Search the site... Reviews About Contact DC Web Store The archive Behind the site Get in touch Grab sweet gear! Please consider disabling AdBlock for our site. HOME (../../INDEX.HTM) » FEATURES (../INDEX.HTM) » BAM5 WRAP UP: FIVE YEARS OF SALT, SWEAT AND THE RETURN OF THE BOMB FEATURES REVIEWS BAM5 Wrap Up: Five years of salt, (../INDEX.HTM) (../../REVIEWS/INDEX.HTM) ROUND- PREVIEWS sweat and the return of the Bomb UPS (../../PREVIEWS/INDEX.HTM) 1 year ago (../../2013/05/index.htm) (P.O./D../CRAOSUTNSD- VIDEOS by Chee Seng Siow (../../author/chee/index.htm) 1 comment U(..P/S../IPNODDECXA.HSTMS/)IN(.D./E..X/V.HIDTEMO)S/INDEX.HTM) CULTURE INTERVIEWS (../../CULTURE/IND(E..X/...H/ITNMTE) RVIEWS/INDEX.HTM) Please consider disabling AdBlock for our site. “CAN YOU DO THE OVERHEAD?” roars the crowd at Daichi Akahoshi as he completes his disgusting Vergil comeback over his training partner ToXy. It is the Sunday of the BAM5 (Battle Arena Melbourne) weekend, it is finals day and it is MAHVEL, baby. Sitting in the crowd one can feel overwhelmed by the level of sound in the room; you have gasps, cheers, jeers, tribal chants and even pleading. It is loud and it is hype. Register Login Daichi is notorious in Melbourne for looking away from the screen in­match to jive with (../../wp- (../../wp- the audience. He once famously dropped a combo when indulging in said login.php- login.php.htm showmanship, only to spin back and win the match with an oh­so­dirty Vergil swords registration=d ) instant overhead. Much to the amusement of the audience he quickly turned back isabled.htm) around jabbing an accusing finger at select audience members exclaiming: “Can you do the overhead? Can you do the overhead? Can YOU do the overhead? If not – shut the F*** up!” Who We Are Gamer Kick aims to provide you with quality, original editorial content that drives conversation within the gaming community. So get reading! Read more » (../../about/index.htm) Popular Articles Super Adventures Of Chad & Chris – Tony Hawk’s (../../videos/super­advenPturroe sS­kcahtaedr ­4 chris­tony­hawks­pro­ska(.t.e/.r.­/videos/su 4/index.htm) The tournament pools. per­adventures­ chad­chris­ tony­hawks­ The crowd takes great pleasure in chanting it back to Daichi as he hits an overhead on pro­skater­ ToXy and we’re only getting started with the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Top 8. This is the 4/index.htm) best thing about attending a fighting game major in person; you get to witness the raw 4 weeks ago culture of the scene and the organic back­and­forth between audience and player. Super Perhaps no other competitive video game lends itself to sheer spectacle and in­match Adventures Of Chad & Chris – drama as much as fighting games do. And with a hyperactive game like Ultimate Street Fighter Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (UMVC3) with its explosions of light and sound and frenetic (../../videos/super­advenEtuXre3s­street­ momentum swings, well this writer can attest to almost having a heart attack while fighter­ex3/index.htm) (../../videos/su watching the Marvel grand finals in the crowd. per­adventures­ street­fighter­ ex3/index.htm) Early Festivities 1 month ago BAM5 started on Friday night at 6PM, Street Fighter players being late and filtering into Why Delsin Needed A the venue in dribs and drabs. The chiptunes artist (../why­delsin­ Mask – The Pselodux (http://pselodux.bandcamp.com/) does his best to warm up the venue with an Failures Of intense set of electronic sound and there’s even an introduction to proceedings by needed­a­mask­the­failurIensfa­omf­ous: infamous­second­son/index.htm) Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono, but the night only truly gets started when the Second Son (../why­delsin­ exhibition matches begin. needed­a­ mask­the­ Ono-san wishes Battle Arena Melbourne Happy 5th An... failures­of­ infamous­ second­ son/index.htm) 2 months ago We start out with a comedy/grudge match between two of the biggest mouths in the Oz fighting game community: Ali “X” Abdo and Yousseff “Fayd” Faddoul. Ali is the head of the ShadowLogic crew in Melbourne, and Yousseff has been a big part of Sydney Tekken for years now. It might not be the highest level of Marvel play, but it is a good chance for the crowd to cheer for their homeboys. The loser (Yousseff) gets appropriately labelled “the King of Salt” with an actual crown and salt shaker. (Why salt? Because tears are salty. This is fighting game logic.) Next up is a blockbuster match, a First to 5 in Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition 2012 (AE2012) between Melbourne’s Sol and BAM’s international guest from Hong Kong: Johnny “Humanbomb” Cheng. Johnny predictably comes out strong with a two game lead, but the local underdog Sol manages to claw his way back to an upset victory with his tenacious Cammy. The Melbourne crowd goes crazy as expected, and Sol’s victory makes the weekend that much more interesting­ could the returning champ be more vulnerable than we thought? Yousseff “Fayd” Faddoul crowned the king of salt. What follows next is more misery for the local crowd as Sydney bodies Melbourne in the Virtua Fighter 5 vs. 5 and in the UMVC3 2 vs. 2 between Queensland’s Hai and Baxter and Melbourne’s Michael “ToXy” Guida and Daichi. Baxter in particular almost silences the crowd with some particularly strong play­ running over both Melbourne players in straight sets and putting a very, very strong foot forward to be the definitive favourite for the Marvel tournament on Sunday. It Has Begun! Saturday is pools day and is when the event is at its busiest. You have hundreds of players in the hall, intently staring at row upon row of BenQ monitors, hands sputtering with staccato violence over their sticks. The room is filled with the joyous, familiar smacks of Sanwa buttons and the usual decibel spikes of people having fun and getting hype. At the front you have the main stage where players duke it out in front of the audience, and just next to it is the stream area where the matches are streamed live to fighting game communities around the world. You can see Justin “Bugsimus” Creed looking over his stream staff with a benign gaze and commentators­in­chief Anthony “Felix” Mallon and Mike “the TV” Skolnik doing their best to provide discourse and context for the matches on stream in a professional but yet personal manner. *GASP* It’s not just players here; there’s Gaming Gear (http://www.gaminggear.com.au/) in the corner with their array of arcade sticks and components, the Fourth Player guys are in the corner recording a live podcast at BAM (http://thefourthplayer.com/the­fourth­player­ep­15/), and there’s even New Game Plus (http://newgameplus.tv/) staff filming the festivities. On the flanks are all the casual stations where intense money matches and a lot of side betting are going on all day. And in the middle, right in the guts of the room, are the tournament stations. This is where the competitor’s battle tooth and nail to stave off elimination and the bracket organiser’s flitter around busily with iPads clutched in hand. At the back of the room you can see rows of bulky, good old­fashioned CRT TVs. Why CRTs, you might ask? Because BAM is also the home of the Super Smash Brothers community who will be brawling it out the whole weekend to crown a new champion. Street Fighter II intro screen for the win. Saturday provides some juicy surprises for Street Fighter IV, Melbourne’s own Guy specialist Duy “Phero” Pham knocks Humanbomb into the losers’ bracket! Now Johnny has to take the long and arduous road back to grand finals via the losers’ bracket (you have to play many more matches than in the winners’ bracket, and if you lose again you’re out for good). Perhaps Johnny is feeling the pressure to perform, being the international guest and returning back to his old stomping grounds. More upsets: Sydney’s two strongest players; Haz “Shang Tsung” and Robert “Robsux” Riggio are knocked into losers’ bracket, and Robsux is even eliminated. Sydney gets its revenge however, as Crazy Freerider knocks OzHadou Nationals (OHN) champion Nicola “Genkibot” Fraser into losers’ where he is eventually eliminated by Hakan “Carnage” Dorter. Shang’s match with ToXy is particularly intense; ToXy was on the brink of defeat when he catches Shang Tsung’s Bison coming down from a devil’s reverse with a clutch, clutch Raging Demon, almost leaping out of his chair in exhilaration as the crowd goes crazy. The Final Day After a long and grueling day of pool play we finally have all the top eights for our finals on Sunday, save for Street Fighter x Tekken, taken out by Sydney’s BKsama and Injustice by Sam Baxter from Queensland. Tom Taylor (http://www.tomtaylormade.com/), the writer for Injustice also makes an appearance, and kindly spends a couple of hours at the venue signing autographs and taking pictures. We even have Dead or Alive cosplayers showing their support for their game! I don’t think anyone is going to complain about this cosplay. But now we’re back in the thick of action on Sunday. Daichi’s just lost to Toxy and we’ve made it through almost all our games, crowning Queensland’s Colinov as the King of Fighters and Melbourne’s own AlexMD the Virtua Fighter 5 champ, beating out Sydney’s Chill and the legendary Mike “Iron Myke” Abdow.