On Dec. 22, the U.S. osu! World Cup Team defeated South Korea in the notoriously injury-inducing rhythm game: osu! This cemented their grand finals win, a 25-game win-streak and one of the most dominant performances osu! had ever seen.
“idke and I have had personal goals to win a World Cup so dominantly that there was literally no way anyone could have hoped for the other team to win,” world champion Toy said. “To make it the most anticlimactic or uneventful Grand Finals ever since the last 4 years we'd played in a Grand Finals match it had gone to a bracket reset.”
Bracket resets have been the least of America’s worries. A series of technical issues has plagued team U.S.A. for years.
Despite winning four World Cups including OWC 2018, U.S.A. wasn’t satisfied. The opposite: they were angry. Apraxia especially showed his anger in-game and was not content with his first world championship win last year.
“It should’ve felt better, but I don’t think it was that great honestly,” world champion Apraxia said.
He said the team went into 2019 with one singular purpose: to dominate.
“For once we were like, ‘we want to absolutely shit on everyone; we want to dominate,’” Apraxia said. “We want everyone to just die. We just want people to think they have no chance. We want the stream to be like so bored when they watch us ‘cause they can’t do anything.”
First thing’s first: the team had to load up their SW4G icons.
As OWC 2019 draws near and teams are finalizing their rosters, I'd like to use this thread to explain the reasoning behind our Super Paper Mario collab.
— Toy (@droombs) November 1, 2019
These Pixls are companions that help Mario complete tasks throughout the game. Each of their names relate to our team members. pic.twitter.com/kTWRRAedZq
“idke’s the one who actually owns those swag glasses [in real life],” world champion DigitalHypno said. “Basically, when Monko2k was editing (making) our avatars for the 2017 collab, he asked idke to take a bunch of pictures of the swag glasses so he could edit them on to everyone’s character. Since then, it’s been a recurring theme in our collabs, since Monko2k has been making our avatar collabs since then.”
Apraxia made sure to practice the last slider of every song.
— apraxia (@anxosu) December 1, 2019
“We were about to fourway full-combo a map, and then I was like, ‘oh ya, let’s go, we frickin fourway full-combod this bitch,’” Apraxia said. “And then I’m like ‘I’m gonna take a screenshot of this,’ like an in-game screenshot, and then I thought that last slider, like the long one, was the last note, and I took a screenshot and there was another note. And then I missed, and then I ruined the fourway.”
Toy practiced his rolling skills.
“…During tournaments, both team captains will roll a number out of 100 to determine who picks maps first,” Toy said. “My team just likes to fuck around and[,] when I rolled before they wanted me to (arbitrary[,]) they yelled at me when I rolled the literal lowest possible number. It was just some goofing around that turned into people memeing me to the ground for being bad at rolling (literally RNG).”
And finally, idke was bribed with “2 McDonald.”
— apraxia (@anxosu) December 1, 2019
Going into the osu! World Cup 2019, U.S.A. didn’t expect to win; they expected to crush.
Coincidentally after the Vaxei bluescreen controversy in 2018, players were now allowed to play with No Fail, meaning, they couldn’t fail a song.
Match one versus Turkey: 5-1. Match two versus France: 5-1. Then, “destiny” appeared one last time just to spite America.
Game two of their third match, Australia versus U.S.A., something scary happened. DigitalHypno’s game lagged, causing him to miss a note.
“If my game didn’t lag here we actually would’ve won the map :(,” DigitalHypno said; yes, he included the frowny face. “It literally just froze for no reason.”
However, the technical problems that haunted U.S.A. for two years did not persist. They ended up going 18-0 after that match.
However, this article promised a 25-game win-streak, and the U.S. provided just that.
The first step of preparation is obvious: warming up.
“…Often times, [fieryrage] will map a warmup for us to use (he did this a few times in 2018 as well as 2019),” DigitalHypno said. “For Grand Finals, Fiery said he wanted to make a warmup map for us, but idke basically said [‘]No wait I wanna make a warmup map this time, you do it often enough[.’]”
The rest of the team had no idea what was in store for them.
For warmup maps, the rules are very loose. The only restriction is they can’t have “questionable content,” or be “inappropriate.”
With only a day to make the map, fieryrage and idke had their work cut out. They mapped to their hearts’ content, and right before the match, they informed their team of two things:
Firstly, the map was “technically full-comboable.”
Secondly, no matter what, DigitalHypno will play the last map.
“I wasn’t supposed to be in for that map at all,” DigitalHypno said. “Because of that, I stopped practicing it like days before the match happened. Once I was told by my team that I was going to be put in for the last map no matter what South Korea picked, I basically had 5 minutes to prepare for like half of the mappool which I hadn’t looked at in days.”
Korea picked their warmup map. After finishing the map, something is heard in the background. It almost seems like a mistake.
“Oh say can you…”
Then, the song is cut off.
Everything is silent, then the song starts playing in the background before all players are ready as osu! gives a preview of the song before it’s selected.
As it turns out, fieryrage and idke had been mapping the American National Anthem.
A picture of Donald Trump smiling is seen, and the map starts normally. Twenty seconds in and it seems to be a pretty easy map.
All the casters are silent as the anthem plays.
If you’re paying close attention, the star rating, or difficulty rating is 14.6. A seven-star map is considered challenging and an eight-star map is considered incredibly difficult.
Then, about two minutes in, we see why it’s so difficult.
idke and fieryrage had mapped out the entire American Flag. It spanned the whole screen which meant you had to follow the pattern across the entirety of your monitor for eight seconds.
Every player broke combo.
Then, fantastic pictures were mapped out.
The words of the song were being mapped out, the outline of America was even mapped out.
Stars appeared, a giant pyramid for some reason. Near impossible sequences of notes were introduced, because why not?
Every player had below a 50 percent accuracy, except fieryrage, who was sitting at a cool 51 percent.
Then, for the finale, the two mappers had added their personal touch.
They mapped out in order “OWC,” “GF,” “SK,” then, the South Korean Flag, “VS,” “USA,” and finally, the American Flag.
Then, as a tribute to Apraxia, they inserted the sound effect of him missing the fourway full-combo.
The best moment in the map is the end when we see see the exact part of the infamous map Apraxia missed on, hear him say “yes bitch,” take a screenshot, miss the note… “fuck!”
All eight players missed a combined total of 1,415 notes, with the least amount of misses actually going to Korean player Zeisen-, with only 128 misses.
Team U.S.A. was confident.
“I felt pretty numb going into every match since it didn’t even really feel like we were playing it,” Toy said. “It felt like it didn’t matter how well I did or not because my team was so beast that we’d win each map regardless.”
The first intense moment of grand finals had started right after warmups finished. Toy had been warming his hands up for four hours. The reason: he needed to roll higher than Korea.
Neither team was willing to roll first. The game of chicken had begun.
Over a minute later, Korea succumbs. They roll an impressive 83.
“We lost,” Apraxia typed.
Toy then rolls 12 seconds later. Although he did get better than a one, he only managed a 21, meaning Korea dealt America their first loss.
However, that was the only win Korea would find that day.
To DigitalHypno’s dismay, all four bans were used on maps he had practiced, meaning most likely, he’d only play in the final map of the match.
The match begins with Korea picking the first map, but it doesn’t matter. U.S.A. wins by 450,000 points. Second map, another 450,000-point win. Third map is Korea’s choice and America doubles up, winning by over 800,00 points with Vaxei getting a full combo.
U.S.A. may have won even harder on the third map, but some small technical problems were affecting DigitalHypno.
“…For some reason (and I still don’t know why it was happening), my game had been stuttering pretty badly,” DigitalHypno said. “Because of that, when the map was picked, I explained to my team that my game was stuttering and I didn’t feel comfortable going in because of it. That wasn’t a big deal because Toy was feeling okay on it at the time, so I let him play for me.”
Every map continues in this fashion until the final map, a map DigitalHypno hadn’t practiced for, probably.
To make matters worse, Korea didn’t use strategy to pick the final map, they left the last pick to chance, typing !roll and going with whatever the dice dictated.
The map was selected and, sure enough, the map U.S.A. trolled on was their worst map.
DigitalHypno is the first to drop combo only 140 notes in. However, a few seconds later, two players from South Korea miss with three U.S. players still going strong.
DigitalHypno has built his combo back up and American has formed a small lead. Then, almost at the same time, Digital Hypno and Korean player firebat92 break.
Soon, everyone on Korea has missed and Vaxei and idke are the only ones holding combo. America’s lead is growing.
Then, three players miss. Vaxei alone is holding strong with a 780-note combo. 900, 1,000, 1,100. Vaxei builds up combo and starts closing out the game.
There’s only a quarter of the map left. Victory seems inevitable.
However, all Korean players have over a 500-note combo while only idke and Vaxei have high combos.
The score gap starts slowly closing, but there isn’t enough time left; until Vaxei breaks combo.
At this point, Korea is less than 200,000 points behind America and closing. All Korean players have high combos.
Korea only has 100,000 more points to go. idke has a solid combo and is the last hope for America. Then, firebat92 drops combo.
The result of the match is now unknown.
They’re less than 100,000 points away from victory, but it seems too little, too late.
The song ends, and through a 1,341 combo, Vaxei managed to carry the team, winning by only 35,000 points.
However, they still managed to accomplish their goal of dominating a World Cup.
The U.S. managed to finally win a world cup without bracket resets, controversy, missing players or major technical issues.
“I don’t know if anyone is gonna be able to dominate that hard ever again,” Apraxia said. “[It] probably won’t be like this ever again.”
idke also announced he’d be retiring from tournaments, marking the grand finals with a bittersweet tone.
“I don’t blame him for quitting,” Toy said. “He’s achieved basically all of his goals and now he can rest a legend forever. I may follow suit but who knows a year from now.”
Toy said he hasn’t been able to meet idke in-person to properly celebrate their victory.
“I don’t live near idke, but I do owe him 2 McDonald and plan to follow through when we next see each other.”
