Falcon's 200th Tournament Bonus Content: Post 100th Tournament Reflection

[FalconXD 1]

Introduction:

Following suit from my 100th tournament, I’m doing a post that is reflecting on the past tournaments I have hosted. Opposed to the first reflection though, this one will involve reflecting upon the 100th tournament all the way up to the 199th tournament. That’s all I really have to say about this reflection so without further ado let’s hop into the reflection.

 

Starting off with the 100th tournament, looking back I found it interesting how everyone went along with the Falcon Miis only theme. I’m thankful people enjoyed the theme and overall while the Mario Kart Wii portion of the tournament was successful, the Mario Kart 7 portion didn’t feel like it resonated as much. The remaining Superstar Showdown and Falcon Tour tournaments all were extremely fun and went well organization wise. Many people consider those tournament series some of their favorite tournaments they have attended out of the ones I hosted. I can see the sentiment and looking back I have positive memories of the later Superstar Showdown and Falcon Tour series. The initial finale FFA tournaments went well too despite people hosting other events over the MKW one. The challenges came with my “retirement phase”. Looking back retiring from tournaments and even the internet proved super cringey. This unfortunately caused problem with my series as my attendance was peaking, but taking a hiatus hurt the series overall. Looking back, this would remain a common pattern over these tournaments and is something I want to work on when getting back into the tournament organizing business.

After about a few months I wanted back in the scene, so I created the Wait What He’s Alive tournament series. I think the funniest thing is the second after I created a thread on mariokartwii.com one of the Super Moderators instantly viewed the thread. I think he was expecting it was some religious cult nonsense with that title. Wait What He’s Alive actually started off super strong with the first two tournaments, but then started declining. As I grew busy, I didn’t have much time for the Wait What He’s Alive tournament series and the 13-tournament long season got cut in half. Oddly enough despite getting too busy for my own series that didn’t stop me from hosting three strong, official FFA tournaments for mariokartwii.com. I even won Tournament Organizer of the year on the website for 2013; however, after having to carry the MKW tournament and other complications I left the official organizers.

The start of 2014 was a small decline for the tournaments. It started off with a Brawl tournament series Finem Rixam that had mixed reception. Afterwards I tried hosting random tournaments and reviving the Wait What He’s Alive tournament series; however, Nintendo WFC ending in May 2014 messed with those plans. I had plans in the background for an elaborate Mario Kart 8 tournament series, but as senior year of high school got hectic I had no choice, but scrapping the story elements for the MK8 tournament series and just doing standard Mario Kart 8 tournaments. The FxD Center Mayhem series did well, but between the start of college approaching and other factors, the tournament series didn’t last long. Also, while the format of hosting every Friday and Saturday whenever a host was available proved successful at first, when I tried abridging the series for another hiatus the numbers dwindled. None of these tournaments were bad attendance wise and the Falcon Kart 7 + 8 finale went off without many hitches, it just fell victim to the old hiatus spell. I took another break after December 2014, but I didn’t stop thinking about ideas for tournaments in this time span.

Come August 2015 I wanted a change, Mario Kart 8 wasn’t hitting the same levels of fun as Mario Kart Wii did for me so I decided I would switch over to Sm4sh. This led to Fight To The Finish, a Sm4sh tournament series, getting created. This tournament ran from August 2015 to March 2016 and proved extremely successful. After the mixed results for the past few seasons, Fight To The Finish proved a second tournament renaissance and was extremely popular. I didn’t plan for a second season though and due to this I spent time working on one quickly. Unfortunately, life kept me busy and it wasn’t until January 2017 that I could begin hosting Fight To The Finish Season 2. This season had its good moments, but it didn’t live up to the hype as the first season. There were also a few questionable organization choices here, but overall the series was fine. Unfortunately, after Fight To The Finish finished in mid-2017, the tournaments didn’t peak beyond this point again.

Senior year of college proved the busiest year yet and I didn’t get much time for organizing tournaments. I hosted a few occasional tournaments related to Fight To The Finish; however, Fight To The Finish Season 3 never happened. There weren’t any more tournaments until the Grab Bag tournament series in summer 2018. Grab Bag like its name implies was a filler tournament series with different games each tournament. Seeing as how the game varied per tournament it was hard getting large turnouts consistently. There were a few memorable tournaments, but it wasn’t the same as past tournaments. The series lasted 12 tournaments which lead into the 200th Tournament Festival which should have preceded the next tournament series. The 200th Tournament Festival unfortunately I felt didn’t live up to its hype since while there were many different events it didn’t get advertised enough nor organized the strongest. This tournament was the first time I used Smash.gg in a while and it shows for some events. There were some fun parts of the 200th Tournament Festival; however, it could have been better and didn’t hold a candle to the 100th tournament.

Now remember how I said the 200th tournament should have preceded a future tournament series? Well, life had other plans between working full-time, master’s classes, and running my college’s Smash team. Although I didn’t do much in 2019, I hosted several offline Smash Ultimate tournaments and hosted one tournament at the end of 2019. Now that 2020 is in full swing I plan to get back into the game, but it’s much different from the past. Through-out the past 100 tournaments there have been several highs and low. My new goal is working on a series that I am proud of and reaches the same heights that Blast Of The Past, Superstar Showdown, and Fight To The Finish did. As for the future, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the tournament series!