#omegathon

So the Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX has this event called the omegathon. It consists of 20 players, 18 of which applied and got accepted, one person from the crowd at the first event selected by playing some kind of random game with the hosts.  The final contestant is the runner up from the previous year, oddly enough this was the third year they had competed as the number 2 champion. He wore a golden crown and came off as extremely douchey and went by the handle “Mighty.” Another competitor had come in 2nd about a decade ago, but was unable to challenge in the following year due to work issues, Vader had asked for another shot.

My buddy John, Wild Chicken or as he is known in other lands, Pollo Savage, wrote a short story in his application and put down, “if you want to find out how it ends, accept my application.” He was accepted and given a schedule of games he’d have to play.  Darren and I came along to cheer him on.

Round 1: Scattergories

Round 2: Mario Kart 8

Round 3: Guillotine

Round 4: Robo Recall

Round 5: Wrestlemania 2000

Final Round: ???

For the first three rounds the omeganauts are evenly divided into 4 groups and the lowest scoring omeganaut is eliminated. So scoring high is an important strategy but so is sabotaging whomever you’d think would be a strong competitor. John trained long and hard but confessed that he doubted he’d get past round 4 since he didn’t have a VR rig to train with. Most of the competition was very pleasant and the atmosphere friendly, Mighty got on a lot of people’s nerves though.

The first round was Scattergories the intense audience scrutiny, knowing it was being streamed and the high stakes pressure broke some people who barely managed to come up with any answers and choked on their words when asked to answer aloud. John, being an English major, fucking crushed it.  

“Good job John, who you gonna play as in Mario Kart 8.”

“I’m gonna go with my boy Yoshi of course!”

“What a shame, you’ll lose if anyone plays as Wario, because Wario always wins.”

John narrowed his eyes and glared at me, every one of our past Mario kart ran through his mind.  He’d never beaten Wario when I played him... except in Smash, man Smash rules.

So we sat down near the screens and the contestants were handed their controllers, there’s a slight hitch to omegathon games. Occasionally they throw curve balls with the gear, such as making people play with power gloves, or in this case individual joy cons instead of pro controllers.

As a result the first game had something truly horrifying happen.  Two people selected identical characters and one of them drove into a wall for two minutes. The audience screamed and screamed but they were so intent on the game that they didn’t realize what was wrong. They were practically crying in frustration but in the end they were eliminated.

“Shit we should’ve thought of signals or something man!” Darren said to me.

“Hey, John saw it, he ain’t gonna do that, he’ll figure it out, that Yoshi is gonna come out on top.”

Now those joy cons are really hard to handle which is why apparently nobody in John’s group managed to select the character they wanted, except the three time returning penultimate champion Mighty who smugged it up with his Waluigi. Mighty came in first in the first two races while we desperately tried to figure out who John was playing as.  Mighty realized that with his previous victories he couldn’t be eliminated so he started racing backwards and sabotaging other players for fun in the final round.  It turned out John needed to come in first and without Mighty cutting loose, he would’ve been eliminated.

Guillotine is a french revolution card game where you gain and lose points based on who you execute, using cards to manipulate execution order. It was brutal, especially the round where the persona cosplaying mother realized everyone in her group was ganging up on her to eliminate her.  John played well and made it through unscathed with a fine collection of heads.

Robo Recall’s round only had 8 omeganauts left, four would leave.  Fortunately the VR game John couldn’t train at was present at PAX and he managed to get in 20 minutes with their demo and was looking up strategies with his phone right up to going up and playing it.  Competition was fierce and the gap in skill was astounding.  Some Vader got through the tutorial by throwing their guns through targets, I watched one guy, Sly, juggle his VR guns between kills and rack up a ridiculous amount of points.  With each competitor I calculated how many John could lose to and make it to the final round. 

On the last competitor I said to Darren, “If this guy beats John’s score, he’s out.”

Darren grimly nodded.

Then the guy got one of the lowest scores of the round, thank god. The fourth round competitors would be, John, the gun juggler Sly, the omegathon veteran returning for one last shot at glory Vader and the crown wearing 3 time penultimate champion Mighty.  Mighty was the one we all pegged as being the biggest threat.

“I’m honestly surprised I made it this far.” John said to us after the match.

“Yeah it’s great John!”

“No guys, I really didn’t think I’d make it this far so I didn’t put much effort into tracking down wrestlemania 2000″

“...John have-”

“I have never fucking played wrestlemania 2000 guys.”

“...god damn it John.” Darren said shaking his head.

So my buddy John makes it to the final round as the wrestling champion, not knowing what the next game was going to be and neither did Vader.  Whom we bumped into outside a bathroom.

I decided to stay for Monday’s match and Vader had been given a few extra passes for some friends to attend and gave us some, which was nice since I hadn’t bought a Monday badge. Mentioned how John asked his wife which PAX she wanted to go to and he talked his call to his wife.

“Yeah I told here win or lose I was happy to be here and she asked me, “Did you really practice and work so hard, come this far, just to lose?” So yeah I’m gonna come at John with everything I’ve got.”

Holding the badge he gave me, thinking about how nice this man was, I got the feeling that he’d just been playing nicely for the most part, but now he was getting serious and preparing himself to get vicious. I didn’t tell John about my misgivings.

The night before we played a bunch of retro games like steel battalion and joked about them having to play the popeye arcade cabinet in the final round. We went to the last few booths we wanted to see, the crowds were thinning out for the last few days of PAX. The morning of the organizer asked us if we wanted any badges for any friends who were going to attend so we got one for Zach who hadn’t been able to come due to work, but it was labor day so he should up dressed as Hunter S Thompson for some reason.

We lined up and waited to attend, the crowd filed in after us, the PA guys mocked John a little bit for his chicken strategy during the wrestling match, but you can’t argue with the results.  They told us they’d already showed the finalists the last game and neither of them had any idea what it was. The giant screen lit up with “NIDHOGG II”

The premise is simple, whoever kills their opponent first gets to run towards their side of the map and sacrifice themselves to  Nidhogg, the other player keeps on respawning and tries to stop them.  It can go back forth with the kills, the first of which John got. Oddly enough whenever John was in the lead, he was great at avoiding attacks, but inexplicably someone kept on hitting the home button causing the game to pause and by the time they got back in, Vader was respawned and able to attack John. I don’t know if he did that on purpose, but it sure was beneficial to him when it happened.

John was really good at running away once he got a kill, but in their clashes Vader began to win more and more and the tide soon turned. We screamed, we prayed but in the end, John lost the game and his bag, because I was so despondent I forgot to pick it up after he left it with me, but fortunately an usher got it back to him.  Apparently being in mortal despair over the plight of your friend isn’t a valid excuse to mishandle luggage with some people.