Mario Meets Miami at the Nintendo World Championship Qualifiers

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The Nintendo World Championships qualifiers took place on May 30 at eight different Best Buy locations around the US. One of those locations was in the Miami, Florida exurb of Doral, a location that initially made my head tilt in bemusement.

Here? Of all places? One can rattle off a list of sort-of-mostly-true stereotypes about Miami, and "gaming haven" would not be one of them. Silicone, yes. Silicon, not so much. Coke before controllers, definitely.

"Miami doesn't feel like the sort of place where something like that would happen," one attendee told me. "New York has a Nintendo World store—we really don't have anything here. There isn't really a huge gaming community. We don't really have a lot of arcades or anything anymore here, that can organize those types of things."

I thought of what arcades I had nearby. The two at the nearest malls housed more skee-ball and other ticket-based attractions, maybe the occasional cab capitalizing on the hottest mobile game du jour. There was one arcade that opened up in the last couple of years that had the spirit and the games to match. A four-player X-Men machine, multiple Neo-Geo cabs—they had Revolution X, for Christ's sake (a game in dire need of a spiritual successor, by the way).

But that was it. The Flippers arcade of my high school years, where I shared clandestine kisses in the Jurassic Park cab and tested would-be suitors over Tekken 3, was a distant memory, gutted and transformed into some nondescript revolving door of a retail space in another one of Miami's nondescript strip malls.

Even with all of my Miami-bred cynicism, I hoped that the Nintendo World Championship qualifiers would represent a way for the home team to emerge from the shadows, the winner earning a spot at the finals on June 14 in LA, right before E3 kicks off.

By the time I showed up to the event, about halfway through, only about 160 people had played out of the 750 available slots. Perhaps my cynicism was well placed. The highest score so far belonged to a mythical "Fernando" at over 1.7 million. I did not get a chance to see Fernando in action, but I was told he was in his early 30s, and he scored his unbeatable score sitting on the ground cross-legged and barefoot. Whatever gets you in the zone, I guess.

As the event came to a close, only 199 people had played, and nobody had come close to that 1.7 million. I decided to become #200. After filling out a form, I received a wristband. I had been practicing for the better part of the afternoon, but I wanted to see how well I did under pressure. I did… OK, but nowhere near the top score. Along the way, however, something resembling a strategy emerged. Here's how it went.

You played three levels of Ultimate NES Remix. The first stage was an original Mario Bros. level with a 50-coin goal. Once you achieved that, you moved on to Super Mario Bros. 3 and a 25-coin goal. After that, all you had to do was get a high score on Dr. Mario. All of the above had to happen within six-and-a-half minutes.

At first, I tried just progressing through the games and collecting coins along the way. This wasted precious time. Instead, one employee told me to try picking a coin-rich spot and dying near it. Every respawn got you a fresh shot at collecting coins. This way, I eventually was able to reach the Dr. Mario level with about two minutes to spare. "If only mom were here to hand off to," I thought. "Nobody was as hardcore as she was at Dr. Mario back in the day."

I'm not a big fan of the casual/hardcore binary that, among other things, often puts Nintendo's stable against flashier, grittier, mature shoot 'em ups. But the folks at the qualifiers more than destabilized that divide.

"I'm a Nintendril, a Ninten-year-old," competitor Desiree remarked. A huge Nintendo fan, Desiree had been to multiple events staged by the iconic gaming company. She has taken time off of work or school every year for the better part of a decade to watch E3, and couldn't pass up the opportunity to snag a chance to see it in person.

Competitor and gaming YouTuber Jonathan made quite the physical sacrifice in order to make it into the tournament: "I had a fractured metacarpal, so I actually had to take my cast off to compete."

When pressed on the difference between casual and hardcore, as well as what skill was needed in order to achieve such a high score, the consensus was that age had much to do with it. Older players had a tendency to score higher, as they were already familiar with the classics' mechanics and levels. Fernando certainly fell into this bracket, while younger players often seemed vexed by the levels and the nature of Ultimate NES Remix itself—the 3DS game is essentially a collection of tricky tasks drawn from a range of old-school Nintendo classics. Whether young or old, though, not a lot of players ended up giving the qualifiers a shot.

Maybe we shouldn't lay the blame for such a disappointing turnout squarely at the feet of an aloof city. Perhaps the choice of game created the lower (than I expected, at least) turnout. The Broward trio unanimously agreed that if it were the newly released Splatoon or Super Smash Bros., they would have destroyed the competition. My YouTuber would've been more confident had Mario Kart 64 been selected. Another wished that players could compete in Super Mario World speed runs.

I agree that having a certain element of chance attached to the competition would have attracted more interest—and the likes of Smash, Mario Kart, and Splatoon certainly have that aspect about them. One blue, spiny shell timed just right, a last-minute flick of the paint roller—either could have turned an honorable mention into a coach-class ticket to LA, and would've added additional spectator excitement.

As the Nintendo reps cleaned up at 7 PM, that audience engagement, much like Fernando's score on the whiteboard, remained unchanged. He moves on to represent Miami against seven others in the finals. But inspired by the competition, I ended up winning out in my own way—I left with a brand new copy of Splatoon. Time to start training for next year.

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