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St. Cloud State University
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X-Box sends student to Vegas
By Joe Palmersheim
Published:
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Media Credit: Kim Bucholz
SCSU´s Ben Aelling won the regional competition for ESPN´s new football game on X-Box. Many hard hours were spent practicing, and have paid off. In November he will be flying to Las Vegas in order to compete for Pro-Bowl tickets.
Sometimes people possess talents that go unnoticed for a period of time. These talents have a way of surfacing at interesting moments. For SCSU junior Ben Aelling, that moment was two weeks ago when he was at Gameworks at the Block-E mall in Minneapolis.
Aelling and another friend were attending a tournament that night for the new X-Box game "ESPN Football 2004." He'd read about the tournament on the Internet.
"It sounded like there were actually going to be people who were rated on 'X-Box Live.'"
Aelling said that there was only eight people at the event.
"I don't know exactly what happened," Aelling said.
After beating his friend in the first round, Aelling advanced to the finals. There he faced stiffer competition, and despite the other team's late-game comeback, won the game and with it the region title.
This was the first time that Aelling had played the game. The last sports game he had played was "Madden 98."
"It ('ESPN 2004') was a lot better than that!" The prizes were not too bad either. The first prize, which Aelling won, was a trip to Las Vegas to compete in the National Championship, and with it, $500 spending cash.
The second prize was sideline Vikings tickets and third prize was an X-Box with an X-Box Live kit.
When asked about Vegas, Aelling says he has no major plans. The grand prize for winning the National title is a trip to Hawaii to see the Pro Bowl in February. To win this, Aelling will have to defeat three other people in the tournament. He has been practicing in order to make this a reality.
"I don't have anything really planned, I actually haven't heard very many specifics. They haven't gotten the itinerary out to me yet. The Marketing Team gave me a call, and I had to Fed-Ex them all kinds of signatures and stuff, but they haven't gotten back to me yet (either)," Aelling said. "They fly us out there on Friday, the Tournament is on Saturday afternoon, and you come back Sunday. The rest of the time is yours."
Aelling is trying to arrange for a friend to come with him to Los Vegas. This same friend whom Aelling beat in the original competition might fly out on his own. "It sounds like he's going to come with me. He's going to buy his own ticket to come down and be my cheerleader," Aelling said with a laugh.
"They (Microsoft) are just trying to get publicity for it. The '2-K Series' was bad. They re-did the whole thing and ESPN got on it. That's what it was. I thought to myself, 'I've never played this before!' and pretty much everyone else had the same feeling," Aelling said.
When asked about the game, Aelling had mostly positive remarks.
"It wasn't too different. The interface was a little different, but if you know what the basic idea of football is, you can play it ('ESPN 2004') and it's not that tough."
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