Hey everyone.  Guillavoie and myself have spent the last couple of days discussing lots of changes to the weekly contests for 2012.  Here's what we have come up with (a lot of this is patched together from PMs we have exchanged):

We are going to break up the contests into 6 blocks that will last 6 weeks each.  The winner of each block will be entered into a tournament of champions at the end of the year.  Ookii risu sent guillavoie a PM when the 2011 contest ended where she proposed a creation of icons to reward the best players of each game genre.  We could structure each block in a way that all games played in a particular block are from a different genre. This way, we could also reward genre champions at the end of all blocks, and include them into the final tournament. Here's an example:

Block 1: From January 15 to February 25

1st week: Platformer : Super Mario Bros.
2nd week: Shoot Em Up:  Life Force
3rd week: Sports\Racing : R.C. Pro-Am
4th week: Puzzle : Tetris
5th week: Arcade : Donkey Kong
6th week: Beat Em Up : Double Dragon

Block 2: From  March 4 to  April 14

1st week: Arcade : Bubble Bobble
2nd week: Beat Em Up : Bad Dudes
3nd week: Puzzle : Kickle Cubicle
4th week: Platformer : Contra
5th week: Sports\Racing : Track & Field
6th week: Shoot Em Up : Xevious

(Repeat the formula for all subsequent blocks...)

We will release the entire list of games being played for the contests for the whole year so players will have the choice to focus on a particular block of games or on a particular genre throughout the whole year. In terms of the games we choose, I think we should stick to mostly common games since most of everyone will have them or be able to acquire them easily, although we could throw in an uncommon game here and there if we need to. We would need to clarify a few rules to clear out blurred areas. Rules like:

- You can't win two blocks during the year. Once you won a block, you can play for fun but your score is not counted in the leaderboard.

- If you win a block, and you happen to be also a genre winner, you will get the genre icon but the 2nd best player in the genre will earn the spot in the final tournament normally attributed for winning the genre.

And probably other rules in the like...

Thinking about a calendar, here's a proposal for fitting all the contests in a whole year.

There's 52 weeks in a year. We normally take about 4 weeks out during the Holidays, so there's 48 left.

If we make 6 blocks of 6 weeks, this would make 36 weeks. We would like to take a week break between each block for several reasons.
- Preparing the list of games that will be played
- Preparing every set of rules correctly before hand
- Revealing the list of games to the forum in advance so the players have time to acquire the games before the contest.

Taking a week break between each block would make it to 42 weeks, which would give us 6 weeks left to organize whatever we want for the final tournament. Here's what we've thought about for the tournament: we set up the match-ups bracket style.  Instead of trying to come up with a ranking system based on who scored the most points in the contests, we just randomly match people up against each other.  With 6 block winners & 6 genre winners, it will give us 12 participants in the tournament.  Basically, 6 participants will be eliminated in the first round of the tournament, leaving 6 for the second round.  3 participants will be eliminated in the 2nd round, leaving 3 people for the final round.  Those 3 will play each other for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place icons.  We could leave a couple weeks to prep for the tournament & then spend 3 weeks playing the tournament, one week for each round for a total of 5 weeks devoted to the tournament.  We could also think about a way to get 16 participants to make it a 4 round tournament. Maybe a special reward for most devoted player, sportsmanship attitude, VIP player, generous donator (thinking about raising funds for prizes). All of this could be an option. Otherwise, we can handle 12 participants with a final round between 3 players.

Another thing we discussed was doing prizes for the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place winners of the tournament.  Here's what guillavoie proposed about prizes:

"We could definitely prepare prizes for the top winners. It is not necessary, but if we want to go through this, I'd suggest that we handle this with full transparency. We could ask for donation, but I think the best bet would be to only accept money donation. This way, we would be able to easily keep track of how much we got and show that we spent it entirely into prizes. If we're going to do prizes, we better do prizes only for top players (1st - 2nd - 3rd), and maybe a few small prizes given randomly to reward participation.

The winning prizes, if possible, should be brand new stuff. Homebrews and Repros are a good bet. Most people don't own them, and it has a stable value partially standardized. I don't like the idea of giving away used stuff. It meant a lot of work to make sure everything works properly, and it might involve cleaning procedure. With NIB thing bought with donation money, we know for sure where the money came and how it was spent.

Maybe we could contact RetroUSB and try to get a discount for making an order entirely dedicated to the NA contest. Maybe we could use their name somewhere in the contest like sponsors do. I don't know what bunnyboy might think of this, but it does not hurt asking. There's also other members here that deal with repros like coinheaven."

If prizes could tun out to be too problematic, we could just skip this.

As for games we will play this year, I like all the ones guillavoie suggested above.  Here are some games I think we should consider playing this year and the genre they would fit best in:

Adventure Island 2 - platformer
Burger Time - arcade
Dr. Mario - puzzle
Gyruss - shoot 'em up
Jackal - shoot 'em up
Ninja Gaiden - platformer
Rad Racer - sports/racing
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - beat 'em up
a pinball game (Pin Bot, High Speed, Rollerball, or Pinball) - arcade

If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to post them here.  We want to start the contests on January 15, but if we have to push them back one more week to January 22 to make sure everything is perfect, then that's fine.

I don't get this part. What would be the point in kicking ass at a particular game for contest sake if once you pull off a block victory, that even though you got the best most awesome score on a later block, why would it not count? What would be the point in playing the rest of the year for the contest then if you are merely playing for fun only which you could do anytime. Something I'm not understanding?

I think you should except donations of prizes other than just money. With you two in charge I personally have no worries about prize mixups. Maybe just post the prize pool as it gets donated. Figure out the prizes for exact placings at a later date. I like the idea of random prize drawings as well, because lets face it, there is an elite group of 3-5 gamers that play most contests and leave the masses scraping for participation points. Might keep people more interested in playing more weeks.

We need to get 6 block winners to fill 6 spots in the final tournament. When you won a block, you're already qualified for the final tournament, so you're not entitled to win another one, and this is why we say that the score don't count in later block's leaderboards.

But, you can still play for:
A: Fun + Honor

If you already won a block, but really want to kick ass at that specific game that you like so much, then do it for honor. Your score will still be compiled in the results, but it will be marked as unofficial for the current block leaderboard.

B: Winning a particular genre icon.

6 new icons will be rewarded to players who got the best results in specific NES genres. 
ie: The player who will win the 1st block can continue playing in other block (with his scores being not compiled in the block leaderboard) to win whatever genres icon.

If a block winner win in a genre, he'll get the genre icon, but the spot in the final tournament attributed to the genre winner will be rewarded to whatever following leader that is not already qualified in the final tournament.

I know this might sound a bit complicated at first, especially since my english is not the most elegant, but have trust that Bimmy and I will take care of all these details with no hassle. Basically, what the players need to remember is to play their best and try to win either a block or a genre, and that's pretty much it, we take care of the rest.

I completely agree with you regarding random prizes for participation.

We'll be open for 'items' donations to make participation gift given randomly. As of now, I don't know what to think about used stuff, and especially, significantly used stuff. The guy that will be in charge of shipping the random prizes will already need to take some times for shipping these items out, and I don't want him to struggle with damaged things and not properly working games.

In any case, I'd like that Bimmy and I get informed before anybody send anything in donation. We might refuse some specific items as donation, and we don't want to get troubles for receiving things that we don't intend to give as prizes. I think it is an honest request.

My only suggestion is to skip out on Adventure Island II. Out of the three, that is by far my least favorite. I have beaten it, but oh my gosh what a terrible game.

Seriously though, I really like this idea. Sounds like a ton of fun and I would be very interested in participating! You guys do a great job with this contest and I am sure you will make it amazing!

bump

I think this sounds great, I like the idea of smaller 6 week tournaments and the winners not being able to win twice and then going to a finals sort of deal. Sounds fun, I'm glad you guys are trying to mix it up and come up with something new.

Palamedes!


Only thing I have to say is lets try to come up with rules that are not always 1 life. With the game list known, this should be easier as we can test games out to find the best way to play for the contest. One of my favorites we did was lowest score on attack of killer tomatoes. I know there's many other games that fit that rule and would work for our contest.

I agree, other interesting ones that I have seen or played (but not neccessarily posted) in the past were the Tetris incomplete line contest, Battlechess, and most sports contests where there is a run differential contest.

Word!

This is excellent, really well thought out. I will be in touch about the icons soon.

I agree with Mog also. The more variety, the better. Still, great job!!

Sounds pretty great, I don't think if you do prizes (which isn't really necessary, honor is good enough) you should discriminate against used stuff. We collect old nintendo games, I don't think anyone would be unable to understand that a random game as a prize might not be drop dead mint. Personally if it came between a cart I don't have and something 'new' I'd probably pick the cart.

I need to get some practice in, I've been running through a few games this year for the "can we beat them all" contest, but I feel pretty rusty.

I really like this new format.... it helps give more people a chance at winning since you don't have to participate all year to stand a chance.

We should do most lines for Tetris instead of score, then those t-spin yuppies won't be on the leader board