Bwog diligently follows up on the Mario Kart tournament previously announced on its very pages.

Friday night was a veritable throw-down/show-down of epically nerdy scale. Eight players, united by Bwog, gathered in a Ruggles suite to flaunt their mastery of a game they’d been playing since elementary school. Mario Kart, perhaps the most beloved game on perhaps the most beloved console of the mid 90s, had brought together two Ruggles juniors, four boys from EC’s Watson House, Bwog’s own CML, and a hawk-loving girl named Courtney. All sat beside a door frame topped with the message that on November 1, 2007, Jacob (present on tourney-day under the game name YRYR) went 29-0 in Mario Kart.

But these participants were a savvy bunch. The room, clouded with cigarette smoke and a trancetastic mix of Battles, Radiohead, and Om, seemed to inspire an almost hermetic focus in each player. Their deep knowledge of Mario Kart lore showed in their selection of players—slowpokes like Mario and Donkey Kong were seldom chosen—and of races—no one dared elect to drive the interminable, psychedelic mess that is Rainbow Road. And the racers’ mastery of cheats was impressive. In his first showing, Dome of Watson House deftly hopped the multiple shortcuts of DK’s Jungle Parkway, leaving the old regulars of Ruggles 6 jaws ajar. And Brett, also of Watson House, proved that it’s worth butting up against the wall and going in reverse to jump onto the road that cuts across half the track in Wario Raceway.

But these cheats inspired the awe, and not the reproach, of a stunned audience. Eventually, conspiracy-minded spectators grew skeptical of controller one’s thirteen continuous victories. But in the best-of-five championship, controller two finally triumphed, handing the second, third, and fourth matches to Yoshi—or rather, to the even more curiously-named Watson House representative, Smiles.

As the boys of Watson House and a few dedicated Bwog observers trickled out of the Ruggles suite, all giddy and juiced, the owners of the N64 remained in front of the screen, still up for a little more Karting.

The victorious Smiles, aka Jesse.

– ACM