This is a Reflection Post going over the event dubbed “King of Touge” a Tournament Hosted by the Metro Top Gear Melbourne. This will cover how the event was composed, operated and evaluated over the course of three months leading towards the event.
On October 8th 2023, B.Lucky and Sons Melbourne Central had given us the
opportunity to host King of Touge. The Melbourne variant of the Monthly Sydney
Circuit that is hosted by Koko Amusements in Hurtsville.
This took a lot of work and a lot of persuasion from many people alike in and outside of Metro Top Gear Melbourne. Ideas were constantly thrown around, a lot of it was accepted and a lot of it was rejected.
Ever since the inception of the Metro Top Gear Melbourne, getting a Tournament hosted has always been in the forefront of action to be called.
Considering that B.Lucky and Sons weren’t going to do it themselves. After all, their business model is mostly a Bar first and foremost. And the Arcade is just a branding tactic.
Running it Independently was our most viable option, by Independent that they would not intervene with the inner workings of the Administration. In addition to this they were restricted on what they were allowed to do based on the memos from the higher ups.
Given this took a month to prepare, getting the gear organised was the naivest process considering we initially thought there was going to be enough time to setup everything. We had the essentials: laptops, capture cards, the audio interface and the compatible connectors associated to recording footage from these machines.
We were given sufficient information regarding this from community members and official technicians from the venue. Our problem? this was our first time rigging a setup that was quite involved. Yet we didn’t know the machines practically, rather only in theory we understood how these things worked.
King of Touge was formatted to a 1v1 player matchup, unconventional given
INITIAL D THE ARCADE was designed for 4 players when it launched. Years since
its launch 1v1 was never designed to be removed by SEGA or its associated
developers at XEEN. In fact, 1v1 would still play a big part given its the
backbone of every INITIAL D ARCADE STAGE game. Added to the fact officially ran tournaments for 1v1 are still being conducted to this day.
For economic reasons, it was an attempt to save time. As we didn’t expect to
know how many players would sign up for an INITIAL D THE ARCADE Tournament.
Luckily for us, a lot of word of mouth came through. But at the same time when
we sent advertising materials to the venue, a huge surge of players signed up.
Significant amount more than we expected.
Players spectating King of Touge
To Speed the Process, the winners were determined by Best of one for the first few brackets and would progressively go up to best of three and for the finals, best of five.
Initially it would have been best of three for all brackets excluding the winners had it not been for the player count of 24 contestants. Although the tournament organisers including myself would have expected much less due to the games niche market demographic.
October 8th comes and at around 2:30pm, we started to have problems. The
network would suddenly begin to disconnect itself from the machines. Yellow
network logos would appear at the corner of each cabinet screen indicating that
its attempting to reconnect to the AIME server. Why’s this important you may
ask? Well, it was the only way for players to access their data stored on
Banapassports/AIME/E-Amusement cards.
That also costed us the efficiency to get through the brackets we organised
a few days before we started the tournament. Constant delays of waiting for the
network to restore itself so players can log on as soon they were called up for
battle. It wasn’t too drastic at first when we set the game to “SPECIAL
MODE A” since none of the progress in terms of Teams or XP point
acquisition was not recorded in this mode.
Tweet from Relunia Gaming covering King of Touge 2023
But when specific maps were played some of the players never got the chance
to actually swap their vehicles in the car customisation options. Therefore,
they felt disadvantaged over if their vehicle was fit to drive on the course
that was selected.
It could have been a multitude of problems, Melbourne Central as of recent
had network issues. Even though we had a streaming rig setup, there was a
possibility we could of ate up most of the bandwidth. Although the streaming
excuse may be over exaggerated on our part. The network problems arose before
most of us had arrived.
As we there were plentiful of highly skilled players, we felt that it would
be extremely unfair to the newcomers to be matched with a player’s skill-gap
they have not reached yet. We set up the brackets for inexperienced players to
start first, then it would progressively get towards to more experienced
players.
It was interesting to observe given that we had some knowledge of the
contestants in terms of playstyle. The lesser-known players from what we
observed, had a lot of interesting moments.
Whilst working with the problems occurring, several hours later we managed to get through to the Finals. At last, the professional talent in Melbourne’s Initial D THE ARCADE scene had started to warm up to winning 1st place. Surely Intense and yet overwhelming to see the results taking shape.
King of Touge wrapped up at 12am. Our Winners were decided.
And Congratulations to them, they worked really hard to earn their places in the Tournament.
Clocking in at 6 hours. That was quite exhausting, yet so satisfying. Curating a tournament for the first time felt like the most satisfying experience I had ever had the chance to participate in. And all thanks to the members at Metro Top Gear Melbourne who wanted it to happen and helped make it happen.
For this I was lost for words. Since then, it was always about me and three other friends coming together whenever there was time to join. To curating a space for Melbourne Players to interact and collaborate with each other over a video game they enjoyed.
This marks an importance that Melbourne is a recognised player base sector for Initial D THE ARCADE. Ever since the silent launch in May 2022, there wasn’t much of a player base as it was just finding its footing. Let alone, it was the only venue in Melbourne that is operating it in Victoria.
And since the Melbourne Players wanted a Tournament for a long time, they got it.
I would like to congratulate everyone involved. MTGM, Participants, Spectators and B.Lucky and Sons for making this possible. And you for taking the time to read this.
And for some news, King of Touge Melbourne will be returning March 2024. We recently got approval to host our second tournament and more information will be announced on this website.
Metro Top Gear Melbourne 
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