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A “Smash”ingly good time

Chris Casillas

On Saturday, September 23, over 70 students gathered to watch and play in the Super Smash Brothers Tournament hosted in Chauncey’s in the Union. The tournament began at 4 p.m. and students from different dormitories could be seen carrying their Nintendo Gamecube controllers with them on their way to the tournament.

The tournament was hosted on all five televisions, and the tournament was one-on-one competition. The tournament consisted of 64 entries, compared to the 40 entries last year, double elimination, and the following rules: a 10-minute time limit per match, five lives per player, no items, certain maps, but all characters were viable. The matches varied in length, depending on the skill of the opponents, but all matches finished within the 10-minute time limit.

John Bernhard, a senior mathematics major, was the champion of the tournament, followed by Christopher Halvorson, a senior computer science major, and Michael Turpyn, a senior optical engineering major. The first prize was a 50-dollar GameStop gift certificate with second and third getting 30 and 20-dollar gift certificates.

Junior Scott Ward, a computer science major, was out to have some fun. “I like Smash Brothers. I want to see if I can beat anybody. This is a measure of my own skill.” Ward was one of the many students to have a bye the first round, which meant he had to wait over 45 minutes just to play for his first time.

Patrick Caffarel, a junior electrical engineering major, had similar feelings. “[I am] here to just have fun. [I am] not here to be serious.”

Ryan Kinney, sophomore computer engineering major, had different feelings towards the tournament. “I am just here to eat some food and hopefully make some money.” There was no food available for the seventy plus students attending the event.

The competition was pretty serious, as many of the students were busy arguing which character was better. “My favorite character is Sheik, or Captain Falcon, but mostly Sheik,” said Caffarel. The tournament was a success, as Chauncey’s was full of people smashing each other for hours into the evening.