Tuesday August 10th 2004, 12pm, a tournament day with a very low expectation and turn out. This was one of the days that I am glad that I was proven wrong as over 100 people showed up and 64 people entered into the tournament. Surprising enough there were a couple of ladies that joined the tournament as well. As the Nintendo Street Team arrived on the seen we took down names of all those who attended and handed out premiums to all and had a Event gathering before we began the tournament. As everyone got to know each other and awaited the start up of the tournament I looked around the place and noticed that it was filled up with a lot of gamers with such a last minute notice by Nintendo of the event. I've known Neutral Grounds to have card game players there, that plays Yu-gi-oh, Marvel, Mega Man Battle net, and Magic, but I have never seen Pokemon card players there ever; until that day. I guess the saying is true, if you build it they will come.

The tournament games consisted of Mario Party 5; Golden Eye, Pilot Wings and these games were for round one. Round two game was Super Smash Brothers Melee. Round three game was Mario Kart Double Dash. Round four games consisted of Soul Calibur 2 and Mortal Kombat 2. Finally in the final round the last game was between which ever two players would get the best time in Excite Bike. In the first round a lot of players were getting there best shots in Mario Party with the exception of Harlem Hero, and Dieminion who got a 5 star shut out. Golden Eye was one of the more diverse competition as there was no one gamer that was dominating the game. Moving on to the final game of the qualifiers which was Pilot Wings, was the funniest competition there was as over 80% of the competitors got zero points for landing their plane. That shows you how much gamers had fell off. A few gamers got 95 and more, and only one gamer got 100%. There was a Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance SP and a Nintendo Game Cube all at the tournament for play. It was nice to see the Super Nintendo again in a tournament. I haven't seen a tournament using the Super Nintendo in a couple of years.

As tournament participants played on throughout the tournament I watched many close calls in Mario Kart Double Dash and Super Smash Brothers Melee. People played everything from Game Boy advance games to Pokemon card games which I already mentioned is rarely played in Neutral Grounds. In the end it came down to Michael Trachteaberg and Ariel Capellan. Michael won first place and obvious Ariel came in second. Everyone took pictures and wore there Nintendo shirts and celebrated the tournament. We also took a group photo with the winners. After the tournament we decided to have another tournament in Mortal Kombat 2, called Aftermath. I decided to join since I wasn't able to compete in the Challenge 5 Tournament due to the fact that I was help running it and taking pictures. A couple of the players from the tournament and two Nintendo Street Members other than myself joined in as well. It brought back a lot of memories playing Mortal Kombat 2. I look forward to the next tournament because then I will be able to enter instead of help running it.