Source of inspiration: Typography

So this week’s source of information will be on typography. So as stated in a previous post, video games are one of my favorite things in the world. So with that being said my favorite font is Called 8 bit wonder. 8 bit wonder is aesthetically pleasing to look at, at least to my eyes. I grew up playing my mother’s old NES (Nintendo entertainment system) so I’ve played the original Mario as well as Zelda and a bunch of other old 8 bit games, because of this I’ve always loved looking at 8 bit textures, graphics or lettering. Now I don’t use this font in my blog because I feel a more traditional standard looking font is a little easier to read and doesn’t take up as much space, plus there are no lower case letters, also this font isn’t available on normal word processors so you would have to download it from a website to get it. Looking at this font really reminds me of those days as a kid trying to figure out super Mario and getting just a little bit further each time I would play before dying to something like a piranha plant or a hammer bro (those were the scariest enemies as a kid I swear haha). But that’s what font inspires me, it very closely ties into one of my other sources of inspiration which is video games.

Source of inspiration: Color

Happy Thanksgiving to all readers from the states!

So for today’s post I’m going to do another inspiration post! Today’s source of inspiration is color! So the main colors that make up my blog are black, white and orange. Being that my blog is a blog about competitive smash bros I chose this color template to pay homage to the original hub of competitive smash bros! the site is called Smash Boards, smash boards is a forum site for anything smash bros related such as finding events to go to in your area, frame data on a character or even just to talk about smash bros, and while mostly competitive you can find so much information about all of the smash brothers games on their although these days the community has mostly shifted to Facebook. Even with that said the smash board’s site is still up and running! As a kid I used to spend hours on smash boards just reading different posts, I was so amazed at all the different information about smash bros. This is an inspiration for color because the smash bros site colors are black white and yellow! I wanted my blog to look like smash boards and the template I chose was an almost perfect match! Despite my orange being a little bit darker than the yellow used on smash boards.

Design inspiration: Video Games

So this week’s posts are both going to be inspiration posts. So these days I pretty much exclusively play smash. It’s not because I don’t like other games, it’s partly because I’m so busy and smash is something that I can work at and get better. Bust last weekend I played super Mario bros 3 with a buddy for the first time in years, I can’t remember how long it’s been since I touched that game, oh did I mention we played it on an original NES? Because that was awesome. Any way we played through the whole game in 1 sitting and I just had so much fun. It reminded me of how much I really love video games in general. Growing up I played a ton of video games, my favorite systems are the GameCube and the Play station 2, I had so many games for each of them and I beat all if not a majority of them. There’s something so magical about video games, especially adventure games such as Legend of Zelda or Kingdom Hearts. For me at least, it’s almost like an interactive movie, they let you take part in a quest and not just view it, you aid it and you complete it, it puts you in this environment where you are the most important person in that world and sometimes you even get so caught up in the story you lose track of real life. Some may think that’s a bad thing but I don’t video games are a way to escape the stresses of reality and be a total badass while doing it. It’s funny, I never thought that video games would still be so relevant in my life today. Even if I don’t play nearly as much of them as I used to in my younger days they still remain a constant part of my life. I mean I follow competitive smash and right about it regularly now ha-ha. It’s no wonder that young adult me would have a video game based blog, even after all these years 

The Smash Summit Overview and Tipped off 11

So this past weekend we had two major events take place! Tipped off 11 which turned out to be a pretty solid event even with the top players not in attendance, and the highly anticipated smash summit which was the reason the top players weren’t in attendance at tipped off 11. So first I will talk about the smash summit. If you have been keeping up with this blog then you’ll remember that I posted a while ago about the smash summit and who I wanted to see make it past the voting stage. Sadly my picks for the smash summit didn’t make it, but even with the absence of two of my favorite players it still was quite a fantastic event. The smash summit was a 4 day event which seems like quite the endurance tournament, the summit however was about much more than just the tournament. In these 4 days we got to see plenty of smash exhibitions between top players playing a multitude of different characters! This was especially exciting for me to watch because as much I very much enjoy watching high level melee its super fun to see how these high level players play characters other than there primary main and regular secondary’s. We got to see players like Mew2King play pichu and mango play Donkey Kong, two characters rarely seen this day and age in high level play. We also got to see the top players interact with each other in games other than melee and outside of video games all together in games such as Mafia.  Something else that the summit showcased is doubles play. So for those who don’t know about smash brothers what so ever smash is a 4 player game, this is a quality that you usually don’t see in fighting games, so because you can have up to 4 players you can also play team matches of 2 on 2. Doubles has been in competitive play since melees competitive inception, over the years however doubles has been getting less and less attention and while it’s still played at every major tournament it often gets very minimal to no stream time. I personally think this is due to the fact that doubles or teams if you will, is a very different game, there is a lot to follow as a spectator (and as a player) and many people often don’t understand the dynamic of doubles so as a result people don’t like to watch or play teams as much. The summit however showcased the whole doubles tournament, which I was very happy about as I personally feel high level doubles play is one of the most exciting things to watch. The doubles tournament was won by team PewFat, which consists of the players PewPewU and Sfat, the team name is a play on their tags. So there is a couple interesting things about the team of PewFat, first off they are one of the only true teams left out there, what I mean by this is that those two players always team together, they are friends in real life and a s a result they are consistent teammates which is very important as they understand each other’s play styles and have great chemistry with one another. This day and age in competitive melee you often don’t see consistent teams anymore, you tend to just see two really good singles players coming together just to try to win what they may consider “easy money”. PewFat is also the only “godless” team that does well at high level and even without either of them being in the top 5 they are considered the best melee team in America which just goes to show how different doubles play is over singles. To win they beat the team of M2K and Armada, two of the greatest players to ever pick up a GameCube controller. The team of M2K and Armada is an example of two really good individual players teaming to win, this however was also due to the fact that armada’s usual teammate, his brother android, was not invited to the summit. As for the singles tournament Armada was the victor yet again. Even with this predictable result however the tournament itself held some surprises, we Saw PPMD get knocked out by Plup which was a very surprising upset, and we got to see a Mango vs Armada grand finals which is something that we haven’t seen in quite a while.

Now for tipped off 11. I don’t have as much to say about this event but I still wanted to talk about it, with another tournament held without the big 5 in attendance it gave the other players a chance to shine again! This time we got to see a grand finals set between Wizzrobe and DruggedFox. This was especially interesting because it’s the second tournament where we got to see a Captain Falcon player make it this far. Both players played superbly but in the end it was won by druggedfox who came all the way from loser’s bracket to take it. Wizzrobe played very well but it seemed like there were a few moments where he choked as he missed some very crucial punishes that could have swayed the momentum in his favor. Congrats to both players though

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Source of inspiration: Youtube

So I am supposed to be making 2 posts per week, this week was a little hectic and blogging wasn’t the first thing on my mind. So I’ll only have 1 post this week unfortunately.

So today I’m going to take a break from my usual discussion of competitive smash to share with the readers a source of inspiration for my blog. Something that inspires me but that I also really enjoy is YouTube. YouTube is a great website because it’s a video sharing website where you can upload videos of anything! (Mostly anything) and with how long YouTube has been around these days there is almost nothing you can’t find on there. It’s a great way to communicate something to someone whether it be showing them a particular skill or maybe just a sports highlight from last night’s football game. I use YouTube all the time for both entertainment and as a learning tool being that there are many instructional videos on there as well of how to do something you want to learn. Being that I’m a visual learner I absolutely love YouTube.

I Think the fact that blogger lets you feature a YouTube video right on your blog page where it’s easily accessible to your readers is an awesome feature! Granted yes I know it’s because blogger and YouTube are both owned by google but it’s so convenient for your readers because they can instantly see exactly what you’re talking about in your writing or at least be able to understand and follow along with what you’re saying a little bit better. With my topic of competitive smash and with how much smash brothers content there is on YouTube blogger lets me instantly show people one of my favorite things on this planet!

Melee future speculation

So 2015 is the second year now that melee is not only an Esport but a pretty popular one at that. This was the first year in quite some time that we see other players catching up to the “gods of melee”. We saw PewPewU defeat Hungrybox in January at Apex 2015, Plup defeated Mango at Evo 2015, Westballz defeated mango at a California local in 2 straight sets in grand finals and of course who could forget Leffen’s rise. With so many of the other players catching up to the top player’s one can only wonder what 2016 will hold for melee. Now as we all know melee is a game that has been around for quite some time now, in December it will reach age 14, and yet even with being out for so long melee continues to grow. A huge question is if this growth will continue in 2016, will we see even bigger numbers at tournaments? Or will things maybe see a slow decline, with the way things have been going in past years though this doesn’t seem to be the case and of course as a fan I want melee to continue to prosper. Even so it still is always a question on everyone’s mind. Now let’s talk about the players. We’ve really started to see a few of the gods start to decline. Most notably Mew2king and Mango. Mew2king’s hands were bothering him at one point in this year, specifically his fingers, he claimed it would hurt to play melee. As for mango we have seen a very inconsistent year from him this year and while having won a few tournaments such as Press Start and Paragon his placings have been dropping form a usual consistent top 3 to now placing more around the 4-8 spots and on a few occasions not even making it to top 8 in such tournaments as HTC Throwdown were he lost to DruggedFox in winners and MacD in losers. Now having been following melee for a very long time it doesn’t surprise me that we are seeing these 2 decline a little bit before everyone else In the top 6, both of them have been playing competitively longer than the other gods and are also the two oldest of the group. I’m being completely serious though, Mango and Mew2king had been winning tournaments since before anyone even knew the names of the other top 4, especially mew2king as he competed way back in the day with notable players such as Ken and PC Chris. So will we see these 2 start to really decline? Perhaps one of them will retire? Or will they completely make me look like a fool and continue to dominate? Now we could speculate about 2016 for hours but I guess we will only truly know when the time comes. Just going to have to wait and see.

(Players mentioned here that were not shown or talked about in the top player introduction post)

MacD

DruggedFox

Ken

PC Chris

Something to note about both PC Chris and Ken is that although they are old school players both have made appearances in recent years especially Ken as he actually returned to competitive play in 2012 and is even a sponsored player now. 

Smash The Record

This past weekend one of my favorite smash events wrapped up, the event I speak of is called Smash the Record. Smash the record is my favorite event for a couple reasons, it’s a 3 day event, which is always awesome, it not only features smash but it features speed runs as well which for those who don’t know, speed running is pretty much just trying to beat any given adventure or plot based video game as quick as possible, sounds boring when I say it like that but check out one if you ever get the chance, they’re quite entertaining. Lastly and most importantly StR is entirely a charity event! Yep that’s right, this past weekend both the smash community and the speed running community raised over $50,000 in donations for St. Jude’s children’s hospital in Florida. Now being that this event is entirely charity that means that there were no cash prizes for any of the top 8 placers in any of the smash events, which for this event and the cause it was helping I didn’t think that was such a bad thing. Now being that there was no money to be won at this event also means that a lot of the bigger name players did not enter or attend, that’s right NONE of the top 6 players entered the tournament, and even some of the top 10 players that did enter the event ended up dropping out of the tournament. Truthfully this kind of ticks me off because it really makes you wonder how much more of a priority these players would have made this event had there been money to be won. Also it’s not like the winner of the tournament got nothing, in place of money there were many prizes to be won. Now there is also the other side of the coin to look at, traveling is expensive and time consuming, and at the same time I don’t know what goes on in the lives of these players so they may have also had their own reasons as to why they didn’t enter or attend. But see here’s the thing, last year there was also an StR and at last year’s event we had 3 of the melee gods enter in Hungrybox, mango and Mew2king. At this year’s event both Hungrybox and Mew2king were in the venue and chose not to enter (although Hungrybox explained his reasoning on stream) why? At the same time though with the gods not present at this event it gave some of the other players a chance to shine, we had a player named S2J who plays Captain Falcon get second place at the event and I cannot tell you how longs it’s been since we have seen a C. Falcon do that well at a national event. The tournament was won by a player from SoCal named lucky, he’s a fox player who is a very close friend of Mango’s. That’s really all I have to say about this event, as much as I would have loved to see bigger names go to this tournament it was more about the charity than anything else and it’s also great to see two different gaming communities in both smash and speed running coming together to help such a great cause.