My Day at the 1990 Powerfest (Part
I)
------------------------
What most people don't know about
me is that I attended and was a competitor in the 1990 Powerfest
held at Universal Studios in southern California. I decided
to go after watching several local promotional ads and a show
that showed what the place was like. It was video game heaven!
Every new and upcoming game imaginable, every nintendo character
to shake hands with, and every memory to cherish for ages!
I just had to go! I begged my parents and on one October weekend,
made our venture.
We arrived at Universal Studios pretty
early in the morning. In fact, before the opening, so we had
to wait outside. A few minutes later, we obtained our tickets
and went into the complex. Taking the normal tram ride as
always through the place was the first order of business following
our tradition. Yay for gunfights, going inside studios, and
of course your favorite friend King Kong.
After our ride, we searched for the
warehouse of heaven. Pretty big place as expected. Hard to
know the dimensions, but it seemed like 1/2 a football field
to me as a kid. The first game that I played was World Class
Track Meet. This was a modified game and the lady let me keep
my shoes on ... heh heh. It was a 2-player game, but the 2nd
player was modified to become the computer. Pretty easy match,
but the computer was a tad harder. Off to the next game!
I walked by some familiar games like
SMB2 and review counters like the "new" gamebody
and the upcoming next generation system that was going to
blow away the Genesis (SNES to the unobvious), but the most
reveling game met me at the warehouse: River City Ransom!
It was a very different game that I've
ever played before. The characters looked interesting, the
plot was great, and best of all was being able to crack your
enemies with lead pipes and bike chains! I continued playing
this game till they shut off all the systems for their "45
min reboot". Oh well, we went off to the gaming center
to start the competition.
The place kinda looked like a high
school graduation of all things. The center had the days semi-finalists
playing SMB3 and hidden behind them was the qualifying screens.
I had to sign some card with my name and for my work, I picked
between a Mario and Luigi plushie (I choose Mario of course.
Now where is that sucker today?). I embarked on the most pressure
that a video gamer had to face of its time -- having to qualify
in the first round of this video game tournament! It wasn't
you against the competition, it was you against the baseline
score of 195000 set by the tournament committee. Five minutes,
195000 was the goal to reach. The following paragraph is a
synopsis of my qualification:
Mind you that I had no idea what the
games were before playing, so I had to read the game cart
as it was being displayed on the screen quickly, so I was
at a disadvantage. In SMB, I just ran as fast as I could through
the game collecting coins at an alarming rate. I got the mushroom
at the beginning to have that power-up. I went through the
pipe before the 1-up spot and landed all the coins and proceeded
to complete the challenge. Time was ticking and I was losing
patience b/c I hit the flag on 1-1 and had to wait crucial
seconds for the garbage that you usually wait for (mario goes
into castle, mario goes out of castle and into the pipe for
1-2, fireworks, etc). I spent very short time in 1-2 as I
reached the 50 coins right there.
Next game: finish Rad Racer's first
course. Pretty simple here. I've played this game enough times
at the dentists office to have no problem with it. I did get
knocked once on a sharp turn going at max speed though.
Final game: play tetris till time expires.
My dreaded nightmare! At this point, it was my first time
ever playing this dreaded game. I was shocked and didn't even
know what to do. I was just placing lines everywhere and getting
lucky by scoring a couple of lines before time expired.
The final score? 195500!! I made it!
I made it! I'm in the semi-finals tomorrow! The dude congratulated
me and escorted me to my parents explaining the process that
would have to take place tomorrow. Meet coordinators, find
your playing time, etc etc ... I was ready to play in front
of a crowd, I was ready to conquer the game that everyone
wanted to play -- SMB3.
