3 Apr 2017
Aspire 2017 Stage One Concludes
by Ephemeral

Aspire 2017 Stage One Concludes

by Ephemeral

With a thunderous conclusion, the first stage of Aspire 2017 is over - and we have a clear and decisive winner. Read on to find out more, including details about the next stage of the contest slated to begin this month!

Over thirty brave contestants submitted their best take on Helblinde's The Solace of Oblivion, a grueling six-minute trek throughout a dark and pounding soundscape.

Twelve emerged at the other side, their efforts judged to be worthy of greater attention.

Those fated twelve were showcased to the world in osu!'s first ever contest stream feature, alongside the expert commentary of our Honorable Mentions panel of judges, Okorin, pishifat, Monstrata and ztrot.

From your votes and their expertise, the twelve have now become three.

But among those three, only one earns the right to be crowned this year's Aspirant, the mapper forevermore acknowledged as one of osu!'s Elite Mappers.

Blowing away the competition with OUTSTANDING scores in all categories, and universal public acclaim, the winner of this year's Aspire 2017 contest is none other than..

Somber Ibis, by ProfessionalBox, with a total score of 76.5/80, and 2732 unique votes.

Well known among the mapping community already for his incredible knowledge of the editor and patterning proficiency, ProfessionalBox created a truly incredible spectacle to behold - taking the game to its absolute limits, producing a map the likes of which osu! has never seen before.

Beneath the technical mastery of the entry's construction, ProfessionalBox created a truly compelling beatmap in many ways beyond the glitches and gimmicks utilized to make it tick, melding techniques and patterns that have rarely been seen together to produce something incredibly unique.

His entry went above and beyond our greatest expectations for this contest. So strong was his entry's presence that it domineered the conversation surrounding it, and his complete victory in every scoring category bar one speaks for itself.

Play the winning entry here!


Well behind but leading the pack thereafter lies Versatile Mallard by the infamous MinG3012, with a score of 57/80 and 1872 unique votes.

Incorporating an eerily dark and mysterious storyboard into his work, MinG3012 lived up to his reputation of breaking the game in every conceivable way - producing a beatmap so utterly broken that it requires hitlighting disabled to even function, and even then, success is not guaranteed.

Every pattern imaginable and even some never-before-seen make an appearance, even including a glitch which forces infinite BPM and breaks the calculation responsible for figuring out how difficult a map is.

Despite it all, MinG3012's work is an absolute spectacle to behold, and it comes as no surprise to see it score so strongly in many domains.

Play MinG3012's game-breaking entry here!


Scoring third place overall lies, Tranquil Chipmunk by Emilia with a score of 54.25/80 and 1547 unique votes.

Stealing the hearts of our meme-loving community with a fantastic twist on the slider animation gimmick established in last year's Aspire, Emilia's infamous dab-slider will be cherished fondly by all.

Beyond the meme, Emilia's map boasted some extremely complicated mapping ideas and concepts, using the full space offered by Aspire to produce some compelling gameplay that is just as creative as the main draw of the map, highlighting a deep and comparatively rare understanding of mapping in general.


The winning map will be made available as an Aspire-class Approval map in the coming days, whilst the two runners-up will be entered into the Loved category whenever possible.

You may view the full composite judging sheet here, which has HM panel judge comments and more.

Check out the contest listing to view the public voting in a much prettier format, and to download all of the entries.

The composite judging sheet combines the scores given by the Honorable Mentions panel (40 points) with a Public Impression score (40 points) calculated by a scaling perspective of the overall votes an entry received in comparison to the others.

Together, the two values produced the winning results of the contest, though the popular vote had them charted fairly accurately anyway.


We're also proud to announce the beginning of Aspire-class contests for all other gamemodes - osu!taiko, osu!catch and osu!mania.

Slated for commencement later in April, we will be hosting an Aspire contest for osu!taiko.

More details on this will emerge as the month draws late, but we look forward to seeing just how the mappers of other gamemodes fare in taking their gamemodes to the absolute limit.

Thank you to everyone who entered, and also to everyone who voted, and a HUGE thanks to our panel of expert judges for volunteering hundreds of hours of time between them, very much making this contest a reality.

—Ephemeral

Comments83

Sort by

i like the MinG3012 map

because is

THE END OF Osu!City!!

Somber Ibis is life

Goddammit MinG (not the first time if thought that to myself)

SALUT

I played these beatmaps on my osu!droid,And it's so amazing!!

look at meh dab

MinG3012 _-_

Calling it now: Next aspire we will see mappers deform slider bodies into 2D shapes

I knew that that map will get to be first place1

For Astonished cormorant, what happens at 1405 combo? during the spinner in which you can do absolutely nothing

osu!taiko aspire? what will that look like?

something like this map https://osu.ppy.sh/s/582888

oomfie Luma

spinner with circles inside

I see handsome's mapping. lel

YES! Somber Ibis is #1!

>"We’re also proud to announce the beginning of Aspire-class contests for all other gamemodes - osu!taiko, osu!catch and osu!mania.

OH BABY IT'S TIME

ez to get SS :p

somber ibis in ctb
>infinite BPM part
>crashed (rarely)
in mania and taiko
>can't even load

memes map

I've seen some **** in osu!taiko... aspire is going to be wild.

All Mappers Are Hackers... what can I say...

haha fuck

Myucel emilia

haha fuck

Really nice map by probox

The only sad thing about this was that anonymity wasn't really solid. Everyone knew the entries mappers. I know it's hard to keep every entry mapper anonymous, but if we want to improve on the next competition that's one of the things that needs some work on. Congratz everyone who participated as mappers and judges, really good competition o/

how did ming lose at his own expertise

Crowie Melter

bc i didn't vote for him

Now ProBox just needs to win a mapping with rewards contest and we're basically elite mapper twins :D.

ProfessionalBox Monstrata

I'll just one up you and win another aspire ;)

Edelgard- ProfessionalBox

cabbage

Infinitstart ProfessionalBox

damn the roast is real

Sotarks ProfessionalBox

That roast is over 9000, my man wow.

Runiel ProfessionalBox

oh fucc

Haruto ProfessionalBox

ayy grats probox!!

E L I T E
A S P I R A N T
P R O B O X
wooT!

Grats

I was thinking Tranquil Chipmunk was made by -kevincela-

Kibbleru den0saur

he wudnt do the dab

>> Slated for commencement later in April, we will be hosting an Aspire contest for osu!taiko. <<

katacheh wins by default >_>

Surono xtrem3x

dont forget Mania and CtB, Evening and......... ExGon?????? Xd

Rikuka Surono

Mania = iJinjin auto win
xD

Who is ready for Somber ibis to destroy ctb pp

ExGon Golterboose

i can't pass it with nomod

No Fail Pass still would be alot of pp

xtrem3x Golterboose

3000pp (?)

MillhioreF xtrem3x

It's not that bad since the minimum number of misses is like 110. Max obtainable combo is 1450 or so which would land the best possible score in the 300-400pp range.

It might end up being a farm map for 4 digits though since you can get a shitton of misses and still end up with 150-200pp just for a mediocre combo.

you finally did it probox

proud of you ♥

It's really sad to see that Forlorn Thrasher hasn't noticed as winner :(

Sotarks Enon

I see "Thrash" I vote 1.

After I watched this I'm now more being sure about the judge comments of CtB aspire contest were completely wrong https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/...

ExGon CLSW

that's not an aspire, but osu!catch super gimmick mapping contest :^

different modes and different people will have different styles of judging :d

CLSW Ascendance

That sort of excuse won't cut it anymore, I hope you may not pretend something 'wrong' to something 'different' please

The actual flaws existed in the contest without its actual intention how the contest should be, when the judges let the other people to test the candidate maps and not himself, and they tried to consider 'easy and comfortable gameplay' it was completely out of the actual title of "Aspire".

if emilia's map won i would have died

congrats to everybody who entered, congrats to the top three

HECK off .

shut the DARN up .

last two videos are in the wrong place :D

oh boy taiko aspire :D

videos for Versatile Mallard and Tranquil Chipmunk videos are mixed up i think

Ephemeral Zeptaxis

YOU SAW NOTHING

Dawns Ephemeral

yeet

ProBox!!

His Entry deserved to win.

and just like that, the elite mapper title gains a bit more meaning now that the best mapper in osu joins the group

Monstrata Ascendance

EXCUSE ME? I'm pretty sure the best mapper on osu is IcePagoda.

BTMC Monstrata

He went there.

/

He went there.