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19-12: 2 things:

1) It should be possible for me to do some streaming with audio commentary soon. I just need to set it up properly.

2) I'm in such an awesome place in my life right now, if I would stream I would make Syrreal look like Mother Teresa. Gonna have to postpone it.

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Starting on august 25th I began my challenge of earning as many medal points as possible in 1 week, with an ultimate goal of 100.000 points. During this week I spend around 100 hours playing medal games, an average of about 14 hours a day. Unfortunately, even though I tried my best to reach my goal, I didn't make it.

At the end of august 31th my final score was: 90000 medal points.

Why wasn't I able to complete my challenge? I can think of 5 reasons:

1) Lack of preparation. My job is going to be very busy soon, so the only available week to take some time off was the one coming up right away. Because of this I had only 1 day to pick the games I was going to play and set up the stream. While my list for the most part contained great games for this challenge, there were also a few big mistakes on it. When I figured out a game would take longer than expected it was usually too late to go back, and I had to spend at least an hour to earn 500 medal points, while I needed to average 1000 points an hour to win the challenge.

2) The stream. It was fun to interact with my fellow medal grinders, but it also brought up some issues. My Flash Player crashed several times during the week so instead of playing games I had to fix those issues and/or reboot my laptop. Also, the stream caused some lag from time to time. When playing skill games the fps should always be constant. This wasn't always the case because of the stream, causing unnecessary deaths within a game, leading to the next point.

3) Frustration. It's something I never have to deal with when playing medal games, because if I don't have a good time I just stop playing. Unfortunately, when you have a pace of 1000 medal points an hour to keep up with, you need to keep going. Failing to beat games because it takes too long or because of lag frustrated me from time to time. This caused me to play worse so it took even more time to beat certain games.

4) Time pressure. Normally when playing medal games, you read the instructions, play a bit, figure out a nice tactic and then destroy it. Because I needed to beat multiple games every hour, there was no time for this, so I had to dive in nose-first and hope for the best. This worked out nicely for the most part, but sometimes I had no idea what to do and lost a lot of time, or figured out a better way to beat the game, but couldn't restart because of time issues.

5) I was too stubborn to use walkthroughs. For the first 5 days I completed every puzzle game by trial-and-error. Using a guide (as we all do sometimes) could've saved me a bunch of time, but I thought the challenge would be more pure this way. I abandoned this idea by day 6, but I pretty much lost the challenge by then.

Looking back to last week, it was a great experience. It took a lot out of me and I'm really exhausted right now, but I still think it was worth it. I'm obviously disappointed I didn't reach 100.000 medal points, but 90k is still a nice score. Trying the challenge again isn't an option, as I now know how to play every game, making it really dull. It was a once in a lifetime thing and a perfect way to keep the medal system entertaining for myself. I really hope the people who watched the stream enjoyed it. I definitely appreciated the support!

Special thanks to: WonderTheHedgehog for helping me setting up the stream and Syrreal / Knuckstrike for entertaining me in the Twitch Chat with random cat and dog images while also providing me with useful information about the game I was currently playing.

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My Newgrounds account for this challenge will be: Yagya Watch me play on twitch.tv/nijsse. Again, any comments are appreciated.

25-8: Ended the day with 25000 points after playing roughly 60 games. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope to see you all tomorrow! =)

26-8: Just finished day 2. I played around 14 hours today and earned 12415 medal points. Pretty safe to assume this challenge is going to be insanely difficult to win. Total points after today: 37415

27-8: Played another 14 hours. Most of the games were lots of fun to play, but the quality of my play is starting to decrease from time to time. Ended the day with 50000 medal points.

28-8: Day 4 started out badly. I experienced problems with the stream, some lag, a few medals didn't register and I wasn't playing too well. Fortunately, things started to get better after dinner, so after playing for almost 15 hours, I ended my day at 61675 points. Slightly behind pace, but it could've been worse.

29-8: I think it's going to be impossible to hit 100k this week. Today didn't go very well, even though I played some great games (Abobo!). One of my biggest strengths as a gamer is that I can stay relaxed and focused without ever getting angry. Today I ragequit a game because of an annoying fly in my house. Playing for around 70 hours in 5 days might be a little over the top, but I'm not giving up just yet. Ended the day with 70320 points.

30-8: Tried my very best today, but the challenge is a little too much for me. Still managed to earn over 10000 medal points today, and finished at 80710. There is one day left, and even though I know it's not going to happen, I'll keep going just to see how much points I can collect.

31-8: With 10 hours left on the clock (and after playing for 13 hours today) I gave up the challenge. Even if I would spend every minute that is left collecting medals, 100k would still be too much. Ended the challenge with an even 90000 medal points and I will post a summary of the challenge soon.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ==

The winner of this of this year's contest is: WonderTheHedgehog. Congratulations!

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3-7: Let the games begin! The game I picked for this years contest is:

********** Room Raider **********

The participant with the highest amount of rooms wins !

GO GO GO. GOOD LUCK ALL!

4-7 (1): Roughly 25% of the contest is over. You guys are putting up quite a show! WonderTheHedgehog with 40 rooms, Syrreal with 39 and the ghost of Shantom has 37 rooms. Nice performance by TheRed555 as well. If you can reach 32, you can reach 40. Again, good luck to all participants in the remaining 36 hours.

4-7 (2): We are approaching the half-way mark, and it seems like Syrreal just went for the kill. 54 rooms is amazing, thanks for discouraging the competition! =)

4-7 (3): It seems like the contest isn't over just yet! After 24 of the 48 hours, Syrreal is still in the lead with 54 rooms, but WonderTheHedgehog reached the 50 room mark as well. It would be fun if some other participants get into the mix as well, but for now it seems like the winner is going to be one of these two.

4-7 (4): Only 14 hours left! It seems like Syrreal is confident enough in his score to stop playing. I'm watching WonderTheHedgehog play right now on twitch.tv, and while he is trying his best to claim the first spot, things don't seem to go his way just yet.

5-7 (1): With exactly 12 hours left in the contest, WonderTheHedgehog managed to reach room 54 as well! I didn't think a draw was going to be an issue, but I'll think of something in case it really happens. THANKS FOR AN AWESOME SHOW GUYS! =)

5-7 (2): Just 4 hours to go, and WonderTheHedgehog took the lead with 56 rooms! It's going to be pretty difficult to beat such an awesome score, but there's still some time left.

5-7 (3): 3 hours left. Watching Syrreal play on my phone. Sorry boss.

5-7 (4): 1 hour left. It seems like it's over. I could probably ship the prize to WonderTheHedgehog right now, but who knows, miracles happen.

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Participants:

Escalus
TacoJuans
Philip3477
EventHorizon
Deluzzz
TheRed555
Fooliolo
carlbobthe3rd
Knuckstrike (playing for Hybrid-Of-Souls)
WonderTheHedgehog
Syrreal
zakzok
IvanMunozLopez95
ulfusNG
gs2
Gabriekk
Bobogoobo
SmashLuigiFan1

...

Today is my 11-year anniversary on Newgrounds! I can't believe I'm still having so much fun on a website I discovered such a long time ago. The reason I created an account here was because I found out about Pico, by far the best free online game back then. There were rumors Pico 2 was going to be released really soon, so I created an account to be informed the moment that would happen. Very funny Tom, very funny. At first I didn't really care about stuff like experience points, I was too busy slapping Britney and clubbing seals.

After a few years, some of my friends started making flash movies. One of them actually won a few daily prizes. Being an awesome friend, I voted 5 on their movies, and that was when I discovered voting power. I started to deposit daily, and right around that time Newgrounds introduced the blam/protection system. Watch & vote on movies/games, and you earn points, ranks, and more voting power. This was probably the most addicting thing ever to me, and after starting off slowly I became obsessed with the numbers. I still remember a beautiful day when I was at the beach thinking 'ugh, I'm missing out on some points now. It was awesome to become Supreme Commander #19, but I instantly quit earning points afterwards because it was time to stop the madness.

Around that time there was a 'Dutch People Club' on the BBS, a thread that allowed us to speak Dutch. People were basically spamming around a bit and I chimed in from time to time. Before the thread got closed (as it was impossible to moderate) I came in touch with a girl (a regular in that thread) and we started chatting a bit. She was living like 150 miles from me in the capital of Belgium. I'm old fashioned when it comes to dating, but going to an unknown city to meet an unknown person to go to an unknown underground party seemed like an awesome idea to me. Even though her Dutch was pretty horrible at first and my French was even worse, we had an amazing connection and actually dated for a few years. Having a long-distance relationship, combined with going to a university, was pretty damn difficult, as I was basically living in a train. We had to sacrifice all of the little free time we had just to be together. This is easy at first but gets progressively harder. Loosing her as my girlfriend wasn't too difficult, but I still miss her as a friend sometimes, even a few years later.

Well, I wasn't going to quit on Newgrounds just yet. For some time, I only went to the site just to deposit my daily experience. Right when I started to doubt why I would still waste that daily few minutes, Newgrounds implemented the medal system. Being a Nintendo guy, there aren't a lot of great games out there, but I really love gaming, so earning a few medals seemed like fun. Medal games turned out to be even more addictive than b/p'ing, and new medal games were released once every few days. This kept things interesting, and reason enough to keep playing them. There was a period I was really obsessed with medals, just like I was with b/p points. This hasn't been the case for a long time, but on that foundation I'm steadily cruising on the #1 spot on this site for medal points. I'm still having fun and don't see myself retiring from medal games any time soon, but you never know what happens in life.

So, what do you guys think? Is it time to grow the f up, make a few babies, brag about my car/work, and do whatever it is people are supposed to be doing at their mid-20s? Or just keep on sailing through life, do whatever I want, and hide the fact I'm one of the best gamers on a website full of 15-year old dudes to my social environment? :P

There, I did it, I reached the 100k medal point milestone. My goal was to be the first one to do it, but WonderTheHedgehog beat me to it by around 12 hours. It was a matter of who had the chance to play the newest game first, and I had a trip to Amsterdam (Ajax, beer, Red Light District =] ) planned yesterday, and that's obviously more important than playing games on the internetz. Oh well, I don't mind being 2nd after someone who earned both of the Lastman medals within 24 hours. You sir, are skilled. Yes, I know there is someone else who has even more points, but even though he seems like a nice guy, I just hate cheaters. Always have, always will. Even back in the Megadrive / Snes days, I refused to beat games with cheat codes. I mean, It's like finishing a marathon on a bike. Yes, you got there, but you'll never feel as good as the people who did it the way it's supposed to be.

It has been a while since I discovered the medal system. After years of just going to NG to make my daily exp deposit, I found out about Portal Defenders having unlockable achievement thingies, and was instantly hooked. The best thing about the medal system is the large variety of games you get to play. NG has an insane amount of talented artists, guys like Matt Roszak, Makopudding, JuicyBeast, Tom Flump himself and others create stuff I would definitely pay money for. Some games really suck, but most of the time I'm having a great time gaming on this site. I don't think I spend (too) much time on them, I feel like the average person wastes more time watching awful tv shows. Maybe I should spend more of my spare time making music, a small record company from Amsterdam offered me to release a (mini) album of my stuff like 6 months ago, but I'm lazy and so are they, so I'm sure it will happen eventually.

As always, if any of you guys have a question regarding a medal or medal game, check Wylina's awesome medal guide, post your question in this topic, or shoot me a PM, I will gladly help you.

to all the people who just randomly vote 0 on other people's music, just because:

a) someone has a higher score, even though you downloaded Fruityloops last week
b) "omg, this isn't heavy metal! vote zeroooooo"
c) you are an idiot
d) you don't like the user who made the music

It's not like the flash portal where a movie needs 200 votes before it even stays in the portal. No, when you (and some other clowns) vote 0 on someone's music, the score gets so low that it's almost impossible to be discovered by other users, no mather how good the track is. I know this post won't make any difference, but it's just a bit frustrating. One of my goals on this site was to make music that people would actually use in their flash movies, but I guess that's just not gonna happen.

I didn't want my first News Post on NG to be so negative... NG still rocks even after being a member for almost 10 years. The medal games are awesome and very very addictive. :)