The Texas Battle Bowl, a project years in the making

Let’s start with a little bit of background as we go through how the TX Battle Bowl has come to life. Urgent Fury was created many years ago for the Socom community on PlayStation 2. The TacMap tournament concept came about to create an experience when competing on the first multiplayer game for consoles. A short explanation of the TacMap tournament is like playing the board game Risk and replacing the dice with a match of Socom. Teams would battle it out for territories on the map until there was a winner. Urgent Fury dates back to the dawn of eSports along side other sites like Socom Battles which later became Game Battles and now MLG.

Over the years we have hosted tournaments online for Socom, Call of Duty, America’s Army, Starhawk and many more. We have had the honor and privilege to consult on numerous video games in the industry and organizations looking to understand the competitive gaming world.

Around 8 years ago, Shane Bell (Urgent Fury Ownership Team Member) met Dave and Justin and Patriot Games in Odessa, TX, a retro gaming store in the heart of West Texas and started helping where he could to help grow this cool gaming shop.

Over time we had always talked about doing things like hosting tournaments and even someday hosting a gaming convention here in West Texas. We have had various conventions here such as the now long time running Permian Basin Comic Con. This event has continued to grow in success giving our area access to entertainment you would normally have to travel to larger cities to attend.

Fast forward to 2023, local colleges Midland College and UTPB have embraced the new trend of adding eSports and competitive eSports teams to their curriculums to attract the newest generations of students. In April Urgent Fury partnered with Midland College to host one of the highest paying prize pool Smash Tournaments in Midland/Odessa’s history. Midland/Odessa has had a long standing history of Smash Bros events here in town but the locations for holding large events have not been viable until that event.

Within days of that event the first and second place winners Vibe and Nationwide got word out to the West Texas Regional Tournament Organizers that we were looking to do more large events like this. They reached out to Shane and explained how the MC event could have been so much more. We only advertised the old Facebook groups we used to promote events back in the day did and did not have access to the the Discords being used by players now. We discussed what the scene was like for West Texas and how there was plenty of room to bring in more events.

With this in mind we looked to find a way to host large events without having to beg and borrow to get enough setups to host a larger event efficiently. We found Unified eSports Association thanks to searching through Google. He met with the team and explained our needs to put on an event where we could host more than 64 players. We already had access to plenty of venue space and a long time understanding of creating and executing tournaments and Unified was the answer for our equipment needs.

In early May we announced the Midessa Regional SSBU Tournament that is being held at the Bush Convention Center on July 8th and 9th with a prize pool starting at $1,500 thanks to our long time sponsor Bahama Buck’s of Midland and Odessa and Patriot Games. This prize pool has already surpassed $1,800 and grows with every entry.

This in turn got us talking with Unified Gaming about doing a full on event. Now there is another piece in the background that Shane was working on that helped push the creation of the Texas Battle Bowl launching in October.

Shane has volunteered off and on for the American Red Cross in Disaster Services since he was a teenager. It is a long time passion of his and has served the Permian Basin for countless responses from House Fires to catastrophic events like Hurricane Harvey and the Kentucky Tornadoes.

Over the last few years American Red Cross recognized the ability for gamers to mobilize and raise money for organizations and causes through platforms like Tiltify while streaming and created Mission Red. The Red Cross Gaming program focuses on empowering gamers to help the mission my fundraising to their communities.

As part of this new initiative, Rescue Royale was developed as an annual event for gamers across all platforms focus on fundraising for the Red Cross. We have come to call this Gamers vs Disasters. This has always been done in the fall and looking to become an annual event every October.

The Texas Battle Bowl is schedule for September 29th – October 1st kicking off the Gamers vs Disasters month long fundraising initiative and combining Shane’s two passions.

We did not want to just do a big Smash Brothers tournament though… the Permian Basin is rich in gaming communities including Magic the Gathering and Warhammer on top of console and pc gamers. So we have brought in all of the hardware and space to support a variety of gamers. We have FPS Shooters, Fighting Games, Tabletop Games and even some Racing with Mario Kart.

Soon we will be announcing special guests from all around the eSports and Gaming genre to complement all of the different tournaments.

We invite everyone to come out and compete or watch and over 1000 competitors battle it out for potentially over $45,000 is cash and prizes. Pre registration is now open!