The first day of the Jonas Cup consisted of 2 side events. But they did not start until 4 PM.
So some of the players were playing practice games. I sat at the Side Stage area, where we were having a casual livestream. I learned how to control Bidwell’s crowd cam.
Live Game Crash
Blue Scuti was at one of the game stations, casually using the Rolling technique to attempt a Level World Record. As he approached the crash points, his board was messy, so he opted to crash the game by clearing a single at the level transition. The crowd applauded as they had just witnessed the first live game crash.
The game station was roped off, turning it into an exhibit. No one dared to turn off the game.
Blue Scuti also wrote that sign that was then placed on top of the TV.
It was cool to see it in-person, to show that the game crash wasn’t fake. Check it out here.
Meeting Other Players
As I remained on the Side Stage for the most part, I met more players for the first time.
It was nice to meet Svavar, a European champion and 2018 CTWC Quarterfinalist. He was excited to meet me. He had that same upbeat attitude that he had when he talked to Jonas in phone calls during Jonas’s livestream.
MegaRetroMan made a surprise appearance. He is known for defeating Jonas in Round 1 of the 2019 CTWC.
MindMeld
It was 4 PM, and the first Side event commenced, MindMeld. This tournament featured teams of 2. One player controlled the D-Pad to move the pieces left and right, while the other controlled the A and B button to flip the pieces.
I cheered for Fractal and Sharky when they won a match. I noticed that I kind of looked like Fractal when an audience member asked me if I was Fractal’s brother.
Meeting My Stats Team Partner
As a volunteer for Jonas Cup, I had access to the Volunteer schedule. I was mainly tasked with doing stats. I saw that someone by the name of Diane was also assigned to do stats work. I didn’t know anyone in the Tetris community with that name.
During the MindMeld tournament, Kingsman introduced me to Diane (Jaedheart) and her husband, Kiernan (kirnmx). Turns out that they were new to the Tetris community. They had arrived from Canada.
When I asked Diane how she found out about CTWC, she mentioned that YouTube was recommending aGameScout videos. This was after aGameScout’s video on Blue Scuti’s game crash went viral and caused Blue Scuti’s achievement to be picked up by various media from around the world. It’s fascinating how the media attention brought in new people into the community, kids and adults.
After our conversation, we watched the rest of the Mindmeld tournament.
Tetris Relay
The next side event was Tetris Relay. Teams of 3 or 4 players are formed. In each game, the controller gets passed to the next teammate in line after every Tetris.
The camera setup for this was complicated. Kiernan, Diane, and I were sitting in the front row. We cleared the chairs in the front row so that the production crew could move the cameras back.
I talked to Nia, who was sitting in the audience after being eliminated. We talked about our experience at the 2024 CTWC. Nia mentioned finishing in 100th Place, which allows her to say that she is in the Top 100 Tetris players in the World.
Team Deja Vu (Fractal, Meme, Blue Scuti, and Rhubarb) was the favorite going into the Tetris Relay tournament. I remember when they casually played a bit of Tetris relay at the 2024 CTWC.
Throughout the Tetris Relay tournament, they hypertapped on the controller. They didn’t use the Rolling technique because it would make it difficult to pass the controller around.
The team had made it to the Finals. Surprisingly, they lost the match.
With that, the day was coming to an end.
