by Alwyn "SilencE" Kotze

This past weekend saw the Megarom Starcraft II Launch Exhibition Tournament at the Sound Room in Midrand.

I picked up Reino “skillbill” Janse van Rensburg and we were on our way. The first impressions were awesome. Everyone was received at the door by a red carpet, not unlike a movie premier, with promogirls ticking off your name from the invite list. It all made me feel quite important for a while there.

It was a normal style club with people hanging around at different bars and sitting on couches and chairs all around this very stylish venue. There were laptops on each side with Starcraft II single-player campaigns for everyone to play, and a retro section where there were 6 laptops connected for people to enjoy the game that started it all.

Every wall had a big screen with Starcraft II matches going on. No matter where you were, you could watch the games as they happened. The middle section sported 4 top of the range clear-cased PC's with Razer peripherals and some really cool ASUS screens.

The PC's were perfectly situated as the panel where the shoutcasters sat had a nice overview of the players and there were two lounges overlooking the playing area, where everyone watched the finals from.

In between all the games, many of people who only know from their names on IRC all walked around and introduced themselves and got to know each other a bit. It was nice to meet all the people and we had some good laughs. Everyone was really relaxed and made for a wonderful Saturday evening.

The drinks were decently priced and the food was good as well. All of this made for a very relaxed but professional setting in which some of the top South African players duked it out for the main prize, a really cool ASUS gaming laptop!

Megarom, I R Gamer and Asus really showed what they could do and the whole package was just marvelous. The games were very entertaining and by now most of you have heard about the long and teched games from Kreeflewer and AngryAfrican, with not a single one of their games going without Thors or Ultralisks.

There were fun games in between with the organisers going at eachother in 2v2 format and myself getting a chance to play a “celebrity showcase” against the man who made all of this possible.

Right before the finals after AngryAfrican and Shase took their seats, it went silent and smoke machines started to fill the place up with an array of laser lights dancing around in the smoke and this EPIC intro filling the place with some of the biggest speakers I've ever seen sending waves through the floor. I was getting goosebumps at the whole situation, with Shase and AngryAfrican seriously staring into their screens, mentally preparing themselves for the final they were about to play.

While this was really awesome I had to feel a slight deal of disappointment, with the place fairly empty by the time the finals started. While people debate the fact that the tournament was invite only, I did notice the attendance list having lots of people who confirmed coming, but never showed up.

We have little events in South Africa, and even less events as awesome as this one. If players don't support it, I understand why they wont host things like this again. So I suggest, together with not making things invite only, we should support every little piece of event we get, and who knows, they might give us something even better!

Other than that, it was an amazing experience and I think I can say everyone enjoyed it immensely.

The final results were :
1. bvd.Shase
2. V|angryafrican
3. miNt-Kreeflewer

The people were great, the prizes were big and the competition was of epic proportions!

You can visit our gallery to see more pictures of the event and all the replays are available here.