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T'was a hot August day. We'd found out the dates from Nintendo Official Magazine, however I would like to point out that I only bought the magazine because the Nintendo website is completely impossible to navigate. Anyway we (me and Amy) went to the one at Brent Cross in London on the 29th.
We went up on the bus. I'd never been to Brent Cross shopping centre before. Amy had, but not for a while. There was absolutely no clue that anything out of the ordinary was going on. No signs, nothing. We were getting a little paranoid by the time we'd walked down the road from the bus stop to the footbridge and then back up the road again (Amy suggested cutting across the duel carriageway, but I refused on the grounds that I'd seen the Animals of Farthing Wood and knew what would happen). There was still nothing once we'd got through the maze of road-crossing apparatus and to the actual shopping centre. We were now convinced that we'd had a wasted trip. We found Toys R Us, where the event was supposedly taking place - nothing. We found the Toys R Us car park - huge lorries with pretty pictures of legendary birds on them. In relief, we bitched at length about the lack of publicity.
As per our plan, we headed straight for the Celebi download queue. It was shorter than the Mew Queue (we'd been to the Mew downloads last year), and various enthusiastic people in official T-shirts were going around telling people to make space in their party etc. We were rather smug about knowing what to do already (we just had to guess for Mew) and, due to being ready, got bumped to the top of the queue. We got a Celebi each, were very pleased, then planned to go back through with my crystal cartridge, after swapping hats, once we'd given the official T-shirt people time to forget what we looked like.
With some time to kill, we wandered around to the big trucks. One was just for messing around on Snap and Stadium 2 and suchlike. We didn't bother with that. The other was for the league competition and, unlike the Mew tour (and to our surprise), the competition was open to anyone. For the Mew tour you had to register on-line or something. For the Celebi tour you had to queue up for hours in the sun (They did have an awning where the queue was supposed to be - unfortunately it ended up being about twice the size). We decided to join the queue just for the hell of it.
Before, I'd never believed it when I heard that most Pokémon fans are boys. I'd thought that it was pretty much universally appealing - it's a good game, and it has cute ponies and many pink things as well as the big spiky monsters, so there's something for everyone (Although most of the female characters in the game are annoying (Whitney, I'm glaring at you) and in Gold/Silver/Crystal all the female trainers who want to phone you spend most of their time bemoaning the fact that they're crap at training pokémon, and the game seems to be of the opinion that all girls are terrified of bugs, but still...). However the ratio of boys to girls queueing for the league competition must have been something like fifty to one. We didn't check the free games - maybe it's just that boys are more competitive than girls...
Anyway, the deal was that once you got to the front of the queue, there was a row of N64s locked away in pretty display cases, loaded with Stadium 2. The monitors were at a bizarre neck-crunching angle. You played against the computer (with three pokémon each) and if you won, you went through to the next round. Not that we knew that at the time. We were provided with zero information, and had to pick up what we could from the wild rumours flying around the queue. There was much indignation when we heard that you could only use rental pokémon. Although it did explain why so many people were using legendary dogs... That had worried me. I thought I was the only one who couldn't catch the buggers. The controllers, as I recall, all had transfer paks on, so maybe you got to use your own pokémon if you got through to the later rounds. We didn't hang around to see. There was about a hundred places, or thereabouts. Every time someone won, the nearest of the supervising T-shirt people would yell "we have a winner!" and everyone in the queue would cheer. Or boo. As the places started to seriously go, the booing increased.
I can't remember how long we queued for, but it must've been a couple of hours, at least. One guy fairly near us sneakily ducked under the barrier (it was a back-and-forth style queue, like you get at banks) and some kid's mother complained very loudly to the T-shirt people, who sent him to the back. Then the kid's mother justified herself at great length, while the kid tried to hide in his collar. The average age of the queuees seemed to be eleven to sixteen. Aside from us there were a few older people, including one guy on his own who looked about twenty eight. There was one tiny child who must've been about five. He lost. We battled a few people in the queue to pass the time. It was like the Mew download - people would come up and start talking to you (or challenge you to a battle) for no reason. It was nice (or maybe they just started talking to us because we were just about the only girls there, I don't know). I lost all my battles. Because of my lack of level hundred pokémon, I was mostly using Amy's, and I wasn't very familiar with their moves. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it. Amy won a couple of hers, I think. One of my opponents was pleased I was called something other than Ash, as his stats table looked a bit silly. Another had a slightly manked link cable that made him be a Rocket Executive in the battle screen, and then crashed both gameboys. We used my link cable instead.
The queue shuffled forward fairly fast. One time when we were in a corner a couple of women started talking to us. I think they must've been doing a social study or something (or else they were just really bored), because they asked us how old we were, where we came from, why we were there etc, and didn't seem to know anything about pokémon themselves. When we asked them why they were there, they said stuff like 'we wanted to see what was going on' and suchlike. They got quite interested in Amy's gameboy (it's an original one, she's painted it black and red) and said they supposed it might be worth some money these days, to which I pointed out that units in perfect condition are currently selling for the princely sum of Ł20.
By the time we got fairly near the front, there were almost no places left. The boos were becoming louder and more numerous. We were trying to calculate the rate at which people were winning places to see if there was any point hanging around. In the end, when we finally got to the front, there was about six places left.
Amy was in front of me (we had a quick game of 'you go first') and got sent to a machine a few minutes before I got sent down the other end. A T-shirt person asked me of I knew how to play. I said yes, having messed around with Bert's copy of Stadium 2 a few times. She loaded a new game, I stared at the screen, and for a period of approximately six seconds, my brain stubbornly refused to acknowledge that it had ever heard of pokémon, let alone to release the knowledge of how Stadium 2 worked.
I can't remember what pokémon I picked, or what pokémon the computer picked. I have a memory of a Steelix, although that could be from anywhere. Anyway, this being a three on three battle, the luck of the draw featured heavily.
Amy got wiped out fairly quickly, and wandered over to see how I was doing. She complained that the computer had cheated, and asked me how it was going. I replied "I think I might possibly be in with a chance," and my next hit killed the computer's last pokémon.
The T-shirt person yelled "we have a winner!' rather uncomfortably close to my ear, and the queue booed. At least, Amy told me they did. I didn't hear it at the time. I was then directed to a desk to the right of the machines and surrounded by barrier ropes where I was given a card with a time to come back for the next round, and was told to show up half an hour after the time on the card. They wrote my name on the big scoreboard, and gave me some forms to sign. A tiny blonde T-shirt thing said 'girl power' to me, which was a little shocking, as I didn't think real people said that. Then we wandered off to find somewhere to sit down until the adrenaline went away.
There weren't any seats, this being a car park, so we sat on the kerb and investigated the permission slip I'd been given. It was the terms and conditions for actually winning anything, and it had to be signed by somebody over sixteen, or over eighteen, or something. When I went to give it back (signed) there was a kid begging anyone around who was old enough to sign his form. He got someone. The T-shirt people didn't object.
Now having about an hour to kill, we went back to our kerb. Someone had set up a basketball hoop and a few people were playing. Someone (we never did figure out who... we couldn't see anyone around with a control) had a remote control car, which kept going for the basketball and buzzing around people's feet.
As I'd got one of the last places we had to wait for most of the rest of the competitors to battle first. We went and hung around the scoreboard and watched some of the matches. Aside from me, one other girl had got into the second round, although there were a couple of ambiguous names that could have been either. There wasn't any queueing this time, you just stood around in a big clump until they called your names. There were some people with TV cameras, who I assumed were doing a segment for local news or something similar. Luckily, I had been to an upper school which liked to think of itself as specialising in media, so I knew how to cope. I made obscene gestures at the camera every time it was pointed anywhere near my direction, to ensure they wouldn't use any footage of me.
The kid I was battling looked about fifteen, and I can't remember his name... Anyway, I lost. But it was a very close match. If I'd have picked any electric type but a zapdos, I might even have won it. See, we were both down to our last pokémon. I'm fairly sure he had a raichu. I had a zapdos. 'Ah ha!' I thought to myself. 'My zapdos, being an electric type itself, will be resistant to his raichu's strongest attacks!' Then he used thunderbolt or suchlike, and my zapdos dropped like a French tart's knickers on a warm summer evening. 'Ah,' I thought. 'It is also a flying type. Which is weak against electric moves. Bollocks.' Then, close on the heels of that thought came: 'I'm not through to next round. I've got a cartridge-full of celebis, and I don't have to battle anymore. Woo-hoo!'
So, I was sent around to the table again, commiserated by the tiny blonde thing, had my name crossed off the big scoreboard and got my celebi cartridge. My opponent then came up and shook hands, and we praised each other's fighting style at great length. Then me and Amy got ice-cream and went home.
Epilogue: The cartridges they gave out were silver games, each of which had twenty celebis on. The deal was that you traded the celebis off, and replaced them with your own pokémon (and you had to swap them for something decent, usually either evolved forms of things, so you had to put some effort into training them first, or pre-evolutions, so you had to put some effort into breeding them) then sent the cartridge off in the lovely padded pre-addressed, postage-paid envelope they gave you, and you got a free copy of crystal. With a little help from my friends, I got all the celebis off the cartridge, swapping them for the required pokémon, and sent the cartridge off, as instructed. Many million months later, I received my free copy of crystal. Woo-fucking-hoo, considering I'd bought it on American import long before I even went to the competition. I gave it to Amy. If they'd have given us the celebis on gold cartridges instead, I'd have kept that. Ah well, something for nothing... Let that be a lesson to you. Expensive import games aren't worth it. Just be patient, and you'll get there eventually. Someone might even try to give you a free copy.
The rest of my prizes consisted of: some movie posters (I remember one was for 'help! I'm a fish'. There were about three others) which got badly scrunched on the way home and were eventually thrown out; a model of Matilda from Robot Wars which I gave to me bloke, with the intention that he pass it on to his friend's kid, but he liked it, so kept it for himself (which surprised me, as I thought it was rather crap. We never did figure out how to attach the tail. I suspect it was from a defective run or something, which was why they were giving them away); a Murrey Walker racing video (sold to the local video shop for Ł1. It's still there); a sheet of pokémon stickers, which Bert tried to beg off me (I made an evolution chart with them); and the pikachu version of one of those gameboy bags, which I use all the time. It's damn handy.
I've still got most of the celebis. I gave about three to Amy for her to pass on to various people, and Bert and H-Pet got a few. For a while I had a box on my silver game called 'celebis', but lack of space meant it became 'rare pkmn' and had my legendary bird and mewtwo collection stuck in it as well.
All in all, I'm looking forward to whatever the next download is.
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