Okay, so “Battleground 2014″… Man, that brings back some memories! This wasn’t some fancy new game, more like a local gaming event a bunch of us threw together back in, you guessed it, 2014. It was all very DIY, very spur-of-the-moment.
It all started with me and a couple of buddies, Mark and Lisa, complaining about being bored one weekend. We were all big gamers, mostly into fighting games and some older strategy stuff. Someone, I think it was Mark, joked about hosting our own tournament. The joke, though, quickly turned into “Hey, why not?”
The Prep Work (Chaos!)
- First, we needed a place. My basement became the “battleground”. It was dusty, kinda cramped, but it was ours.
- Then, games. We decided to keep it simple: a mix of fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken, maybe some Mortal Kombat, and for the strategy side, we went with Starcraft. Old school, I know, but that’s what we had!
- We sent out invites through text and Facebook. Mostly friends, friends of friends, anyone who we thought might be interested. It was super informal.
- Food! Can’t have a tournament without snacks. We pooled our money and bought a mountain of chips, pizza, and soda. Enough to feed a small army, or at least a dozen hungry gamers.
Game Day!
The day itself was…organized chaos. People showed up, we hooked up a couple of old TVs and consoles, and created a very rough bracket system on a whiteboard. The “rules” were pretty loose – mostly “don’t break anything” and “have fun”.
The fighting game matches were intense! Lots of button mashing, yelling, and the occasional controller thrown in frustration (mostly by Mark, he’s a sore loser). The Starcraft corner was quieter, but just as serious, with people hunched over their keyboards, clicking away furiously.
We didn’t have any fancy prizes, just bragging rights and the satisfaction of beating your friends. I remember one particularly epic Street Fighter match between Lisa and this guy named Dave. It went down to the wire, with both of them on their last sliver of health. Lisa pulled off some crazy combo and won. The room erupted! It was awesome.
Wrapping Up
By the end of the night, we were all exhausted, but it was a good kind of tired. We cleaned up the mess (mostly pizza boxes and empty soda cans), said our goodbyes, and vowed to do it again. We actually did have a few more “Battlegrounds” after that, but 2014 was the first, the one that started it all. It was a reminder that you don’t need fancy equipment or a huge budget to have a good time, just some friends, some games, and a whole lot of enthusiasm.
