The PGL finals were held at Club-I cyber cafe in San Francisco, California, USA from November 12-14, 1998. The tournament competition included Quake, Quake II, and Starcraft.
Day 1
Joel a.k.a. GX-Wemmick from Gamers eXtreme let me know that I’d be working the event with Gamers Extreme a few days before. I woke up at 3:00a.m, partly because I was excited, but I also to get some news up on a couple of game website Jediknight.net before I left. The flight departed from San Diego at 7:00a.m, and arrived in Oakland, Airport at around 8:20a.m. Wemmick was there to pick me up.
I arrived on the same day the PGL Finals, Thursday Nov. 12th, 1999. Driving from the Oakland airport to Berkeley to get to the GX office was pleasant. Berkeley is a quaint college town. Wemmick pointed at one of the trees, it had beautiful Autumn leaves. Simply gorgeous
After leaving the office we went across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The clouds surrounded the bridge that day. I couldn’t really see San Francisco that well while crossing it.
The competition in Quake II was awesome to watch the 1 on 1 battles. I haven’t yet to play Starcraft so I didn’t know exactly what was happening. Quake was also exciting to watch, but I may have been biased as multiple DeathRow players were my friends from previous clans.
I was able to be at the PGL for the full three (3) days of the tournament to watch Dennis ‘Thresh’ Fong and Kurt a.k.a. Immortal (Immortal was also at the XPCON2). Immortal ended up winning one of the games against Thresh.
My Spotlights on Quake II DM Matches
Thresh [1] vs. Immortal [10]: This match had everyone on their toes. Immortal kicked up the excitement with the crowd with a first kill to Thresh. Through out the game Immortal gives Thresh quite a few railgun hits. While the game was nearing the end, I kept wondering if Thresh would come back and win the game but Immortal totally owned the level. Immortal’s railgun skills truly amazes me.
Noname-99 [10] vs. Immortal [20]: Noname-99 had the first kill on Immortal. Immortal then came back and over took the game. At the 10 min mark, noname racked up some frags but Immortal still accomplished the game.
K9-Masta [21] vs. Lord-187 [9]: K9-Masta did really good in most of his matches. This particular Match had Lord-187 taking two lava suicides.
After the matches were over for the day, I was able to go to a nice Thai Restaurant. It was the first time I was able to try Thai food. I don’t like very sweet dishes so I was really touchy on trying a Thai dish. I tried a chicken dish that had a red chili pepper sauce. It was one awesome dish. The white chicken meat with a really cool flavor.
Day 2
Friday the 13th (I am not superstitious) was more of a relaxing day. I was up early to leave at 8 am to the GX office again. Wemmick had mentioned the night before that he would take me around for a tour of San Francisco. After we left the GX office we drove across the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge again. It was a very clear day compared to Thursday Morning’s Cloudy episode. I was able to see all of San Francisco its splendor. The view was gorgeous. The whole city looked as if it was reflecting off the watery Bay.
Wemmick pointed at a tiny island, which was Alcatraz. It looked so small, as if no one could really live on such a place. Another place that was pretty interesting was Lombard Street. It is a zig zaggy road known to be the most “crookedest street in the world,”. We drove across the well known Golden Gate bridge. The bridge is alot bigger than I expected and an enjoyment to see and cross over. We didn’t actually hit the city, just stopped at the viewpoint. I believe the closest town was Sausalito. I was able to see another view of Alcatraz. After leaving there we went to The Legion of Honor Art Museum. It had these really nice Lion Statues in the front entrance.
We then went back to the Club-I building by around 2pm. There were a lot of people already there by then. It seemed to be about 3 times more than yesterday’s attendees.
My Spotlights on Quake DM Team Matches
DeathRow [72] vs. Clan Kapitol [61]: This was an extremely close match. For a while there it looked like Clan Kapitol was going to take lead.
DeathRow [89] vs. Clan Kapitol [65]: This was a pretty good match. Unholy stepped in to take Reptile’s place in this game.
Spotlights on Quake II DM Matches
Thresh [15] vs. RB-Ren [0]: This match determined who played the final match with Immortal. I was unable to see this match due to me not getting to Club-I until 2pm.
K9-Masta [10] vs. Thresh [25]: I saw the end of this match. It looked like Thresh did pretty good.
Immortal [20] vs. RB-Ren [-2]: Immortal got the first kill with a rocket launcher. Ren back flipped into the lava. Immortal once again accomplishes his game.
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was a beautiful sight at night.
Day 3
Today felt like a super busy, yet exciting day. I was up around 7 a.m. and had to get to the GX office to meet everyone early. We had to be at the Subway by 8:38 am due to knowing it would be crowded at Club-I. It was pretty nice to be on the Subway.
When we arrived at the Club-I it was already pretty busy. The rest of the day was full of surprises. Saturday felt like it was about 6-7 times more people than what showed up on Thursday. It was so packed with people.
Spotlights on Quake DM Team Matches
Clan Kapitol [75] vs. Power Rangers [81]: This was a really close game. You couldn’t tell which team was going to win.
DeathRow [115] vs. Clan Gib [59]: This was the first game of the Quake Team Championship, both DeathRow and ClanGib were fully prepared and ready to go. Deathrow played with a lot of confidence in this match. The final score had DR up 115 to 59. Both teams regrouped to discuss a strategy to prepare for the second game in the match.
DeathRow [129] vs. Clan Gib [76]: DR controlled the end of the match, winning 121-76 and taking home the PGL Quake Teams championship. Unholy took Reptile’s place in this match. Wemmick describes this match really good at the PGL site.
Spotlights on Quake II Matches
Immortal [3] vs. Thresh [10]: Immortal did pretty well in this game. Thresh needed to win 2 matches against Immortal to win. Immortal only needed to win one match against Thresh because Immortal defeated Thresh on level DM3, Friday. This match was played on level DM3 as well. Thresh put him down with some nice RL work, and followed with a spawn kill at the railgun to go up 2-0. There was one Rocket Launcher fight in the rocket launcher room where Immortal was dodging rockets from Thresh. After Thresh won this game he had to prepare for his next match against Immortal.
Immortal [0] vs. Thresh [43]: Thresh, having one more match to win the championship to one final match. There was a random draw which was taken place. The level that they ended up playing was the Power Trip. Immortal started to look like he was sort of giving up by the time he was 15 frags behind. Thresh wins the game and is granted his Quake II DM Championship.
Spotlight on StarCraft
Gadianton [Winner] vs. Kin-Dom{KoD}: This game was a very exciting game for every StarCraft player. Gadianton wins the title of the StartCraft PGL Champion. Calbear of the GX Staff wrote up a commentary of the match.
Thresh ended up winning the title of Quake II Champion along with my buddy friends of DeathRow B2 a.k.a. Patrick Li, Reptile a.k.a. Jim Dangcil (whom I also call Tarzan, right Tarzan? Hehe.) Frick a.k.a. Wes Culver, (I met Wes through Pat a.k.a. B2 on ICQ when DeathRow were in the tournament in Sweden), Dennis ‘D11-Thresh’ Fong, Jason Carlton a.k.a. Unholy, winning the title of the Quake Champion Team for the 3rd Season of the PGL.
Quake II DM Division 1 on 1 Players:
NICK NAME A.K.A. REAL NAME CITY STATE COUNTRY
alrevelation nem_ccm Andrew Wise Novato, California USA
Immortal Kurt Shimada Pleasanton, California .USA
Lord-187 M Mark Buxton Palm Harbor Florida USA
Mastakilla K9-Masta Sean Yi Los Angeles California USA
noname Justin Spencer Orrington, Maine USA
Pharoah Al Lehocky Tarpon Springs, Florida USA
RB-Rennard Erik Charlbois Toronto, Ontario CANADA
Thresh Dennis Fong Berkeley, California USA
Starcraft Division 1 on 1 Players:
NICK NAME A.K.A. REAL NAME CITY STATE COUNTRY
Esp Phong Li Houston, Texas USA
Gadianton Jason (Jay) Severson San Jose, California USA
~jolly~ Richard Nguven Fountain Valley, California USA
KGOR Miguel Bombach El Paso, Texas USA
Kin-Dom Robert Chan Los Angeles, California USA
TanthalaS Randall Watanabe Honolulu, Hawaii USA
The ~Insane~ Frog Guillaume Patry Beauport, Quebec CANADA
TillerMan Lain Girdwood London, ENGLAND
Quake Division Teams: Clan Capitol – Clan Gib- DeathRow – Power Rangers:
After the PGL was over we all didn’t know exactly where we wanted to go out to eat. Pookie mentioned a few places along with Cross mentioning some places. We ended up going to a really nice Chinese Restaurant in ChinaTown.
Starcraft and Half-life at GX Office
After dinner some of us went back to the GX office. Pookie, Cross, Chris and Steven played some StarCraft while Spear and Nemesis played Half-life Multiplayer mode. XP-Chael and I watched them play a few matches. Spear gave me his computer to play the game. It was such a fascinating I played it for 2 hours. The weapons are different, the grenade is more powerful than your typical hand grenade in Quake. The enemies were creepy! One of the critters chases after you, the other slurps you up with their tongue (similar to what looks like a rope hanging from the ceiling). Silly me, I jumped on a rope and it was moving upwards, It didn’t take long to look up and realize the creature was trying to eat me. The tongue was sticky so it took a while to figure out how to jump off. Overall the game was addicting and refreshing. Be sure to check it out!