Fx Games bringing Halloween fun during their special end of October tournament

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   10/30/23-  At 6 p.m. in Plano Texas, on most Fridays, a special event happens. Gamers across Texas come to a small games shop off of Custer Road to show off their skills in their favorite fighting game.

    Through views of Retro video games, action figures, and vinyl in the store's collection, you eventually see rows of chairs across from tables with Playstation consoles on them.  You can also start to see the vibrant and thriving community of gamers many of whom were dressed up in costumes from their favorite games. 

    In one corner a cyborg ninja from Nether Realm Entertainments Mortal Kombat, In another corner the two people running the event are both dressed up as different characters from SNK Co.’s King of Fighters series. 

The event was known as Suplex, a Fighting Video game tournament that's held every Friday inside Plano Texas’s Fx Games Shop on Custer Road and run by the shop's own production company Tourney Locator. This tournament was special, as this week it was a Halloween-themed event.

“It’s an event that we put on every year now.” one of the Tournament organizers Joel “Sloth” Ramirez told me. He said that every year they put on a special tournament just for Halloween and it ends up being one of the most exciting due to how many come to play in their tournaments, and how it gets extra special with a costume contest. 

The contest winner, Eric “Dozing” Ray, dressed up as Calcetín Con Rombos Man, a Sock puppet from the Chilean children's TV show 31 Minutos, and won a free ticket to FX game's next big tournament. The gamers in costumes strutted between the tables getting cheers from onlookers until Eric was the last one left getting lots of cheers. 

“The costume contest is really fun!” Ray told me. “I didn't expect to get first since there were so many good costumes, but I am really glad I was the last one standing.”

The event was streamed on Twitch TV on the Fx game's Twitch channel and featured 45 people battling it out in tournament brackets to be the best at games like Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1, and Killer Instinct. The organizers offered a discount for those dressed up in costume and gave out candy and Halloween-themed Pokemon cards for anyone who entered or even just came to watch. 

Event organizers Mike “Mikey” Nguyen and Joel “Sloth” Ramirez aspire to bring people together using gaming but also do it for the fun of the game. 

“It's really cool to watch people grow and see people you know do well,” Ramirez told me.

 He emphasized how he liked using tournaments to bring people together, but he and his fellow organizer also emphasized the difficulty tournament organizing can be. 

“The most difficult thing is expectations of people showing up,” Nguyen told me. The weekly tournament had gone through a week's drought of many people showing up, so many things were up in the air when Nguyen and Ramirez announced that they would be doing their special Halloween event with a costume contest. 

“Even when you promote it, you just can't have expectations on whether people will show up,” Nguyen said. 

The event did end up being a success both told me. Gamers played fighting games against each other into the night until the event ended with the final two players in the Street Fighter 6 tournament. Ramirez regretted that the event ended so late

“I try really hard to have the tournament end on time but sometimes it's really hard to find people to commentate over the games or there were just too many events and it ends late.”


Fx Game's next big gaming Low Tier City event starts on November 18 at the Arlington Sports Stadium. 

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