Wesley's Tool-Box

Continuing on, the eight finalists for the FarCry tournaments were summoned to the alley leading to the backstage. The tech demo was still in progress, and we had to wait about ten minutes for that to finish.

And then, it was our turn. The first four finalists took the seats: winner of group 1 sat on the 'amd1' station, which was on the far left (closest to the camera), and so on. The ones that finished first and second place in this semifinal round would go into the grand final.


I was the group 5 winner, so after the first round was over, I took the 'amd1' seat. I wasn't able to score any frags for the first half of the game, but the situation got a bit better towards the end of the round, and I narrowly got into the second place with five frags or so. I was now on the grand final.

All four people qualified for the grand final would win some prize, so I was somewhat relaxed and just played on. The stations did suffer from certain lags and the gameplay wasn't very smooth, and that was a bit of a letdown. Still, I ended up doing four frags and got into third place. The winner of the match was really good with the rocket launcher and scored eight frags. The second and the last place got six and three frags respectively.


So what was the prize for the third place? Razer Diamondback mouse. Now this was kind of bizarre for me because this was exactly what I won in a raffle at last year's AMD Mania Day. Same prize, two years in a row. I've been using this mouse with Mac mini and you might have noticed this in some of the photos in my blog.

Meanwhile, the first place got the PSP, the second place earned a 17" LCD monitor, and the last place was awarded with an MP3 player. Incidentally, the second place guy was from Clien.net and he later reported that there were four dead pixels on the prize. I hope he gets a good replacement soon.


There was an intermission after the tournament and everyone was treated with hot canned coffee. I wished there would also be some snacks, but none were prepared.


Next event was the "Golden CPU Challenge", modeled after the popular quiz show "Golden Bell Challenge" on KBS. 30 participants who answered the most questions (out of 50) correctly during the pre-registration event were called up on the stage. The emcee would give a question and the participants would write up the answer on the whiteboard in five seconds. Anyone that got the answer wrong would immediately leave the stage. This would be repeated until either the questions or the participants run out.


Hilariously, on the very first question, only five participants correctly answered what was supposed to be a simple O/X question. Of the remaining five, two survived to the 5th question, and they were set aside for a while. Then the other 28 people were called back on stage to give a second chance, and were given three questions. About 20 of them survived and the game resumed on the sixth question, with the two survivors back on stage.


As the questions came, participants slowly thinned out. After the 11th question, only five remained, with one of the 'two survivors' still on the game. The final five were to win prizes. The 12th questions had two correct participants, so they were set aside for the grand final, while the remaining three got questions to differentiate between the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place. After that was done, The final two came back on stage.


The 'Golden CPU' question was the 15th one, but both failed on the 14th question, so no one got to hear the final question, but the first and second place was determined anyway. The first place got the Fujitsu Lifebook laptop while the fifth place got the HP all-in-one laser printer. The second to fourth place each earned an AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU of differing speeds (4800+, 4400+, and 3800+).


Finally, the raffle time came, and two ladies came on stage to pick the winning numbers for the glass bowl.


Some thirty winners were to be chosen out of about 360 that attended the event. Winning numbers for prizes such as that Diamondback mouse (4), 'gaming' keyboard (4), MP3 player (4), Western Digital Caviar HDD (2), ATI Radeon X550 (6) and X700 (6) video cards were chosen by the lady and the winners would redeem the prize at the hall desk after the end of the event.


The winners for the final prizes, AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs, were chosen by each representatives of the sponsors (three, for 3800+) as well as the CEO of AMD Korea (one, for 4800+). Surprisingly my number, #155, was picked for last drawing of the 3800+ CPU. I was so excited I almost tripped while running up on the stage. The crowd had a big reaction as they immediately recognized me from the previous FarCry tournament event.


And so these are the stuff I brought back today. The mouse (top left) and the CPU (top right), as well as a complimentary 'T-Money' card with AMD logo on it (bottom center), used for paying the bus and subway fares in the Seoul metropolitan area and the promotional flyers.

I guess this wraps up a good year of reaping prizes.