My Day at the 1990 Powerfest (Part
II)
------------------------
After the chat with the tournament
official with my parents explaining the details of tomorrow,
I understood that I had to be there strictly at a certain
time or I was disqualified from further competition. Also,
I would be playing the newest NES game Super Mario Bros. 3
which I couldn't even practice, so I'd be playing the tournament
with no experience in the game and would be rusty as I didn't
practice that morning.
It was Sunday and we went back to Universal
Studios, Hollywood for the semi-final showdown. I was obviously
nervous when we signed up with the tournament director. My
mouth and body was shivering although it was a hot day. I
was only two steps away from the NWC!! I had to wait about
two hours until my match and it felt like the longest two
hours of my life. I was stressing it out by pacing back and
forth. My mom had to force-feed me so that I could have proper
nutrition.
Well two hours passed and the director
found me with my parents and called me over to prompt some
instructions. It was nothing much -- just some rules about
the competition. I had learned that I would have to score
the most points in SMB3 in 5 minutes out of a group of three
opponents to continue in the tournament. It was pretty much
the same exact instance from the movie, The Wizard so you
know what I had to go through in order to win.
About 30 minutes later, I got into
my seat and had the controller in my hand practicing button
and direction reflexes to warm my hands up as they were dead
cold from the waiting time. My opponents were also doing the
same thing. The annoucer made everyone cheer and the game
was on! He announced our names, hometown, age, and our hobbies
(from the stat sheet they made us fill out previously). The
annoucer then told everyone our game was SMB3 and we had 5
minutes to play through it for qualification. The following
is as best as I can remember my walkthrough of the 5 min of
SMB3:
They started us out at the world 1
screen so we had to waste 10 seconds getting into world 1-1.
The beginning looked similar to SMB, so I just walked moderately
through the level never seeing it ever in my life. I knew
I had to get the most points, so I bopped almost every "?"
box that there was getting credit for obtaining the coins
and power-up items. Halfway through the level, I became raccoon
Mario and racked up some major pts jumping on the green koopa
troopas and paratroopas that were there. I pretty much just
ran the rest of the level and ended it. I was trying to concetrate
as hard as I could, so I wasn't looking at the time left or
how far behind or ahead my opponents were at this time. I'm
pretty sure I had used more than two minutes of the allotted
time to complete 1-1.
Now off to 1-2, about 10-15 goes away
using up the world screen. Bah, I hate that. Anyways, level
1-2 as you know has massive scoring if you use raccoon Mario
to jump continuously and hit the goombas over and over again.
Of course I didn't know that as it was my first time, but
I did get some points off that method. The time was winding
down, so I didn't wanna waste time in one area for so long.
I did go into the pipe where the P-switch was located and
reaped the coins from below, so that was good. Yet, the warp
takes you back a few feet which was the bad part about it.
Anyways, there wasn't anything else interesting about this
level other than getting the Starman and running through the
rest of the level and finishing it.
Now, I had a choice with the less than
60 seconds left on the timer. I could either go to level 1-3,
level 1-4, or go to the first fortress. Using the knowledge
that I have now, I probably would've went to level 1-3 because
I could run through the level since it was short and score
the timer bonus, but I went into the fortress probably thinking
I was gonna get through all of world 1. Silly me, that wasn't
the smartest thing to do. I entered the level and instantly
got smacked by a podboo since I was panicking and had to run
through the level. I instanly regained Super Mario with the
mushroom nearby, but there had to be less than 30 seconds
remaining. I just became suicidal and ran thinking that this
was my only chance to do anything for the win. I got the second
power-up and reached the door, saw the spikes, and the screen
froze, ending the match. I breathed out a large sigh of relief
and just stretched by arms back awaiting the result. It took
them about less than a minute to write down the scores and
verify them, but I wasn't announced as the winner. Boo hoo,
I should've done my practicing. We all left to an applause
and my parents did the normal "You did a good job"
blah blah blah bit. I was sorta in tears, but I wasn't that
bad in shambles. I did become one of the top 10% of NES players
in the US presumabily by reaching this far in the Powerfest.
Thus the journey to the NWC and my
hand at one of those cartridges was lost. At the time I didn't
know how far I could go, I just knew that I'd be going farther
and farther with each win. The epilogue of this story is that
my dad purchased River City Ransom and SMB3 and I beat the
former in 6 days and the latter in 2 wks (by warping), but
I'll always remember the weekend I had. Although some of us
remember that there were more tournaments such as the local
Captron ones (which I did participate in one for F-Zero),
the Blockbuster SNES/Genesis, the Starfox tournament, and
the 1994 Powerfest (which I didn't go to because they weren't
playing anywhere locally to my knowledge), the first ever
national tournament that started it all was the best. These
days, I rarely get to play any NES games as it is, but I will
always remember the day that I played SMB3 for the first time
in that special way.
