The best recent events and tournaments at Localhost

Nerd Street’s owned and operated gaming venues, known as Localhosts, are not only places where you can stop by to play your favorite games on high-quality gaming PCs and consoles. Localhosts also are the site of LAN tournaments, private events, camps, activations, watch parties and more. Every month, we’ll be spotlighting some of the best events that have happened at Localhosts around the country, from Philadelphia to Fullerton and everywhere in between. Here’s a look back at some of the fun things that happened at Localhost over the past month.

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Localhost serves the city’s youth

July started with the kickoff of CreateAccess and Launchpad Philly’s six-week creator program at Localhost Philadelphia in which high school kids from around the city embarked on a course to learn about 3D modeling and asset creation in Blender, Unreal 5 and Unreal Editor for Fortnite. CreateAccess and LaunchPad Philly are all about giving underrepresented kids exposure and access to coding and technology in order to prepare them for careers in tech. At the end of this summer program, participants showcased their custom characters, items, maps and game types in the Unreal Cloud for Epic Games and the Launchpad Philly custom Island.

Read more: These kids learned valuable tech skills via Fortnite at Localhost this summer

Photo credit: CreateAccess

Throughout July and early August, Localhost Philly saw nearly 1,000 local youth drop by as part of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation’s summer camps. Groups of Parks & Rec kids, each in their colorful camp T-shirts, take over the gaming venue throughout the summer. On a typical day, anywhere from 40 to as many as 90 kids aged 6 to 13 years old get to have fun playing games like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft and Fall Guys on Localhost’s high-tech PCs and consoles. Localhost Philly served over 14 Parks & Rec centers in the month of July alone. Localhost Denver also had four Parks & Rec groups come through with over 150 kids visiting the venue.

Read more: Why Localhost in Philadelphia is a home for young gamers

Photo credit: Nerd Street

It wasn’t just Philly Parks & Rec bringing kids to Localhost Philly this summer. Some of the other visitors included students from Philadelphia Electrical and Technology Charter School (PETCHS) and the BPIS, or Bridge Intensive Prevention Services; a youth anti-violence program operated by the Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC).

Camp Localhost rolls on!

Summer camps were in full swing across Nerd Street’s Localhost venues throughout July and August. Hundreds of kids aged 8 to 13 had fun participating in the weeklong sessions held in Philadelphia, Denver and Rowan. In addition to playing video games, the campers got to participate in fun onscreen and offscreen activities like Speed Trivia, Memory Madness and Build Your Own Town, Create Your Own Game and 2v2 Fortnite challenges. In Denver, one session registered an all-time high of 26 campers in one week!

Photo credit: Nerd Street

Philly tournaments

Cheeseadelphia, Nerd Street’s long-running StarCraft II community LAN series, was back in the building in July for the second qualifier for this year’s Cheeseadelphia Winter Finals. With Paul Dolan taking first and qualifying for the finals later this year, Cheese added another entry to its book of grassroots community support with a prize pool funded by both ticket sales and direct contributions!

The biggest event of the month though was the RGL.GG Team Fortress 2 (TF2) Philly LAN, which featured a full weekend of Team Fortress action including the Open NA Sixes LAN and a community invitational. Players from around the country once again converged on Localhost to support one of the most beloved legacy titles in FPS esports.

Localhost closed out the month with the fifth edition of Local Frontier, a Pokemon VGC monthly, and the Phurnace, Iron Phist Philly’s Tekken 8 monthly. With over 25 entrants, the Phurnace monthlies are now contested under Tekken World Tour rules and eligible for TWT Dojo points on the 2024 circuit.

New FGC meetup at Rowan

One of Localhost’s frequent attendees at Smash the Glass, Rowan’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate weekly, branched out and started a new fighting game community tournament series in July. Limit Break is a new biweekly FGC event that meets Saturdays and includes competitions in Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive.

The inaugural Limit Break saw 29 attendees competing across the three titles. With some attendees competing in multiple titles, Limit Break #1 saw a robust 43 entries. Congrats to the winners of the first Limit Break!

Tekken 8: MachoMan

Street Fighter 6: M10Gz

Guilty Gear Strive: Mimi

Quick hits

Fan-favorite character Claptrap from Borderlands dropped by Localhost as part of the promotional tour for the new Borderlands movie.

Localhost Philly also played host to another Anime Community Night in July. The night featured open PC and console gaming, anime movies and shows throughout the venue as well as Anime Quizzo challenges where our guests' knowledge of both new and old anime was put to the test.

Localhost Denver held a Rivals of Aether 2 beta tournament giving fans of the franchise a sneak peak of the new game. Spreecher and Juvee sponsored the event, which included brackets for singles, doubles and amateur players.

Lead photo credit: Nerd Street