Head-2-Head-X / The History of H2H: H2H1

The History of Head-2-Head: H2H1

---

 

NE was founded in March 2002, and it was during these early formative months that webmaster iris tried lots of contest formats and other site features, many of them 'borrowed' from Danimation. One of the original features iris came up with was 'Head-2-Head', a team based contest in which players were drafted into teams, making parks against a strict deadline, and going up in a poll-decided match against other teams. Initially the parks were intended to be solos, but later duos were allowed. The style and format of the contest was inspired by American (Fantasy) Football.

 

Here, in April 2002, the foundation for the most legendary RCT contest had been laid. H2H had a mid season break back then, and during this break, the site was upgraded to 'NE2'. Unfortunately, all NE1-content could no longer be accessed, and therefore much knowledge and content of H2H1 has been lost to time. Below you will find what is known about the team roster.

19 parks and one play-off match topic survive - mostly through the latter we know of three team names; Team Solar (captained by Foozycoaster), Team Victory (captained by iris) and Team Infinity (captained by Adix). This match topic gives a small glimpse into the culture at the time: people voting for their own team, people voting before even checking out the parks, and 1337 5p34k. Other information can be found on archived NE2 parkmaker pages.

 

We can deduce that Team Infinity performed poorly, with only Infinity House Party by Adix and aero21 winning a match by vote, which is fitting because aero21 was H2H1's #1 pick in the draft. A similarly musically themed park, Techno Peaks, was released in the next round. Not every park had a creative concept like that, though. There were also a fair share of simple, down to earth realistic parks, and even a single wide paths park in Era. Parks like Disney's Hercules by Team Solar, mostly engineered by x-sector, as well as Geyser Rock by RRP and bokti, were among the strongest parks of the season and they were a sign of things to come in the coming years of LL on NE.

 

Geyser Rock by RRP and bokti

Disney's Hercules by x-sector and iris

 

During NE's 10th anniversary in 2012, posix wrote a nice piece on the first year of NE's history. With no new information, who can summarise the unfolding of the contest better than an eye witness? About H2H1, he had the following to say.

 

posix wrote:

iris continued to push the community and announced the site's first ever contest: Head-2-Head. This was an original contest concept in which participants were drafted into teams and battled each other in 2vs2 duo park match-ups where public polls decided the winner. The contest introduced strict deadlines by which a park had to be sent in, and for the first time evoked a certain pressure to finish a park which anyone who has participated in an H2H season is probably familiar with. The contest's first round of matches took place in April 2002, featuring a release by Nevis who worked on "Tales of Camelot" together with mp3mystro (today "Panther"). The park again demonstrated Nevis affinity for custom ride design, featuring a large 4D coaster and custom ride. Although Nevis criticised mp3mystro as "impossible to work with", the park is considered as one of the best of H2H1, and ranked #2 in the "Best H2H park of the year" rankings. Coming in first was Fatha's and Andy Hodgson "Streets of New York", a story-based fantasy adventure ride through the city. At the time this was a novel concept few people, if any, had used before. Adventure rides were later also a trademark of Fatha's later releases. The contest took a two months break in June 2002 and wasn't to continue until August two months later.   The two finalist teams had their first play-offs match, which due to an H2H activity drought also turned into the finals of the contest. Nevis and Elrocko's "Cherokee Valley" was beaten in a close match against x-sector's and Fatha's "Ganymede". This was Nevis last performance before he retired. The match-up was posted on a notorious date in NE history: 16 Sept 2002, the launch of NE2.

 

This final match between Team Solar and Team Victory never reached a clear conclusion, and eventually Team Victory lived up to its name as Foozy gave up on H2H1, and with him Team Solar. Iris and his team became the first H2H champions.

 

Awards were held, but never published. Streets of New York won Best Park, Best Steel Coaster (for the dueling adventure ride) and Most Creative. The coaster by Foozy in Shanandoa Springs won the coaster award in the wood category. The most important award for 'Most Valuable Player' went to RRP for his contributions to Geyser Rock and Lost Paradise.

 

Tales of Camelot by Nevis and Panther	Streets of New York by Fatha and Andy Hodgson
Cherokee Valley by Nevis and Elrocko	Ganymede by x-sector and Fatha'

 

Until any more eye witnesses step forward, or more H2H1 parks surface, this is about as much as there is to know about H2H1. Consider this an open invitation to all old timers to dig deep in their memory and share whatever you may find!

Can't believe Andrew was around all the way back then. Truly a legend

Fun post. Some of y'all old.

Lovely read, thanks for writing this. Very interesting. A midseason break in which they change the site and lose everything from before, wth   I wonder if NE will still exist 20 years later on, with all new people, and they will dig in the archives and talk about us like this... 

Beautiful! I always love these pieces of New Element history, it only adds to the lore of this site. 

Always love the history write-ups, especially nice to learn some more about H2H1

It always amazes me how much of H2H1 is probably lost forever. Really shows the long history and tradition this has.

It amazes me that even with people like RRP, x-sector, evil WME, aero21 & Fatha involved, we still have next to no more information.

 

I also always associate Geyser Rock, Ganymede, Tales of Camelot & Streets of New York as later than this, I think of them as H2H2 because of so many other classic parks from that contest.

This was lovely.

 

I would imagine Corkscrewed likely played a certain part in the conception of H2H too, but I don't know for sure. It's so unfortunate NE1 was lost, and this is one of the reasons. Even if it were just a few months in mid 2002, a lot of information about cornerstone classic NE LL was here. Maybe we can exhaust waybackmachine a bit more at some point with the NE1 forum link https://web.archive....d4d2eaa26daffff

This was lovely.

 

I would imagine Corkscrewed likely played a certain part in the conception of H2H too, but I don't know for sure. It's so unfortunate NE1 was lost, and this is one of the reasons. Even if it were just a few months in mid 2002, a lot of information about cornerstone classic NE LL was here. Maybe we can exhaust waybackmachine a bit more at some point with the NE1 forum link https://web.archive....d4d2eaa26daffff

I'm pretty sure Cork was involved from what I remember from later H2H I believe he was mentioned as being quite influential in it and participating in all. So I would also asume he was probably one of the captains. Might also be interesting to check the some of the other sites back then too as most parks from NE often did spread to other communities too and got discussed there.