Nintendo World Championships: Thoughts

[Nightmare]

We'll save the comments about the competitors for later, but want to post about the finals:

1. Why no classic games in the main competition? I guess marketing reasons, as they want to market the Wii U for sales as well as DLC. I would've felt more respected if they did at least one classic game.

2. Numbers probably had the best overall profile. He could play classics, he can play Smash, he practiced SMB Speed Runs. He deserved to win. His SMB 1 was fucking sweet, Andrew Gardikis and I were talking about it, we both are super impressed by that part.

3. Team games: Really, really, REALLY need to go. This sets a dangerous precedent validating the teamplay mechanic in modern gaming and is really a bad idea. Classic gaming is about striving to be the best you can be, getting the best time, getting the best achievement. This was a big no-no, supports all the team and clan activity (ugh), promotes cyber-bullying, among other things. This has no place in the competition.

4. Cosmo was not smart by not even picking up NSMB. This was a "staple" game among new games and should've been addressed in the preparation at least in some degree. This cost him (as well as not being able to play SMB 1, lucky he didn't get Zelda or Super Metroid either)

5. I suck at Smash. As good as I am overall, I'd agree I'd have no shot if I made it that far. I would've done -10 against that level of competition. Everybody looked like they looked a bit at Pro Smash.

-James

[mrz84]

I will admit that I don't really follow gamers who stream gaming online (with a few exceptions) so aside from Arin I didn't know any of the participants. Regardless, it was a t least entertaining to watch. And those reveals! (I have some of them in spoiler tags in my E3 thread btw)

[Nightmare]

As much as I hate self-promotion stuff, I have to admit the Reggie-Fils Amie spot worked. The competitors were seriously tired after all the rounds and needed a break, and Reggie used the spot to sell a new character. While I'm not a big fan of the guy (still have a hard time accepting a Pizza Hut guy heading a video game company), he did his job and probably got a few bucks for his company doing it, and didn't look too bad playing either!

[ctrl-alt-delete]

"dangerous precedent"

[Nightmare]

I still think making/joining the Unnamed Pokemon Team was one of the biggest mistakes I made in my video game career: It put too much pressure on me and had to carry the entire team in competitive strategy for nearly 3 years (though Rusey contributed to the strategy and Lissanne was a good breeder). But in the end, there was some bullying going around on all sides, and I was helping providing breeding stock for the entire East Coast without much return and carrying 50 people competitively. This was not cool: People need to earn their own way, not leech off of anyone else.

I think this will happen again if people promote team play. It's not good.

-James

[Dimentio]

Is there any place I can find the footage of your entry round, Nightmare? Or was it not recorded?

[Nightmare]

Not recorded. No one's qualifying event was.

Put it simply, I was in the same qualifying region as John Numbers. He blew everyone away. 4.7 M score to 1.7M to the next closest competitor, that's all you need to know.

-James

[rock_nog]

To be fair to Reggie, I think it's clear that his expertise is neither pizza nor video games, but marketing, and that's why he got the job. And I'll admit, he's good at what he does. I mean, for someone who didn't start out in the industry, and who by all means shouldn't really care about anything more than the bottom line, he's a really likable person and does a great job projecting a real love of video games.

I totally missed most of the NWC, unfortunately, but I did see some of the bits involving Mario Maker - my God, those levels were insane. They remind me of some of those impossible Mario ROM hacks (I knew it was only a matter of time before we saw that, just didn't think it would be before the game even came out).

[Nightmare]

M1 level = troll level
M3 level = new feature level
MW level = blah
NSMB level = Cosmo's death and stupidity for not practicing NSMB before the tournament (and a warning to all other old-school SMB speedrunners as well).

-James