After Keegan McCulley beat Great Bend High student Kade Huddleston, they proved to be a formidable online team in Super Smash Brothers Brawl at the Great Bend Public Library.
McCulley and Huddleston finished with a 9-1 record and were ranked fourth against online teams from other libraries around the country to celebrate International Games Day. They were unable to secure a reliable Internet connection to continue in the online tournament that involved dozens of libraries.
McCulley and Huddleston spent much of their time waiting to connect with other teams around the country. They defeated teams from North Carolina and New York
McCulley was won a local Game Stop video tournament and also won a Great Bend High School technology club video tournament. McCulley attended Colorado School of Mines and originally majored in geophysics. Now, he’s working at the Great Bend Public Library.
McCulley chose Ike as his favorite character because of the powers with Princess Zelda as his backup. Huddleston chose either Luciaro or Fox McCloud. Ike moves slowly, but wields a big sword with long range.
 “If you want to learn what each character can do, it takes several weeks to figure out how they differ,” McCulley said. “Some move slow and hit harder. Some move faster.”
“I started a long time ago when I started with Nintendo. It’s really entertaining. There is a lot of intelligence involved playing the games, trying to figure out strategies that work. Most games have a story. It’s like controlling a movie with your characters.”
Huddleston likes Luciaro because he’s a balanced attacker with a counter move and good range for his attack. Huddleston plans to attend Barton County College. The first game he played was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on Gameboy.
“What I like is any character who choose can beat another character,” Huddleston said. “  
International Games Day celebrated the power of play and learning when patrons agree to play games in a spirit of co-operation. The games involved chess, board, card, trivia and tabletop games. The online video games spanned North America.
Other local players who competed at the library were Eric Thoren, Julio Herrera, patrick heath, Zach Austin and Daniel Abbott.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl was the first game in the series to expand past Nintendo characters and allow players to control third-party characters. Like its predecessors, the object of Brawl is to knock an opponent off the screen.
The Wii Nunchuck controller is the primary controller for Nintendo’s Wii console, which was launched in 2006. A main feature of the Wii remote is its motion sensing capability, which allows the user to interact with and manipulate items on screen via gesture recognition and pointing through the use of accelerometer and optical sensor technology.
Participating libraries:
Adams (R.I.) Library
Ann Arbor (Mich.) Library
Anoka (Minn.) County Library
Atlantic City (N.J.) Library
Aubrey (Texas) Library
Barnegat Ocean (N.J.) Library
Barton (Mo.) Library
Baxter County (Ark.) Library
Blount County (Tenn.) Library
Booth & Dimock (Conn.) Library
Calvert (Md.) Library
Cincinnati (Ohio) Library
Community (N.Y.) Library
Franklin (Minn.) Library
Grimes (Iowa) Library
Jefferson (La.) Library
Kalamazoo (Mich.) Library
Kirkwood (Mo.) Library
Lafayette (La.) Library
Lawrence Library
Madrid (Iowa) Library
Medfield (Mass.) Library
Mentor (Ohio) Library
Missoula (Mont.) Library
Oakland (Calif.) Library
Pamlico (N.C.) Library
Rockingham (VT) Public Library
Sandwich (Mass.) Library
Topeka Library
University of Michigan Computer & Video Game