Ever wanted to see a Starcraft professional tourney?

They're usually in Korea. South Korea, of course. A North Korea tournament would suck. The championship would just boil down to some poor kid trying his damndest to make sure loses against Kim Jong Ill. Anyways, I browsed on over to Penny Arcade and read the mysterious first guest post, since PA boys are off on adventures for a while. Today's entry was by blogger Chris Remo, of Remowned. It was a good piece, about DRM, heard it before, but I think he represented the argument well.

Browsing over at Chris' blog I saw a post regarding something that I don't think I've ever seen. A Starcraft tournament. It's not because I hate Starcraft, I just never really got into it. It was good, fun, well made. I played it and then moved on. Now, I have seen other tournaments, such as the various Quake championships, and that shit bores me to death. I don't know if I could stand to watch a Starcraft championship in Korean, as that would probably just confuse the hell out of me. I haven't played the game in years and years, plus I don't think I ever played the expansion. Shame on me, I know.

What makes these competitive Starcraft videos nice is that they're in English. As Remo puts it:

I’ve watched replays of pro StarCraft matches before, and though I can appreciate the high level of play, simply by being aware of the ludicrous number of actions being performed per second, the appreciation was more borne out of novelty than of a genuine comprehension of what I was seeing. Hearing narration by somebody who is himself accomplished enough of a player that he can fill in those gaps for me actually makes it genuinely enjoyable. And when he gets excited, I know I’m supposed to be excited too. Somehow, this actually works.
- Source

Anyways, here's the one that I've watched so far, and he's right. There's some big moves in there, and when you hear the announcer genuinely surprised and hear the chatter and roar of the Koreans in the background, it delivers what competitive gaming is about so much better than even the best Championship Gaming Series
matches or any of the other Western league
championships.