This past Labor Day weekend in La Mirada, California, held the second running of 2GGaming’s SwitchFest, an event consisting of ten different games on the Nintendo Switch, including Smash Ultimate. Players from out-of-state – even out-of-country – flew out to this event, even those who didn’t play Smash, just to compete in games that nobody hosts tournaments for. From Pokken to Super Mario Party, this event had it all. As a bonus, every game was free to enter! (All you had to pay was venue fee.) I ended up competing in Ultimate (of course haha), Puyo Puyo Tetris, Super Mario Maker, and Super Mario Party.
Day 1: Smash
…was a roller coaster.
After maybe half a dozen of bracket revisions, the final version decided to put me against a friend from San Diego. Bracket revisions are done to prevent playing against friends and those who live close to you, but it unfortunately can’t be helped if it’s done on the very last revision.
Against said friend, in the final game of the set, I was up a full stock, when suddenly… BATTERY DEPLETED?!? My pro controller had just somehow disconnected, and simply resyncing it fixed it, meaning the battery wasn’t actually depleted…? It threw off my momentum so much that he ended up taking the game and the set, despite my huge lead and him only being around two hits away from death before the desync occurred. I hadn’t felt frustrated in this game before. How can one avoid getting angry for something out of anyone’s control, that completely changes the outcome of the entire bracket?
After that, my next opponent was against a Young Link. This didn’t help my anger at all, as this is easily one of the most annoying if not difficult matchups for DK. I endured a long 20 minutes of shielding and walking around projectiles with a giant gorilla. My anger from the previous set indisputably cost me the first game against this Young Link. I had never wanted to disqualify myself from bracket so much. But at least the controller seemed fine, and I did win that set, and pretty convincingly too in the final game. I kept sipping water to calm myself down, which did help a bit.
Two matches later, the controller starts acting up again, undoing everything I had done to mitigate my emotions. This time however, instead of saying “Battery Depleted”, the screen would just show up as if someone had unplugged their controller, showing the controller assignment screen. Not only was I getting frustrated again, but I kept feeling bad for my opponent as well, as I’m sure it was interrupting his flow as well, but fortunately he was a friend of mine and he kept insisting it was fine every time it happened.
Throughout the set, combos were dropping everywhere. My mind was effectively separated from my hands. And still yet, the match had come to a last-game last-hit situation. After missing at least a dozen guaranteed combos after landing those combo starters, I still brought it to this situation. I however could not finish it off. My friends who were watching still said I played amazingly, minus the dropping combos. My emotions however didn’t let me care for what they said, at least in the moment.
Right after I lost, my friends and I were able to check into the hotel, as we decided to stay over for the night instead of making a 3-hour round trip drive again. After everyone dropped off their belongings, I decided to stay in the room and sulk over those emotions. Let em run loose. That’s all I could do. After all, time heals all wounds.
Afterwards, I asked around online if anyone wanted to go out and grab a boba, as every Asian wants and needs. No joke though, after catching a 3-mile Uber just to grab a drink and sharing good conversation with a friend, everything that had been bugging me the previous 2-3 hours had just gone away. Who would’ve thought? Boba is magic.
The rest of the day consisted of friendlies, meeting up old friends from out-of-state, and enjoying an all-you-can-eat hot pot dinner just two miles away. The rest of the day was perfect. Good vibes everywhere. Deep, meaning, celebratory conversations during dinner. Every time someone asked how I did in bracket, I didn’t even care anymore that what happened, happened. There’s always the next tournament, even if this one is considered a major.
Day 2: Everything else!
Day 2 was when I was to participate in all my other games. It started off with an early 10 A.M. round of Super Mario Party, where I was actually able to emerge victorious despite only having played this version once (and even with a lot of bad luck!). This put me in top 32, out of 128 entrants, but round 2 was to be held way later in the day at 6 P.M.
Immediately after winning, I was to play in the Super Mario Maker bracket at 11 A.M. To be frank… competitive Mario Maker was a joke. 4 players are forced to play on a LAN (not a single Switch), and despite being right next to each other on a wired connection, the connection was horrendous. I’m one of the most patient people who’s even willing to tolerate playing Smash on bad connections, but Mario Maker was somehow much worse. One missed precise jump on a lag spike meant you had to redo the entire stage. And that’s all the matches seemed to be — whoever was the luckiest with the lag. First player to win two courses wins the match, and somehow one person won two games in the row, despite not really playing the game and having gone in expecting to lose but just played because it was free. I didn’t mind the turn of events since after all I had nothing to lose but a few minutes, but it’s so unfortunate to see how poor the connection was. Since this “tournament” only lasted ten minutes for me, I just walked around and talked to people for the rest of the hour, until 12 P.M. for Puyo Puyo Tetris.
Despite entering this game, I actually had only played Puyo once for maybe 15 minutes. I had entered just to see how much my Tetris skills could carry me. I was practicing a bit on Tetris 99, the battle royale version of Tetris on the Switch, and I was winning around once every 5-6 games, while the average player can never win a single one let alone place top ten in one game. I truly believed I had a shot of at least top 8.
And oh was I so close! Not too many people showed up – I had 3 opponents DQ’d – but the games I had were close and went to game 5 (in a best of 3). Every game had ended up in a “last hit” situation, where both of our piles were just one mistake away from dying. I had lost to both the players I faced, effectively having gone 0-2, but I was glad to have put up a fight against players who play the game regularly.
I had spent the rest of the day playing friendlies in a bunch of games: more Puyo, Mario Kart, and of course more Smash. With that, dinner, watching top 8, and Raising Cane’s to close the night on the drive back home, Sunday was a fantastic day for me with such a unique experience that no other Smash event had.
Conclusion
I really wish there were more Puyo Puyo Tetris tournaments! If there were, I’d actually buy the game and practice it and see how far I’d go. But alas, I just gotta stick with Smash and put in the blood and tears into this game alone. I’ll get up there soon, hopefully on a day when my controller doesn’t act up!
…as for the reason why that was happening? Apparently I wasn’t alone. A bunch of friends with wireless controllers were having similar issues, apparently due to all the Bluetooth hot spots all over the place, since the default screen for the Switches with non-Smash games were on the controller-searching screen. This means there were maybe 20+ Switches all searching for controllers at once. This is never an issue at other Smash events because that screen is never up, even at EVO with 3500 attendees, so I’m not too concerned about this happening again.
I’m also aware that there’s an option to play with the data transferring from the controller to the console via a wired connection, but that does actually cause a bit more (notable) input lag. I suppose this is something I should get used to, on top of having a more stable cable since if it gets loose while playing, it’s as if I had unplugged the controller.
Despite my bracket results and the unfortunate turn of events in bracket, it was still a great weekend! There’ll always be other tournaments, and no matter what happened (or will happen), I’ll always be growing.
Kevin Who 