With it being nearly 3 whole years since Animal Crossing New Horizons was released, we thought it was about time we let the special raffle items go, so we had the rare fossil from Tavington Crafts as the star prize, plus an Isabelle pillow which was much sought after!
We also had enough sticker sheets and screen dusters for everyone who attended that wanted one!
The content of the actual event was somewhat different though. We had a bit of time for people to drift in, and we did the shop run for refreshments too.
People set up with friends at their tables and got some multiplayer games going. It was nice to see both old and new faces today!
We started the main event with round 1 of the Mario Kart League. Round 1 was the expected Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the “normal” way round. We featured tracks from the recently released wave 4 DLC.
One of the races (DK Snowboard Cross Wii), all 4 controllers just stopped working mid race :S
We discounted the points for that race, and redid it.
Coincidentally, the next group on a different switch with different controllers had the same issue, but as it happened just as 1st and 2nd crossed the finish line, that group decided it wasn’t worth redoing the race.
Next up was the main tournament.
Splatoon 3 DLC had recently released online/friend battles for Tableturf (a virtual card game about getting the most turf overall)
This took a little bit longer than anticipated, probably because we didn’t set time limits on the moves. We moved through the rounds based on scoring though. Similar scores were matched together after a random first round. Most people had never played it before, so we started off with a demo from the hosts!
The demo ended up being the ONLY TIE of the whole tournament, with both Jen and Dylan scoring 87 points…
In the end Evie had the edge over John, despite the fact that John had only played for the first time in the event, whilst showing Evie how to play!
This venue was definitely the best for this type of tournament, as we were able to have both sides on the big screen, but the competitors couldn’t see each others’ screens from where they were sat.
It was also interesting to have a play around with spectator mode:
In order to spectate, you have to treat it like “real life” where you look over the player’s shoulder!
We overran slightly so hurried on with the second round of the league.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in “mirror mirror” mode.
Some of our older members may have remembered the last time we did this, under the league “Games Done Differently” in 2019.
Some members got the idea that if they held their controllers upside down too, they could effectively play it as normal…!
We ended up with both Glyn and newcomer Chris winning the max points for the session.
Since we’d overrun, we did the raffle and the group photo before the tie breaker. (A few people had to leave earlier, so this isn’t the full group!)
And then we ended with the tie breaker between Chris and Glyn.
Chris and Glyn were fairly even throughout the 4 races, and it came down to the last race. Chris was the stronger racer, but then on the final lap, he got pelted with multiple red shells, and Glyn flew past to the final victory; winning the Luigi hat and the fiver!
Next month’s event features a cinema trip to see the new mario movie! Keep an eye out on our socials for updates 🙂