Fifth grader wins the first ever national Minecraft tournament

By Keith Nelson Jr. December 21, 2015

minecraft movie release date ps4 best of — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Very few lyrics succinctly sum up the boundless spirit of video games than late, great R&B singer Aaliyah’s “age ain’t nothing but a number.” This past Friday, a 10-year-old demonstrated how true that statement is when elementary school student Julien Wiltshire was crowned Super League’s Minecraft national champion this past weekend.

Wiltshire was awarded a $5,000 scholarship prize along with the Super Bolt trophy. Wiltshire was a member of the Seven Arrows Elementary Team, with his classmates from Pacific Palisades, CA. The prepubescent Minecraft warriors raked in a combined $10,000 at the first ever national Minecraft tournament after competing at the AMC Santa Monica 7 in Santa Monica, CA. The competition took place this past June.

More than one thousand players from across the United States gathered in 40 auditoriums from AMC, Regal and other major movie exhibitors. Each player had their own laptop in a first-person point of view, but are able to see a Bird’s Eye View of the gameplay on the movie screens. The competition was divided into three phases: Mayhem (free for all player vs. player), Build (cooperative building sessions) and Crystal Crater (survival game). The players cycled through these phases three times, with the exception of Cyrstal Crater which only happened twice.

The tournament’s age limit was based on a creed of “no gamers behind” according to the league’s FAQ page, but most of the gamers were between 6-18 years old. The fact the winner hailed from the halls of Seven Arrows is a bit more understandable once you speak to people at the school. “Many of our kids play Minecraft,” said Margarita Pagliai, Head of School, Seven Arrows Elementary in a press release about Wiltshire’s win. “When they heard about this new after school league they jumped at the chance to compete.” Pagliai says the game helped kids with STEM principles, so their brains weren’t rotting after spending hours a day on the game. The game has already been integrated into several school curricula around the world.

Kids are making money playing video games that make them smarter; age is nothing but a number and learning is nothing but a game.

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Keith Nelson Jr.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Keith Nelson Jr is a music/tech journalist making big pictures by connecting dots. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY he…

Gaming

Latest Nintendo Direct ushers in an age of Wii nostalgia

The player throws a bowling ball in Nintendo Switch Sports.

If 2021 was the year of the Game Boy Advance renaissance, then 2022 is the year of the Wii. At this point, the Nintendo Switch has outsold the Wii, but it still doesn’t feel like the Switch is as ubiquitous with casual gamers as the Wii was. Meanwhile, the Wii is getting just old enough that it’s starting to feel nostalgic and retro.
If Nintendo wants to continue to grow the Switch’s userbase, these yearnful Wii fans need to be its next target. Perhaps that’s why the latest Nintendo Direct felt like a love letter to the Wii era by featuring games like Nintendo Switch Sports, Mario Strikers: Battle League, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
Nintendo Direct - 2.9.2022
Let’s go bowling
At this point, most hardcore gaming fans who want a Nintendo Switch likely already own one. While those 100+ million players will continue to buy new video games, Nintendo still wants to sell 23 million more units this year alone. If it’s going to accomplish that, it needs to entice people who might not usually play video games or spend hundreds of dollars on a new system.
Nintendo was the most successful at doing this during the Wii era but moved away from this casual focus after the Wii U flopped. Focusing on its hardcore fans is what made the Nintendo Switch a runaway success right at launch, but we’re now almost five years in, and Nintendo is looking to maintain a growing audience.
Making the Nintendo Switch even more appealing to casuals and non-gamers seems to be the company’s next goal. Nintendo Switch Sports recapturing some of that Wii magic is the spearhead of this strategy.
Its predecessor Wii Sports is one of the most successful games of all time. Even people who’ve never played a video game might remember the game from the Wii’s heyday. Nintendo wants a Switch in every nursing home, school, or daycare if it isn’t all ready, and first-party titles like Nintendo Switch Sports make that a possibility.
If the game catches on with casual gamers and Nintendo makes it a bundled Switch game, there’s a chance that this could be the Switch’s next Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Animal Crossing: New Horizons from a sales perspective.

Wii Remember
Believe it or not, the Wii is over 15 years old. Young kids who played games on the Wii with their parents are now adults and likely have nostalgia for those experiences. Some may even consider it to be a retro console at this point. As such, it’s not surprising that Nintendo and other companies would dip back into the well of Wii-era IPs. It started with the Skyward Sword remaster last year, but several Wii-related announcements were in this Nintendo Direct too, which made it a real trip for those of us that grew up with these games on Wii.
Mario Strikers’ last great outing was on the Wii, and the sports spin-off series has been dormant for just long enough to where Nintendo fans are delighted that it’s making a grand return. Even Nintendo Switch Sports will trigger nostalgia for the millions of people who enjoyed it over 15 years ago.
Third parties are even taking notice. Aspyr decided to specifically remaster the Wii version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which is an odd choice considering that a more polished version of the game existed for Xbox 360 and PS3. Still, the Switch is the only console capable of preserving that Wii experience, and Aspyr ensures that the Wii port doesn’t get lost to time. For players who enjoyed the Wii but don’t want to dig out their system, sensor bar, and some Wii Remotes, releases like this will allow them to satiate their nostalgia. While games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 indicate that Nintendo isn’t abandoning its hardcore audience, it’s clear that the casual market is the Switch’s next great frontier. Many of the games featured in the February 9 Direct capitalize on a new wave of nostalgia for the Wii. Embracing that market and those causal players with these games might be the key to the Nintendo Switch’s continued success.

Gaming

The best Wii U games of all time

The Wii U era wasn’t the most commercially successful for Nintendo, with the system shipping only 13.5 million units over the course of its life. Despite the hardware being a commercial failure, the Wii U featured some of the best games ever released on a Nintendo platform.

In this guide to the best Wii U games, we’re going to highlight our favorites. Although there are still a handful of games that you can only play on the Wii U, many of the top games from the console have been ported to Switch (read our best Nintendo Switch games roundup for more on that). Even so, if you have a Wii U gathering dust, these games will breathe new life into it.

Gaming

Super Mario 3D World made it to Switch, but other Wii U games are still stranded

Wii U Composite

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury comes to Nintendo Switch this weekend giving the console another excellent first-party game. It’s the latest in a line of Wii U titles to receive a Switch port in the past few years, salvaging the best of the ill-fated two-screen system’s surprisingly strong library.

Even with games like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and Pikmin 3 making the jump to Switch, there’s a handful of strong Wii U games that haven’t -- and probably never will. That’s creating a generational dead zone that may leave games that dared to take advantage of the console’s bold concept forever trapped on the Wii U.