The Great Yoshi Egg Hunt! 13/04/19

We decided that since this (mini) meet was so close to Easter, as well as the fact that Yoshi's Crafted World had just been released, we may as well do a FREE Easter Egg Hunt!

The event itself was 12-5, but we started setting up at our usual time of 10. We had an awful lot of egg tokens to hide after all! (+ 6 Yoshis!)

We were also selling Easter themed cakes - dark crispie, milk chocolate shredded wheat nests and cornflake cakes for 50p each.

The egg tokens ranged from "XL to XS" and were coloured according to their rareness. This time, the biggest egg (bronze) was the star prize, and the XS size ones were the more common light green and light blue colour. (and won you a creme egg or similar size) The 6 Yoshis got you a Lindt or Cadbury bunny, but if you found "Fat Yoshi" you got a slightly bigger Lindt bunny!

There were rule sheets spread across the room, and we made sure people had read them before they started.
If you wanted to enter you had to show Jen a Yoshi "thing". Get the go ahead, then take said Yoshi thing on the hunt with you.
We had a few amiibo, some plushies, a CD case, and some figures of varying sizes.

People were allowed in from 11.30, but for fairness, once people had been signed up, we waited until 12 before we started, so that everyone entering had a fair chance.

We also started with a bit of Yoshi's Crafted World on the big screen.

There was a limit of up to 3, so that everyone had a fair chance of finding at least something.

before we kicked off, we had a group photo with all the yoshi things :) (John came in 30 seconds later and missed the photo though...)

The whole thing mainly took half an hour, and we let the last couple of people keep going as the rest had their limit. We hope that certain people remember how important sportsmanship is in our community.. :)


When the last few gave up, everyone got one more shot no matter what they'd won already...


...but there were 5 that just couldn't be found. (1S and 4 XS)
With the XS tokens being only just bigger than a 5p piece, it was supposed to be a challenge.
People did keep looking, but no luck.
Looking at Jen for clues, Jen realised that she'd forgotten where she'd hidden them, so her and Emma went round checking places to see if they could find any! (we found 3/5 so gave hints for people to find them)

In the end, those two "unknown" ones are apparently still in the room somewhere. I wonder when/if we'll ever find them...!

The rest of the day was dedicated to freeplay like the rest of our mini meets. We saw a 12 player Mario Kart LAN session, plenty of Smash Ultimate, Baba is You, Blazblue Crosstag battle, Ultimate Chicken Horse and lots more!

A group of Pokémon GO players also popped out because it was another community day, for catching Bagon!

Thanks to all those who made it, we hope you had fun! :)

March Multiplay! 23/03/19

Everyone seemed to turn up early this time. We were thinking we better get started, but it wasn't even 11am yet! Love the dedication, guys! :P

Some freeplay was set up to begin with, where we saw some  Baba is You and Taiko no Tatsujin. There was also Radirgy with his usual Smash Ultimate setup. 

We started around 11.30am, and had round 1 of the league. Today's first "game done differently" was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. In mirror mode.... with a mirrored screen. It confused a few!
It was great fun though, and it gave everyone a chance too!

A couple chanced trying to race by using their controllers upside down... 

Today's event wasn't the busiest we've done, but probably the most complex. We had 12 games in the tournament, but due to time it also had to be single elimination.

The games were:

Strategy
- Puyo Puyo Tetris (Switch)
- Katamari Damacy Rerolled (Switch)
- Super Monkey Ball (3DS)

Fighting
- ARMS (Switch)
- Pokken Tournament DX ( Switch)
- Smash 4 ( 3DS)

Speed
- 10 Second Run (Switch)
- Pacman Championship Edition 2 (Switch)
- Bit.Trip Saga- Runner (3DS)

Rhythm
- Rhythm Paradise Megamix (3DS)
- Beat Sports (Switch)
- Taiko no Tatsujin (Switch)

For each round, people had to choose their category. There were 3 rounds in total, and each time, half the table got through and half got knocked out. (No matter how many people were on a table.)
22 people entered, 13 got through to round 2, then 7 for round 3. People had to change category each round, but it was up to them how they did it (and they couldn't repeat a category)
Once they were sat at their desired table, one person was asked to pick a card (out of 3) and the number on it corresponded to which game they needed to play.

For the third round, and 7 people, we ended up with 3 tables with 2, and the 4th table with 1, so he automatically got through to the final!
2nd place for Rhythm got through to the final too, because the guy who won it just upped and left before the next thing...


We saved the final for after the league though.

League Round 2 was unknown this time, because it was taking one of the games NOT used in the tournament, but was listed. We opted for Puyo Puyo Tetris. The "different" bit was one handed controls only. (Right Joycon)

We then did the final for the tournament - Murder Trivia Party from Jackbox 3. (Not expected at all, but also perfect as it didn't fit in any of the categories specifically)
It was a very tense finish, and fair dos to Radirgy who aced all the memory sections! However Drn came 1st and Dan came 2nd.

We did the raffle and group photo before the league tie breaker, so that we could finish on time for those who had to go.

The tie breaker was Monopoly (Switch) - the first person to go bankrupt (Without pressing the bankrupt button!) It didn't take 3 hours like the original way of playing it, but it was a good 45 minutes. John won the session again, so well done to him!

NNW- NPUK's Road to Insomnia64 16/02/19

We decided that this year the league would be 2 rounds instead of the usual 3; simply because there's just so many things to play on the Switch, if we have any gaps in events, we can dedicate a freeplay section! Anyway, little did we know that we didn't have any time for that kind of thing, it was straight from one thing to the other. (Although obviously the freeplay still happened, as people started getting knocked out of the main qualifier tournament)


This event was the biggest event we'd ever had, and over the day we had a total of 44 attendees. (Our previous record was just over 30)
NPUK's Road to Insomnia64 is a series of 16 qualifiers across the country. The 16 winners gain tickets to Insomnia, and then fight it out for the final spot in the Top 4 final. The winner of that goes on to represent the UK & Ireland in the European cup!

Here's the original Nintendo UK article:
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2019/February/Are-you-the-UK-and-Ireland-s-best-Super-Smash-Bros-Ultimate-squad-Prove-it-and-you-could-compete-in-the-European-Smash-Ball-Team-Cup-2019-Finals--1510942.html

And here's the NPUK article:
https://nintendoplayers.uk/news/introducing-nintendo-players-uks-road-to-insomnia64

We had exactly 12 teams of 3 sign up. A few came as a trio, and others signs up as individuals, and made teams on the day.

To give the admin time to sort out the teams, the event kicked off with round 1 of the new league season.

This year the league theme is "Games done Differently" - so the games are announced in advance, but what's different about them? You have to wait until the day to find out!

We started with Runbow, and it was fixed on the mode "Do a Barrel Roll" which meant that every item flipped the screen!

The groups were in 6s or 7s, and the most common result was 3,2,1,0,0,0!


We went straight on to the qualifier. This took up a large chunk of the day, but we tried to make sure anyone who got knocked out early had something to do, so we also put on a Mystery Challenge.

A Time Trial on Mario Kart 7 .... although most hadn't got the memo about bringing their 3DS, so we ended up changing it to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe since nearly everyone had their Switches with them!

(Well done to Dan who won that with a time of 2:15.280)

Of course, there's always chance for some freeplay, so we saw our usual table of Splatoon 2, and some Overcooked 2 on the other big screen.

Also whatever this was...

Things ran pretty smoothly for the Smash Tournament, and there were plenty of dramatic and tense moments. (Not going to forget that Kirby/Pit moment in the semi final...!) and the final was fought by two teams - one from the university's gaming league society (Team Shapiro), and the other team actually had an ex university student in it. (Ben also won a ticket when we did the Wii U Smash Qualifier back at the Christmas event in 2014!) Ben's team consisted of his friend Daniel, and also Tim, a regular around different NPUK groups.
Ben's team "Shosha" came out on top with a 3-1 victory!

The team names in general caused some amusement. And the favourite "Can I Borrow A Switch Charger?" didn't fit on the board, so Jen had to shorten it...

The Challonge bracket can be found here: https://challonge.com/NNW_Road_to_Insomnia64.


Round 2 of the league was up next, but we quickly realised we were going to run beyond schedule, so warned people as appropriate.
Super Bomberman R was as expected, but with Dylan added in as a "troll"! He wouldn't lay any bombs, but he'd chase people if he picked up a disease, and if he was bombed, he would throw his revenge bombs from the sidelines! There were 4 groups of 6, and Dylan actually managed to win one of the sets!

It was already 5pm by this point, so we made the decision to do the raffle before the final tournament, so that those who had to leave could leave!
We also had a 5-way tie breaker for the league session, but due to time, we decided we'd contact those involved and arrange an online session for the eShop credit.


We still had the other Smash tournament to do, and 24 people were still happy to carry on, so we were there until 6pm!

Ben and Jack were in the final, and Jack took the victory for the solo competition!

We still managed to have our group photo, but by that point not many were left haha!

There's a reason why we say ALL times are approximate, and it's to cover cases like this. More people than expected, busier event, more happening = need more time! All's well that ends well though, and good luck to Ben's team at Insomnia!

Our next event will take place on Saturday 23rd March, hope to see you there!



Photo credits: Jen & Emma

NNW Mini Meet #16 12/01/19

We were supposed to be at the slightly shorter times of 11-4, but we were enjoying ourselves too much, so we stayed until 5 instead!

Lots of Smash was played, naturally (We had three set ups on TVs/big screens at a few points)
We also managed to get in some Pacman Championship, Overcooked 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mario Kart 7 as decent multiplayer sessions.
Other games were also played by individuals making use of the space too.

We tried Catastronauts, but Jen managed to set fire to herself and then run around setting fire to everyone else.... oops!!

The big occasion was #Johnwinseverything's birthday! It was a special number, so we just had to make him a super special cake!
It went down a treat!

Thanks to Chant for the creation, and Emma for the help decorating it!
(Thanks also to Rhodri and his dad for the brownies and flapjacks :) )


We also got a sort of deja vu... sort of, because he was horizontal instead of vertical.... hmm...!
(See January 2018's event!)

Our first main event of 2019 will be on Saturday 16th February, and you definitely don't want to miss it! :D