My First Maximum Tune 4 Tournament Foray

A week ago, exactly on Saturday, I decided to join a Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 4 tournament at Summarecon Mall Serpong, a mall located in the Serpong area of Tangerang City, which is Westwards from Jakarta. A long time ago before MT4 even existed in Indonesia, I joined a preliminary of a Zone 2000-ran tournament in the Bogor area where the preliminary took place at Mal Parung, and the winner went to the finals which was held at one of the malls in the Bogor area. Sadly, due to my place's misinformation about the finals, I was totally excluded from the finals. In other words, I missed the finals which I shouldn't have to. My tournament experience was screwed...

Fast forward to the 2014 where MT4 has already existed in most of the major malls in Jakarta. Not only Jakarta, but other cities have cab sets of MT4 too. With MT4 enthusiasts grew from the first time it arrived at Puri Indah to the present day, a tournament to determine the best MT4 players has finally come. It isn't the first time an MT4 tournament is held, but this year, it is. Popular arcade chain Timezone held an MT4 tournament at Summarecon Mall Serpong where competitors battle it out to win a total prize of millions of Rupiah in a form of cash and vouchers, and of course trophies for the top 3. It was series one of many series the MT4 tournament took place, so to speak. The tournament's rundown for January was SMS on 25th followed by Mall Taman Anggrek and Margo City on the next day. The rundown like this made me wonder why not making this a championship series instead a la Global Rallycross Championship? Why you don't give each mall an interval of minimum one week after a tournament is finished so maybe the same faces would compete once again? Probably they wanted to have a variety of winners at each venue, perhaps?

Technically, it is my first Maximum Tune tournament because the Zone 2000 is not counted due to aforementioned incident. Summarecon Mall Serpong is not a near place to reach from my home but I was still able to make my show there...

IT IS SHOWTIME!!!

Let's cut directly to the tournament's D-Day, shall we? The D-day begun with people lining up for re-registration. There are 48 competitors, most of them are pros and experienced in this very field. Hell, those from known Indonesian MT Teams such as MVi, Infamous, and SuToS, to name a few, joined the fray. These 48 competitors waited for the drawing session, and as the drawing session commenced, they were eagerly waiting to find out who they raced with. No surprise, among from those 48, there's yours truly and my friend Handi R, who is better known as Rena_KonataKanade in one of the Maximum Tune-related forums.

The competition begun as four MT4 cabs in the arcade turned into Event Mode, and then four more. The first heat gathered two drivers in separate sets, which made me wonder why the organizers didn't field all four competitors for the sake of time... Initially, the heats with two drivers were set into "Double Distance" mode where races are twice longer than usual, but then the game was changed with full field of racers, only one set of four cabs turned into Event Mode (which means the other set became back to normal), and normal distance. My heat was fourth, while my friend's was fifth. Also in the drawing the cab positions were defined by letters. This means mine was B4 and my friend's was A5.

In my heat, I was fielded against another blue R34, a camo-sticker FD3S RX7 belonged to Infamous team, and one more that I can't recall. The battle started on straights where I could hold my lead against the other R34 until the red turn where the Infamous RX7 stole my show, but I managed to score 2nd place and advanced to the next round. As we reached the red turn people were screaming hard and it was quite a mental test. Gladly, I could maintain my composure there. As for Rena KK, he used his white 180SX, but sadly he couldn't take the pressure against other drivers as he was stuck in 3rd place, thus not able to advance to the next round.

An impromptu breakdance routine in the middle of the race

Next round, I raced against yet another blue R34, and the Infamous RX7 that raced with me on the previous round, this time with a known-face competitor who advanced with the other R34 driver; an MVi member with a car named 84NK5. I don't know if the name sounds like a 1337-speak rendition of a certain supermodel or not but I'm sure he's quite senior in this field. Sadly for this round, with the fact that I was rammed early game, avoided braked-in-front technique in vain, and a series of low-key lining and speed, I had to call off my journey to the final. However, my journey didn't end just that as I followed the tournament from start to end and got to try an unorthodox antic ever done in an MT4 tournament...

#SMSMT4TOURNAMENT LIVE FEED FAILURE

This is one of the things I point out here. From my Twitter account @RebirthAY, I tweeted the live feed of the #SMSMT4Tournament. The going went smooth until when trying to tweet a live feed, where Opera Mini logged off my Twitter for NO APPARENT REASON. I have filed my complaint to the Twitter team before but apparently deleting cookies doesn't solve the problem. I guess that for this reason, never use Opera Mini for live feed purposes, use a Twitter app or even a laptop and a modem to do it. This was also one of the things that supported my desire for the next statement below:

RENDY: THE NEXT MARTIN HAVEN. Seriously?

I said to myself "If you lost a game but you have a good antic or two to show, you are yet considered as a sore loser". Martin Haven, a prolific commentator known for his commentaries in numerous racing series like Le Mans 24 Hours and World Touring Car Championship, is my idol and that I followed his path of being a race commentator for this tournament. Yup, if you attended last week's tournament at SMS, you can notice that this blog belongs to a 'nameless commentator'. (Image courtesy of uk.eurosport.yahoo.com)

One of the most memorable antics in the tournament was the fact that I become a commentator for some heats and numerous rounds I wasn't in. Commenting is a fun thing for me to do it but executing it is anything but easy. One thing for sure is that you cannot use soccer-like commentary styles when commenting MT tournaments, because everything has its own place. When commentating a racing event I had to make sure that I comment the actions not too rushed and take it slower, but not very slow, especially too slow. When I could only witness the other guys racing for advancing to the next round, I was thinking to myself about how I could become a good commentator like Martin Haven does.

And now let's see how Martin does it... :)

CHECK ANOTHER SHOWREEL OF HIS HERE (For some reason this video is unsearchable...)

I took this chance because sometimes the in-store commentator was busy on the brackets with the organizers, he couldn't able to commentate some of the actions happening, so I asked him if there was another mic for me to commentate on, but there wasn't, so I took the chance of being the commentator for some of the races. With knowledge of featured cars, courses, and drivers, as well as having an ability to know which team the competitor is on, I was happy to be a part of the competition, both being a graceful loser and a Martin Haven in the making.

But the real philosophy is that I wanted the world to treat Maximum Tune as another part of E-sports. In this world, there are many games that are considered E-sports, but only a handful that's popular, namely Defense of the Ancients (DotA) and Counter Strike series. It breaks my heart that Tekken, from its arcade roots, became a part of the internationally-known E-sports too, while MT isn't. Sure MT is internationally known, but are those in the American and European region know MT well? Do they have MT4? Not even that, Arcade scene isn't so much popular, let alone networked Arcade games. By being a commentator who has intermediate knowledge to the MT world, I wish I could par MT's competitive environment more.

FOUR ADDITIONAL RACERS AT THE LAST MINUTE! Urgh!

There were four last-minute racers joining in the tournament, which means that there were a total of 52 that competed. Because of that, the bracket had to be re-arranged so that the three winners and three runners up can be determined. This means that in select heats there was three-man heat and two-man heat too, with those heats only took one winner to advance.

THE ALL-INFAMOUS FINAL

Infamous Team clinched its one-team final after their members defeated all the competitors in the semifinals where the races were done in duel manner and each winner went to the final while the losers went to the runners up stage. The special request came from one of the members saying that they could pick any track they like for the final. Without a doubt, the final pitted three FD3S RX7s named Pxl, *Lynx, and Akina (correct me if I'm wrong) in Hanshin Expressway. Everyone rammed and sped their way to victory, until the victor was decided. I couldn't recall who was driving which, and even who the winner is, but congrats to them anyways! They make a great fight in the final! Special mention also goes to the runners up as they also served a great battle too. Sad that an MVi member didn't make the cut to the final as it is one of the greatest teams out there, but nevertheless, everyone enjoyed the tournament, as much as I and my friend Rena KK do

THE WINNERS AND THE RUNNERS UP IN A PICTURE

The runners up got Timezone vouchers with an accumulated total of IDR 450,000! Among them was a famous face whose ghost I always see when playing at Bintaro Plaza before MT4; Roy Alkaisar, better known as R-Ksr. I was rooting him for the rest of the rounds.

The winners got Timezone vouchers (total of one million), a lump sum of cash (also total of one million), and a trophy for each placer. As Infamous dominated this tournament here, they have secured ALL THE PRIZES! MUHAHAHAHA *evillaugh*. Btw, from left to right are 1st to 3rd placers: Brian Jonathan, Asen, and Brian Julian

So there you have it. A sum of what I've experienced in my first MT tournament. Tried live tweeting feeds in vain, lost in the second round, and being able to commentate the races was a superb experience for me! I just wish that I could repeat this moment albeit at a different place. All we have to do now is to wait for another MT4 tournament to come, but I prefer the tournaments to be held at a reachable place. Please don't force me to make a trip from Sawangan to Mal Kelapa Gading, okay?

~[R]

edit: Rena KK is not Handi, my mistake. -_-