This weekend I met up with a friend I play on X-Box Live who is located in Maryland, specifically so that we could both travel to Round 3 of the Gamestop Street Fighter IV tournament. He was kind enough to give me the lay of the land in that particular part of Maryland, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to take advantage of it in the future. A story for another time. I arrived at his home at around 11:16am, we talked over a few trivialities and I had a few warm up rounds before heading to the tournament location around 12:30pm.

When we arrived at the store, there was a video game music cover band tuning/warming up outside. They would be neglected for the better part of the day and they packed up rather quickly after the event ended. I imagine they were told to show up to spruce up the event, though that’s a rather meaningless gesture given the overall setup of the store and tournament. Specifically it being small and crammed with 32 people concerned with getting a free 150 dollar arcade stick and a free trip to San Fransisco. I liked their rendition of Mega Man music, though I’m not sure vg cover music is something I can really appreciate these days.

Walking past them, I located the tournament organizer/store manager and got the details of the tournament. The only important information obtained, other than the start time speculated as being about half an hour later than the scheduled time of 2:00pm, was that the tournament was going to be played on the 360 pad. With a feeling of disgust in the face of that prospect, I just resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to do my best. I had played on an arcade stick for the past 2 weeks. That was “I’m a sucker” moment number 1 for the day. After we were told there would be catered food was when “I’m a sucker: Part 2″ quickly debuted.

The sequel was better than the original in this case.

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