October has just started and as we enter into the final quarter of the year, a big arcade tournament is now underway with the 14th Big Buck World Championship. Qualifiers were held on all Big Buck Hunter Reloaded machines throughout this year, whittling it down to the top 128 players from around the world. They had to skip the event last year, but it’s on now over in Rosemont, IL at Joe’s Live. A quick summary from the official website:
For 2021, the 14th annual World Championship plan is the same as 2020, with all qualifier play from 2020 carrying over to 2021. We will bring together the top 64 skill players and 64 wildcards to compete in a massive two day event. Our biggest Big Buck battle yet returns home to take over Joe’s Live in Rosemont, Illinois. The championship competition kicks off in 2021 on Friday, October 1st, and continues on Saturday, October 2nd. With over $125,000 in total prizes available throughout the season, 2021 is angled to be an explosive year for Big Buck Hunter.
This makes the BBWC’s the largest coin-op arcade competition in the world, really showing the strength of the arcades in the eSports space. They also have other Play Mechanix/Raw Thrills games on hand including Minecraft Dungeons Arcade and Halo: Fireteam Raven.
I was invited to attend as press, but unfortunately, I wasn’t prepped to head over there like I should have been. It would have been a great opportunity to go and check out Raw Thrills’ HQ, along with several other arcade manufacturers and of course, Galloping Ghost Arcade.
Big Buck Hunter Marksman Released
Coinciding with this event is a new game release that should please home gaming fans, as Play Mechanix has partnered with Skillz to launch Big Buck Hunter Marksman on iOS & Android devices. I did download the app and attempted to play it today, but it refused to give me a verification code to move forward, so I’ll have to keep trying…it also is porked up with an absurd amount of ads, which I hope that they scale back as they work the bugs out, but that also seems to be part of the verification problem, as when it loads that portion, it locks up and shows me an ad instead. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
