The Opponent - Event Report

The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament 3 at The Beast In The East 9

2026-07-26T00:00:00-04:00

Mystery tournament contenders select the first of their 2-3 games. Video credit: @CaptainNoFun_G on Twitter. Used with permission.

I've attended The Beast In The East, a gathering of competitive rhythm game and fighting game players, since their second event in 2017, which was held in a vacant lot in Military Circle Mall in Norfolk, VA, on the border of my home town of Virginia Beach. They have steadily grown over the years and in 2019, it was large enough to warrant moving to the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton, VA, about 45 minutes away. I contributed to their proceedings by bringing my own gaming setups for other attendees to play on freely throughout the weekend. I've also held some mystery tournaments there, though The Beast In The East 9 was the first event I was able to do so with official backing. Official support for community-run tournaments was significantly expanded this year, with a dedicated communication channel for community tournament organizers and a start.gg page for the community events. The organizers also supported each other, and I was able to borrow a second portable monitor so the game instructions can be shown on either side of the TV, close to both players. I would like to thank everyone involved with the community tournaments for making this tournament possible.

Upgrading the Setup

In preparation for The Beat In The East 9, and for any future events after, I took it upon myself to expand my controller in every way I could think of, over two months starting in May 2026. After the previous tournament at the DC Riichi Mahjong Open in Arlington, VA, I felt a need to expand my own influence myself, after considering how much of my own time and money I've invested making the mystery tournament experience as polished and smooth for the players as I possibly can. I implemented every feature I could think of to shorten the time between sitting down and playing a game, on top of making it more visibly appealing for passersby with a copious amount of colored lights. I've dubbed the renewed system as Lutero, which refers to the scripts that launch the batch files that prepare the games. Upgrades include RGB-lighted buttons that match the instruction sheet and a large, glowing red button as an alternative to the NFC cards. I had an ESP8266 microcontroller lying in my parts bin for years and a number of spare WS2812 RGB LED "NeoPixel" modules from a previous project, and I finally found a use for them in the IMB2 dual arcade controller. The buttons lighting up in response to the game being launched is inspired by GP2040-CE's RGB LED features, but is implemented externally with a separate microcontroller that drives 32 NeoPixels, two for each button. The PC communicates to the microcontroller on each game launch, which lights up the chain of lights accordingly. I bought transparent buttons during a clearance sale at Focus Attack to use with my RGB lights, and after installing everything, the effect immediately looked even better than I imagined. It's rare that an idea of mine at this scale turns out so well on the first try.

The big red button originally launched a randomly selected game immediately, as if a card was inserted into the reader. In June, I developed an interactive menu in Godot that launches the games, acting as a catalog of the available games. This method replaces the purely random, non-interactive function of the red button. I did need to update my batch scripts to account for quirks in the way Godot launches external processes. The menu is much more accessible and eliminates the risk of the cards being mishandled or lost, however I feared that showing all of the games and letting players choose will lead to only games familiar to them being played, at the expense of my original goal of giving incentive to explore new games. Going by the program logs, that is exactly what happened in The Beast In The East. I prepared nearly 400 games for the sake of completion—I would think it strange as a player for only a few King of Fighters games to be installed, for example—and the majority were never played outside of the tournament. To help combat this, I added the Random button that highlights a random game in the list. It attempts to pick a game that has not been chosen in the last 100 launches, to encourage players to discover new games. It does not immediately launch the game, however, though I considered doing so to recreate the original random button function.

At the Venue

As a community tournament organizer, I was allowed early entry to the convention floor to install my setup in a dedicated table in the middle of the hall. I took these photos before general admission opened to showcase the menu and the RGB buttons. I own one portable monitor for the instructions, which means the player opposite it will need to lean further than the player seated next to it. For the tournament proper, I was able to borrow a spare monitor of the same size from another community organizer that owned several of them. I am considering buying another monitor like it solely for the redundancy for events of this size.

<!-- <a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-12.jpg">klzzwxh:0028{: .image-process-thumb9}/a -- a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-13.jpg"img alt="X-Men: Mutant Academy 2, for PlayStation." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-13.jpg" title="X-Men: Mutant Academy 2, for PlayStation."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-14.jpg"img alt="AzuFight, a doujin game for PC." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-14.jpg" title="AzuFight, a doujin game for PC."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-15.jpg"img alt="Punch-Out, for Wii. The players are using the traditional pads, and the arcade buttons are unlit to indicate it is not used for this game." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-15.jpg" title="Punch-Out, for Wii. The players are using the traditional pads, and the arcade buttons are unlit to indicate it is not used for this game."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-16.jpg"img alt="Great Bishi Bashi Champ, an arcade game. Note the differently-colored buttons, as it does not use the joysticks." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-16.jpg" title="Great Bishi Bashi Champ, an arcade game. Note the differently-colored buttons, as it does not use the joysticks."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-19.jpg"img alt="Art of Fighting 3, a Neo-Geo game." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-19.jpg" title="Art of Fighting 3, a Neo-Geo game."/a/p !-- [![Fight Fever, a Neo-Geo game.]({static}images/bite9-17.jpg "Fight Fever, a Neo-Geo game."){: .image-process-thumb9}]({static}images/bite9-17.jpg)[![Glove on Fight 2: Gleam of Force, a doujin game for PC.]({static}images/bite9-18.jpg "Glove on Fight 2: Gleam of Force, a doujin game for PC."){: .image-process-thumb9}]({static}images/bite9-18.jpg) -- pThis is a selection of games played before and after the tournament. I took these photos on my phone, and was unable to use my phone during the tournament proper as I was using it as a wired mobile hotspot connected to my laptop for streaming. Many people throughout the weekend approached me to ask about this setup and whether I built it myself. I constructed the IMB2 arcade controls and engineered the game launch flow, and it got a tremendous response from all who played on it. The colored buttons show through in some of these photos beneath the players' hands./p h2 id="the-tournament"The Tournament/h2 div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/o0qjjf56SoA?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;" referrerpolicy="strict-origin"/iframe/div pbr //p pOne of the highest priorities of this tournament was to ensure a video record was made that can be used to pitch my service to other gaming events. I was able to stream and capture the tournament footage on my personal Twitch channel at a href="https://twitch.tv/TheOpponent"twitch.tv/TheOpponent/a using my phone as a mobile hotspot, with a single webcam showing the players. However, I spread myself thin throughout the weekend, and I had multiple responsibilities on Saturday, the day of the tournament. I had hoped to use the microphone built into the webcam to get audio of the crowd and/or the players, and it failed to capture any usable audio. Even then, the tournament was located next to multiple dance game tournaments running at the same time, so it wasn't likely I would have gotten good crowd noise anyway. I also didn't have a microphone available for my own commentary, as the microphone on my laptop was disabled at the BIOS level for privacy reasons. The video at the top of this article is the only one I could find that had any kind of crowd noise. That video is also the only one that shows the entire flow of game selection, including spinning the wheel, the submonitors on either side of the TV changing to the game's instruction sheet, and the arcade buttons lighting up to match. /p pOn July 20, I watched the recorded stream on Twitch to provide post-commentary, embedded above. Several minutes of downtime were edited out of the raw footage and player names and scores added in an overlay. The commentary on this stream was largely a candid post-mortem of the experience running the tournament. It admittedly wasn't a flawless experience for the players due to some errors on my part./p pThe tournament was single elimination with 32 players signed up. 24 players checked in, with one walk-up substitute for a no-show. The tournament was scheduled to begin at 6:00 PM EDT, but because some players were registered in multiple tournaments running at the same time slot, I chose to give time for late players to check in. As a result, the first round started at 6:15 PM. 58 games were played in the tournament, the largest amount of games yet, with no players taking advantage of the offer to replay the first game they lose in a matchup. The YouTube video above has timestamps for each game in the description./p h3 id="game-list"Game List/h3 ul liThe Last Blade 2 /li liThe King of Fighters XI/li liTatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars /li liFighter's History Dynamite (a href="https://gamehackfan.github.io/karnovre/"Karnov's Revenge Revolution hack/a )/li liTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (a href="https://romhack.ing/database/content/entry/1c1Y52DJQa2cKX00NbNkMg/grandmasters-edition-tmnt-tournament-fighters"Grandmasters Edition hack/a)/li liAggressors of Dark Kombat /li liVirtua Fighter 2 (Saturn)/li liBattle K-Road /li liZero Divide 2 /li liBreakers Revenge /li liGuilty Gear XX Slash /li liPsychic Force 2012 /li liTekken 5: Dark Resurrection /li liDead or Alive (PS1)/li liBattle Tryst /li liSuper Street Fighter II Turbo (a href="https://newlegacy.fr"New Legacy hack/a)/li liAstra Superstars /li liDOA2 Hardcore (PS2, Japan version)/li liHinokakera Chaotic Eclipse /li liSamurai Kirby/li liKiller Instinct 2 /li liDengeki Bunko: Fighting Ignition Climax/li liBoxing (Atari 2600)/li liEvil Zone /li liNight Warriors /li liBloody Roar Extreme /li liTokimeki Memorial Taisen Puzzle-dama /li liBattle Monsters /li liSolitary Fighter /li liSpace Invaders: The Original Game /li liAdvanced VG 2 /li li1 on 1 Government /li liWarpath: Jurassic Park /li liBig Bang Beat -Revolve- /li liUltimate Fighting Championship /li liSoul Calibur II (Extra VS, Charade Mirror)/li liInuyasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale /li liTop Ranking Stars /li liSonic the Fighters /li liThe Karate Tournament /li liToy Fighter /li liThe Battle of Yu Yu Hakusho /li liFatal Fury: Wild Ambition /li liStreet Fighter II' Special Champion Edition (Hyper speed 10)/li liPokémon Close Combat /li liAlien Challenge /li liStreet Fighter III: 3rd Strike (a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/2026/01/the-big-huge-mystery-games-tournament-2-at-super-magfest-2026.html#games-list:~:text=Street%20Fighter%20III%3A%203rd%20Strike%20%2D%20The%20Karate%20Tournament"Makoto Mirror/a)/li liUltra Fight da Kyanta 2/li /ul h4 id="semi-finals"Semi-finals/h4 ul liRevengers of Vengeance /li liAgress /li liWeaponLord /li liBattlecry /li liStreet Fighter II (Super Game Boy)/li /ul h4 id="grand-finals"Grand Finals/h4 ul liPuchi Carat /li liGarouden Breakblow - Fist or Twist /li liGlove on Fight 2 /li liVirtua Fighter 10th Anniversary /li liFighting Layer /li /ul pAs with the previous tournament, I gave the Semi-finals round nothing but black cards, my most difficult game selections. The cards all look identical, so I have no knowledge of which cards contain which games as I shuffle them into the wheel. As I didn't have a Loser's Finals round in this tournament, it was the closest equivalent to the penultimate stage where I would give the players who reached this point the greatest challenge I could offer (and I wasn't even able to call them losers for getting that far)./p pemBattle Tryst/em runs on Konami M2 arcade hardware, which was unplayable on MAME for many years. Several weeks before The Beast In The East, a new custom fork by Tovarichtch was released as a preview build that overhauls the driver and makes the games on that hardware playable at full speed, or close to it on mid-range hardware like the Beelink SER5 I use. I took a risk in including it despite little time to give it proper testing, because another primary goal of the tournaments is to expose little-known games to a new audience, and a Konami game released in 1998 and only playable for a worldwide audience for the first time less than a month ago is a prime example of that, especially since there were no guides written for it at the time. /p pRelated to that, I like to include notable ROM hacks and less-played versions of popular games in the opening round of the tournament where the audience is the largest. I want to give exposure to extensive efforts to rebalance and bugfix games with smaller but dedicated scenes, and including unfamiliar builds of the most popular games is meant to challenge players familiar with the most-played versions with incompatible muscle memory. Some of the most comprehensive hacks also change movesets and simplify the most complex inputs, so everyone gets some degree of resistance early on regardless of their skill level./p pTwo games had to be skipped due to technical issues: emIdol Showdown/em failed to recognize one of the controller sides, and the PC port of emGuilty Gear Isuka/em failed to launch. emIdol Showdown/em was fixed after the tournament by enabling Steam Input (I suspect an update between the time I tested it and tournament day was the cause of the sudden controller incompatibility), but I was not able to diagnose what kept emGuilty Gear Isuka/em from starting. I should be able to use emIdol Showdown/em in the next tournament, but I may need to resort to the arcade version of emGuilty Gear Isuka/em if I include that as well./p pI was guaranteed a three hour block by the staff for this tournament, but even after the many measures I took to maximize player turnaround, it ended at 9:20 PM EDT. After deleting downtime between matches searching for the next players, the tournament video was just below three hours in length. Had I chosen to enforce the starting time of 6:00 PM, I may have been able to end at exactly 9:00 PM. Because of the time considerations from some players failing to appear in a timely manner and some games unexpectedly taking a long time to resolve, I did not use the boss cards which contain longer games. I use those cards for Winner's Finals in double elimination, but there's no true equivalent to it in single elimination. For the same reason, I changed Semi-finals from first-to-3 to first-to-2 (I explained to the players before the tournament started that this may happen depending on remaining time), and only added one black card to the wheel after round 1 (which was never rolled) and not continuously unlike the last tournament. /p pFinally, for Grand Finals I allow the finalists to freely choose from all unplayed games, but in a first for my tournaments, they both insisted that the last games are also randomly chosen. For this, I selected five final games and randomized their order. There was one caveat to this: One of the final games was a black card, and it came up in game 5. The game was emOshidashi Zintrick/em, a somewhat obtuse puzzle game for Neo-Geo CD. I made an executive decision to abort that game immediately, as I felt it would not have been a satisfying conclusion to a mystery tournament. The final game was instead emFighting Layer/em, a much more fitting end game. There was a cabinet running that game in on the venue floor last year, but it didn't return this year./p h2 id="future-challenges"Future Challenges/h2 pOne of my greatest concerns is tournament length. The last thing I want to do is bore the audience by making it run for longer than advertised. The games I run have widely varying average lengths, between 1-5 minutes depending on genre and how many rounds they last. I always get nervous when the latter happens, because I fear that the audience can become disengaged or leave. When I attend mystery tournaments myself, that's what I feel when something runs past the point I'm interested in it. This is an unavoidable reality of my format of randomly selected games, so I decided to make it a feature of my tournaments: the game selection is designed to keep the players on unstable footing, and indeed there were multiple matchups where a 30-second game immediately followed one that lasted several minutes./p pBetween the previous tournament and this one, I got feedback asking for more non-fighting games. I prepared several dozen such games, most of which are competitive puzzle games. I intended to add them after round 1, but I second-guessed myself and hesitated on adding most of them to the bracket. The advice I read for running mystery game tournaments is to open with reputable, reliable choices for fighting games and then gradually add more unfamiliar and non-fighting games as the bracket goes on, but I decided to keep to mostly safe choices, as I was constantly watching the time and tried to keep to my scheduled block with so many players. I believe I can address this and be more ambitious with game selections by imposing a smaller cap for entries. I allowed up to 32 signups, which was reached on the first day of the event, but reducing to 16 will allow running double elimination, which means the competitors will play more games, and keeping the same 3-hour block will allow for more long games. One of the concerns I had with single elimination is that I felt like I had to use safe choices for round 1, because I wouldn't want any players who got eliminated in the first round to have played for less than two minutes because a game could end faster than the average fighting game match. Double elimination guarantees the competitors will play a minimum of four games, so I could be more ambitious with game selection in every phase./p pI failed to get any audio from the crowd and players for this tournament, so the commentary I recorded on Twitch after the fact is intended as a substitute. The proper solution for all of the issues related to audio is to bring redundant equipment, including more microphones and webcams, and possibly hire a small staff to manage other aspects of the tournament such as the bracket so I can focus on interacting with the crowd and the stream chat. If I were to mic the players, it would be between the arcade controls and the TV, and that would cause an obstruction. I would need to elevate the TV six inches or more off the table to keep the microphone away from the screen./p pOf the positive feedback I've received for the setup, one commenter noted it was scalable compared to the mystery tournament setups seen at Combo Breaker, since the PC and the controllers are in a single self-contained setup and not using real console hardware and hard copies of individual games. Combo Breaker's mystery tournament is many orders of magnitude above my own in scale and budget, with a large number of stations and copies of games with a full paid staff managing them, enabling them to run pools and host a far larger number of participants. I'm a single individual running emulators and Steam games with homemade arcade controls built and funded by myself. Rebuilding the entire setup at current market prices for PC parts, lumber, and arcade components will approach $1,000 USD, to say nothing of the labor of recreating the IMB2. If I should be able to duplicate the setup, I would be able to run pools myself, or perhaps a mystery tournament spanning multiple days./p pa href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-20.jpg"img alt="WhoDat poses with his mystery tournament trophy. Left: DragonCharlz. Right: coderius, senkou0." class="image-process-article-image" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/bite9-20.jpg" title="WhoDat poses with his mystery tournament trophy. Left: DragonCharlz (second place). Right: coderius, senkou0."/a/p pI put a great amount of time and money over the previous two months to prepare for this event, the first tournament I held for The Beast In The East in years, and I feel I've done everything I could to make the tournament thrilling and unpredictable for the players and spectators, all for the purpose of showcasing my services for any event coordinators who might read this post. My light-up arcade controls, instructions submonitor, and game selection turned a lot of heads throughout the weekend too. I did have to service the setup several times, but no more than the amount of time I expected to. Looking back at what went right and wrong, I think I would have made fewer errors if I didn't take on so much responsibility during the weekend. The bulk of the preparation work (augmenting the hardware and writing scripts for and researching 400 games) is already done, so I won't need to devote so much of my spare time preparing for future events again. The setup has proven reliable enough to run unattended for most of the weekend, so I would like to be able to spend more time enjoying other games on the floor rather than supervise my equipment./p pIf reading this post and watching the tournament archive made you interested in commissioning me to run this tournament at your own event, contact me at the e-mail address at the bottom of this page. Be prepared to answer questions on the size and operating hours of the venue, the availability of displays, tables, and projectors, and how many players you expect will register./p

The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament Side Event at the DC Riichi Mahjong Open 2026

2026-04-02T00:00:00-04:00

video width="100%" height="100%" controls title="Kart Fighter, the last grand finals game, in play at The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament side event."source src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-01.mp4" type="video/mp4"/video div class="admonition aside" p class="admonition-title"Aside/p pNext time I run a video game tournament at a mahjong event, I'm calling it Chombo Breaker./p /div pFollowing the conclusion of the a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/2026/01/the-big-huge-mystery-games-tournament-2-at-super-magfest-2026.html"mystery games tournament I held at MAGFest/a in January, I was asked by the staff member who oversaw it to run another for an event they were also helping to organize the following March, the a href="https://dcriichimahjong.com/dco-2026/"DC Riichi Mahjong Open 2026/a tournament in Arlington, VA, next to Washington, DC. I was not planning on attending the mahjong tournament proper, but I took the opportunity to get the most out of my mystery tournament setup away from home with a guaranteed audience, even if it had to be at my own expense./p pThe mystery tournament took place at 8:30 PM EDT on Saturday, March 28, the first of the two days of the mahjong tournament. The mahjong tournament reached its player cap of 160 players. Of those, 11 signed up for my tournament, but only 8 had checked in. One player had to drop out in the middle of the bracket. As a result, the event was much closer in scale to the tournaments I run at my local venue, but with an entirely new audience./p pNote that although this post is written as a companion to the previous Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament report, this tournament was not advertised under that title. Several audience members and passersby inquired about a href="({static}/2025/07/multi-game-pc-setup-with-dynamic-instructions-display.html)"my setup/a between and during matches, as well as before the tournament, as I had established it four hours before the scheduled start time./p h2 id="format"Format/h2 pThe format for this tournament largely followed the same as the MAGFest event, with some experimental changes. As with last time, the start of the bracket seeded the wheel with 16 games of varying notoriety but genuine reputable quality, but after the first round, I started to populate the wheel with black NFC cards that are completely featureless. These cards contain the games I normally reserve for loser's finals, the most challenging to control and/or considerably most jank or poor in game feel or other perceived quality. While I know what games are on the black cards, I have no knowledge of which cards contain which games as I shuffle the deck and start replacing numbered cards with the black cards starting in round 2, when I decide the players are getting too comfortable, or if I decide for another reason to disrupt the pace of the tournament. For loser's finals, the roulette is entirely filled with black cards, because the two players who get that far are losers and need to be treated as such./p pa href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-10.jpg"img alt="Card roulette wheel, completely populated with plain black cards." class="image-process-article-image" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-10.jpg" title="Card roulette wheel, completely populated with plain black cards."/a/p pThe small number of players allowed me to run the entire tournament as double elimination. However, due to me misreading the bracket structure, I inadvertently held off on using the boss cards for grand finals rather than winner's finals./p pFor spectators, a small projector was furnished by event staff and aimed at the wall next to the players. Despite the keystone, it was adequate for the audience. I had actually brought my own cheap projector for this event, but the projector they provided was much better than mine despite also being cheap, as it had superior viewing range and a built-in tripod./p h2 id="games-list"Games List/h2 pa href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-01.jpg"img alt="DOA2 Hardcore for PlayStation 2." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-01.jpg" title="DOA2 Hardcore for PlayStation 2."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-02.jpg"img alt="Fighting Vipers for PlayStation 2." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-02.jpg" title="Fighting Vipers for PlayStation 2."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-03.jpg"img alt="WWF WrestleMania the Arcade Game." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-03.jpg" title="WWF WrestleMania the Arcade Game."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-04.jpg"img alt="Ultra Fight da Kyanta 2." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-04.jpg" title="Ultra Fight da Kyanta 2."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-05.jpg"img alt="A!, Taisen Shiyo, commonly known as AzuFight, a doujin fighting game for PC." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-05.jpg" title="A!, Taisen Shiyo, commonly known as AzuFight, a doujin fighting game for PC."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-06.jpg"img alt="Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S for 3DO. Despite the similar title, it is not to be confused with Sailor Moon S for SNES." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-06.jpg" title="Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S for 3DO. Despite the similar title, it is not to be confused with Sailor Moon S for SNES."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-07.jpg"img alt="Boxing for Atari 2600. Note the audience members getting into the action." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-07.jpg" title="Boxing for Atari 2600. Note the audience members getting into the action."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-08.jpg"img alt="Shadow: War of Succession for 3DO. The match has ended, with Viper despondent as he waits for Erika to finish him off." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-08.jpg" title="Shadow: War of Succession for 3DO. The match has ended, with Viper despondent as he waits for Erika to finish him off."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-09.jpg"img alt="Gun Fight, an arcade game from 1975. The roulette contains two black cards among the standard numbered cards." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-09.jpg" title="Gun Fight, an arcade game from 1975. The roulette contains two black cards among the standard numbered cards."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-17.jpg"img alt="KemoFre Fight 2nd, a doujin fighting game for PC." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-17.jpg" title="KemoFre Fight 2nd, a doujin fighting game for PC."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-13.jpg"img alt="Smash Remix, a mod for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-13.jpg" title="Smash Remix, a mod for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-19.jpg"img alt="Sailor Moon SuperS - Various Emotion for Saturn." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-19.jpg" title="Sailor Moon SuperS - Various Emotion for Saturn."/a /p p39 games were played over two hours, and no players opted to repeat any games. Games marked with an asterisk * were stored in black cards./p ul liSailor Moon S (a href="https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/8371/"Tournament Edition hack/a)/li liSoul Calibur (Dreamcast)/li liDOA2 Hardcore (PS2, Japan version)/li lia href="https://gamehackfan.github.io/karnovre/"Karnov's Revenge Revolution/a /li liFighting Layer/li liSuper Street Fighter II Turbo (a href="https://newlegacy.fr"New Legacy hack/a)/li liFighting Vipers (PS2)/li liBreakers Revenge/li liWWF WrestleMania (Arcade)/li liTatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars/li liUltra Fight da Kyanta 2/li lia href="https://mizuumi.wiki/w/AzuFight:_Taisen_Shiyo"AzuFight/a/li liDragon Ball Z 2 Super Battle/li liPretty Soldier Sailor Moon S (3DO)*/li liBattle Monsters*/li liTekken Tag Tournament (PS2)/li liSailor Moon SuperS - Various Emotion*/li liUltimate Fighting Championship/li liBoxing (Atari 2600)/li liTekken 4/li liShadow: War of Succession*/li liGun Fight/li liThe Outfoxies/li /ul h4 id="winners-finals-games"Winner's Finals Games/h4 ul liRing of Destruction/li liTao Taido*/li liStreet Fighter III: 3rd Strike ("The Karate Tournament" custom ruleset, see the aside in the a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/2026/01/the-big-huge-mystery-games-tournament-2-at-super-magfest-2026.html#games-list:~:text=Street%20Fighter%20III%3A%203rd%20Strike%20%2D%20The%20Karate%20Tournament"previous tournament report/a)/li /ul h4 id="losers-finals-games"Loser's Finals Games/h4 ul liBlandia*/li liMega Man 7*/li lia href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1320240/zoku_sonohigurashi_vs_touhou_universe_2/"Zoku Sonohigurashi vs. Touhou Universe 2/a*/li lia href="https://www.dlsite.com/home/work/=/product_id/RJ230326.html"KemoFre Fight 2nd/a*/li liZombie Revenge*/li /ul h4 id="grand-finals-games"Grand Finals Games/h4 ul liChuChu Rocket/li lia href="https://smashremix.net"Smash Remix/a/li liKart Fighter*/li /ul h4 id="reset-games"Reset Games/h4 ul liMortal Kombat (1992)/li liUmineko Golden Fantasia/li liGuilty Gear Xrd Rev2/li li1 on 1 Government/li liChaos Code: New Sign of Catastrophe/li /ul pI took the intervening two months between this tournament and the last to expand the pool of games. I have worked out a method to play 3DO games using the a href="https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Phoenix_(emulator)"Phoenix/a emulator, crafting the batch files that launch them to copy premade configuration files for each game into the expected location before launching the emulator, then using NirCmd to press the hotkeys that will activate fullscreen mode and load the save state. (The Opera core for RetroArch has compatibility issues that Phoenix has solved. Phoenix also has support for Atari Jaguar games, but I have not explored it yet.) Save states can be loaded before starting emulation normally, which will also bypass the need to load the BIOS normally as well. The two 3DO games I was hoping would come up the most, emPretty Soldier Sailor Moon S/em (not related to the SNES game with a similar title aside from the subject matter) and emShadow: War of Succession/em, did get played. I must, however, express my disgust that the emPretty Soldier Sailor Moon S/em players decided to make it a Sailor Chibimoon mirror match./p pAlso as a result of the black cards poisoning the well throughout the bracket, we somehow got all three emSailor Moon/em fighting games I had available, in reverse order of quality. Another fortuitous coincidence that I didn't plan for./p pLoser's finals ran to game 5. For grand finals, I once again gave the players, starting with the loser's finalist, carte blanche over all games on numbered cards that were yet to be played, the boss cards, and the unplayed black cards. I started to encourage them to try their luck with the black cards in the hopes of evening the playing field. As a result, grand finals resulted in a reset, which also ran to game 5. This was close to the ideal result I had been hoping for regarding the end of the bracket, maximum carnage with the largest number of games played possible./p h2 id="other-remarks"Other Remarks/h2 pMy favorite photo in the above gallery is of Atari 2600 emBoxing/em, with several members of the audience shadow-boxing to the action on screen./p pLast year, I bought a pair of 8BitDo wired controllers to allow running games that cannot be comfortably played with arcade controls. I prepared several games to be played with these controls for the MAGFest tournament, but none got selected. This year, two such games were played: emChuChu Rocket/em and emSmash Remix/em, both in grand finals. Introducing two more controllers to the PC causes issues with some emulators regarding controller order, particularly with Flycast, which is already inconsistent with controllers that share the same vendor ID. It is especially important for my use case that controller order is not changed for any reason, due to the a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BdMP-MslsXd/"IMB2/a, the double-wide, marble-patterned two-player arcade construction of my design that I use for the majority of games, and the unexpected reversal potentially causing incorrect match results to be reported. Flycast reversed the player order for the Dreamcast games in spite of testing I did earlier that day, so I will likely need to use the Flycast core within RetroArch for these events in the future, as RetroArch has proven more reliable in preserving controller order after some adjustments and upgrades I made after the MAGFest tournament. This snafu with controller order was the only issue with the software this tournament, and it did not require me to abort or replace any games./p pThree games got particularly strong reactions from the crowd: em1 on 1 Government/em, emZoku Sonohigurashi vs. Touhou Universe 2/em, and emKemoFre Fight 2nd/em. em1 on 1 Government/em is a perennial favorite of mystery events, an obscure arcade sports game that I have come to describe as "This is totally a fighting game, just trust me". Before the game is done, any doubt within the crowd is completely evaporated. One person who had played it exactly once before at a previous showing of my setup, but was not playing in this tournament, likened it to "a basketball game with emTekken/em controls", even though it uses buttons appropriate for basketball and not emTekken/em. Still, I'm still of the belief that it started development as a fighting game before pivoting to basketball, even though this is less likely for its PS1 prequel, em1 on 1/em and its updated version, emSimple 1500 Series Vol. 30: THE Basket: 1 on 1 Plus/em. emGovernment/em is so popular in my area that it was requested for free play shortly before the tournament began, and a complete match was played before then. For some reason, Dr. T is a very popular character here, and in nearly every tournament match to date including this one, someone chooses him./p pa href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-11.jpg"img alt="Zoku Sonohigurashi vs. Touhou Universe 2 character select screen." class="image-process-thumb4" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-11.jpg" title="Zoku Sonohigurashi vs. Touhou Universe 2 character select screen."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-12.jpg"img alt="Much of the audience taking pictures and/or video of the Zoku Sonohigurashi vs. Touhou Universe 2 character select screen." class="image-process-thumb4" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-12.jpg" title="Much of the audience taking pictures and/or video of the Zoku Sonohigurashi vs. Touhou Universe 2 character select screen."/a /p pThe two Fighter Maker 2000 games emZoku Sonohigurashi vs. Touhou Universe 2/em and emKemoFre Fight 2nd/em both resonated greatly with the mahjong-playing audience, as there is an apparently near 100% overlap of interest between riichi mahjong and the subjects of these games. When both games came up, nearly everyone in the audience started taking photos and videos of what they were seeing. The two photos above were taken within seconds of each other. I even instructed them to take pictures of the instruction monitors showing the titles of these games so that they may research them after the event. However, playing them comes with the complication of Japanese locales, and neither game has any fan patches to simplify changing the locale for these games, unlike more popular FM2K-based games like emDong Dong Never Die/em. I can only hope that anyone so curious about playing these strange titles for themselves will find the resources they need to both download and play them./p pUnfortunately, despite one emKemoFre Fight 2nd/em player choosing Toki, they were not able to execute the fun Toki (emFist of the North Star/em) Easter egg./p h2 id="conclusion"Conclusion/h2 pa href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-15.jpg"img alt="The champion of the mystery tournament, holding up the trophy. The final game of the tournament was Chaos Code: New Sign of Catastrophe." class="image-process-article-image" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/dco2026-15.jpg" title="The champion of the mystery tournament, holding up the trophy. The final game of the tournament was Chaos Code: New Sign of Catastrophe."/a/p pThis event took place late in the evening, after five complete rounds of competitive riichi mahjong in the ballroom across the hall where I was holding my own event. I drove 200 miles from Virginia Beach to Alexandria solely to run this tournament at the request of the staff member who generously provided commentary for The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament 2, without any plans of playing any mahjong myself. The crowd reactions to strange competitive video games in the periphery of the popular fighting games and the great interest the organizers had in my mystery games setup were the primary motivations for running this event at my own expense. I would like to spread this setup as far as I can do so, but the primary obstacle is the size of the IMB2. I built it wide enough for two players to sit a comfortable distance from each other, with enough palm space for any player. Even though it can be carried by a single person, it is by no means transportable by air without tremendous cost. The two control PCBs within run GP2040-CE, and any attempts to minimize the controls for better travel will need to retain them. The secondary obstacle is the cost of travel./p pWith all of this said, if you're within reasonble distance from Virginia Beach, VA and you're interested in commissioning me to run this tournament at your own event, contact me at the e-mail address at the bottom of this page. Be prepared to answer questions on the size and operating hours of the venue, the availability of displays, tables, and projectors, and how many players you expect will register./p

The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament 2 at Super MAGFest 2026

2026-01-20T00:00:00-05:00

pa href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-01.jpg"img alt="Sailor Moon S for the Super Famicom at The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament 2." class="image-process-article-image" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-01.jpg" title="Sailor Moon S for the Super Famicom at The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament 2."/aemPhoto credit: MattoBii/em/p pIt occurred to me only this month that I've been attending MAGFest for 18 years (missing only 2017 due to a prior engagement), my first being MAGFest 6 in 2008. In the intervening years, I've participated in a number of tournaments, including mystery tournaments, and took note of what I saw as strengths and weaknesses of how they were hosted and organized. One of my pastimes is showing games I think are cool or interesting to people who aren't familiar with them, and mystery tournaments are a very efficient way to do that. The setup I used for this tournament is documented on a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/2025/07/multi-game-pc-setup-with-dynamic-instructions-display.html"this page/a./p pThroughout 2025, I hosted mystery tournaments at my local gaming venue to refine the tournament structure for the eventual return of The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament for Super MAGFest 2026. This event was far more successful than last year's show, to the point that I got a request to run it again for another event in the DC area this March. I have three non-negotiable priorities with my tournaments:/p h4 id="smooth-player-experience-in-regard-to-controls-and-instructions"Smooth player experience in regard to controls and instructions/h4 pI built my own two-player arcade-size controller for the express purpose of standardizing controls for games I run in public spaces. It currently uses a href="https://gp2040-ce.info/#/"GP2040-CE/a on both sides for their low cost and easy maintenance, and the joystick and buttons are Sanwa parts. This removes the need for players to bring their own controllers with the extra setup and removal time that incurs per playera href="#" class="annotation" annotation="I once helped run a tournament for \iGundam Wing Endless Duel\/i on SNES running in an arcade cabinet, but one player insisted on playing with a keyboard. We tried to accommodate, opening up the cabinet and allowing the player to connect their keyboard to the PC inside the cabinet and mapping their controls, but doing so added a significant delay before and after that player's sets, to the point that some players left before the tournament had ended. My own insistence on using only the controls I provide is motivated by that incident."[a]/a, at the cost of forcing them to use a button layout and joystick type they may not prefer. In the eight years the controller has been in service, I have never received any complaints about the quality of the controls or the layout./p h4 id="full-information-on-the-games-being-played"Full information on the games being played/h4 pSome mystery tournament organizers provide no instructions to the players at all for the games, forcing them to figure out the basic controls if it's their first time playing the game. I do not believe this to be a fun experience, so I write instruction sheets for every game I run with controls and some universal commands that I deem important for basic gameplay. There are a few things I won't disclose, however, to leave a little burden of discovery to the players. In particular, I do not include commands for throws in fighting games. The instructions are shown on a small monitor close to the players and are automatically changed as the game launches./p h4 id="tournament-duration"Tournament duration/h4 pTournaments in conventions are given a slot of one or two hours in schedule guides, but in practice, no tournament ever runs that shortly unless they have a small number of players. The registration system used by MAGFest allows a limit of up to 32 players with a waitlist, so I knew that two hours was a very conservative estimate from my experiences with past tournaments. The tournament began at 6:00 PM and ended at 9:07 PM, even with all of my measures to minimize downtime between game changes. This forced me to skip a number of games I planned for the finals, explained below./p h2 id="format"Format/h2 pUnlike mystery tournaments where the organizer selects the games and the order they are played in advance, I use a roulette wheel where 16 games of my choosing can be picked, but the exact games played are left to chance. Each game is contested for a single set, so every pair of players plays a different game. After a game concludes, it is not played again for the rest of the tournament. The wheel is restocked for each game played, and I have the option to replace games in the wheel at any time based on the conditions of the tournament. This means a large number of games I prepare do not get played./p pIn my local tournaments, I have a rule where the loser of a game may rematch that same game or spin for a different random game, to give them some agency while at a disadvantage. The majority of players choose to play a new game, but to maximize the amount of games shown at the convention, I introduced a new rule where the third game in a first-to-2 matchup must be a new roll. The grand finals set was first-to-3, but the losing player chose to reroll each time. Had the finals not gone 3-0, I would have only allowed one rematch in the same game per player./p pOf the 32 players registered and 7 players in the waitlist, 23 players turned up with three of them coming from the waitlist. For the tournament structure, I planned on running single elimination qualifiers with the top 8 going to a double elimination bracket. The combined runtime of all of the games by the end of the first round did not make this feasible, so I ran the entire tournament as single elimination. I believe all convention tournaments I run with a 32-player cap will be run this way going forward. The top 6 were entered into a single elimination bracket after two rounds of qualifiers. I was able to get a 3rd place match even with this structure, as MAGFest offered prizes to the top four players. All matchups before grand finals were first-to-2, and grand finals was first-to-3./p pFor grand finals, I normally allow the finalists to freely select any game that had not been played yet, including the special games reserved for winner's and loser's finals. Due to time constraints, for this tournament I changed the grand finals to only allow the games I had prepared for loser's finals, which I selected to be the most challenging to play due to frustrating controls, very unconventional gameplay, or generally poor quality. The games I reserve for winner's finals are those that take longer to set up and play, particularly modern games on Steam with longer rounds. Those games were not played at all./p h2 id="games-list"Games List/h2 pa href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-02.jpg"img alt="Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura for the PlayStation. The game cards and roulette wheel can be seen on the table below. A small monitor with game instructions is placed near the players." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-02.jpg" title="Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura for the PlayStation. The game cards and roulette wheel can be seen on the table below. A small monitor with game instructions is placed near the players."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-05.jpg"img alt="Ring of Destruction: Slammasters 2, an arcade game." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-05.jpg" title="Ring of Destruction: Slammasters 2, an arcade game."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-06.jpg"img alt="Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike for the PlayStation 2, running the Karate Tournament ruleset. See the aside below for more information." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-06.jpg" title="Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike for the PlayStation 2, running the Karate Tournament ruleset. See the annotation below for more information."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-07.jpg"img alt="Ultimate Fighting Championship for the Dreamcast." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-07.jpg" title="Ultimate Fighting Championship for the Dreamcast."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-08.jpg"img alt="Street Fighter X Tekken for the PlayStation 3." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-08.jpg" title="Street Fighter X Tekken for the PlayStation 3."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-09.jpg"img alt="Sonic the Fighters for the PlayStation 3, using the Community Edition hack." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-09.jpg" title="Sonic the Fighters for the PlayStation 3, using the Community Edition hack."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-10.jpg"img alt="Street Fighter Alpha 3, Mazi mode. Note the quot;L.O.quot; indicator on the bottom of the screen." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-10.jpg" title="Street Fighter Alpha 3, Mazi mode. Note the quot;L.O.quot; indicator on the bottom of the screen."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-11.jpg"img alt="Asuka 120% Special version 2 for the PlayStation." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-11.jpg" title="Asuka 120% Special version 2 for the PlayStation."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-12.jpg"img alt="Warpath: Jurassic Park for the PlayStation." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-12.jpg" title="Warpath: Jurassic Park for the PlayStation."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-03.jpg"img alt="Buriki One on the Hyper NeoGeo 64 arcade platform. The game uses an inverted control scheme with the buttons on the left side and the joystick on the right, and the arcade controller has been turned upside-down to match." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-03.jpg" title="Buriki One on the Hyper NeoGeo 64 arcade platform. The game uses an inverted control scheme with the buttons on the left side and the joystick on the right, and the arcade controller has been turned upside-down to match."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-14.jpg"img alt="Galactic Warriors, an arcade game." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-14.jpg" title="Galactic Warriors, an arcade game."/a a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-13.jpg"img alt="Mega Man 7 for the SNES, in the hidden battle mode." class="image-process-thumb9" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-13.jpg" title="Mega Man 7 for the SNES, in the hidden battle mode."/a /p p56 games were played in a span of three hours./p ul liJoJo's Bizarre Adventure /li liFighting Layer /li liAkatsuki Blitzkampf Ausf. Achse /li liSuper Street Fighter II Turbo (a href="https://newlegacy.fr"New Legacy hack/a)/li liBattle K-Road /li lia href="https://gamehackfan.github.io/karnovre/"Karnov's Revenge Revolution/a /li liDan-Ku-Ga /li liBreakers Revenge /li liStreet Fighter EX Plus Alpha /li liMatrimelee /li liSurvival Arts /li liStreet Fighter Alpha 2 /li liThe Outfoxies /li liZero Divide 2 /li liEvil Zone /li liSailor Moon S (a href="https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/8371/"Tournament Edition hack/a)/li liUltimate Mortal Kombat 3 /li lia href="https://retrogl79.itch.io/snk-vs-capcom-for-c64c128-stronger-edition"SNK vs. Capcom for C64: Stronger Edition/a/li liMighty Warriors /li liReal Bout Fatal Fury 2 /li liArt of Fighting 3 /li liGalactic Warriors /li liTekken 4 /li li1 on 1 Government /li liDOA2 Hardcore /li liUltimate Fighting Championship /li liStreet Fighter: The Movie (Tag Team mode)/li liTetris with Cardcaptor Sakura /li liVirtua Fighter 4 Final Tuned /li liKiller Instinct /li liStreet Fighter III: 3rd Strike ("The Karate Tournament" custom ruleset, see aside below)/li liStreet Fighter /li liStreet Fighter X Tekken /li liPower Stone /li liAlien Challenge /li liStreet Fighter III: 2nd Impact /li liSonic the Fighters (PlayStation 3)/li liSoulcalibur III (a href="https://8wayrun.com/threads/soulcalibur-iii-definitive-edition-for-ps2-release-v1-20.21386/"Community Edition hack v1.11/a)/li liSuper Puzzle Fighter II Turbo /li liMelty Blood Actress Again Current Code /li liStreet Fighter Alpha 3 (Mazi mode)/li liGuilty Gear /li liWar Gods /li liKiller Instinct 2 /li liBest of Best /li liAsuka 120% Special /li liWarpath: Jurassic Park /li liRing of Destruction /li liHolosseum /li liSoul Calibur II (GameCube; Extra VS, Charade Mirror)/li liSuper Dragon Ball Z /li /ul h4 id="3rd-place-games"3rd Place Games/h4 ul liStreet Fighter II: The World Warrior ("Choose Same Character" hack)/li liSamurai Shodown Sen /li /ul h4 id="grand-finals-games"Grand Finals Games/h4 ul liBuriki One /li liMega Man 7 /li liThe Master's Fighter/li /ul div class="admonition note" p class="admonition-title"Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike - The Karate Tournament/p pThis is a minigame of my own invention, and it requires a console version with all of the System Direction pages and Extra Options unlocked. Both players use Makoto. /p pIn the standard options, set the time limit to 30 seconds, best of 7 rounds, damage level to maximum, and handicap on. /p pIn Extra Option, set 1P and 2P Vitality on page 1 to 1, 1P/2P S.A. Gauge Length on page 2 to -8, S.A. Gauge Increase Speed on page 2 to 1, and Life Gauge Display on page 4 to Off./p pIn System Direction, set EX Move Energy Requirement on page 6 to 4, S.A. Gauge Max Start on page 8 to On, and All Super Arts on page 10 to On./p pAfter selecting characters, set both players to 1 handicap./p pSee a href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-15.png"this image/a for a reference on which System Direction and Extra Options to change./p pThis simulates a point karate tournament as closely as possible, where single clean hits decide rounds. With health and handicap set to the lowest possible values, it isn't a true one-hit KO mode, as a few light punches and kicks will not cause KO, but any stronger attack will. Players can use any Super Art and EX move from the start, but can only use two total for the entire match. /p pFor maximum effect, select the white and red palettes (Start+LP and Start+MP) and Makoto's stage. If you're using emulation, create a save state immediately after choosing the stage. I have found that the PS2 port included in the emStreet Fighter Anniversary Collection/em emulates better in PCSX2 than the Dreamcast port does in Flycast./p pIt got such positive response that I would like to host a tournament only of this minigame, similar to the tournament for the Samurai Kirby minigame in emKirby Super Star/em./p /div h2 id="issues-and-resolutions"Issues and Resolutions/h2 pThe highest priority I have with all of my tournaments is a smooth experience for the players, including what the spectators see on screen. The first game that was selected was emGuilty Gear XX Accent Core +R/em, but upon launching it, Steam raised an error regarding cloud sync. This was because I had forgotten to set Steam to offline mode, which would have prevented this. I did so, and although there would not have been any issues with Steam games after doing this, I decided to err on the side of caution out of consideration for the limited convention time and not use any Steam games at all for the tournament. I had the players spin again rather than take further chances with Steam problems, and the arcade game emJoJo's Bizarre Adventure/em was the actual first gamea href="#" class="annotation" annotation="\iJoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Heritage for the Future\/i was the first tournament I ever ran at MAGFest in 2017. I didn't know what I was doing at the time but those experiences tempered how I run tournaments now."[c]/a. The large volume of games I had that ran on emulators mitigated the problem with Steam cloud sync, though I had to miss out on running games like emNidhogg/em or emGuilty Gear Xrd Rev2/em or even emUltra Street Fighter IV/em with the a href="https://www.sf4remix.com/Main_Page"SF4 Remix mod/a. In order to prevent this from occurring again, strongI will need to set Steam to offline mode before packing/strong./p pI use a twin arcade stick construction with both players using their own GP2040-CE controller board. To expand the possibilities for game selections, I added two 8BitDo wired controllers with a traditional gamepad layout as controllers 3 and 4. To maximize the chances that the games assign the controllers to the correct players, I always plug in the boards in order in the same USB ports shortly after boot, and still some emulators are inconsistent about controller mappings. In my testing, I have found that RetroArch can be consistent with controller assignments even though it is notoriously difficult to configure in the best of times. A week before MAGFest, I found what I believed to be a consistent configuration for four controllers connected in a specific order in specific ports, even though the controller names did not match the physical devices. However, come tournament night, a handful of RetroArch games were missing controller mappings on one side. This is in spite of rigorous testing several nights before without the PC being used at any point between then and the tournament. I had no desire to configure RetroArch in situ, so I skipped over ema href="https://usagiru-orochi.itch.io/kunio-no-nekketsu-school-fighters"Kunio-kun no Nekketsu School Fighters/a/em on Genesis and emWarioWare/em Chicken Race on Game Boy Advance, two games I really wanted to showcase. Only these games had problems; the other games on RetroArch such as emSailor Moon S/em and emSNK vs. Capcom for C64/em ran perfectly. After I returned home, I recreated the exact environment from the tournament with the controllers plugged in the same order and found that the games in question all ran correctly with the expected controller mappings. strongI have yet to determine why only a small number of games did not respect the mappings I verified before the tournament/strong, which is troubling as I intend to bring this setup to future events this year. As a further sticking point, no games were chosen that used the 8BitDo controllers./p pOne last issue I had is comparatively minor, but a personal one. After the tournament, I was asked for social links. I am very bad about self-promotion, even for my personal projects I have put years of my life into. This will be solved by strongadding links to my website and points of contact to the attract mode video loop between games/strong./p h2 id="conclusion"Conclusion/h2 pa href="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-04.jpg"img alt="The top 4 players. First and second are in front, and third and fourth are behind. The grand champion holds the trophy I printed for this event." class="image-process-article-image" src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/images/magfest2025-04.jpg" title="The top 4 players. First and second are in front, and third and fourth are behind. The grand champion holds the trophy I printed for this event."/a/p pOverall, the tournament went as well as I could have hoped. I arrived more than 30 minutes in advance for the start of the tournament and that turned out to be exactly enough time to prepare. It is a tremendously complicated setup, with two discrete systems and two monitors with as many as six devices to connect to the game PC, but I feel it's worth the effort to ensure rapid player turnover in a time-constrained environment like a gaming convention. It was very fortunate that one of the last games played was emMega Man 7/em, fitting for the emMega Man X/em-themed Super MAGFest 2026. I can say with confidence that as long as I'm allowed to return to MAGFest as a staff member, The Big, Huge Mystery Games Tournament will be a yearly fixture./p