The first VIRTUAL Meet 28/03/20

Sadly, we had to cancel all our upcoming events because of the country being in Lockdown due to Covid-19.
We'd already decided as NPUK to advise people to cancel their events the week before the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but little did we know that just over a week later, the whole country would be obliged to go in an actual lockdown!

This particular event was originally supposed to be 1 of 16 "NPUK's Island Paradise" challenges, which has now been postponed to later in the year. (TBC)
In the meantime, NPUK as a whole has ramped up its online presence, hosting various games for everyone to join in! (Please check out the Discord server for more info!)

NNW will never cancel an event. We stand by that, but on this occasion we weren't allowed to hold a physical event, so rather than lose it completely, we moved it all online instead!

We had a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Tournament from 12-5pm, a Smash Ultimate Tournament from 1pm, and an all day Animal Crossing photo challenge.

The Mario Kart tournament was won by The Mole, who got all his matches in at 12pm! The majority of us went on at 2pm. 32 races were a lot to get through, but everyone seemed to have fun! (Even Jen who had awful drift haha)
150cc, Frantic items, CPU normal, random tracks!

The Smash Tournament was hosted by regular Shae. He'd asked for sign ups before the day, and set the rules out in the Discord ahead of time too. There were 10 sign ups in the end, and he did a double elimination tournament which lasted a couple of hours. 

One of the players apparently went on a shopping trip in the middle of it and ended up getting disqualified for not coming back in time...

Games between AquaZz and Lanziio were very close, and then AquaZz v TastyDerp too.
Glyn managed to swing back, but it was TastyDerp that took the final victory!


The Animal Crossing Challenge was to take a photo representing commuity. Given the weird situation that we're in at the moment, some took it as more contemplative, others took it as a group of villagers coming together, and one simply just put the NNW banner on the ground! (Thanks, it was appreciated! :P)
We asked the other NPUK admins for a quick vote, and revealed the winners as almost a tie between SammyRed and TheDrn's Fiancee, Zara!
With a couple of extra last minute votes, Zara just swiped the victory!

Wishing Upon a Star (for better times where we can meet in person again :) )

Each of the winners of the day bagged themselves £10 eShop credit. Well done guys!


Alas, we couldn't do our traditional group photo, or the raffle at the end, but hopefully it won't be forever before we can meet properly again!

Please keep in touch with our latest most up to date news via the Discord Server (discord.gg/rX8JxgD)

NNW: The Perfect Couple 29/02/20

We were forecast a storm for the weekend, but it was actually ok for most of the day!

We had a Bowser and and a special enamel smash badge in the raffle this time.

We saw some Grid on the big screen first, and then when people started arriving, some wanted to try out the "loanable" amiibo to see which one they could trust for the tournament.
Most people who signed up for our "Perfect Couple" tournament (where you and your amiibo battled it out against someone else and their amiibo) brought their own amiibo. We had a couple of Isabelles, and a few Samuses. but there was a good range of amiibo in general.

First though, we had round 1 of the new league to do. This year the league is based around Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo Olympics, Out of two rounds, one was a game themed to the Olympic game we had chosen. This time it was "Must Dash Amigos"


This is a tremendously fun, highly charged Mexican sprint, full of Guacamole, Bombs and slippery goo....!
Groups of 3 or 4 competed against each other to get their first set of scores for this year's league.

The Smash tournament was next up.
Not everyone realised that you could share stock with your amiibo, but once everyone got going, it proved quite useful!

There were some tense matches, and unexpected people won because of strong amiibo!

Especially that Bowser...
It was only after the tournament had finished, that a team of 7 managed to take down "Web"

Lucky for Glyn, he had chosen "Web" Bowser as his loaned amiibo for the tournament. He beat John in a fairly quick battle and still had 3 stock left over! oof!

Round 2 of the league was the actual Olympic Game: The 100m dash. It was very brief, but people put a lot of physical effort into it!

There was a slight gap, so some played a bit of Just Dance on the big screen.

The other screen had Smash on for most of the day.

The tie breaker featured just Dale and Kian. They battled it out on 10 rounds of Runbow, but Dale took the final victory and the £10 eShop credit that came with it!

We finished with the raffle and prizes, but almost forgot about the group photo! We just about managed it before most escaped though! (and some carried on playing Just Dance for a bit too.)
- sorry to those who actually escaped before we realised :P

North Wales' Just Dance for Alzheimer's UK Party! 11/01/2020

we switched the room round this time - the main screen was the left one, and the freeplay one was on the right. The "admin" table was therefore in the middle of the room next to the partition screen. This also allowed the ARUK banner to be above the table.

There was plenty of cake, and a lot of Smarties!
The first 10 to claim them, grabbed a free wristband, and the smarties were there in a big jar for people to guess the number.

At least there was plenty of dancing to counteract the cake though!

This was the first exclusive charity event NNW had done. We joined with Ubisoft in their campaign to raise money for Alzheimer's Research UK.

We split the Just Dance 2020 list we made at the Christmas event into two lists. The A list was the "party" tunes, and the B List was the "memes/old classics" tunes. The few who'd gone for the sponsored dance could pick either of them or dance both if they wished.
The schedule made sure there was chance to recover in between each list. (each list was 30 minutes long, and were pretty tiring!)
There were 7 dancers who did both lists :)

Here is a selection of some of the dances we did:

^ Rasputin

 ^ Blue Da Ba Dee

  ^ Don't Stop Me Now

 ^ Dragostea Din Tei

The B List:

     ^ Beep Beep I'm a Sheep

^ Cotton Eyed Joe

 ^ Ghostbusters

 ^ skibidi

and finally... Baby Shark!

There was a lot of freeplay too - We saw a good session on Must Dash Amigos and Heave Ho on the big screen. On the other big screen we saw the usual Smash setup, but also some RingFit adventure, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (this year's league theme by the way!) and Mario Maker 2.
There was also some tabletop mario kart, Tetris, Overcooked, Zelda and others.

We ended the day by revealing the number of smarties in the jar, 774, a lot were in disbelief that so many could fit in. Yes, Jen did count them all one by one :P Dale was the only one close to the number with a guess in the early 700s...!
We had a group photo, as this wasn't a mini meet, it was a special charity event - with balloons and banners!

And then the party went on for a bit longer...!

The total made from the event (sponsor money, cake sale and sweets jar) was £133.61. Well done guys!
The JustGiving page will be live until the end of February, so there's still plenty of time to donate and help us reach our total :)
tinyurl.com/JustGivingNNW


additional photo/video credits to Dylan and Emma (and Chloe for the group photo)

Christmas Done Differently! 07/12/19

We got in a little bit late, but we got set up including full size keyboard! Some of the members wanted to have a go this time, which was nice until Jen realised she'd forgotten the pedal...

The tie breaker for the trophies was between John and Chris - guaranteed trophy but who was 2nd or 3rd?

We started a little late due to the pedal, but we just about got our result before "lunch" as promised!
They had to do a speedrun on SNES online's Super Mario World. It was about the first person to get to Ghost House I and complete it. Chris did it, although it was the second attempt as John accidentally reset his level!

It was a bit more of a relaxed event this time, and we wanted to get Just Dance 2020 out - In January NNW will be doing its first ever (own) Charity event, in aid of Alzheimer's UK, in conjunction with Ubisoft and NPUK!

We will be doing a sponsored dance, a cake sale and a Guess How Many Sweets competition, with all proceeds going to the charity!
(We tasked people with picking songs for the playlists - List A "memes" and List B "party" - We'll be refining them ready for the event.)
In the mean time please get sharing and donate to our JustGiving page from the link here: https://tinyurl.com/JustGivingNNW


We had a break for lunch, then we got started with the big Quiz!
Like last year, we had the option to enter as a pair or solo. The prize was a big £40 of eShop if solo, but the pair split it £20 each.
Everyone gave themselves a team name and most were in pairs. There were 45 questions. 5 of which were music, 10 about amiibo, 10 eyes, and the rest were multiple choice.
It was "Quiz Done Differently" after all!

The music round only had 5 pieces this time, but we'd done those differently too. How? Here's the full video:

(credit to Rhodri. 1. Sad Tetris, 2. Song of Storms backwards 3. Brewster's Roost in the minor key 4. Dr. Mario (Fever) with some notes missing 5. Portal- Still Alive.

Dylan went through the answers while Jen marked the papers. There was also various freeplay happening, and a corner of people watching an important football match... (Smash was the main feature for the secondary big screen though.)

Just Dance was back on too! Quite a few did a session with that, trying out various songs! It looked like great fun, and hopefully we can create a flash mob idea in January ;) (P.S you don't even have to be able to dance, it's all for the fun!)

Finally, we got to the trophy presentation. James had the 1st place, Chris had 2nd and John took 3rd. This year all the trophies were 3 different shapes.

We did our usual trophy winners photo, plus the one where 1st place has to stand on a chair because they're too short compared to the others! 

The Quiz winners were Rizzo's Rangers (Cat & Chris) with Missing George and Ringo (John and Paul) not far behind! 

Since the raffle was all wrapped up (just to be different) it was more like a lucky dip! We had a 10 second rule (not that we counted) just to stop people dithering...

The raffle was great fun! John made a beeline for what ended up being two of the more "joke" prizes. Rhodri was made up with his giant green shell plush and Cat found the hidden eShop credit! 

and of course...

We finished with our full group photo!

Join us on Saturday 11th January for our big Just Dance Charity event!