On the day the Houston Texans won their second ever NFL playoff game, Monsters Arcade and Insomnia Video Game Culture both held their first fighting game tournaments of 2013. Early on it was Monsters hosting an Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 tournament. Events were planned for Super Street Fighter 4 AE 2012 and King of Fighters 13, but appeared to not have enough participants.
With 16 players, the early going for the tournament saw many of the top seeded players scoring routine wins. That quickly ended with Big Chris defeating his old rival Gene Flowers. Gott no Skills then turned around and defeated Big Chris and pulled off the upset of AB Jan Del Rio to reach the winners bracket final. Waiting for him was Rubeks, a top 32 player from Evo 2012. Rubeks would come out on top and advance to the grand finals. In the losers bracket, Jan fought his way through Gene, Sylint(who eliminated Big Chris), and got his revenge on Gott no Skills to make it to the grand finals. In the end it would be Rubeks holding off the veteran Jan to take the title.
Later on that night, Insomnia held their first event for Mortal Kombat 9. 27 players came out and Kombat Houston had a huge presence at the tournament. While tournament stalwarts from the Major League Gaming season, Frank "KH Showtime" Occhione, and Anibal "KH Cat" Torres and even Robert "KH Starcharger" Conley made their appearance, but KH Scar was conspicuously missing. Most of the KH players made it through their early round matches with the exception of KH Lumberzach and KH Royal with Cheese who both lost to Courtney. The rest were defeated by fellow KH players.
The top 8 consisted of 6 KH players, Courtney and Andy. After Cat knocked Showtime into the losers bracket by winning the winners bracket final, Lumberzach and KH Shanxter eliminated Andy and Royal with Cheese in the 7th place fights. Lumberzach also took out Starcharger while Shanxter eliminates Courtney in the 5th place fights and made the entire top 4 all Kombat Houston players. In the 4th place fight, Shanxter would defeat Lumberzach, who made an impressive run in the losers bracket after being defeated in the first round of the tournament. Showtime would defeat Shanxter for a shot at the title against Cat. After winning the first set of the grand finals, it came down to one last set for the championship. Cat simply could not hold off Showtime's momentum, meaning that Frank "KH Showtime" Occhione is your first Insomnia MK title holder of the year!
Congratulations to Rubeks and Showtime on their wins! If you enjoyed this article, then please subscribe to my Arcade Games column. Check out my Video Game Babes and Action Figures columns as well. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and my Blog for more news about anime, gaming, and other events in Houston.
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