Feature

Winners Announcement! $500 EB Games Voucher and REFRESH Eye Drops Giveaway

By Tim Colwill on August 23, 2012 at 7:05 pm

Our magnificent competition to give away a bunch of soothing REFRESH Eye Drops and two five hundred dollar games vouchers has come to an end — but the prizes remain unassigned. Until now. After reviewing all delightful 115 entries, we’re very proud to announce that our two prize packs are going away to the following excellent people:

Schnookie

I used to be IT Manager for SA/WA/NT for a large independently owned company.

My first job.

People used to ask me stupid things. Lots. So on Fridays sometimes, if I wanted a break, I’d pull the power cord to the server and close the door to my office which was superthick glass walls and door, and look ‘concerned’ while trying to ‘fix’ said server.

No one ever bothered me.

BF2 gets released.

I ‘fix the server and rid the network of a virus/worm’ for three weeks straight. (read: I get in early, pull the server to maximise bandwidth, hook up my own PC, game for 12hrs behind glass, go home, game more, rinse/repeat).

Three weeks of BF2 hilarity, fully paid for. Not disturbed. Not once.

NB. Some months later, feel completely and utterly justified in the above when asked to return to office after driving an hour to my home, to ‘put paper in the photocopier’… I did return to the office. And filled the photocopier, printed my resignation and left.

southead

Back in January of 2004 I played Desert Combat, a mod for Battlefield 1942, for around 50 hours straight. At the time the Mountain Village map had just been released, which above all had 3 choppers as only mode of transportation for the US side. I used to love shooting down choppers full of infidels with Stinger missiles.

Well one of my friends called me as I was aproaching around my 50th hour and asked me to join some friends to listen to the Triple J Hottest 100 at a local park and have a few drinks. Figuring I had been at the computer long enough I accepted, and before long I was out in the sun playing cricket, drinking a few beers and listening to some great tunes.

As I was standing around with a beer fielding (or maybe just drinking). A chopper flew overhead traveling quite fast. Before I knew what I was doing I had thrown my beer down, run to the nearest tree (roughly 35 meters away) and peered through the branches at the chopper while reaching for my Stinger.

I still get ribbed about it any time I am with my mates and an aircraft flies over…

Congratulations to both Schnookie and southead!

They walk away with a REFRESH Eye Drops pack and a $500 EB Games gift voucher, just in time for the end-of-year gaming marathons. Although we only have two prize packs, there were so many great entries that we couldn’t help but pick out a few of them for some honourable mentions. Here are some of the best, in no particular order:

Honourable Mentions:

adro117:

Earlier this year I was at some girls party, It was fairly boring since I didn’t know many people. I decided to give myself a tour of the house.

I came across a room with an xbox 360 hooked up to a 50 inch LCD tv. Usually I wouldn’t invade someones privacy, but I was reasonably drunk. There was a game of Call of duty Black ops paused. Without really thinking I sat down and started playing someone elses game.

I ended up finishing the entire black ops campaign on hardened. But without realising the party had ended a few hours before I had reached this gaming achievement. I still had no idea of the time, and so I continued on to play countless games of Deathmatch online. I even found a headset and made an online friend.

The funny part of this story is that, around 5:00 pm the next day, the girl who lived there, while doing the laundry or whatever, discovered that I was still there playing. She was so amazed that I had subconsciously played 24 hours of xbox in someone elses house.

We actually ended up talking and we even went out for a while.

lordapophis:

Back in the distant era of 1998 when StarCraft first launched, I was grabbed by the family jewels and drawn in hook-line and sinker. I had 3x 1.25L bottles of coke, My Desktop PC, my trusty weapons of choice, the keyboard and mouse and it was game-on.

Little did I realize how many hours or even days would pass, Hunger, Sleep, real-life obligations literally flew out the window and hit an old lady on the head that was calmly walking by my home as the sound of explosions and enemies being slain could be heard by the entire neighborhood.

Sometime during my second day of my marathon; I was in a climatic struggle where the desire to pee like a pregnant woman and my desire to decimate the Zerg swarm came to a clash. The solution? I had an empty bottle of coke.
So with one hand I was relieving myself of the desire to pee, with the other I was in a clicking frenzy microing a group of marines into victory against a group of Zerglings.

When StarCraft 2 rolled around, I thought ahead and bought a laptop so I could stay in the glorious royal throne.

gunta:

My best remembered gaming marathon was not my own but a friends. Four of us had got together for a night of various games and the first one we chose was Age of Empires 2.

All of us were used to playing against AI at normal difficulty but none of us at the time had won a game against the hardest difficulty. Deciding to work together as a team we pitted us four against working together against four hard level AI.

Half an hour in one of us had already been decimated. 2 hours later two more of us, including me, were wiped out and we were ready to give up the campaign and move onto another game. The fourth guy though wasn’t willing to give up until he was wiped out also, simply on principle.

For the next couple of hours he held on by the skin of his teeth at which time the rest of us decided to go to bed. 8 hours later we woke up and he was still going. He had wiped out 2 of the other civilisations, was just finishing off the third and in the next hour he won the game.

raioken18:

The problem with having friends all over the world is that there is always someone who is awake to play games. After having worked a 10 hour shift on Friday, my friends and I had gone out drinking and after a particularly late night we had missed the last train from the station. Not wanting to waste money on a taxi, my mate and I headed to the local 24 hour internet cafe. We then proceeded to have a 10 hour gaming session in which we also had pizza delivered to the cafe. Realizing it was around midday we decided to head home. I was ready to collapse but there was street work going on outside, so I played some Battlefield with my overseas cousin.

Later that afternoon I was informed that our guild in was running ICC 10H, whilst my care factor was zero at this point a friend guilt tripped me into coming. By the time we finished I had been awake for around 44 hours. I then got a call on Skype to play Borderlands. I went to the bathroom and looked into my bloodshot eyes, did the logical thing and went to sleep.

True Story.

unitzero:

My epic gaming marathon was rather a retro affair. New to gaming, I casually took my flatmate’s Gameboy to the bathroom and tried out a thing called The Legend of Zelda…

I was sitting there on the loo for a good four and a half hours before the last vestiges of feeling finally left my legs. Then another hour and a half after that, before I finally toppled sideways and yanked the charger from the wall. The red rings around my eyes were matched only by the perfect oval imprinted on my behind.

phewcha:

A friend of mine was the owner of a local netcafe where a bunch of mates would have nightly LANs filled with CS, DOD, BF1942, COD, QTF, MOH and a whole other bunch of acronyms. One night around 8:30p.m the shop was quiet of tourists, browsers and runescapers .. so the owner decided to lock the doors for us gamers. What proceeded was hours of gaming goodness played with the screams of 12 intoxicated grown men. Competitions started, bets placed, ciggarettes smoked.. and memorable times were had. It was’nt until someone decided to actually step outside that it was discovered it was past lunch the next day, and around 20 hours of gaming time had transpired. Eyes stingy red, back hunched over aching, voice lost and wrist cramped in a Monty Burns pose. Great times.

Highlights
- Racking up $100 bill in munchies.
- Threatening to kill the owner for awping.
- Been knocked unconcious for nipple crippling the owners girlfriend.
- Seeing a guy recieve sexual favours outside the shop from one very drunk girl.
- Making the gamewinning kill with a steyr on 3Hp in a comp and receiving a GPU.
…and gaming and laughing all night with mates.

True story.

patchz666:

The time 12pm, the location my mates decked out gaming room aka “THE SHED”
Man power involved 4 man squad, computers on speakers up battlefield bad company 2 going off.

It all started off so inoccent bunch of mates together to rain hell on all enemys in there path to have fun have a laugh and work as a team to win each match that came around.

12pm till 8pm having a hoo and kickin ass
8pm till 12pm next day still having fun and some what hypo after heaps off coffee.
12pm till 9pm starting to get a little silly but still having a blast.
10pm uh oh who opened the “JACK DANIELS”

Now things have just gone down hill in the funniest way ever choppers are taking off and crashing back to the ground due to the pilot now being heavly intoxicated.

After that a serious game just turned silly with freindly fire on and us seeing how much crazy things we could do with c4 and vehicles before most of us fell asleep in our computer chairs.

It was an awesome marathon and will always be remembered.

thank you.

gentmithy:

A poem by Smithy entitled “My life as a hardcore gamer”.
Written to the beat/rhythm of “5 o’Clock in the morning” – Lily Allen / T-Pain

It was one o’clock in the morning,
My girl was still in bed snoring.
So I snuck out to the lounge room,
Grabbed some chips and a cask of goon.

Then I fired up my PC,
Turned on some AC-DC,
It would be a hardcore gaming all-nighter,
Frags aplenty for this über gunfighter.

And then WTF it was morning,
My girl was still in bed snoring.
But I wasn’t done gaming,
So instead of complaining,
I picked up my car keys,
And drove over to APC’s,
This was my favourite internet café,
And there I spent the rest of the day.

And so now I am single,
About as classy as Lara Bingle.
And when people ask was it worth it?
I say $#17 yeah, GON server rank #1, fully legit!

fryzeegunner:

When the original Borderlands came out, I was still at school, but I was so pumped for it when I got home on the Friday I just played and played and played and before I knew it I had beaten the game over the weekend and was well through the second play through, and we’re talking like 9 hours of sleep over the 3 days, the rest was spent playing. When Monday rolled around got up went to school, got to class, sat down, and when I tried to focus on the teacher, people, work, anything, it all just turned cell shaded. I kid you not, the world literally turned cell shaded before my eyes and It was clear I had spent way too much time playing in the world of borderlands that it was affecting my vision of reality. And that was by far the most vivid bizarre experience I have ever had in my life, and It will most likely happen again with the upcoming sequel. Cheers.

Thanks to all of you who entered, and thanks to REFRESH Eye Drops for supplying the prize! Stay tuned for more competitions in the very near future.