You are making some very good points, so I would love to address them.
Of course, I would like to stress, that this is all my personal perspective, I don't necessarily share the views of the organizers, and my approach is probably very different when it comes down to it, but we have the same end goal.
QUOTE(Okey_Dokey @ May 21 2016, 06:10 AM)
Copenhagen is as suitable for European Championships as Portland for World Championships. If you are not from Denmark or Sweden, you can get there pretty much only by plane. That's why 90 % of the participants come either from Denmark or Sweden.
I get what you're coming from, but honestly this would be true no matter where in Europe you chose to have this. The thing is, though, and that's really all that matters, is that Europe didn't choose Denmark, people from Denmark decided to do this, because no one else is doing it. Off the top of my head, we did have participants from both Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, England, Holland, France, and Serbia, and of the Danish contestants, Christian is really the only one who is able to put up a fight in the NES playoffs, so the top tier is really quite international. The fact still remains that with people like Linus, Svavar and Jani in the competition, we still have a field of some of the strongest PAL Tetris players.
But in the end, what really matters is that no one else is doing this. Instead of being critical of the location, we should just be happy that it exists. Tetris is such a competitive sport, and more needs to be done about it. I don't personally care where in the world that is.
QUOTE
Also there's no sense in holding a TGM2 tournament when only 3 participants have played that before. A Gameboy tournament where nobody sees anything doesn't make much sense either and PAL NES isn't as good as NTSC NES from a viewer's standpoint. So it's all about SNES.
This is, again, not as simple as you put it. The decision of including GB and SNES I think was just tying to put more content into the schedule, so there would be more for people to see or do? I'm not really defending it or being against it, it's really just a novel part of the event that makes it a bit bigger. You could easily argue that those two could easily be replaced with a more competitive platform, and/or some guideline VS matches for the sake of variation. At the moment there is no game with a hold button, or T-spin rewards. The thing is here, though, that similarly to the location, this would require someone with an interest in this platform to take action and push it through. But this is a small event at present, so hopefully stuff like that will come in time if we grow bigger.
As for TGM, I have to admit I was the one pushing for that. I'm a big fan of this version, and I think it's really one of the most impressive versions of Tetris, when it comes down to what the audience sees. I was hoping that by including this, it would make more people aware of it and get more people into playing it, but also helping attract more people to the event than just NES players, which I think it actually did. Of course, with Qlex being the only truly capable player present, the competition was a novelty at best, but a lot of people loved seeing it, especially his M ranking during the qualifications was met with a lot of cheering.
Right now, CTEC is in all honesty all about the NES competition. All the best players present are digging this version, and the contest is much tougher, making the matches much more exciting to watch. But I would love in the future to see a bigger event with more platforms that really mattered. And personally I wouldn't mind seeing it hosted by a different country each year, even if that sounds like a logistical nightmare.
Tetris European Championship
Mar 16 2015, 08:08 PM
