For this St. Patrick’s Day, Super Smash Otters Club hosted their yearly “Smash Patrick’s Day tournament,” bringing students from across campus to enjoy Nintendo’s “Super Smash Bros.” in a competitive light.
Throughout the event, traditional Celtic music was playing as Otter gamers competed against one another to win and get their hands on the ultimate prize, a family-size box of the one and only whole-grain classic cereal, Lucky Charms.
Green and gold-colored snacks from across the dessert aisle were also available for the attendees to grub on before getting into their fierce matchups or available to them after losing in heartbreaking fashion.
The tournament was structured as two brackets: a winners’ bracket and a losers’ bracket. When contestants would continue to win they would move up on the winners’ brackets. When they lost, they would be moved down to the losers’ bracket.
When in the losers’ brackets, they only had one chance to win by fighting their way through the bracket. The winner of the losers’ bracket would then face the winner of the winners’ bracket.
Super Smash Otters Club Treasurer Jaden Lewis-Wall won the winners’ bracket, but before getting his hands on the family-size box of Lucky Charms, he had to face the winner of the losers’ bracket, California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) alumnus Aldrin Carlos.
They went head-to-head in a nerve-wracking competitive matchup with Lewis-Wall playing Fox from the “Star Fox” series and Carlos as Link from “The Legend of Zelda” series. Their matchup went the full distance with both of them winning two matches each.
Carlos won the fifth match, but as he was wrapping up, eagerly awaiting to claim his prize, Lewis-Wall called for a reset because he was not afforded one due to winning all of his previous matchups.
Ultimately, it proved to be a failure of a last-ditch effort as Carlos overwhelmingly won the final matchup of the night and was finally able to claim his deserved prize.
“It is a pretty good and exhilarating feeling to win, especially since I lost and came back. I have to thank my naturally competitive spirit as I had more of a reason to try to win and come back,” said Carlos. “I always want to prove myself in this and any tournament I am in.”
President of Super Smash Otters Club Micah Rodriguez was thankful for those who attended the event as he felt it was another successful tournament that created a closer bond for CSUMB’s “Super Smash Bros.” community.
“Our event went really well and I honestly have my officers to thank for that as they always do an amazing job coming up with ideas for all of our events. I was proud of the solid turnout as a lot of returning members that I haven’t seen in a while stopped by to participate and just say hi,” said Rodriguez. “The community here is nothing short of spectacular and I am proud to call this space my home.”
