I have to say Elliott, our high school friends, and I used to play the hell out of Strat-O-Matic. It didn’t matter if it was baseball (my fav), football, or hockey we had loads of card sets and we’d head over to the Norridge, IL Gamer’s Paradise – a local store that used to be a great source for games until it became a low rent Spencer’s Gifts sort of joint band then going out of business – to grab the latest sets when they came out. The winning video, from Howard Neuthaler, for the first annual Strat-O-Matic YouTube contest brought back a lot of those memories of our hours upon hours of sporting simulations and I had to laugh when the narrator starts talking about the teams of the past because we had those same football teams and spent quite a bit of time haggling with each other over those very same players and defenses…
From Strat-O-Matic:
Howard Neuthaler of New York, NY has been named by Strat-O-Matic as the winner of its first ever YouTube Contest.
Neuthaler’s video, titled “Strat-O-Matic, Snowstorms and Syrup,” is a poignant five-minute mini documentary about him and two of his best childhood friends and their 30 years of playing Strat-O-Matic Football together. Neuthaler edged out Gary Williamson and Jack Spoerner in the finals for first place.
The YouTube Contest, which was launched on October 9th, encouraged Strat-O-Matic Fanatics to create their own Strat-O-related videos and promote them as much as possible. The three videos with the most number of total views by December 20th advanced to the finals. Submissions included everything from comedic songs to photo montages to even a pig teaching viewers how to play Strat-O-Matic Football (Spoerner’s video). Strat-O-Matic received three videos from children 10 years and younger.
As the grand prize for winning the contest, Neuthaler will receive a $400.00 Strat-O-Matic merchandise credit.
Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media, Jeff tackles any and all sorts of games but has a special fondness for strategy, conflict sims, and roleplaying games. Plus, he's certainly never at a loss for an opinion...
