The Bungie Winter Pentathlon!
By
Frankie
Monday, February 2nd, 2004, 1:40 PM
The Bungie Winter Pentathlon 2004: AKA The Trophy Atrophy
The Pentathlon is a Bungie tradition stretching back over three thousand years, to the time that Marty O'Donnell passed his driving test. Basically, it's five game-type events played in teams, and those teams are based on length of tenure at Bungie. That means in descending order of crustiness, ending at taut handsomeness, the teams are:
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Grizzled Ancients
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Old Skool
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Middle Skool
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Newbies
The winner gets a trophy so awful that victory is a purely subjective term. But bragging rights are huge. For years now, the trophy has been "missing" and is stolen and re-stolen so often, that it's actually a much greater achievement to swipe and hide the trophy than it is to win it.
Now in theory, the time you've been a Bungie employee shouldn't affect your gaming skills, but the makeup of teams certainly does make a difference. For example, a lot of the testers, who're obviously better at Halo 2 than the average employee (since they play it ALL THE TIME) were mostly clumped in the Middle Skool team. Also, because they've been alive for so long, the Grizzleds are actually skilled cave-painters, which gives them a tremendous Pictionary advantage. Meanwhile, Old Skool and Middle Skool use their transparent lack of charisma to blend softly into the background, where nobody will notice their cheap blend of chicanery and distracting mediocrity.
But the main theme of this year's Pentathlon was one of revenge. Last year, the Newbies won the 2003 Summer Pentathlon (technically a different event) in convincing fashion, securing their victory in a test of physical prowess the Tug of War. This year, in order to make sure that the glistening, hardbodied Newbies would lose, the frail, impotent others insisted on Pictionary instead of say, cage fighting knowing full well that the Newbies were too busy making out with hotties and driving sports cars to have acquired any illustration or "Bemani" skills.
But the first game in the Pentathlon was Halo 2.
Halo 2: Running Riot
For the Newbies, things started badly. A miscommunication in Team Slayer on Burial Mounds led to a thorough beating by Old Skool. Mat Noguchi, a player for Old Skool, made life pretty tough for them and (rightly) boasted, "During our match with the Newbies on Burial Mounds, I went on a rampage while their team was trying to return the flag to their base with an SMG and Rocket Launcher. I managed to delay the capture long enough to allow the rest of my team to regroup and continue the attack."
But in the end, the Grizzled Ancients used a bunch of trapdoors and exploits that they built into the latest build of Halo 2, including the ability to kill the entire opposing team instantly, simply by pressing the "back" button. After the 17th "Killtacular" the others started to suspect something was up. Though in fairness, the Grizzled Ancients weren't the only ones with a dishonest bent. Some sneaky server antics meant that some players had a distinct advantage over others. Outrageous.
Brian (Sketch) worked hard to win this for the Newbies, but his best efforts were in vain: "I spent a lot of time working on detailed maps of Burial Mounds which showed weapon and item placement as well as the various flag routes and even how many seconds it takes to complete the run. Despite having these beautiful full color maps, several online practices AND a strategy meeting the day before... we got our asses handed to us across the board."
HALO 2 Results
1st Place: Grizzled Ancients
2nd Place: Old Skool
3rd Place: Middle Skool
4th Place: Newbies
EyeToy: TV for Orchestra Conductors
After that came EyeToy the PlayStation2 webcam thingy that makes Dance Dance Revolution seem almost dignified by comparison. We played a number of different game styles, ramping up the difficulty as the rounds progressed until eventually every single team member had been reduced to spastic flailing, like they were trying to hail a cab in the fifth dimension.
Since the Grizzleds practically specialize in spastic flailing, and used their Venice Beach robot dance-skills, they took the EyeToy contest with ease.
EYETOY Results
1st Place: Grizzled Ancients
2nd Place: Middle Skool
3rd Place: Newbies
4th Place: Old Skool
Top Spin: Chalk Dust and Tragedy
Ah Tennis. Is there anything more relaxing than strawberries and cream at center court? Wimbledon, with its history of kings and the grand tradition of sportsmanship. Well, none of that applied to the Top Spin tournament. Perhaps the sweariest, cursingest game of tennis ever witnessed (at least since McEnroe retired), and one of only two games that the Grizzled Ancients didn't actually win. Old Skool took the trophy, but not without a valiant struggle. In fact, Top Spin was probably the most closely contested game of the day.
TopSpin Results
1st Place: Old Skool
2nd Place: Grizzled Ancients
3rd Place: Newbies
4th Place: Middle Skool
Grizzled Ancient, Charlie Gough had a fantastic showing in Mario Kart, saying, "Ryan Hylland and I learned and practiced Mario Kart over a period of three hours Thursday evening and Friday morning. We then went on to place 1st in four of the five heats which carried us to 1st place."
A less enthusiastic Old Skooler ( he will NEVER be a Grizzled Ancient, never!), Marty O'Donnell whined bitterly, "My most depressing moment was getting the Silver with teammate Chris Butcher in Double Dash against the far lesser team of Chucky and Ryan. They were not better, but won due to the lame random car selection when playing LAN. Just another example of weak ass code."
He also helpfully explained his lack of Grizzled Ancient status; "Ok, this is a sore spot with me. I'm Old Skool and I love everyone on Old Skool and hate the Grizzled Ancients. However, the problem comes from the fact that more than half the guys on Grizzled were little whiny fan-boys of Myth which I helped make! Simply because I was an outside contractor at the time of doing ALL the voices, sound design and music, plus the audio implementation for Bungie games like Myth:TFL, Myth2:Soulblighter, Total Codex, and Oni. Helping to bring world acclaim by being the sound and music guy for the MacWorld 99 Halo extravaganza, and doing the whole DVD for Halos 2001 E3 blowout, I'm still not credited with officially joining Bungie until my start date of May 1, 2001 which makes me Old Skool."
Obsess much Marty?
Mario Kart Results
1st Place: Grizzled Ancients
2nd Place: Old Skool
3rd Place: Middle Skool
4th Place: Newbies
After that, it was time for Pictionary. This got nearly as ugly as the drawings. There were two whiteboards, one a pale expanse of virgin canvas, the other was a tiny portable whiteboard, squashed into the kitchen area. This meant that observing teams couldn't really see what was being drawn on the board, while around the corner, teams lucky enough to get the big board, had a perfect auditorium from which to view the pics. Lorraine, the TRAINED ILLUSTRATOR from the Grizzled Ancients drew a line of runners to describe the word "Last" and Frank drew roughly the same thing, albeit much more poorly. Frank's drawing looked like some clowns eating a cat. "Cat Clown Feast!," yelled the crowd. The creepy part is that he thought it said "Lust."
Lorraine's team, with the benefit of a stone-deaf judge, who failed to hear ANY of our (erm, I mean "The Newbie's") correct call-outs, smashed the Noobz, but lost badly to the other two teams. In the end, Old Skool was the quickest on the draw, although many of their drawings were of pirates doing obscene things to plush toys.
Pictionary Results
1st Place: Old Skool
2nd Place: Middle Skool
3rd Place: Grizzled Ancients
4th Place: Newbies
TABLED FINAL RESULTS
So here's the final score tallies, showing points per game in the following order; Halo 2, Top Spin, Pictionary, Mario Kart, EyeToy.
Grizzled Ancients: 5, 3, 1, 5, 5
Old Skool: 3, 5, 5, 3, 0
Middle Skool: 1, 0, 3, 1, 3
Newbies: 0, 1, 0, 0, 1
So in the end, what becomes horribly clear is that cheaters not only prosper, they eat all your snacks, finish your beer and make out with your spouse while you're away on business.
Which brings us to our poll results. Although we admit we may have misled the public about the relative skill of the Newbies somewhat, there was no way to predict just how wrong the poll results would be. Doh! Although you guys did place Old Skool and Middle Skool correctly. Kudos.
But where is the coveted Trophy? It depends entirely on who you ask:
Greg Snook:
"Trophy? I understand it was at Bertones place. Someday I will have it and deliver it back to the fires of Mount Doomsomeday."
Marty O'Donnell:
"In safe hands."
Matthew Coyne:
"You think I might have been in on THAT secret? AHHH-HAHAHAH!"
Sketch:
"I saw the trophy for a brief moment at the party on Friday evening. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared into the unknown. If it had lingered just a second longer, the n00bs would have stolen it for ourselves."
John Butkus:
"Some boo-hoo baby kept it in his apartment all year, instead of giving it to its rightful owners The Newbies."
Dave Dunn:
"I think its in poor taste to point fingers. Remember Paul and Ben are both innocent until proven guilty in a court of law."
Mat Noguchi:
"Unknown."
Nathan Walpole:
"Dirty Beardy."
And so, as the wintry sun sets on this horrifying and shameful debacle, we can only look ahead and say, with confidence, that the Newbies will return. Younger, fitter and with their hearts steeled for vengeance. You have been warned.