastic and he was good enough to get offered a job with blizzard for his skills. 
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I think the fact he had a MIT degree in computer programming of some sought and had already made an RTS game had ALOT more to do with him getting hired than the fact that he one the BW Beta tourney!
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hmmm what about the guy Grrr played in Blizz Tourny... Leader something... Skelton prob too deserves a mention (he did win a starleague.., or no?) FreeMura winning the first OGN starleague has to count for something, and SoSo also cause he was crazy (the whole pop band thing created some good games vs Grrr...)
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Russian Federation1953 Posts
Can anyone remember what was between D22-Soso and korean pop star Eugene Kim? Hint: Soso was in love with her...
So I think GoodGameMan worth a mention here. He was on top when BroodWar was released and now he returned like GGMan in KPGA, but his skills are poor comparing to other top players...
Here you can find battlereports where a lot good old names mentioned:
http://www.battle.net/scc/br/
Also check www.battlereports.com - tons of very high quality reports of oldtimers.
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On December 10 2002 11:44 RowdyBob wrote: hmmm what about the guy Grrr played in Blizz Tourny... Leader something... Skelton prob too deserves a mention (he did win a starleague.., or no?) FreeMura winning the first OGN starleague has to count for something, and SoSo also cause he was crazy (the whole pop band thing created some good games vs Grrr...)
It was [B-Blade]Leader, B-Blade used to be a pro team in the beginning if I recall well.
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Netherlands4511 Posts
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Netherlands4511 Posts
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Norway10161 Posts
Ok let me add some stuff I remember, altho some of it is vague, and some of it may even be completely wrong:
First real tourneys were blizz' early ladder tourneys, altho it seems like they removed the old tourney reports and ladder rankings from the battle.net page.
Should mention that our dear canadian placed #2 in the first ever sc ladder season. I don't remeber who was #1, but it may have been WarBlade! .. in other notes I belive this is GFrasier's old sc aka.
I should make a quick stop by season two, where we run into a swedish player - Villert! .. unfortunately he was not known as much for his great grip on the game as he was for being the first well-known ladder abuser 
Fast forward a bit untill bw-beta, where we again run into some well known americans; Zileas and Agent911, who battle it out in a fierce best-of-7 match where Zileas barely comes out with a 4-3 score. It should be noted that this was when cannons only did half dmg to mutas, and also all three games agent won was zvp when he overran the z man with mass econ and numbers.
So again fast forward, the first koreans also enters the fray, among them Ssamjang, honest, muzel and LeadeR (yay, another leader). As alreayd mentioned LARRY (ssam) won a bw tour, honest won a sc tour(?). Anyway, the last bw ladder tourney was also the world championship, where it got narrowed down to only two people .. the canadian wind and [BBlade]LeadeR who had surprised the heck out of everyone by running thru some of the toughest western players, using the imbalanced TERRANS. Sadly Grrrr showed him a 3-0 beatdown in the finals.
The i2e2 came, this is where I first remeber HOT, playing as HOT~486~Free, lost 2-1 to Crexis. Byun also showed himself in this tour, losing 1-2 (i think) to GGMAN himself. Grrr, ofcorse, won the whole thing by defeating )DL(October in the final.
Lost a bit track of the timeline here, but Game-Q held their starleagues, world championships and exibitions ..
.. and Slayer (GG99) won the 2nd kbk using ... Terran - defeted I.Love.Star in the finals - in other notes, there was some other tourney right after KBK - may have been an early starleague in not sure, where GoRush defeted the same . TheMarine won the first KBK btw, using the nick Fanta~[Strike]. He played _only_ zergs. A few westerns who participated in the 1st and 2nd kbk are [o]Mr.X and NTT(placed 3rd or 4th in 1st one i think - may be wrong on this).
Mensrea is way better fitted to describe the Starleague history, and probably also the Game-Q world championships (I think the 3rd one never got finished)
Thats some bits i remember .. there is prolly more, but have to get home from work now
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Sweden33719 Posts
Could someone write a list of who have won starleague? I remember one from bw.com it was like
Freemura
Grrr
Boxer
Garimto
Boxer
Garimto
Sync
Reach
But I am not sure about the actuality of that list.
Regards FrozenArbiter
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Good thread, keep it up.
I remember SKELTON coming to East to play a few games on Ladder. My friend played him, Good_Man_Tim, he was awesome in his Day.
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All my posts deleted wtf ?
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Not even close to accurate.
my brief rundown of events as i recollect:
everlast defeats agent911 in sc season whatever. this game was significant because it showed that mass hydra was overpowered against marines, setting in motion the balance changes of bw.
pgl season 1 is played. gadianton wins over a field including kain, grrrr, maynard and others. the defining moment of this tourny is gad vs kain on dire. gad (being coached by d22-soso) and kain both turbo reaver with the broken cooldown, with defensive goons after. gad hotkeys his probes to something like 7 and 8. they drop on each other. gad moves his probes away by hotkey and manages his drop on kain, showing the first great art of sc.
sc v 1.04 is released. 6 range dragoon, massive hatchery nerf. grrrr switches to protoss. nobody follows his lead.
pillars and kain continue to show terrific form. ranged dragoon abuse becomes the major "pillar" of protoss play.
pgl season 2 is played. grrrr overcomes a terrific field in dominating fashion. thresh repeats as quake2 champion, then retires as the greatest fps player in history.
sc:bw beta is played. zileas finally breaks through, having been on the cusp from sc v 1.02. with his abuse of reaver pop in the deciding game, bw is released with a massive cooldown increase for protoss units on unload from shuttle.
crexis develops 9 pool lurker. he dominates every terran player on land with this.
bw season 1 is played. soso defeats grrrr in a 3 game series, winning pvz on temple 6P VS 12Z in the deciding game. he then goes on to defeat crexis, proving himself to be the most complete player of this time.
soonafter soso, grrrr and gad go to korea for sports seoul. grrrr loses to )dl(october in the final. a few months later grrrr avenges his loss in the i2e2 tourny, RAPING october.
bw season 2 is played. ssamjang wins over a sparse field.
kbk season 1 is played. ntt comes oh-so-close, but loses to some z.
the korean scene produces it's first superstars: ssamjang, intotherain, hot486, st.eagle. they trade wins back and forth in korean tournies. western players first hear about st.eagle and vulture/tank.
bw season 3+world championships is played. grrrr wins both with protoss on land and zvp on air.
whear makes a name for himself on kali with 3 factory vulture then tanks.
grrrr goes to korea and rapes everyone for 6 months with fast expo on land and sair/reaver on air. koreans are totally confused on how they can counter his total style of play.
kbk season 2 is played. slayer wins.
game-q world invitational is played and aborted. in his first major impact on the scene, slayers_`boxer` defeats [z-zone]byun on temple with marine drops and a macro style combined with terrific defense.
bw v 1.07 is released. 1 hat lurker vs terran dies. undocumented mine trigger range increase.
world cyber challenge is played. star-gorush wins.
kbk season 3 is played. themarine wins.
bw v 1.08 is released. dropship. turret. dt on unload from shuttle is visible for a fraction of a second.
wcg 1 is played. boxer establishes himself as the dominant player on the world stage, going undefeated.
slayers_`boxer` begins his reign of terror, totally changing the way sc is played as grrrr did before him. dropship abuse confuses zergs for almost a year before they finally start to expo/2 hat muta into lurk.
lesser korean stars win various korean events.
boxer continues his dominance, becoming the most complete bw player in history.
boxer wins wcg 2, showing the western scene that he does indeed have the heart of a champion and is not just some "well-practised robot".
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Greetings:
On December 10 2002 01:46 mensrea wrote: Man, I'm getting all nostalgic now...
Haha, quite the same with myself good sir, recalling the early days of bnet, when 4pool/bloodbath reigned, and you could join "Protoss Strategy" (it would actually have more than 1 idle bot in it at that point, and the bot would not be porn spamming you) and see Zileas philosopizing on the merits of hallucination/templars or his infamous reaver tactics.
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Norway28637 Posts
I literally become sad from nostalgia when I think about how fsdjafhdasj amazing sc used to be.. =[
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Tsu was early generation progamer, wasn't he?
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United States37500 Posts
BratTsunami can be considered early I suppose. He started playing SC about 1.5 years after it came out. He frequented in channel toyland back then. Highest ladder in SC was low 1700. Made the transition to BW when it came out and hit a max of about 1500 on BW ladder. I believe he's been a Z user ever since the start.
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I don't know any *top* player that has considered Tsunami good
his strats make fun replays, but that's about it
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United States37500 Posts
Heh Naz, you are harsh.
Tsunami was good at his time, when SC/BW was still young. He never did hardcore it to become *top*. But from what I've seen, he had potential IMHO.
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WarBlade! is not GFraizer. They are old friends, and both works on Blizzard now. [9]Villert is danish.
[9]eVERLAST went to Korea as the first non-korean pro gamer. [5th]Fire deserves a meantion, he was the best Swedish player at that time.
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Norway28637 Posts
neo, the fact is that he's right.. 
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United States37500 Posts
Eri, I never said I doubted or argued against Naz's statement. What he says will always have more consenus from other top players than my own opinion. Just saying Tsu was good in my opinion.
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And in my opinion tsu sucked and hacked.
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I know Naz hacks...i got replays to prove it.
chRh told me he is a hacker and all
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United States37500 Posts
*shrugs* To each, his own.
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anybody remember this?
Anybody wanna add somethin?
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Montaro deserves mention. His use of the Ghost really was quite ahead of his time. No one ever gave that unit a chance until Boxer's amazing victory over TheMarine by locking down 12 battlecruisers at once. Montaro's mass nuke tactics are still unmatched. Of course, Montaro never had to try that against korean pros =p
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Tsunami was the sort of guy who always wanted to be original. I recal obsing a game of him aobut 4 months ago, I thought he would come to his senses and expand/sunk defence/muta haras but NO lol he still going 2 evolution chamber upgrade hydra/ling vs terran
Thats a true warrior.
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On December 10 2002 12:50 Eliminator wrote: Show nested quote +On December 10 2002 11:44 RowdyBob wrote: hmmm what about the guy Grrr played in Blizz Tourny... Leader something... Skelton prob too deserves a mention (he did win a starleague.., or no?) FreeMura winning the first OGN starleague has to count for something, and SoSo also cause he was crazy (the whole pop band thing created some good games vs Grrr...) It was [B-Blade]Leader, B-Blade used to be a pro team in the beginning if I recall well.
His name is Kim Chang-sun, a commentator for couple of leagues (the guy with square-shaped face and glasses). Just by reading the battle report, I was fascinated by the power of Terran, the lesser race at that time. Too bad he had to face Grrr in the final. (He had to fight carrier with the short-ranged goliaths)
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how about naz? how did he got in pro gaming scene?
can someone post a timeline on how all this happen?
-thx
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I think Naz first became well known in Cloud Ladder, then much moreso after defeating NTT in the WCG dutch prelims
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Naz was always well known on the SC scene.
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Hmm =)
This has me thinking about old times...
In 1999 in Auckland New Zealand a guy held a small bw convention and if I remember correctly the guy who hosted it was using the alias hone[sg]. He showed off )DL(October vs Grrrr - who at the time was playing z A few people paid and got to play Grrr but at the time I was not into bw all that much and did not bother playing. (God I regret that now!)
Is hone[sg] )Is(Honest by any chance? And I heard one of them (if its not the same person) used to be Grrrr's manager? Anyone know about this?
Cheers!
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Norway10161 Posts
Honest'[sg] was and is not )is(Honest. First of all the )is( is american, while [sg] is korean.
October vs Grrr must have been the finals of either i2e2 or the first (big) kor tourney grrr won, i'm not quite sure which one that was, tho.
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)Is( is as Korean as it gets..
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hone was an australian who studied korean the language and culture in college and was very enthusiastic about brood war. he began working for the australian embassy in korea a couple years ago~~ and yes he was GRrr's manager at one point, if any reason because he spoke english and korean. also that's who I think mensrea is :-)
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larry-the-weird owned shit up. i think he got places in some blizzard tourney ages ago. i always wonder what happened to those early gamers - are they the ones where everything originates from? or just smaller playing field?
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On December 12 2002 18:54 Casper... wrote:
And in my opinion tsu sucked and hacked.
tsu was original. original doesn't gel with sucked. and, he was too much of a gentleman to hack
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montaro all the way....
i was a huge fan of montaro.org....omg, all those battlereports he posted, they were classic..
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ToKoreaWithLove: The game was a practice game, where hone organised the players to meet on a certain bnet channel to play some demonstration games - which we watched the games on a projector
Ilnp: Cheers for clearing that up; but I thought he was from New Zealand? Oh well either way I've met him :O
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did maynard actually achive anything except transferring peons?
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That's pretty cool in and of itself Could you imagine the OGN commentators saying Boxer is performing a Resonate Transfer with his peons. This is performed to . . . blah blah blah
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
Casper, Tsunami did NOT hack and is probably the most mannared player I've ever seen. He has beaten the likes of grr and others, establishing him as good player, but not a progamer. So I dont know why you can say he sucks, he just doesn't have time to practice.
LOL, maybe you think so bad of him cuz he was a z player that frequently dominated toss.
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We all know Z dominating toss is unheard of --v
And btw, Tsunami is now an arrogant little bitch, after being followed around by yes men for a year, he was no longer as manner as he once was. And many people have beaten grrrr and others, doesnt mean they can do it when the game matters, everybody knows grrr is 10x better in tourney play than online play.
FrEaK
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the story i recall is that maynard became known when he went onto whatever the sc kali server at the time was (the leet one, not the fucktard one), unknown (mostly?) and proceeded to beat each and every "best" player there (at the time, the best players in sc were all considered to be the best ones on that kali server). something like that. of course he also played war2 but wasnt known for that i guess and maybe he had friends or w/e hell i dont know. honestly if you want to know about that part of sc history you should go to the source.. grrr, maynard, agent, everlast, ntt might remember too? whatever.. i hope sc and bw history, strategic, tournies, leagues, balance changes etc. becomes a section somewhere, its good stuff and shouldnt be overlocked by the fanboyism "the current bw is perfectly balanced. everything before was inferior and it cannot be improved upon, period"
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u left out a lot of KBK and Game-Q Probably the 2 most important things to non korean gamers.
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My first was grrrr 12 z vs boxer 9 t.
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Didn't Hone and Mensrea post simultaneous on broodwar.com in the pre-Iszard era?
That would mean they're not the same person, or Hone/Mensrea was already blowing smoke up our asses back then. Why would he do that?
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I always that that replay was fake, due to the zergs play. And I am pretty user boxers name in that rep has some modifacation.
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I had to bump this thread, it makes me so nostalgic.
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edit: Come on, man, you have to get warm and fuzzy reading about the early games.
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EPT
