That is uncanny, Pod.
Feel free to take it away whenever you’d like, cuz there’s no way anyone’s getting the particular moment at this stage.
If anyone’s interested for academic purposes, here’s the first image where that is feasible (full screenie included in the spoiler below):
The Moment in question, plus the full screen!
[spoiler]Many years ago, in the very earliest days of Starcraft 2 history, the esports scene around the game was just coalescing, mostly on the back of a ton of “washed-up” Starcraft 1: Brood War pro’s and semi-pro’s making the switch because it wasn’t realistic for them to compete in the knife-edge, hyper-refined tournaments of SC:BW anymore. Somehow, though, these scattered competitors became the stuff of legends, providing awesome games and fantastic personalities. Together with the fans and Blizzard, they crafted an esports scene that continues to thrive and give me chills to this very day!
Of those, none were more famous than Lim Yo Hwan, “BoxeR,” a genuine legend from the SC:BW days and the first so-called “Bonjwa.” These titans had each had era-defining championship runs in the older title, commanding glory and winning hundreds of thousands (and often millions) in prize money and sponsorships. His legacy had continued on from there, with his hand-picked proteges going on to their own glory and fame, and he almost single-handedly legitimized the South Korean military as a genuine threat in team leagues when he underwent his mandatory service.
In his switch to SC2, he found more glory, leading a team called SlayerS with the help of his famous model-actress-partner, Kim Ga-yeon, in the process starting the careers of many players who’d go on to incredible fame of their own–some of whom are still winning to this very day (indeed, SlayerS–now SKT1–Dark literally just won the 2016 Starcraft II StarLeague Season 1 in April)!
BoxeR himself was thought by many to be too old and “washed up” to be a true competitor himself by that point, but every so often, a brief shining moment of the old BoxeR would show through, where his tenacity and tactical acumen more than made up for his slowed reflexes and hand-speed. Though he never won that big title he dreamed of achieving once more, he did find himself making history a few times.
Of those, one always sticks in my mind. In late July 2011, BoxeR was near the peak of his SC2 performance. He’d clawed his way into the Winner’s Portion of MLG’s arcane bracketing system after two days of hard-fought competition, and found himself against FnaticRain. The other Korean had left the country some time before (in a bit of infamy, actually, but that’s another story entirely), and had made a significant name for himself stomping westerners as the ace of his European team, Fnatic. Both players had made it to the top of their respective groups, though not without some difficult battles.
In Game 1, held on the infamous map Metalopolis (where randomized starting positions sometimes made a devastating by-air rush from Terrans a virtual certainty on some-such patch in that woebegon era), things started to trend toward a lengthy macro game. . . and then kept trending in that direction. . . and trending in that direction. Half an hour (real-world) in, the commentators were almost at a loss–few games reached this stage, since by this point, one pro player had been able to turn some minor advantage into a game-winning scenario. Each here, however, just kept amassing more and more units in their late-game, doom-bringing armies, switching almost entirely to air as their power there utterly outpaced ground units (perhaps as some sort of comic inversion of the map’s nasty habits mentioned above).
As the second hour of the game started, enormous fleets patrolled the skies of a mineral-depleted map, feinting and probing, seeking weakness of any sort. Some in the chat were beginning to theorize the game might never end, either calling forth heretofore rarely seen Draw rules or maybe just continuing into perpetuity, until the players turned to comic skeletons at their computers.
That is, of course, until the climactic final moments. . .
If you’re curious how the individual game turned out, here’s the full VOD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bXKJKLxIU4.
And finally, here’s the full screenie I took:
[/spoiler]
