The Spirit Week booth-judging contest occurred today in Cafeterias One and Two. The Senior Class won first place, followed by the Juniors in second and the Freshmen beating out the Sophmores for third place.

In the annual booth contest, each grade transforms a pre-built wooden booth into some sort of interactive carnival-style game to be played by students during their lunch periods. Each booth is decorated in accordance to the grade’s individual theme for Spirit Week.

The Seniors’ booth this year was based on Mario Kart—a series of video games based on the drag-racing exploits of various characters from the Mario Brothers series—and featured a semi-circle-shaped track on which students could race each other using remote control Mario Kart toys. The front of the booth featured a three-dimensional image of a car—or kart—the sides, images of the Mario characters in action.

“We wanted to find a part of Mario that was most fun for East students,” said Rowan Alkaysi (’12), a prominent figure in the creation of the booth. Alkaysi also said there is a certain symbolism behind the senior’s game.

“The end for Mario is the finish line, but for the seniors it’s graduation,” said Alkaysi, “Mario heads towrd the finish line as we look toward our last days at East.”

“I’ve never seen something like that before,” said Mr. Kovnat, a photography teacher at East who worked as a judge for the contest this morning.

In second place this year, the Junior’s booth revolved around Donkey Kong, a classic 8-bit arcade game. The booth featured a version of the popular carnival game-of-chance Plinko, in which the player drops a ping-pong ball onto a board with a bunch of nails in it. The ball bounces off the various nails and down the board into one of a few slots, each with a different corresponding prize. Juniors decorated the booth with a large-scale image of Donkey Kong himself, images of the jungle and a depiction of the original arcade game. The front of the booth read “It’s on like Donkey Kong!” Dan Dubin (’13), a designer and creator of the booth, said that it drew inspiration from the retro spirit of the original Donkey Kong.

“I haven’t felt this alive since Mariah Carey’s last album,” said school Vice President Andrew Adler (’13) of the booth’s gameplay.

Class of 2015 based its booth around another seminal arcade game, Space Invaders. The booth invited students to try to shoot “aliens,” here represented by painted Styrofoam balls, with a Nerf gun. The booth was painted with various celestial bodies and character from the videogame.

The Sophomores’ booth was decorated like Pikachu, a prominent character from Pokémon, a famous videogame, and featured a game in which students could throw “pokéballs” into various levels of color-coded cups for prizes. There was a large scale image of a Gameboy Color videogame system painted on the side.

“The booths this year are amazing,” said Student Government advisor Mr. Davis, “Every year they get better and better, and its clear that these are the result of a lot of hard work by dedicated kids.”