T20 Competition returning for year 3

Galloping Ghost Arcade laid down the challenge once again, putting $500 and a one-year pass to the venue up for grabs to the winner of September’s T20 Competition. The T20 has been established as a “Tournament of 20 Games,” making it one of the more interesting – and challenging – competitions around.

I’ve always been drawn to competitions that tested players in the ability to adapt to what is happening around them while providing versatility and interesting games for not only the competition, but also for those looking on. This facet might be evident by my implementation of mystery game tournaments at my events as I slide obscure, imported game titles in front of competitors to test their overall playing abilities. 

The T20 competitors have no idea what 20 games will be included until the very start of the event.

Year one (2015) included Blasted, Bubbles, Crack Down, Dragon Saber, Elevator Action II/Returns, Extermination, Kick/Kick Man, Krull, Mad Planets, Monster Bash, Mouse Trap, Primal Rage II, Sarge, Sol Divide, Solar Fox, ThunderJaws, Trog, Vulgus, Wacko and X-Multiply.

Year two included Alien Syndrome, Anteater, Arena, Argus, Assault, Batman, Crater Raider, Cryvern, Domino Man, ESWAT, Exterminator, Final Fight, G Darius, Joust 2, Metal Black, Pooyan, Scramble Spirits, Splatterhouse, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting and Turkey Shoot.

The competition takes place over the span of a weekend and, to qualify, a player must register a score on all 20 games. At that point, the competitor can replay the games as many times as they wish, which creates an interesting dynamic of time management. The player is awarded points based on how high they are on a game’s leaderboard, and these points are combined over the 20 games to determine their event ranking.

This year’s event will take place Sept. 1-3, 2017, at Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, Illinois, and I’ve had the honor to serve as an Aurcade referee for both of the previous events. I’m looking to repeat that for 2017, so I hope to see as many people there as possible.

As a bonus for this segment, I’m including below a piece I wrote for a publication based on the overall 2015 event. I recreated the feature with bonus photos and a different layout, so it’s an interesting two-page read on T20, the scoring culture and the guests that were present at that event!