Next to me stood Josh, the audio engineer and musician from South Central Los Angeles. A little further down the line was Adam, a web programmer from San Diego. And then there was me, the video game journalist who's secretly terrible at video games.

Our mission: in six minutes, twenty-one seconds, make gaming history and win a spot at the upcoming Nintendo World Championships. Our battleground was the Torrance, California Best Buy, conveniently located just off the Pacific Coast Highway. Our weapon of choice: brand new 3DS's armed with a copy of NES Remix. The rules were simple: collect 50 coins in Super Mario Bros., grab 25 coins in Super Mario Bros. 3, then use any remaining time to rack up as many points as possible in Dr. Mario. Hold the highest score in the store at the end of the day, and move on to the Los Angeles-based finals.

While Nintendo's marketing materials made it sound like Best Buy's Nintendo World Championships qualifying events would be epic, day-long showdowns, in reality, it was a lot more relaxed. Participants signed up at a table staffed by disinterested Best Buy employees (when I asked how the event was going, they just shrugged; one woman said, "We're from marketing," as if that explained everything), and then stood in line for a few minutes. Nintendo reps herded players ten at a time to the table of 3DS's. Contestants took their shot, grabbed some cheap swag, and then moved on. The whole thing lasted less than ten minutes.

Of course, I got there in the afternoon; it sounds like the morning was an entirely different scene. According to Best Buy representatives, there was already a huge group of fans when the manager opened the building at 6:00 AM. According to some, the line stretched around the building.

But the crowd was pretty small by 1:30 PM, and some people got to try to qualify multiple times. After competing, nobody seemed quite sure what to do. A big-box retailer isn't the best place to socialize with strangers, but nobody really wanted to leave, either. Best Buy was full of people wearing Nintendo-themed t-shirts, and the Super Smash Bros. display case was surrounded by motivated, quietly intense fans. Despite the lack of fanfare, a quiet, awkward sense of community emerged; people weren't talking, exactly, but there were a lot of knowing looks and shy nods as fans passed each other in the aisles.

I met Josh during my brief stint in line, where we chatted about old-school Nintendo games while waiting for our turn at competition. Josh is an avid gamer, but he gravitates towards social titles like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart - things you can play with friends while sharing a couple of beers. He used to be into longer single-player games - especially RPGs like Final Fantasy - but he doesn't have the time any more. At 31, Josh has other concerns: building skateboards. Working. Hanging out with his girlfriend.

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Page 2: Competing in the Nintendo World Championships

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Nintendo's been promoting the World Championships as a throwback to the days of The Wizard and Nintendo Power Magazine, and I think that's why most of us were there; as kids, we heard about the fabled World Championships, and always wondered how we'd do. Now, we know. Mid-competition, Josh muttered to himself, "Remember your childhood. That's how you win."

Josh did a lot better than I did, but on paper, I beat him. While I was distracted and barely cracked 200,000 points (if you haven't tried NES Remix - which I hadn't before the event - that's unspeakably awful), Josh accidentally cleared his screen before the Nintendo rep could record his score. He got the zero; I, joked the Nintendo employee, was in "about 500th place."

Meanwhile, Adam did pretty well; he broke 1.5 million, good enough for fourth-best at the Torrance Best Buy.

Unlike Josh and me, Adam practiced for two weeks before the qualifiers began. "I've been dreaming about Dr. Mario," he told me. Adam's a huge Nintendo fan - he runs the NintenDiego blog and meet-up group, and used to take part in Pokemon and Mario Kart tournaments, before competition just got too stressful. His eyes lit up when I asked about Splatoon, Nintendo's new third-person shooter; thanks to Adam's passionate endorsement, I walked out of the store with a brand new copy.

Ultimately, however, none of the people I met are going foward. Only the players with the best scores at each of the participating eight Best Buys will move on to the finals, where they'll be joined by eight other players of Nintendo's choosing.

While I was at the store, no one even came close to the beating the top score, which was somewhere between 5.4 and 5.7 million points, depending on who was talking. The high score was set by an unknown man from San Diego who arrived in the early morning rush, set the bar impossibly high, and left without a trace.

I'm assuming that the mysterious San Diegan ended up winning, but I don't know for sure. When I called Best Buy on Sunday to confirm the results, the customer service representative had no idea what I was talking about.

At the very least, the event was well organized. As a kid, I remember walking into a Blockbuster, eyes bleary from practicing NBA Jam all night, only to discover that most of the employees had no idea that there was a video game tournament in progress. I was baffled; this was a big deal. How could they not know?

Still, the small, mostly neglected game tournaments of my youth felt important to me. I'm not sure the Nintendo World Championship event did. It was over so fast, and with so few spots on the line, it didn't feel like it mattered.

In the old days, prizes were a lot easier to come by. The Star Fox t-shirt I won at Software Etc is still in my parents' attic. Sometimes, I fire up the Donkey Kong Country Competition cart and wonder how I ever got a winning score (grand prize: one year's worth of free video game rentals from Blockbuster). I sure couldn't do it now.

Maybe Nintendo's marketing machine overhyped things. Maybe I've just gotten older. After all, the chubby six-year-old in the retro-Donkey Kong shirt was so excited he was shaking, and he couldn't see over the registration table. After his round, he high-fived everyone who walked by. There's no way he won, but it doesn't matter; he got a shot, and that's all he cared about. And when Nintendo holds the next round of World Championships in 2040, I bet he'll be one of the first people in line.

Source (images): it8bit, NintenDiego