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Competitive Odyssey

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11
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  • Age 34
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Since I've already talked about how I got interested in competitive Pokemon, I might as well talk about the experience I've had with other competitive games in the past. Though I wouldn't call it competitive experience, since most of the time I just liked messing around with those games.

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Looking back the Pokemon Trading Card Game might have been the first time I ever came in touch with anything competitive related. The first time I managed to get one of the cards was way in the beginning when there was only the Basic deck available. I still have the first deck alongside other Basic decks, a Jungle and a Fossil deck. I've never really spend much time playing the TCG though; it just never interested me that much. there weren't that many people on my school that played it either, so that is another reason as well. Although it doesn't change the fact, that I bought a couple booster packs, anyway, even if it was just for the sake of getting new cards.
My interest into the Pokemon TCG completely disappeared when I changed school and all my cards ended up collecting dust. One, or maybe it was two years ago, out of randomness I decided to buy myself a booster pack, because I was curious as to how the TCG had developed over the time and they sure changed a lot.

Around the early 2000s Dragon Ball Z was quite the thing in my country. I'm not sure why it took so long to arrive, but it did anyway. With all the DBZ euphoria it also brought in a ton of merchandize, including a (really expensive) collectible series of DBZ chess pieces. The deal was that every week they'd release a new figure combined with a small magazine that covered some of the basic rules of chess and even a couple more complicated strategies. I've managed to get the whole set and I still have it lying around.
I even spend some extended time trying to get into chess and even learnt a couple openings and all that stuff, but I don't know, it just doesn't feel right to me. Maybe it's the lack of flashiness, or the fact that I don't know any people that play the game. Well, maybe someday, when all computers explode and there's no other way for entertainment, I might consider picking it up again.

After the grand era of DBZ, slowly but surely other Anime series started popping up, bringing not only tons of memories of really great series, but also a bunch of different competitive games; the most motable one being Yu-Gi-Oh!
I have a decent amount of cards and about two, or maybe three different starter decks that I bought over the course of the years. But more importantly: I got myself one of the GBA games that they released. I don't quite remember which one I got, but I know it took place during in the second season, just without the God Cards. The funny thing about that, however, was that at the time only season one was airing, so I didn't know anything about the rule changes they made during the transition (or rather the change from "having no rules" to an actual ruleset, including forced sacrifices to summon monsters with more stars). Needless to say, it was quite a challenge to get into the game, without actually knowing the rules, but it sure gave me a good time.
As I managed to unlock more and more stuff, I build my main deck around one strategy: overpower the opponent with a ton of powerful monsters and if that doesn't work, just pin them down and wait until they run out of cards. So, what I ended up doing, most of the time, was praying to draw Gravity Bind which forbids any monster with four stars or more from attacking. After that I'd play it and build up my monsters to make sure, my opponent doesn't get the opportunity to attack with weaker monsters while waiting until their decks run out of cards to draw. It also helped that the AI was really stupid, especially when it resorted to cheating. {XD}
It was fun while it lasted, but I don't have the desire to play these kinds of card games anymore. Maybe it's the collecting aspect, or the whole deck building process, or the sheer amount of cards that exist, combined with all the strange changes and additions they made along the line (Synchro Summons, etc.) that made me just not care about it anymore...
Also, I taught myself how to throw cards, so that's a thing that happened; thanks to Kaiba and his physically impossible card throwing technique. {XD}

Probably the first time I ever took a dive into the actual competitive scene was 2010. Back then I still went to university and a couple people started playing League of Legends and as a result they tried to drag me into it as well. We where three people playing a couple matches together, but I never really had that much fun with it. I gave up pretty quickly and even though I gave it another shot about a year later and with differend people, it just felt even worse. I've never touched the game since and I don't intend to give it yet another try.

During that period of time I also played a little bit of S4 League, but I never cared for it too much, as well. It's some sort of a shooter thingy, that's all I remember.

At this point, some people might have noticed that there's a specific genre missing, that usually pops up, whenever people talk about anything competitive: Fighting Games
Fact is: Fighting games always went unnoticed by me. There probably are a couple times years and years ago, when I played a match, or two, but nothing that's worth remembering.
Sometime after I bought myself a PSP I also decided to get one of the Soul Calibur games. Again, I didn't really bother that much with it and just moved on. Another Fighting Game that I picked up just this year, is Skullgirls, especially because many people were saying this game's supposed to have one of the best tutorials any Fighting Game can offer. After buying it, I've spend a decent amount of time trying to get into the game. However, at some point I just came to following conclusion: I'm not a hugh fan of purely combo based Fighting Games.

And then there's Smash. Up to this point I can't clearly say, what I think of this series, since most I've seen was just other people playing it and when it came out, I got annoyed relatively fast, because of all the coverage it got. However, I also got that strange urge to try it out, myself. Having that said, a week ago I decided to pick up a copy of SSB4, although it's the 3DS version since my finances care about more important stuff than buying a WiiU, especially when there's already talk about a new Nintendo console being in development, anyway. Also I'm just not the type of guy who likes playing games on a home console. The XBox 360 that I own has only been used like a handful of times and has been collecting dust since. {XD}
Anyway, back to Smash: right now I'm still trying to get into the mechanics, so there's still a ways to go until I can judge this series and whether or not I want to bother with it. But I suppose, that's stuff for a future post.
 
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