SEAM2014 Aftermath

I like how this post is 1 week late, but it has been a really busy and tiring week. Oh well, here we go!

Through some miracle, I was able to make it for South East Asia Major 2014 (SEAM2014). Wow, what a weekend! What an event! Where do I even begin?

Shoutouts to all the organizers, marshals, and people who made streaming possible for all the tournaments that were taking place.  Kuni, Josh, Yongde, Farp, Don and all the others from the other tournaments who made this event possible.

Shoutouts to all the players who made it all the way down to compete. We had players from USA, Australia, Brunei, Vietnam, Myanmar, The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, and more.

Shoutouts to all the people who made commentating BBCP a thrill. Anton for joining me with his calm demeanor of a voice, Dinman's crazy Tager that made it to top 8 WINNERS BRACKET, Ourozama for being the true Hazama of his pools, Rebel2 players of course, and Kirie, Vic, Uncle Joel and Kenzi for the afterparty stream appearances.

The list just goes on. Hiro for accompanying our Arcsys guest Souma-san, Rchusan for winning Terumi dakimakura (lol!), Dix for winning the Tsubaki side tournament and the Tsubaki dakimakura as well as having a great time of CVS2 with me. Speaking of CVS2, I cannot thank Lenn of Versus City enough for setting up a chill booth with really old games like KOF95, CVS2, SFT and 3rd Strike. Unforgettable.

And of course, journalists and cameramen (Edz, we really need to UMVC3 again) who take their time to come down and cover the event. Props to all of them.

Now that I’m done with the shoutouts, I can finally talk about my thoughts, although the shoutouts should have mostly expressed my thoughts. This was a hell of an event, possibly the best SEAM to date. It never fails to amaze me how far apart we all are, yet bonded together by fighting games.

Just a few things to rant about. I wished I had joined UMVC3 on Friday but I couldn’t make it. I was curious to see how would my Taskmaster/Spencer/Tatsu team fare now that I know better combos and setups compared to last year’s. I ended up joining BBCP mostly just to represent my character Platinum, though I don’t really had any expectations to win from the beginning because I haven’t been keeping up with the game nor practising for the past maybe 3 months? Winning 3 before being eliminated far surpassed my expectation and I’m still kind of laughing about it.

Commentating was fun. Rewatching the stream, I think I did an okay job. It could definitely be better. My voice sounds hoarse and mellow like a gorilla, which didn’t really please me lol. Man, I really sounded like a Chinese who can’t even enunciate words properly when I’m talking fast. That aside, I’m not really sure how I should improve, considering that I really don’t want to turn my commentary into e-sports mode. At the very least, I should stop sounding like a gorilla with a mouthful of marshmallows I guess.

What else can I say? It was really fun meeting up with everyone after disappearing due to work and other commitments for a couple of months, and seeing the community grow to this point.  Kind of makes me a little sad that I’m not born slightly later, training for tournaments when I had all the time in a world pre-National Service. We didn’t had any of that back then. I still find it crazy how Capcom single-handedly revived Singapore’s arcade scene from the brink of death.

Great games. Game on.

(Man I really enjoyed the CVS2 section a hell lot ^_^)