Just wanted to say thanks to Steve for this event.
Believe it or not, it was actually a pretty major deal for me. Not because I got a big score at this game, but because, after several years of not really understanding the appeal of Mario Bros., I finally (finally) "get it."
This was a game that I never liked, and it boiled down to the controls: I thought they were clunky and frustrating. On Friday night I was complaining in the shoutbox about how annoying it was that I just couldn't ever seem to get or keep Mario where I wanted him to go. But I know from a lot of CAG experience that even games that you dislike can open up to you with a little pushing, so I pushed.
I played for about an hour and a half on Saturday (my first session for the tourney, 28 coins), and by the end of that, something had clicked.
On Sunday I streamed more attempts and ended with a new PB of 113K. It took me 26 coins, but the game was starting to sink some hooks into me. I love hitting that point with a game.
Anyway, I'm getting the hang of this now, and I'm starting to see that the controls are actually part of what the game is about, which is mastering inertia and finding/exploiting the best positions on the board (sorta like Joust or Asteroids). Yeah it makes more sense for an ostrich or a spaceship to be hard to control, and it defies reality that a (sober) person would be slipping around so much, but I just have to remind myself to not think of this in "real life" terms.
I found myself watching some videos (which I try to avoid when I'm first learning a game so that I can discover things for myself), learned a lot, and was actually grinding at it pretty hard the last night. Now the game is "pulling at me" and my PB is up to 163K, and I know how to get through the invisible-platform coin boards.
So I'll definitely be around for the next one of these.
