Final Whistle Blows for SHIRO! Online Soccer Tournament

Kicking off at the end of November last year , the eighth SEGA Saturn SHIRO! Online Tournament in SEGA Worldwide Soccer ’98 has come sliding to an end!

The winner of the USA West Coast bracket TheNotoriousVDP went head to head with East Coast champ Double Dime to see who got to go up against the European bracket winner Benclaff in the finals.

In the finals, Double Dime managed to dribble his way to the top of the podium, with Benclaff in second and TheNotoriousVDP getting third. This time around there were three separate eight-player brackets, which helped deal with previous tournament issues involving connection distance and scheduling across time zones.

Unlike previous tournaments, which all used double elimination, single elimination was used in addition to two-week deadlines per match. This helped bring the total tournament length down to just four months, a third of the time it took to get through the Duke Nukem tournament !

SEGA Worldwide Soccer ’98 also got the privilege of being the first Saturn online tournament using SEGARPGFAN’s new tunnel method , which did away with using IP addresses and port forwarding, making the connection process easier than ever.

Seven of the soccer matches were recorded. Click here to see a playlist of them all in chronological order .

Thanks to all 22 participants who took a shot on this game, as well as SEGA’s own Sonic the Hedgehog and Tails Prower for helping fill the two empty bracket seats!

What will the next tournament be? Find out later tonight when it’s announced on the SEGA Saturn SHIRO! Show!

	DoubleDime
		Saturn Online Tournament Coordinator