K.O. Is This Weekend: What you need to know

Here's the schedule and extra details everyone needs to know

Venue: One of the Suntec City Convention Hall 404 (level 4). Link

Friday 6pm: Represent participants (59 total) casual matches against Poongko (Kor), Itabashi Zangief (Jap) and Laugh (Kor).

Saturday 1pm: 3-Nation exhibition match feat our foreign guests and Peihoon. (You can show your support for him here) Format: Best of 3 games

Followed by: K.O. Finals proper feat 13 of the best Singapore has to offer plus our 3 foreign guests. Format: Double Elim, final 4 best of 3 games.

Our foreign guests will be arriving tomorrow. If you want to catch a sneak preview of their game, do head down to Bugis Junction Virtualand this Wednesday night! They will all be there to get a feel for our awesome arcade scene. =)

Oh, and in case you haven't been keeping up with the K.O. results on www.round1.sg, you can just head over to this thread for the full list of qualifiers.

To end off probably my last post before K.O., let me give everyone an idea of what kind of level of play we'll be seeing this weekend. One of the K.O. qualifiers is Itabashi Zangief from Japan. JUUUUST in case you haven't heard of him, well, here's a video of him beasting some Ryu player in Japan. I dunno who the Ryu player is, but his name is Daigo Umehara. Dunno, name seems kinda familiar, hmmm..

Get your Round1.sg T-shirts now!

That's right, the first Round1.sg T-shirt designs are up! This is a great opportunity for all of us to show our solidarity as a kick-ass fighting game community, and not to mention I think the design is really kickass as well! (Thanks Farp for the design!)

They will be available in both Black and Red as you can see above. For more information on the shirts (sizes etc) and how to order, click here.

As you can see, I'll be closing orders soon so that we can get our shirts in time for the K.O. finals at Suntec City. So, what are you waiting for? Order yours now!! (God, that was cheesy. =p)

Japan and Korea K.O. Qualifier updates

Laugh(right) with Round1.sg web mastah Farp (left), has just won the Korea K.O. Qualifier leg and will be representing Korea along with our special guest Poongko just July 4th at the K.O. finals at Suntec! Laugh is a good friend of ours and was here recently for our Clash of The Titans tournament last March. Although the team of me and Laugh only managed to clinch 3rd place at the tournament, it was clear then that Laugh carried the team and that he introduced Singapore to the most technical and methodical Ryu to date.

As for the Japan leg, it's happening this Saturday! If you happen to be or speak Japanese, or have Japanese friends who are into gaming, do help spread the word with regards to the qualifiers in Tokyo. More details on that here, in Japanese.
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Y_Matsui/20090601/1243819580

K.O. Updates

Sam "Aheda" has posted a thread on Round1 with updates on K.O.
http://forums.round1.sg/index.php?topic=367.0

In short, 3 people qualified for the K.O. finals last Saturday. There are
1st: Leslie (Sagat)
2nd: Yagami (Me with El Fuerte)
3rd: Simon (Ryu)

As mentioned in the thread above, videos can be found here. Here's the finals, which I must admit was really tense for me. GG Leslie!

Updates from the past week: Represent+Player interviews

First off, pics and videos from Represent!!(Yo) are in. Here are a few.


Group pick at the end with most of the Round1.sg members. Yes, as many of you know by now I wore an afro on the day...


And the top 3 of the night, from left:
3rd- Weijie (Dhalsim)
1st- Peihoon (Sagat), your Singapore representative vs Korea and Japan @ K.O., TGX'09
2nd- Alan (Akuma)


Just had to put this in. ;p


MOSH PIT!!

More photos can be found here(thanks Sam) and here(Thanks Rafee).

Videos of the event can be found in this thread, which will be updated once more videos come in. In the meantime here are the best matches, both featuring Alan no less.

Best comeback of the night


Grand Finals



As always, Gamesync has a report on the event here.

Also last week, our very own Singapore Representative Tan "Peihoon" Jia Chun was interviewed by Rapture Gaming on their website. Its good to see our players getting recognized in the larger competitive e-gaming sphere. Thanks Kuan Hoe "Alkaiser" for the interview.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for news on the first K.O. qualifiers.

Attention Ps3 players

That's right, get a chance to play Poongko (Efzzang) and this Taiwan dude in the next few days on the PSN. Thanks to Gameaxis for the heads up.

Please join the Bugis K.O. Qualifiers

I really don't know how to say this without being blunt, but it must be done. To my knowledge to date (Wednesday), only 12 people have signed up for the K.O. Bugis qualifiers. That's right, only 12. It seems that many people got the impression that all the 'pros' have registered at Bugis, so they've registered for the more obscure locations at later dates. Let me give you the lowdown on the situation now, and why these people might regret not joining the first qualifier.

- Bugis has the LEAST number of registrants compared to the other locations. I'm sure I don't have to say why, but I'll just say it anyways: Everyone was trying to avoid each other at Bugis and now they've ended up together anyways at the other locations. I've seen the list, and Kallang looks like the toughest location to qualify in. Makes sense doesn't it? The most 'obscure' location has now become the hardest to qualify in. I would rather not elaborate, but I'm sure most of you get the picture by now.

- Nevertheless, there are a good number of 'pros' that have signed up for Bugis, and not all will hit top 3. I've spoken to many of them, and it is certain that they if they don't get top 3, they will sign up to compete again at the other locations. And they'll continue to do so until they can't qualify at the last qualifier (I don't know if this was mentioned elsewhere, but registrants for previous qualifiers get priority registration for later dates). With Peihoon now out of the picture and with a large pool of players in the next tier below him, I'd say chances to qualify are equal across all locations.

- With chances being equal across all locations, why not register for the FIRST location? K.O. qualifiers aren't about location, they are about timing. The last qualifier will definitely have the most players, with the spillover from previous tournaments. Therefore, it makes the most sense to register for Bugis. That way, if you make it there, you can immediately relax and spend more time preparing for the finals. If you don't, at least you have 3 more chances to qualify during later dates. What if you registered for Kallang and came in 4th? That's right, your last chance would now be at Clementi with everyone else who didn't make it for the past 3 tournaments vying for those final 3 slots.

At the end of the day, let's support the local scene and make the first qualifiers as lively as possible. Although it won't help your chances of qualifying, it might inspire others who haven't registered to register for later dates. I hope I haven't come off as too 'strong handed' in this approach to get people to register for Bugis, but I hope that after reading the points above you'll also realize how hilarious this whole situation is. C'mon, its pretty funny right? Everyone was trying to avoid everyone and wound up at the same place at the end of the day. So yea, lesson learnt. =p

So if you haven't registered, please register for the Bugis leg. If you have already registered and put in a location other than Bugis, it's not too late. You can email them at tournament@tkaworld.com to indicate that you're switching locations.

- I just thought of this: people might read this and think "Now everyone's going to switch to Bugis so I better stay put here in AMK/Kallang/Clementi". LOL. Not again! Enough of this cat n mouse game. K.O. only comes around once a year, and after K.O. there will be NO MORE major tournaments till next May. Ok, rant over, see you guys on Saturday. =D

Represent!!(Yo) Report: Part1

We saw some of THE best Singapore SF4 matches to date on Saturday, and there were certainly many great in-game moments which I certainly wasn't expecting. Expect videos to be uploaded in batches. Personally, I can't wait to see the comments on Alan's amazing Akuma comeback.

However, arguably the best moment of Represent didn't come from the game. Before the finals between Alan and Peihoon, I interviewed the both of them. Peihoon's response shall never be forgotten, and we'll just have to wait till K.O. to see if it really is true.



And yes, Peihoon won the match and is your Singapore Street Fighter 4 representative. After his pre-match comments, I believe we can all agree that it was inevitable.

Stay tuned for the gameplay videos.