Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991

Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991 was a video game competition sponsored by Nintendo and held at nearly 60 college campuses throughout the United States. It was the first of two Campus Challenges.

Games

Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991 Cartridge

Like Nintendo World Championships 1990, the official event gave each player 6 minutes and 21 seconds to play in the contest, but there are three different minigames. The first minigame of the competition is to collect 25 coins in Super Mario Bros. 3. The next minigame is a version of Pin*Bot where players must get 100,000 points. The final minigame is Dr. Mario and this lasts until time expires. Once time does expire, a player's score is totaled using the following formula:

• Super Mario Bros. 3 score times 10
• + Pin Bot score times 1
• + Dr. Mario score times 100

Cartridge

There is only one known original copy of the 1991 Campus Challenge cartridge in existence. The game was found by a video game collector, Rob Walters, at a garage sale in New York City in 2006.^[1] The game sold for $14,000 in July 2009^[2] After 3 months, the game was resold on eBay for $20,100.^[3]

1991 Event Structure

The 1991 Campus Challenge was held at 58 college campuses and spring break locations. The event consisted of three stages. The main stage had the competition on 12 different game stations. The second stage was Nintendo Entertainment System systems with various games while the third stage had Game Boy systems. Attendees at the events could play as many times as they wanted and the highest score at the end of the day was announced the winner.

The winner from each location was flown to Disney World in Orlando over New Year's weekend in January 1992.^[4] All the competitors played in the first round followed by a second round with the six highest scoring players only. The final round was a head-to-head match between Steven Lucas and Matt Sekelsky. Steven Lucas won with a score of 2,394,130.^[5]

References