Early last week, Nintendo of Australia put out a news story to tell everyone that they were attempting to break an Australian record by holding the largest playoff ever. It was a Pokemon Playoff, and anyone interested had to send his or her details to an email address only found on that Thursday’s Daily Telegraph. 70 people were going to be chosen. And the winner would win a trip to Singapore, and a year’s supply of Nintendo products. The event was to be held on the next Saturday, the 29th of March 2003, in front of the Imax Theatre, Darling Harbour in Sydney, from 12pm to 7pm.

I arrived at around 12:30pm, and although the area taken up by the two tents was small, the crowd was absolutely huge. People were crowding around in line to play the latest demos, Zelda: Wind Waker, and Metroid Prime. I lined up, and before you know it, I was playing Zelda and Metroid for the first time, and it was great.

I had arranged to meet fellow Australian PGCers Chris (a.k.a. Mario on the PGC forums), and Lance (a.k.a. Infernal Monkey) there, and for half an hour, they were nowhere to be found. There was one shady character standing walking around with no apparent purpose. He was taller than me, had a lame-ass goatee, and spiked up hair. I avoided him for a while. Until I remembered that this was the description that Infernal Monkey made of himself. So, I walked up to him and said: “’Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about Planet GameCube would you?” The guy turned around and said, “Why hey, you must be Termin8.” Haha. What a way to meet. Chris turned up a bit later, recognizing me from my picture on my website.

At that point, around 1pm, the Pokemon Playoff was about to begin. So we headed around to the main stage, and watched as the 70 chosen contestants (ranging in age from 10 to 30), made their way up and took a seat.

70 players ready to go, with Jade and Ryan from Cheez TV hosting the event.

The rules went like this:

Each candidate was given a number, and placed into a team, 35 a side. And since this was Pokemon, the teams were Team Magma, and Team Aqua (this arrangement was done before-hand). Each had a Game Boy Advance SP, with one of the new Pokemon games (forgot which one). Each contestant had to start a new game, single-player, and try to get the highest score possible. By this I mean how much Pokemon you have captured/seen, the levels of your Pokemon, how many badges you have, etc. At the end of every half-hour round, the teams had to stop playing, and the five players with the lowest scores were eliminated.

At the end of the first round, Team Magma stopped first, their Game Boys checked, and first five players eliminated. Then Team Aqua stopped, and had their Game Boys checked, and their first five players eliminated. Then, the remaining players returned to their seats, and continued playing.

If this were all that happened during the day, then there would be nobody there. It was boring to watch 70 kids face down on their Game Boys playing Pokemon. But Nintendo had this problem in the bag. Pikachu, Charmander, Meowth and Psyduck made an appearance for photos, much to everyone’s delight. But also, not only was the event hosted by the very enthusiastic Jade Gatt and Ryan Lapp from Channel 10’s ‘Cheez TV’, which airs the Pokemon series, Nintendo was giving away thousands of dollars worth of free goodies during each round. And this was what separated the Nintendo Lover, to the Nintendo worshipper. Everyone was in frenzy when a freebie was about to be given away. But because everyone wanted a freebie, the reps wanted us to work for them. At first, this involved simple questions, like “What colour is Pikachu?” until this question was asked. “Who is the designer of the Mario and Zelda games?” Well, I am happy to say that yours truly answered in the only way possible. A loud shout of “Shigeru Miyamoto!” and I scored my first freebie, the one and only, Star Fox Adventures for GameCube.