Announcing TOEJAM: Yet Another Video Game Tournament

[InvadErGII]

While watching the Wild game after SSNCT yesterday, I wrote a video game packet that ended up being pretty great. I still have a bunch of other ideas, so I'm turning this into a full-blown event, which I'm calling Tossups On Eggman, Jumpman And More. Here are the details:

Distribution

20/0 Video Games

What?

There is not, at the moment, a specific subdistribution plan for this tournament. Generally speaking, there will be a lot of questions on retro games, especially games from the 8- and 16-bit eras. Modern games will definitely come up, but not very often.

Also, this will probably be fairly difficult.

When, dammit?!

I expect that TOEJAM will be ready to be played sometime this fall, at which point I'll try to figure out one or more places it can be played. Update - this should be ready in time for Trash Day at UMN, so you should be able to play it there.

[InvadErGII]

Now that this is almost complete, here are some more details on the unnecessary question set that is TOEJAM:

- There will be eight packets of 20 tossups each.

- The difficulty level of this set varies from "medium" to "Erik, what is wrong with you?"

- As mentioned elsewhere, this will be played at UMN's Trash Day. If you'd like to play this somewhere else, let me know! After Trash Day and any theoretical mirrors, I'll read it in the IRC.

- The actual distribution will be as follows:

20% tossups on things from the NES era and earlier
20% tossups centering on the early 90's and other 16-bit goodness
20% tossups on games from the late 90's and early 2000's covering the 32- and 64-bit eras and the first few disc-based consoles
20% tossups on the arbitrarily defined "Modern Era"
20% tossups that are multi-era, common link or otherwise hard to classify chronologically

[InvadErGII]

Thanks to everyone who came to the inaugural playthrough of this. I think it went really well, and it ended up being a pretty exciting finish! Rob Carson and Mike Kioski were tied at 490 points with five questions to go in the last packet, when Rob was able to pull ahead and seal the victory. Mike Cheyne and Ben Livingston finished in a strong 3rd and 4th, respectively.

[Cheynem]

Full stats

Rob: 520
Mike K: 490
Mike C: 245
Ben: 200
(remaining people did not really play all of the packets)
Carsten: 25
Sam: 20
Andrew: 10
Peter: 0
Arlo: -5

[Auks Ran Ova]

This was a delight. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

[Harpie's Feather Duster]

I'd love a shot to play this, whether it be in IRC or anywhere else.

[Valefor]

Ditto. I know you said you planned to read this in the IRC at some point, and so I eagerly look forward to that--hopefully soon--day.

[InvadErGII]

I am looking at running this in the IRC this Thursday night, starting around 8pm central time. Dylan and Jason (and others), would that gel with your schedules?

[Tejas]

I'd really like to play this but won't be free Thursday, is there any other day when this can happen?

[InvadErGII]

I'd really like to play this but won't be free Thursday, is there any other day when this can happen?

Hmm. I could run it tomorrow night, but if that won't work we'll probably have to figure out a night for next week.

[Valefor]

I could make tomorrow night, or Thursday. The only days coming up when I *couldn't* make it would be Friday and Saturday.

[Harpie's Feather Duster]

I'm fine with tomorrow night or holding off until next week.

[Tejas]

Tomorrow night works for me.

[InvadErGII]

Cool - tonight (formerly known as tomorrow night) it is. Let's meet in #toejam somewhere around 8pm central time and we'll start once there's a good number of players.

[InvadErGII]

The TOEJAM online mirror was won by Jason Thompson, who finished handily ahead of Eric Mukherjee and a bunch of other people. I'll post the full stats in the morning. There were some absolutely ridiculous buzzes tonight from several players. Thanks to everyone who played!

[Ike]

Yeah this was really fun to play / watch. Thanks for writing it!

[JKHtay]

Would it be possible for you to post the set?

[InvadErGII]

Final scores from the online mirror:

Jason 465
Eric 315
Mik 240
Pat 155
Tejas 130
Matt Lafer 125
Dylan 95
Billy 45
Victor 45
Anderson (?) 35
Chris M 25
Andrew W 5
Wynaut (?) 5
Ike -5
Matt B -5

I'll post the full set to the usual place sometime soon.