Hey guys,

Last week I attended the biggest public gaming convention in North America: PAX East, that unfolds over the course of 3 days (Friday to Sunday). (Luckily for me, it's only a half-hour subway ride away from my house, in Downtown Boston.)

Besides the main expo hall (which is gigantic), they have lots of other cool stuff to do, like an arcade, a classic gaming area, console freeplay, tabletop gaming and a handheld lounge (with really comfortable bean bags  ). Every year, they also run a variety of tournaments in tabletop gaming, console gaming and handheld gaming. And, of course, this year they held a Mario Kart 7 tournament (each day they held one handheld tournament, MK7 was on Saturday).

The tournament was held in a slightly bizarre format:

- Qualifying rounds: there were two (you could only sign up for one): the first one was at 12:00, the other one at 2:30. Each had a max capacity of 32 players (we easily reached that) divided into groups of 8. Each group had to play a 4-race match (all matches were 150cc, random courses, all items), and the Top 4 of each group was qualified for the Finals (at 6:00). I ran my usual WW combo (Metal Mario, Egg1, Wooden) and finished 1st all four races.

- Finals Round 1: instead of mixing us all up to form new groups, I was surprised when they just took one 4-man group from the 1st qualifying round and lumped them together with a second 4-man group from the 2nd qualifying round. Again I ran my WW combo, but because there wasn't really any item rape in this tournament, my combo was quite slow and I ended up getting passed because of that. I finished on the podium all 4 races (something like 1st/2nd/3rd/1st) and 1st overall. Again, the Top 4 qualified to the next round.

- Finals Round 2: this time they actually mixed us up properly, and I got to face some new people. Because of my previous experience with my WW combo, I decided to switch and went MM/B7/Mushroom which I used for the remainder of the tournament. Did really well, finishing 1st/1st/1st/2nd for 1st overall. Groups of 8 once again, so again Top 4 qualified.

- Semi-finals: again, we got mixed into random groups (this time we were only 6 per group). By far, this was the round that made me the most nervous. Every single race, I would pass everyone to get to first as quickly as possible, only to be battered down at the first item box because I'd get fireballed and/or starrammed immediately...   So I would spend the whole race trying to catch up, with no chance of frontrunning like the previous rounds. Don't remember the exact results, but I know that I finished a horrendous 5th/6 in the last race, and I only finished one point ahead of 4th overall. Only 3 people from the 2 semis qualified for the final. Ironically, this coincided with the fact that my two friends had arrived as we were preparing the room for the semi.  

- Final: we were down to 6 people, and the guys organizing the tournament had decided that, since it was MK7, we would do 7 races. However, Nintendo decided it would be fun to limit the number of races in a VS match to 4... So we had to do 2 matches in a row and write down the results after the first one...   Anyways, my bad luck from the beginning of each race in the semis was gone and I was able to frontrun like a boss while they destroyed each other with items. After the 2nd race (having finished both in 1st), all the other guys said "we gotta gang up on this kid" in a joking manner. This was particularly hilarious considering I was by far the youngest person in the final (everyone else was at least in their mid-20ies). One of the organizers overheard and even said "You guys are all gonna gang up on the kid!?" to which they responded "the kid is beating us all!" and "what kid? There's no kid here!". So we continued, and I finished 1st in all 4 races of the first GP. By then, because there was no clear 2nd, I had pretty much already won. I then won the 5th race as well, but took the last two relax and finished somewhere in the middle of the pack.

After that came the awards ceremony (medals for the Top 3): for the 3rd and 2nd places, everyone clapped and congratulated them (they got 29 and 32pts if I remember correctly). Then came the announcement "With 42 points..." at which everyone laughed and cheered.

All in all, great tournament.   Was slightly disappointed though because I missed the MKDS tournament that they held on Friday (had to go to school  :'(). Was really surprised when I learned that they had banned snaking in the tournament, saying that it was an exploit.

-Christophe.

Congrats dude! You always feel good when you finish the first races at first place... You start to get confidence and start playing better.

LOL wut

robman60 wrote on 04/14/12 at 07:37:29:

Yeah, I was extremely happy when I learned that there was a MK tournament (and that I could attend), I'll definately be on the lookout in future years to see if they hold more MK tournaments at PAX East.

I got a gold medal that says "PAX East 2012" (generic medal given to all PAX East tournament winners).

About the snaking, I think the main reason they banned it was to give casuals a chance and to not completely destroy the competition, since almost everyone who participated (in the MK7 tourno at least) were casuals. I think most people who participated in the MKDS tourno didn't even know what snaking is.

-Christophe.

Christophe, how many streetpasses did you get while at PAX? On another forum I'm on a guy got over 1100 streetpasses over the weekend!  

You may not have been clearing your queue every time you got ten, but you still must have received a considerable number of passes.

I read somewhere that at least one of the 3DSes has to be in motion (pedometer counting) for streetpass to work. I don't know why this would be the case, but that's just what I've read. Good chance it's not true as there is lack of clarity surrounding streetpass I notice...