Stare-Tember: Luigi's Revenge! 07/09/19

People were eager to get some practice for the Mario Kart tournament in, so they were straight on the big screen/tabletop modes with a game as soon as we set up the room!

We'd announced the tournament but not what the rules were, as people were assuming all over the place so we decided to keep them guessing...

we had a fabulous blue shell plush as the star prize in our raffle this time (as well as some other cool prizes!) :D

Of course, we started the event itself with round 1 of the "Games Done Differently" league session. 

Round 1 was Dr. Luigi on the long forgotten Wii U!

With Dr. Mario World having recently come out for smartphones, it seemed a good nod towards it, except people who had played it were so used to the sequences, the L shaped ones were sort of jarring...

And can you believe it, some people had never even played Dr. Mario at all!! :o

The rounds seemed to speed up after the first few, and then we hurtled straight on to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tournament! 

We had 26 entrants, which since the first round was a battle tournament, we split the groups into even numbers: an 8, an 8 and a 10. 

Each group had to do the "random battle" which meant 5 games in a random order. (Each for their own except obviously cops and robbers.)

The top 4 from each group got through to the next round, which was a mirror tournament with frantic items. 

This was supposed to be a straightforward 6 races, but one of the players accidentally(!) quit the group after the 2nd race. After a discussion it was decided not to restart, but to do it in two parts, which meant admin had to use their mental arithmetic skills at speed once again :P 3 races, then 3 races. The top 4 advanced in to the final. 

Before the final 4 took each other on, we did round 2 of the league. 

The 2nd game was Smash Ultimate, but done differently of course!

This time, it was set to only Mario Kart items, and randomised between the mario kart stages. Everyone had to play as Piranha Plant too! 

and then we ended with the final of the Mario Kart tournament, which was a 200cc, and 6 races. 

It was tense, and the results were ridiculously close (not including the Mole who was way out in front.) 2nd, 3rd and 4th only had one point difference between each of them!

Top 2 won the eShop prizes! £20 and £10 respectively.

We finished the main event with the tie breaker for the league, which was just between Chris and Drn. They played the original Dr. Mario on the Wii U. Chris took the victory here.

James is still in the lead overall though, with a big fight for 2nd and 3rd place. It's all to play for as there's only ONE session left! ooh! (16 November, don't miss it!)

And of course, we finished on time, but not before our group photo, some random nerf guns and a chaos (NNW 2) team photo :)

The Festival of Ordered Chaos! 10/08/19

The weather was awful first thing, but thankfully we got straight into the building as soon as we got there!

We demoed Indie game PictoQuest- The Cursed Grids (Thanks to Nanopiko for supplying the game!) It was received very well, and people were trying to help each other by pointing out squares on the big screen.

Once people had arrived and signed up we sorted out the sides for the Splatfest. People had to write their names on a small piece of paper, followed by which team they wanted to represent. The theme was "Talk vs Text".

The stages were random turf war stages, with the Splatfest colours from Flight/Invisibility (blue and green)

We had 8 for each side which was neat, so we had two games, both best of 3. Talk won overall, but we had a lot of connection issues so it took a bit longer than anticipated!

We had a small gap for lunch, then went on with round 1 of the league.

The first game was Overcooked 2.

We did a 2v2 on Roasted Resort.

The "different" bit was that the screen was zoomed in slightly, so that the score and the time were both hidden. 

Players also had to all be the same character: The Octopus (which is definitely not a Squid, Dylan!)

In the other room,  we saw Smash Ultimate, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Maker 2, and some other games.

Round 2 of league followed not long after. This was Splatoon 2. The different bit was that one person had to have the L Joycon, and the other person had to have the R joycon! (Essentially this meant one person was in charge of moving and the other person was in charge of aiming!)

There were 6 people in the tie breaker. We did Clam Blitz "differently"

Every man was for themselves, and they had to collect mega clams but not put them in the basket. Instead, they had to jump to spawn as soon as they got one, and we'd tally it on the notepad.
Spid managed to win with 5 clams, closely missed by a few others who got 4.

There had also been a Tetris 99 challenge: Highest position obtained online while using the Splatoon theme. 

Of course, we finished the event with our raffle draw and group photo! :D

Nice to see some new faces, and those from further afield again, hope to see you again in the future!

Summer is What You Make it! 07/07/19

This event was part of NPUK's Building the Kingdom Challenge which was happening all over the UK throughout the month of July.

There were 3 classes to enter, but we also had to fit in our two league rounds and an art contest!


The art contest was all day, people could use the official Mario Maker 2 sketch book's graph paper, grab some of the provided pencil crayons and get creating! (Winner will be edited in to the end of the post at a later date.)

The raffle was of course on all day too. There was a good selection of prizes, all for just 50p a ticket.

We started the event itself with the Super Bell Class. Here, people had made levels at home and signed up using the level's code. We downloaded them onto one console, and put them on the big screen to showcase.
We asked a volunteer to play through the level, the requirements being it wasn't the level you created, and you knew how to play the game!

You can check them out here:
FCM-C24-QVF
YW9-6R6-G9G
55X-LR6-HWF
HDK-624-FCG
76N-LTM-C4G
NSB-QKG-9RF
4NB-F1L-QHF


Some levels were quite hard though, so after two people attempted it a handful of times each, we let the creator show us the rest of it!

There was laughter at Paul's "Moley Land" and the craziness of it, but Luke's Chase the Claw won with the most votes after all 7 entries had been played through.

(once all 7 stages had been played, everyone was supplied with a small piece of paper. They had to write the number they wanted to vote for and put it in a tin.)



League Round 1 featured Crash Team Racing. The "different" bit was that the screen was upside down!
A lot of players opted to lie on the ground so they were looking at the projector upside down too!
One member had an interesting angle...

Mushroom class was next. This was a timed solo challenge where people had 45 minutes to create their levels. It was so quiet for those not taking part, but they took the chance to play on the big screens. We saw some 1,2, Switch, Mario Kart, Enter the Gungeon, Celeste, Rocket League and Mario Tennis Aces (amongst other things)

After 45 minutes was up, people had to clear their levels and upload them so we could acquire the codes.

Due to time constraints, we saved all the codes, and posted them online after the event so that people could vote on their favourites once they'd had chance to play them through themselves.



Round 2 of the league featured Super Mario Party.
The groups had to play a Remix of Sound Stage, but with no volume! It confused some, but others took to it really well.

The final NPUK challenge was the pairs challenge - Double Cherry class. We had 5 pairs, and they had 45 minutes to design their level. Some used two player mode. Others did solo mode but with both inputting ideas. Again, once the 45 minutes was up, they had to clear the level and upload it, for the later online voting.

To check out both Mushroom and Double Cherry Class levels, see the picture below:

And here were the end results after the national vote! Well done guys!

The final item of the day was the league tie breaker. This was between Bill and James. They had to do 'Barreling Along' - controllers were turned around so left was right and right was left.  It was neck and neck throughout the whole race, and Bill only just beat James at the finish line!

We finished with the raffle and the group photo.

Thanks to everyone who made it (apologies again that it had to be changed to a Sunday, though it was nice to see those who can't make it on a Saturday too!)