The Australian Arcade Championship is a 3-day tournament featuring classic arcade games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Players will be allowed 30 game attempts on the Saturday with their top 5 scores going toward qualifying. The top 16 will return on Sunday for a head to head best of 3 single elimination battle royale.
Brought to you by Hutchinson Builders and 1 Up Arcade
Tickets are $45 and include entry to the Ekka Showgrounds, your 30 game attempts and a limited edition AAC pin. Tickets can be found by putting BPAC in to the search bar at eventbrite.com
Overview
The Australian Arcade Championship is a 2-day tournament featuring classic arcade games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Players will be allowed 30 game attempts on the Saturday with their top 5 scores going toward qualifying. The top 16 will return on Sunday for a head to head best of 3 single elimination battle royale.
Qualifying
The qualifying round of the tournament will consist of 30 attempts per player across the available titles. Players may play any machine as many times as they like with the knowledge that only 30 attempts are allowed in total across all games. When a player has finished all 30 attempts, their qualifying round is over. There shall be no additional buy-ins or tournament entries allowed for any one person.
A qualifying attempt shall be defined as one single credit game played on any of the tournament machines. Games must be completed in single player mode and with no continues permitted. A time limit of 15 minutes will be enforced for all qualifying attempts. Any player exceeding the 15 minute time limit with have their scored for that attempt rendered inadmissible.
Once the qualifying round has ended, the top 16 ranked players will proceed to the Finals round the following day.
All scores on a machine are maintained in a ranking. Point values will be attributed to each player based on their ranking on each machine. The total qualifying score for each play is the total point values attributed to his or her ranks on each of the machines in the tournament. In the instance of two or more scores on a machine being tied, the highest rank and associated points will be awarded to each score.
Each rank on a machine contributes the following points to a player’s total qualifying score:
1st = 100 points
2nd = 99 points
3rd = 98 points
4th to 100th = 97 down to 1 point/s
101st onwards = 1 point
While each player may use their 30 attempts across all available machines, only their top 5 ranks will count towards that player’s total qualifying score. Therefore, the highest qualifying score a player may have is 500 (ranked 1st in 5 games at 100 points each). This also means that a player is not required to play all machines available and may qualify for the finals having only played a minimum of five machines.
Qualifying Tie-break Procedure
If two or more competitors are tied on the qualifying bubble, such that not all of the tied competitors can advance to the final rounds, the highest single ranked game between the competitors will be used to determine which competitor advances. If the highest ranked game for both competitors is also tied, the tiebreaker will be decided by the next highest ranked game, and so on, until the tie has been settled. In the unlikely event that this method does not break the tie due to the players’ five qualifying ranks matching exactly, a coin will be flipped to determine the outcome.
All non-essential qualifying ties, which is any tie not related to the qualifying bubble, will be decided in a similar fashion. The winner of each tie-breaking procedure will always receive the higher seed. Players will never be given a choice of seed at any point.
Final Rounds
The top 16 players will be seeded in a single elimination tournament bracket so that seeds 1 and 2 cannot meet until the final match.
In each best-of-3 head-to-head match, the higher seed selects the first game, the lower seed selecting the second game, and the higher seed selects the third game. If either seed defers the choice of machine, a random title will be chosen by a Tournament Director with the result of the choice not being assigned to either player. Once a player has made a verbal declaration to a Scorekeeper or Tournament Director, either by choosing an arcade title or deferring to an opponent, the decision is declared final and cannot be altered.
The choice of arcade title or deferment during the final rounds will proceed by order of seed from highest to lowest. Once an arcade title has been chosen, it cannot be chosen by another group of competitors during that same round. This limitation intentionally gives higher qualifying seeds an advantage when choosing arcade titles during the final rounds.
Competitors are only permitted to choose an arcade title once during the entirety of the final rounds. For example, if a higher-seed chooses Ms. Pac-Man in the first game of the first round, they will not be permitted to choose Ms. Pac-Man again for the remainder of the tournament. However, the player’s opponent could still pick Ms. Pac-Man, making it possible for a competitor to play the same game multiple times.
In the final round, the two finalists shall compete over 5 games with the higher seed selecting the first game, lower seed selecting the second, higher seed selecting the third, lower seed selecting the fourth and the fifth being selected at random from games neither player has competed on in the finals thus far.
Arcade titles during the final rounds will be designated best-of-three or single-game, based solely on the estimated length of game time of the arcade title in question. Tournament Directors reserve the right to adjust this designation at any point. All games in the finals shall have a time limit of 10 minutes.
On any game designated as best-of-three, competitors will play separate single-player games and will compare scores, with the lower seed playing first in the first game. After the first game in each round, the loser of the previous game will have the option of playing first or second in the subsequent game until an overall winner for the round has been determined.
Tournament Directors reserve the right to substitute or add additional arcade titles or duplicate machines to the final rounds. If any arcade titles are added to the final rounds that were not used during the qualifying portion of the contest, all competitors will be given a 3-minute warm-up period on the machine prior to their having to compete on it. In most situations, games will only be added to the final rounds to offset malfunctions or mechanical failures that occurred during the qualifying portion of the event.
Format subject to change at the discretion of the Tournament Directors.
