Since Tuesday, I had forced myself to wake up at 6 AM, preparing myself to show up to the venue on time. I arrived around 9 AM, giving myself some time to practice for the qualifying session scheduled for 10:30 AM. I pick the first session so that I can get it over with and so that others can get the more popular sessions.
Kingsman let me check in early. The process was the same as the previous 2 years. I was given a CTWC Name Tag, which I filled out with my online name, Wingfryer.
The next step was signing the posters. I picked the top left corner and tried my best not to take up a lot of space on the poster. From there, I went to the game station that I selected. I picked the TV that had a working screen. These old CRT TVs can be finicky, where it can be difficult to see the pieces. I also picked a side where I could see the timer on the giant LED screen on the main stage.
As we got closer to the first qualifying session, I was invited on stage to countdown the start of the Qualifying round. When I stood on stage, my legs were shaking as I was nervous. I was able to ease up on the nerves quickly as I knew that all I had to do was hype up the crowd.
Eventually, the commentators cued the livestream towards me. I turned on the microphone and did my intro. I knew I was loud, but I didn’t expect to blow out the speakers. It was fun to do the countdown. I’m going to use that in my application video for Wheel of Fortune.
After the countdown, I walked back to my station for my qualifying run. I was not doing too well in my games. There was one game where I reached Level 19 with a stack that was high and messy and I topped out with a low score of 300K. I submitted it anyway so that my name would appear in the final standings.
Later on, I reached Level 19 again. I cleared 10 lines on that Level to reach Level 20. I ended the game with a 459K score, which I submitted.
When there were less than 5 minutes left, I went for a Level 15 start because I wasn’t going to lose more time in my session because I was allowed to continue my current game when time is up.
I went for a Tetris when I was approaching Level 19, but it didn’t work out because my board got messy going into Level 19 and I topped out shortly afterwards. I didn’t beat my 459K score.
What threw me off about this custom cartridge was that you could not pause the game. I always pause the game before I reset the game by pressing A,B, Select, and Start at the same time. In a qualifying run, games that are reset cannot be counted, but it does help you save time by allowing you to avoid a potential rocket screen that you are forced to watch after your game ends. After the session ended, a player mentioned that he was able to reset the game even though you couldn’t pause the game. Turns out I didn’t need to pause the game to reset it.
It wouldn’t have mattered for me because my gameplay was not that good in my qualifying run.
Another thing that messed me up was that my mind drifted on a personal mistake that I made 3 weeks before the tournament. I won’t bore you with the details. It wasn’t the end of the world, but I kept thinking about that mistake as I was playing my game. Next year, I hope I don’t make any personal mistakes in the weeks leading up to CTWC that I constantly think about. If it does happen, I will need to quickly forget about it. If I wasn’t thinking about that mistake or if I didn’t make that personal mistake in the first place, I would have done better in my qualifying run because I would have focused more on my game and had more fun.
I wasn’t happy with my qualifying performance, I wanted to get at least 500K to have a high chance of making the Bronze Bracket. I knew the 459K score was not going to be enough to make it in the Bronze Bracket.
Last year, I saw a few players get very emotional after failing to meet their expectations at the tournament. Feeling very sad about my qualifying performance, I kind of understood how those players felt.
Anyways, I went backstage to take a quick break before the next qualifying session started. I was the qualifying judge for that session. I sat at a table with aGameScout and Fireworks (that’s an online name). Scout mentioned that he had considered dropping out of the tournament but the organizers had placed him on the main stage next to Zrobot for his qualifying session. So he didn’t want the organizers to have to make last minute changes on who will qualify on the livestream.
Later on, Scout talked about his video ideas and how certain outcomes could create catchy video titles. It was a fascinating conversation about the marketing aspect of YouTube videos.
