I showed up early to the expo and sat in the front row. Chris Tang was sitting next to me, which was surreal. I mentioned it last year, but I got into CTWC after watching the 2016 Finals. I was fascinated by his commentary, especially his catchphrase.
Anyways, I talked to him about how he managed to get the Nintendo Switch 2, which was released a few days before the tournament.
Knowing that Chris Tang had been commentating CTWC matches since its beginning in 2010 I asked him what he had observed about the tournament throughout the nearly 15 years. He ended up talking about the difference between the Nintendo World Championship and Classic Tetris World Championship.
While the Nintendo World Championship was organized by the Nintendo company, the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) is organized by fans of the game. With CTWC being organized by fans, there is more passion put into running the tournament.
Top 16 Begins
The Tetris Anthem was performed to initiate the Final day of the tournament.
From there, the first 2 matches on the main stage began. It was “Alex T vs Noah Dengler” and “Blue Scuti vs Fractal”.
When I was watching the matches, I realized that these 4 players have been in the Top 4 in previous CTWC tournaments. If you didn’t know what round this was, you would think these were much later rounds. Some very highly skilled players were going to get knocked out early.
Alex T swept Noah Dengler, while Blue Scuti swept Fractal.
The next set of matches were “iBall vs TetrisTime” and “Tristop vs Dog”.
iBall defeated TetrisTime, 3-1, to advance to the Quarterfinals.
Meanwhile, Tristop and Dog went all the way to a Game 5 decider. They both reached Level 29. Unfortunately for Dog, a drought going into Level 29 caused him to topout and lose the game. In the past CTWC tournaments that he has been in, he has always finished at least in the Final Four. This was his first early elimination.
While Tristop was mullening (continuing to play after already winning the game), someone from the CT2 stream told me that the livestream had stopped. I let Vince Clemente know, so he went to the CT2 side of the stage to log back in and resume the livestream. That’s when I found out that the online viewers missed the ending of the game between Tristop and Dog.
After Tristop finished his game, he and Dog hugged each other. I was so focused on trying to help the CT2 stage get their livestream back on, that I didn’t really have time to realize the significance of Dog’s loss. I also knew it could have easily gone either way, Tristop was last year’s Semifinalist and Dog was last year’s Runner-up.
The significance of Dog’s loss sank in for me when Dog was getting emotional. The cameras zoomed in on Dog as he processed the loss. Dog and Tristop went offstage as they continued the process the moment. One of the commentators, Kingsman, got off the commentary table to console Dog after a brief struggle with the headset wire that he stepped on.
Afterwards, the organizers asked the production team not to linger on players that were crashing out as if this was a reality show.
As for the 4 matches that happened on the other side of the stage, SV, Cobra, Myles, and Meme won their matches to advance to the Quarterfinals.
Second Lifetime Achievement Award
After the Top 16 matches were completed, Vince Clemente went back on stage to present the second Lifetime Achievement Award for the year.
When talking about this person, Vince talked about meeting him at the 2018 CTWC East Coast Regional. I immediately knew it was aGameScout because Scout mentioned that it was his first Regional after CTWC posted the livestream VODs of that tournament.
Sure enough, aGameScout was the person Vince was referring to.
Marfram called it the previous day when she noted that Scout hadn’t received a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Quarterfinals
Before the Quarterfinals, Gilbert Tang (part of the CTWC production team) quickly brought me backstage. He was bringing people backstage to make the player walk-in intro more lively.
I was given Atmosphere Aerosol spray cans which create a fog-like atmosphere like a fog machine. I was tasked with spraying it while the player makes their way on stage. There was also another person with those spray cans by the door leading to the main Tetris area. To create that foggy atmosphere in the background.
Other players were brought in as extras, playing NES Tetris in the background.
I knew the player intro was going to start when Kingsman started speaking. The camera operator was ready for the intro shot. The cycle repeated for each of the four players for the first set of Quarterfinal matches.
I got to see the player intro in-person. Being a fan of CTWC for many years, I wouldn’t have thought I would be this involved with the tournament.
When the player intro was over, I went back to my seat in the front row.
The first set of matches were “Blue Scuti vs Cobra” and “SV vs Alex T”.
Blue Scuti defeated Cobra
DanV had a sign that said “It’s Coming Home”, rooting for SV to win the World Championship and bring the Jonas Neubauer Trophy to the UK. SV was the last UK player left in the competition, but then he got swept by Alex T.
DanV prepped for if a UK player wasn’t going to win with the other side of the sign saying “It’s Staying Here”, referring to the trophy staying in the United States. But the thing is, that was not guaranteed, because there was still one non-American player in the competition, that was iBall from Canada.
The second set of matches were “Tristop vs iBall” and “Myles vs Meme”.
I went backstage to prep for my role in spraying the Atmospheric Aerosol cans for the next set of Player Intros. iBall had the Canadian flag on his back as he made his way on stage.
Meme defeated Myles, 3-1.
The match between Tristop and iBall went to a Game 5 Decider. iBall won the game and celebrated in style, showing off the Canadian flag.
Semifinals
Semifinal matches were going to be played one at a time.
The first match was Blue Scuti vs Alex T.
Alex T won the first game after Blue Scuti topped out at Level 31 with a lower score.
In Game 2, Alex went all the way to the Level 39 Super Killscreen, with a new score record of 1,915,820. This was the first 1.9 million in CTWC match play under the Level 39 Super Killscreen. Setting the new score record in match play, which beat the previous record set by Blue Scuti the previous day.
Alex went on to win Game 3 with a commanding 1,810,900 to sweep the match and get back into the Finals. That score became the third highest score in a CTWC match, under the Level 39 blah blah blah, you get it already.
Blue Scuti knew there was nothing he could do to win any games against Alex T.
The second match was iBall vs Meme.
I returned backstage to take part in the player intro. The first player introduced was Meme, who did a comedy bit where she was asleep and someone woke her up to let her know that it was showtime.
iBall was the second player to be introduced. His player intro featured his friends from the Super Mario Bros. (SMB) Speedrun community. iBall is a Super Mario Bros. Speedrunner himself, who had competed at the Super Mario Bros Speedrun tournament that was taking place at that same expo.
As soon as the match started, iBall’s crowd were already doing the “Seven Nation Army” chant, something you would typically hear in a Major League Baseball (MLB) game.
With the iBall crowd being very lively, I decided to root for Meme to get them to root for iBall. I started the “Let’s Go Meme” chant to get the crowd going. Eventually, we did the “Let’s Go Meme” and “Let’s Go iBall” chants. I love the iBall crowd, it was cool to have them here.
In the end, Meme swept iBall to advance to the Finals.
After iBall’s elimination interview, Kingsman invited iBall’s SMB speedrunning crowd to join iBall on stage to celebrate iBall’s run to the Semifinals.
Crowd Observation
Before I talk about the finals, I want to talk about things that happen that you don’t see on stream. It always makes me happy seeing players having fun outside of playing CTWC matches. In between some of the downtime, I looked to my left and saw ChaoticHazel and Zrobot playing frisbee with a folded up piece of paper. There was also another moment where Danny Cox gave Zrobot a piggyback ride.
Finals
The finals was between Meme and Alex T.
Back at the 2025 CTWC Genesis Regional in February, Meme swept Alex T in the Finals. This time, Meme was facing him at the World Championship. It was not going to be easy for Meme, with how well Alex T had performed in the previous round.
So far, Alex T had not lost a single game this entire tournament. He was on a hot winning streak.
Kingsman invited Henk Rogers, as well as Japanese players: Koryan, Greentea, and Sight to initiate the countdown for Finals.
With that, the first game began. I was planning on doing the “Let’s Go Meme” chant to get the crowd going, but the commentators were explaining how the game and tournament worked, so I didn’t want to interrupt them. The commentators did this because there would be people that would discover CTWC for the first time through the Finals match. That was the case for me, the 2016 CTWC Finals was recommended to me by YouTube. A lot of top players had discovered CTWC from watching the 2018 finals, where Joseph Saelee (16-year old) defeated Jonas Neubauer (7-Time champion) to win the tournament. It was important to let the new viewers know how the game works from the start so that they keep watching.
Anyways, Alex T won the first game, and then won the next game. He was one win away from having a perfect CTWC run. The only time this has ever happened was in 2011 by Jonas Neubauer, when it was only an 8-player bracket and all matches were Best of 3.
There were 2 other years where a player was one win away from getting a perfect run but failed. In 2013, Harry Hong was one win away from the perfect run, but got reverse swept by Jonas Neubauer. In 2023, Fractal was one win away from that perfect run, but lost the next 2 games. But Fractal won the Game 5 decider to become the 2023 Tetris World Champion.
Sharky (one of the 3 commentators) pumped up the crowd for Game 3, since it could be the last game of the tournament. When both players had a low board and the commentators had some downtime, I got the “Let’s Go Meme” chant going. I didn’t do this last year, because I wanted to keep a low profile for my first visit to CTWC.
Both players reached Level 29, with Alex T having the lead. Meme topped out at Level 36 with a score of 1,413,680 and Alex T had the higher score already giving Alex T the win.
With that, Alex T became a back-to-back Tetris World Champion. He was also the second player to achieve a perfect run at CTWC, never losing a single game.
Afterwards, the Runner-up, Meme, would be interviewed by Kingsman. Her interview stood out to me because of her story. Meme talked about how she was a clumsy and awkward person and then discovered that she was good at Tetris. Later on, Kingsman asked Meme what it meant for her to be a part of the Classic Tetris community. Meme talked about how she had trouble finding a community where she fits in and was a loner of sorts, so being a part of the Tetris community, which accepts her for who she is, means a lot to her.
And then, as Kingsman puts it, “it’s time to acknowledge your tribal chief of Classic Tetris”. Alex T returned to the stage for the interview. Alex T mentioned how important mindset was. That’s actually a very important thing to have in life, I can tell you that from personal experience.
Kingsman then asked him to give his final words for the interview. Alex T exclaimed, “I’m the new champion! Oh wait, I’m not the new champion. I’m the champion!”
As per tradition for Alex T’s celebration, Blue Scuti brought an inflatable pool on stage. A bunch of players arrived on stage to dump Powerbear Tetris gummies on stage, something less messy than parmesan cheese. DanV gave him the sign that said “It’s Staying Here”, referring to the trophy staying in the United States.
After The Tournament
When the tournament was over, people lined up to get photos with Alex T and his trophy.
Later on, some players were asking me for autographs and selfies. It still feels weird being somewhat of a celebrity within the Classic Tetris community. That’s what happens when there are not a lot of journalists that cover this tournament.
After most people left the venue and the chairs have been cleared out, Alex T and Zrobot were playing tag in an open area.
And then I went to the afterparty. I got to wind down a bit at the outside area, since the music was so loud at the bar area. I got to chat with some more people. It still felt weird having players know who I am.
As I walked around the outside area, I overheard Fractal chatting with others about how he wanted CTWC to change their qualifying format. To give some background, it became clear to many players that the multiple maxout rule was not a good way to determine seeding ranks at CTWC going forward.
Someone asked Fractal if he would want the seeding ranks to be determined by the average of the player’s Top 3 scores (AO3) in Qualifying. Fractal did not want that because AO3 did not do a good job at measuring how consistent a player is at scoring. A large outlier score can easily skew a player’s overall qualifying score.
As more players left the Afterparty, I got to meet the Japanese players, Greentea, Koryan, and Sight. Of course I have to get a selfie with Koryan.
When the Afterparty was coming to an end, a player dropped me off home and I went to sleep almost immediately.
The next day, I went back to my normal life, missing the hangouts with the Classic Tetris community.
