Australia Added to the 2013 Pokémon Video Game Championships
Well that rumour didn’t last long! Australians have been crying out for a National Championship in their country for years and today, their calls were heard. The very first Penny Arcade Expo Australia will play host to the very first Australia Pokémon VGC National on July 20th and 21st. Like the events in North America, Europe, and Asia, there will be three age divisions:
- Juniors: Born in 2002 or later
- Seniors: Born in 1998, 1999, 2000, or 2001
- Masters: Born in 1997 or earlier
The top two finishers in each division will receive an invitation to play in the 2013 Pokémon World Championships in Vancouver, Canada along with flights and accommodations to the event. The exact format of the tournament is unknown at this time. For players who do not have a ticket to the now sold out PAX Australia, there will be a number of tournaments held in Australia with PAX Australia tickets and flights + accommodations up for grabs. These events — dubbed Battle Competitions — will be held at:
- Perth (Supanova Pop Culture Expo) Sunday 30th June
- Melbourne (Deakin Edge – Federation Square) Saturday 6th July
- Brisbane (Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre) Sunday 7th July
- Adelaide (AVCon Anime and Video Game Convention) Saturday 13th July
- Sydney (Luna Park) Sunday 14th July
Yes! You read that right! The first event is this coming weekend and the next two will be held the same weekend as the US National Championships. Each weekend leading up to PAX Australia will have an event. A little short notice, but the entrance of Australia in the VGC circuit is exciting to see!
We hope our Australian readers can make these events and keep us updated! Will you be attending?
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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Very exciting!
…and not, for me. I’m leaving Sydney on the 14th July and wont be back for another two weeks T.T why can’t they hold it a week earlier at Sydney…
Oh well, there’ll always be next year. Thanks for giving us Aussies a shot at the VGC tpci! :3
Glad to see that Australia of all places has twice the number of invites as Korea.
Also where’s number one machop fan
I can’t wait for it!
I think number one machop fan is very happy with that.
Wish we were told this a week or so ago as it would now cost about $4600 just to attend it
let alone accommodation. I’m thinking about flying from Hangzhou to perth/melbourne to do the local tournaments to get into PAX/VGC then fly to Seville for my interview then back to melbourne for the PAX/VGC tournament.
Yere Mate
This is awesome and slightly insane. I wouldn’t have picked it to happen this year though I like to think our voice has been heard and what we’re trying to do down here has been seen and noted. Interesting we have more invites than Korea. I think two is good number but really Korean should’ve got more.
anyways,
I will be most definitely going to the Sydney event so I better get a decent team together. If anyone else is going to Sydney It’d be cool if you could PM me so we could get together and meet up
It sucks you can’t make it Thowra and some others from Sydney can’t make it either.
Now….to make that winning team ;D
External
Official Nintendo Announcement :’)
Wow, I thought we Europeans had it at short notice with just a month between the announcement and our first VGC. Surely not many people would be able to travel after just three days?
Cool that Australia is getting involved, but hope we don’t end up with another one of these poor-attendance-leads-to-the-event-not-recurring things given the short notice because I imagine the turnout for this is going to blow.
Well, by short notice it had negative notice. The tickets to PAX Australia have been sold out since March. If someone doesn’t have tickets but wants to go, they’ll need to find someone willing to sell their ticket or win one of these Battle Competitions. And even then, it’s about as expensive to fly within Australia as it is in Canada.
I can’t wait to win the Melbourne event! This is amazing news, hopefully sanctioned VGC events will become a regular thing.
I am disappoint when they gave us short notice without buying PAX tickets. They are really should give us long notice and we would buy them. I really need to test my team on PS now.
Hmm good point about the turnout numbers, as australa does have a relatively small population compared to the rest of the vgc countries. Still, I’m optimistic that there’ll be plenty of people coming, I would simply love to enter it next year.
Sadly none of my friends play pokemon so me telling them about it won’t help, although I wonder if I can train a team for my neighbour’s 10 year old kid and get him to go…
This was almost definitely only finalized within the last month. They could have waited until next year I guess but this is cool to get out at the last minute still. Pokemon is to PAX Australia as League of Legends was to PAX Prime?
No week is passing without Pokémon surprising us at least once, to put it carefully.
I’m just looking forward to seeing an Aussie player win Worlds
#AussieMetaToCatchWorldsContendersOffGuard
How can TPCi be this bad at planning? I mean this is a good action regardless, but “oh yeah by the way we have an event in three days hope you’re ready” is kinda crazy.
I’ll probably be going to the brisbane event, luckily I have some pokemans ready otherwise this would not be a fun week of preparing.
Adelaide, Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne have 1-2 weeks to be ready which it is unfair for people who live in Perth. It wouldn’t be a fun weeks of hardcore test pokemon on online simulator and preparing for anyone from Australia. I know some people from Perth, they can’t go there because of it.
And TPCi said, “Let there be an Australian VGC Circuit starting in 3 days time.” And it was so.
I love that Australia gets VGC! All we need now is South America and Africa, so we can have real Worlds, not just the north hemisphere.
TPCi, great work on not announcing the events on their actual date, I’m sure LOADS of Aussie players were prepared for this happening and won’t have problems with time/money to attend.
I really hope they’ll learn after this season that late announcements are terrible idea and we’ll be informed earlier during the next season.
All I have to say is:
STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I have nothing to more to say. I just quote it because is all truth
This is amazing! Can’t wait to see who breaks out here, and glad to have you all at worlds!
Oi mate fancy a fosters and a Pokemon battle with your mates? (Notice this accent is different from British because I said fosters)
But seriously does anyone else remember the last time Australia had VGCish tournaments in 2011? I am pretty sure no one down under figured out how to beat TerraCott yet
You must be new to Nintendo Australia’s shenanigans.
Anyway really happy and excited this is happening. The competition for those PAX tickets is going to be pretty fierce though, at least where I am. Cross-fingers next year we will get some Regionals going too
I’m in Perth and the 3 day notice was pretty inconvenient. More so for moneys sake rather than teams(Perth runs Australia’s only VGC league so I’m up to date with the meta).
There’s going to be some very tough cookies at Perth’s qualifiers, it’s going to be very interesting.
Anyone able to do updates from the Battle Competitions and especially Nationals?
I can do that if you want.
Yeah I’ll help out as well. I am going to Sydney and Famous is going to Melbourne. Garchomp might be able to do Perth.