The best recent events and tournaments at Localhost

by Brian Bencomo

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, gaming community gatherings, private events, youth camps, brand activations and more. Every month, we’ll be spotlighting some of the best events that have happened at Localhost in Philadelphia, Rowan and Denver. Here’s a look back at some of the fun things that happened at Localhost over the past month.

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Summer Camps Kick Off

Photo credit: Nerd Street

Camp Nerd Street is in full swing across our Localhost venues in Philly, and New Jersey (at Rowan University) as well as at Maryville University in St. Louis. Our 2025 summer camps kicked off with soldout or nearly soldout sessions and a mix of new and returning campers across all of our locations.

Campers are enjoying playing games together like Fortnite, Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as well as taking part in group activities like Memory Madness, Create Your Own Game and Speed Trivia. Campers in Philly and Rowan are also gaining some coding skills through our partnership with CoderOgres which is running a new game dev workshop featuring Roblox Studio.

Mindset of Champions

Photo credit: Nerd Street

Locahost Philly hosted the Mindset of Champions: Marvel Rivals Final event featuring the top middle and high school teams from MoC’s network around the city. Nice Space, Penn Treaty, Germantown and Free State ChalleNGe battled it out in the high school finals, with Penn Treaty taking home the top prize. MoC 2 and Penn Treaty Middle competed in a hard-fought final in the middle school division, with Penn Treaty also securing a win to go 2-for-2 on the day.

“Kick the Day” at Localhost Philly

Localhost Philly welcomed back the Martin Luther School for their summer esports special as part of their “Kick the Day” initiative. The KTD summer tournament was an immersive, student-run project where juniors and seniors shadowed Localhost staff to run a tournament for their soon-to-be sophomore classmates and middle school students.

Working with Localhost staff members Kyle, Ish and Jumaani, students were sorted into two groups. The first group worked with Kyle as event admins/tournament operators, which involved organizing the bracket, calling matches and reporting scores. The second group worked with Ish as the broadcast coordinators and on-air talent (casters), with two students assigned to do commentary for the Brawlhalla tournament matches at the stream station, one student working as the producer, and one student working as the broadcast engineer to run the stream. The third group worked with Jumaani as event content/social media coordinators, with two students responsible for capturing photos and videos during the tournament, as well as getting interviews from players and casters about the event.

Cheeseadelphia 2025

Photo credit: Nerd Street

Cheeseadelphia, the longtime-running North American StarCraft II LAN tournament, was back in the building in Philly last month. Joseph "Future" Stanish continued his recent dominance at the event and outlasted the 28-player field to take home another Cheeseadelphia trophy and the lion’s share of the nearly $6,000 prize pot. The American player took first place over Poland’s Mateuz “Gerald” Budiak in a tightly contested 4-3 victory, in the 17th meeting between these two players since 2017.

City of Brotherly Love Esports

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Brotherly Love Esports was back in the building to present Creed IV, the fourth edition of the Philadelphia regional championship for Super Smash Bros. Melee, Rivals of Aether and Smash HD Remix. Leaning heavily into the community’s love of combat sports and sports entertainment, Creed IV featured a championship belt for the Melee singles champion.

After being sent to the losers’ bracket in winners’ finals by Arthur “404Cray” Hernandez, Philadelphia’s own Hugh “SluG” Hegarty battled back to reach the grand finals with a 3-1 victory over Dawud “Aklo” Rahman. In the rematch with 404Cray, SluG maintained the momentum to reset 3-1 in the grand finals and claim a Creed victory with a 3-0 in the final set.

Localhost Philly Double Feature

Toward the end of the month, Localhost welcomed back Iron Phist Philly for their first Dojo event of the 2025 Tekken World Tour Season alongside Broad Street Blur’s first Mario Kart World LAN! Players were excited to check out the second season of Tekken 8 and the newest Mario Kart title, which was released for the Nintendo Switch 2.

IPP’s June Phurnace event saw 26 players with Brandon “ThatsGami” Watson taking first place in Tekken 8 singles and scoring some TWT Dojo points for the 2025 Tour Season. Perennial top finisher Jonathan “Technical” Liveli took home first place and etched his name as the first Mario Kart World champion at Broad Street Blur!

Rowan Recap

Photo credit: Joseph Lima / Fragadelphia

Fragadelphia, the grassroots Counter-Strike tournament series, was on campus again last month, and 13 teams competed in the eighth edition of Frag Jersey. Rowan’s own grassroots Smash and Fighting Game tournament series had strong turnouts in June, with BreakThrough (Smash) and Limit Break (Fighting Games) both packing the venue with over 30 competitors.

Last month was the kickoff of Localhost’s partnership with Glassboro Summer Fest. The community festival brings music, food and activities to Glassboro Town Square on Thursday evenings in June and July. Localhost is bringing fun and games to this weekly festival by running Rocket League matches under a tent outside of Localhost.

Make-A-Wish in Denver

Localhost Denver was the site of a very special Make-A-Wish activation last month. A launch party was held at Localhost for an indie game project that a Wish Kid was involved in. The nonprofit organization dressed up the venue with decorations and balloons and provided snacks and invited friends and family to come play test the game. There was even a Twitch livestream of the event.

Lead photo credit: Nerd Street

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