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Thomas 'Ito' Gonda Wins the Nintendo World Championships 2017

It was a tight Super Mario Odyssey race, but Thomas 'Ito' Gonda was able to outlast defending NWC champion John 'John Numbers' Goldberg to become the new Nintendo World Champion.

Ozzie Mejia

October 7, 2017 6:45 PM

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The Nintendo World Championships 2017 is in the books and there is a new champion. Thomas Gonda (a.k.a. Ito) has dethroned defending champion John Goldberg (a.k.a. John Numbers) to become the third champion in the competition's history, beating out a crowded field that included players of all ages.

The final game of the competition was Super Mario Odyssey, in which both players ran through three never-before-seen levels of Mario's latest adventure. The three stages showed off some of the game's new mechanics, oddball puzzle mechanics, and culminated with a boss fight that required skilled use of Cappy to make the boss punch himself in the face.

Ito is a NorCal native, but is attending school in San Diego. He would qualify for the NWC out of the Los Angeles region. He's well-known to the Smash Bros. community, having been a top-level Super Smash Bros. for Wii U talent in NorCal. He still finds time to compete whenever possible, including at Genesis 4, where he finished in 25th place.

John Numbers took advantage of his experience to propel himself to the championship round out of the winner's side, easily winning the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Arms, and Super Mario Maker rounds. But Numbers fell behind in the final Super Mario Odyssey stage and wasn't quite able to figure out the boss pattern before Ito clinched the victory.

Those looking to check out a replay of Saturday's action can check out the video below.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?