In June 2024, I had the opportunity to attend the 2024 Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC). It was a bittersweet ride back home as I had just left a CTWC Afterparty where players from around the world were hanging out. I was already missing them.
Fast forward to September 2024, the first annual Jonas Neubauer Cup was going to take place at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo in Portland, Oregon. This tournament was created after CTWC relocated from Portland to Pasadena.
The Jonas Neubauer Cup (sometimes shortened to Jonas Cup) is a DAS tournament, where players play the old school way by holding down the directional pad (D-Pad) to move the pieces. Hypertapping and Rolling were not allowed in tournament play.
This event was created in honor of Jonas Neubauer, who had sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 39. Jonas was a 7-time Tetris Champion who dominated the early years of the tournament using the DAS technique.
I really wanted to meet some of the Tetris community again, so I booked a flight to Oregon. I arrived at the expo the day before Jonas Cup as I was a volunteer.
I got to meet some of the players again. When I was at the 2024 CTWC, I was very nervous meeting them because it was my very first time at a CTWC event. This time, I was not too nervous when chatting with the players.
The Tetris community mainly interacts with each other online, mainly through Discord. One thing about interacting with some people online is that some of them have profile pictures with different avatars, so you don’t know what they look like.
As I approached the side stream (CT3) area, I got to see Chris Bidwell again. I introduced myself to a woman sitting next to him, “Hi I’m Wingfryer, what’s your name?” She said her name was Sunnygem. Turns out, I did know her. She was very active in Jonas’s Discord Server. I was telling her that I had just arrived here from Los Angeles – mentioned how fortunate I was to have CTWC relocate in my area. Afterwards, we chatted about our jobs.
I also got to meet NGC Man, one of few players who scored 1.3 million points with DAS. It’s a very difficult feat that requires a lot of skill and luck.
As I toured the Tetris area, I started learning about certain production items. I learned that the plastic cube wrapped around the microphone with a logo on it was called a mic flag.
Back at the side stream area, there were flat screen TVs behind the table for the spectators to view the livestream. Bidwell was plugging in the TVs into the surge protector located under the table. Sunnygem, Bidwell, and I placed gaffer tape over the cord. I’ve seen gaffer tape before, but I didn’t know what it was nor what it was called. Gaffer tape is mainly used in production sets. It’s like Duct Tape, except it doesn’t leave sticky stains when you remove the tape.
After setting up the side stream table, I took the opportunity to play Tetris on the CRT TV. I scored in the mid 400K before topping out at the Level 19 transition. I was happy with the score because I wanted to beat my 2024 CTWC Qualifying Score going into Jonas Cup.
As the evening approached, Sunnygem, Bidwell, and I walked to Sizzle Pie. We talked about what was going on with some of the players. Later on, other players showed up as they had finished setting up the stage for Jonas Cup.
Eventually, we all went back to the hotels as we got rested for the first day of Jonas Cup.
