Stuart Morrison - The Blockbuster Challenge

Finding Stuart Morrison was a difficult task indeed. Thankfully getting him to answer questions was a lot easier, and more rewarding than was expected. Stuart takes us back over the past 20 years and fills us in on the relatively undocumented 1997 Blockbuster Challenge, and tells us more about the life of a professional competetive player.

how old were you when you entered the blockbuster 1997 playstation challenge?

18 Years old, I'm 36 now, so it was exactly half my life ago pretty much to the day!

do you remember how you came to hear about the competition?

I remember there was a feature(or 1 page advert) in Playstation Plus. I assume it would also have been published in all the other EMAP images magazines of the day, (almost certainly C+VG as well) Also the logo from the disc we both have was prominently displayed in the window of Blockbuster stores up and down the country. I remember walking in to my local branch in Wokingham Berks and asking the staff for more info. They weren't a participating store so I ended up going to a Blockbuster in Rivermead (I think) about 15 miles down the road. I think I also set a time in Reading, I wanted to give myself "insurance" and set two times in two separate stores. I think I was champion for both in the end!

what were the competing games, and what was the criteria for qualification?

The games that we competed on were a special 1 lap demo of Rage Racer on PS1 which at the time had only just been released that April. And Crash Bandicoot 2 for the final which at the time had yet to be released. But I don’t think we were playing a Beta version I think we were playing the full completed game, it just hadn't been released at the time. The criteria for qualification I remember was quite strict, each store only put 1 person through to the final but not every store was participating in the tournament. 16 stores up and down the country had a PS1 Demo pod where you set your time. The track they used for the "hot lap" was mythical coast, the first and simplest of the Rage Racer tracks. We used the Basic Gnade Esperanza as our car too. I remember the trick for a fast time was to select Manual Transmission and to use engine braking to slow the car on tricky turns. Not too many people selected M/T so it gave me the edge I needed to get to the final. Regardless the competition wasn't enforced with hard and fast rules, I Remember in Reading I got only one shot but in Rivermead the staff were like " you can have more than one go if you like" Luckily I didn't need it!

was there a set ammount of time you had to compete in store?

It was "officially" only 1 lap and once that was over you had your time and you submitted it to the stores designated timekeeper. They would stand behind you while you were doing the lap to make sure you weren’t using gameshark or other devices. All the previous times of people who had gone before you were on a clipboard and at the end of your lap they would put your details in and tell you your position in store. When I went to Rivermead I did my best time ever. I had a blinder of a lap and got number one by a full second and a half. I remember they then updated the board at the front of the store with that stores current best time and my name and prominently displayed it in the window so that people coming after you knew what they had to beat. I walked out of that store on a gloriously hot day and my hands were shaking I remember. Stupid really but I distinctly remember buzzing after that performance.

do you remember how many players entered in your specific store?

About 40- 50 players were on the form on the clipboard when I rocked up, 3 or 4 pages worth of entries. I guarantee that half of them just had a go while they were shopping but there were some pretty impressive times logged already on the day I did my lap so there were quite a few players that were definitely above average.

did you have any previous experience with the games you were competing in?

Yeah, that’s what gave me the edge, it was necessary to practice at home if you wanted to get put through to the final. As I said the trick was to use M/T, like most racing games M/T cars had If I remember correctly a slightly higher top speed. Also Rage Racer had hills and inclines for the first time ever in a Ridge Racer Game. So you could shave off a few tenths of a second by dropping down a gear on inclines. This gave me the edge to beat out the other competitors as almost everyone else would have been using the default A/T. I was also a massive fan of the Ridge Racer series having played Ridge Racer and Ridge Racer Revolution to death the year before.

based on the lack of info existing on the internet, it was specualated that the regional finals never took place,as we now know this is not true, would you like to talk a little about the actual final, and the event itself

No that is true. There weren't any regional finals, winners of the store heats were put straight through to the final. That’s why the qualification criteria for the store heats was so tight. This wasn’t a last minute change either it was always the plan to select 1 winner from each participating store (and possibly a couple of fastest runners up I'm not sure) to progress to the final.

do you remember where it was held?

It was held at the Sports Café London, which recently closed down in 2013. It's now a Riley's Sports Bar. I think it's close to Covent Garden.

was it a large event, that was televised?

Yes the competition was televised by both Newsround and Sky News. I remember thinking at the time that it was a lot of media coverage for such a disorganised small-ish event with no cash prize fund! Newsround's report was the usual bullshit about how playing too many videogames can be damaging for young children. They actually went there and set up the cameras right by the pod where I was practicing, my friend who accompanied me to the event cracked up every time they talked about the dangers of video game playing. I remember for one take, Christian Guru Murphy was saying "we think children locked away for hours in their bedrooms playing videogames causes kids to become introverted" and my friend just turned around and shook his head directly at camera. We were told quite forcefully to stop after that....buton take 2 and 3 we couldn’t stop laughing, the take they eventually ended up using had us pissing ourselves right in front of the camera as Newsroud attempted to do their "serious expose of the evils of gaming"

The Sky News report focussed on Jo Guest's cleavage and not a lot else. As a result I felt it was the stronger of the two reports.

what position did you come in the finals?

I fucked it up massively. I was shit at platformers. I played the original to death for practice as Crash 2 was not yet available. But I remember in Crash 2 there were secret areas with loads of wampa fruit that were marked with a huge and really obvious question mark....Which I walked straight past! End Result was that I got knocked out in the first round, but on the day I remember there was one no show, and they needed someone to play a head to head with another finalist as the single elimination bracket was uneven so Jo Guest picked a name out of the hat and it was me! Which gave me a whole new opportunity to fuck it up all over again....

do you remember the names, or are you still in contact with anyone else from the competition?

Aaron Noel was the eventual winner and won a trip to San Fransisco a copy of Crash Bandicoot 2, various Freebies and a Kiss from Jo. I got there first though.

do you have a RR or crash bandicoot disc from the competition?

Yes I still have the Rage Racer Disc. 2 In fact! I'm going to stick it on tonight and see if I've still got it.

do you remember any prizes that were offered out?

All the finalists got a copy of Rage Racer, which was weird as everyone that made it to the final had obviously bought it to practice on anyway. We also got I remember a PS1 record bag, an over the shoulder thing. a Flight Force Pro PS1 Joystick for use with Ace Combat 2 (Weird Prize for a games competition focussing on Driving and Platform games) An invite to become a beta tester for a company that made 3rd party unofficial gaming peripherals (Interact or something I think they were called) But the prize that I cherish most was getting Dominik Diamond of Gamesmaster fame to sign a book of Sports Café Matches for me. I nicked one of his fags too....

i found a reference to the princes trust fund on the RR disc, do you remember if they had anything to do with the competition at all?

No Idea, but didn’t the princes trust have some link to that Help Charity compilation on PS1 in 1997?

what was your most memorable moment of the tournament?

Nicking a fag from Dominik Diamond and talking to him about Channel 4 and how they were planning to fuck up his show (this was near the end of Gamesmasters run on telly), Cracking Up at(and subsequently pissing off)  inept Newsround Reporters and getting a kiss from Jo Guest. :)

would you like to tell us about what youve been upto since the competition?

Today I'm still tremendously passionate about gaming and the games industry in general.

As I got older the competitive game scene that initially flourished in the nineties and early noughties seemed to dry up. I think this might be due to the fact that the early 2000's saw the birth of proper multiplayer online gaming. Up and coming gamers no longer needed to physically go somewhere to compete, they could compete simply sitting on their sofa. I'm not knocking it, it was always going to happen but somehow we lost something when multiplayer gaming became mainstream. The strong player communities around certain developers and franchises had yet to establish themselves at that time and the gaming industry didn’t have the voice that it has today. Tournaments like Evo show the world what a bunch of dedicated passionate gamers can do when they get together. Personally online multiplayer will never replace the need to take on your friends and rivals face to face.

I never consciously quit the tournament scene but as I got older I wasn’t actively looking as much as I had been, this coupled with the fact that I got a full time career after leaving university meant that I didn't play as much, and wasn’t as sharp as a result. To compete at the highest level you’ve got to keep your hand in and when that competes with real life something has to give.

as you were a grand finalist in the sci fi channels ultimate gamer tournament in 2003, would you like to talk a little about that, and also your win at the twix 1998 gamesplayer of the year tournament?

That one was really exciting, mainly due to the cash fund being around £50k! But ultimately this tournament was heartbreaking for me as I got from the regional store heats all the way through to the grand final where 10 of us were playing at the Odeon Leicester Square on the main Cinema screen! We were actually playing the Hulk on PS2 on a cinema screen!

I had to knock out as many troops as I could in 2 minutes in arena mode, First Prize was 15k, 2nd was 7k, 3rd was 3k and I came 4th.....which was nothing. The worst part was that that tournament wasn’t a level playing field. Sometimes loads of troops would spawn giving some players the opportunity to score big, other times there would be no targets to attack it was so random for a tournament with that big a prize fund. Ultimately my fate was sealed when a wave of troops failed to spawn when I had 25 seconds left. If they had I would have won £15,000. I wanted to punch the smug presenters face in.

were those tournaments hosted by the same companies as the blockbuster challenge?

No Twix and Emap sponsered the Gamesplayer of the year tournaments whereas Universal, the film company gave the money for the Ultimate gamer championship to promote their piece of shit Hulk game. "Hey who cares if it isn't balanced for tournament play? Lets get media exposure for our by the numbers cookie cutter superhero game." Sorry I'm still bitter.
As a pro gamer, and a former gaming champion,  have there been any tournaments you were invited to take part in?

Nope It didn’t work that way back in the nineties, you had to earn your place!

do you still play at competition level today?

I'm above average at fighting games. Semi-Pro at Tekken. Decent at driving games, I'm playing the crew at present and I just reached Platinum 1 the highest online division. But if im honest the birth of multiplayer online gaming has raised the bar and I have less time to play. So I have to pick and choose the games I want to specialise in. I can still beat most people at the old favourites though and I challenge anyone to beat me at Tekken when I'm using Paul Phoenix!
I retired in 2005 and replaced the void in my life with shopping and mowing the lawn.

We cant thank stuart enough for the level of detail he went into for these questions. You can read more about how we came to find stu, aswel as more info on the Bb Challenge by clicking the links to the right. Or please feel free to leave a comment below. And if you were part of the Bb Challenge, or any other challenge spoken about here, then please get in touch.