Top Players

Hello internet! In today’s post we are going to list off the top players in Melee to look out for! On a side note, this weekend The Big House 5 (TBH5) is going on which for those who do not know is a huge international smash tournament series based out of Michigan, it is the second largest melee tournament of all time in terms of entrants with just over 1500! TBH5 will be discussed, covered, and talked about in the next post when it wraps up!

So we will first off list what is known as “the big 5” or “the 5 gods” of super smash brother’s melee. These 5 players are referred to as that because for about the last 5 years or so nobody had ever won a major tournament except these 5 players. I also need to note that there is a 6^th player who has broken into the realm of the big 5 having won 5 majors over the 5 gods in 2015. After these 6 players are noted we will also list other top players too look out for that consistently place high in major tournaments

The 5 Gods

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Mango

Characters: Fox, Falco (formerly Jigglypuff)  

Sponsor: Cloud 9

Region: Southern California (SoCal)

Armada

Characters: Peach, Fox

Sponsor: Alliance 

Region: Sweden (Europe)

PPMD (Formerly known as Dr. PeePee)

Characters: Marth, Falco

Sponsor: Evil Geniuses

Region: North Carolina (south I think?) 

Mew2King

Characters: Marth, Sheik, Fox (no he does not play Mewtwo)

Sponsors: Cognitive gaming, Most Valuable Gaming

Region: Originally Tri-state (New Jersey) moves around a lot

HungryBox

Character: Jigglypuff

Sponsor: Team Liquid

Region: Florida 

Leffen

Character: Fox (Formerly Falco and yoshi)

Sponsor: Team Solo Mid

Region: Sweden (Europe) 

Leffen is the 6th player referred to earlier that has broken into the realm of the big 5. He acquired this status by winning CEO, FC Return, WTFox back to back, all U.S. majors over the 5 gods, and while he did not win Evo he won Super Smash Con over Mew2king and then later HTC Throwdown over HungryBox

Other Top notable players to look out for 

Axe

Characters: Pikachu, Falco

Sponsor: Tempo Storm

Region: Arizona

PewPewU

Character: Marth

Sponsor: Computer Logic Gaming

Region: Northern California (NorCal)

Shroomed

Characters: Sheik (formerly Doctor Mario)

Sponsor: Winterfox

Region: Northern California (NorCal)

Westballz

Character: Falco

Sponsor: Tempo Storm

Region: Southern California (SoCal)

Wizzrobe

Character: Captain Falcon

Sponsor: Cognitive Gaming

Region: Florida 

Plup

Characters: Sheik, Samus

Sponsor: Panda Gaming

Region: Florida

These are just some of the many top players to look out for in the melee scene. as time goes on some of these faces will fall while some of them may rise and there is always the chance of new players emerging on to the scene.

Melee Introduction Overview/Inspiration post #1

As many of you may know Super Smash Brothers Melee is one of the most popularly played competitive fighting games of all time, for those of you who do not know about melee continue reading as we give you a basic overview. Ok so first things first, Super Smash brothers melee was a game released for the Nintendo GameCube back in 2001 (yes this game is that old), since then Nintendo has already released two sequels to Melee, which are named Super Smash Brothers Brawl (SSBB) for the Nintendo Wii, and Super Smash Brothers 4 (SSB4) for the Wii U respectively. However even with this game already having not just one but two games to succeed it, melee remains the most popular of the four titles (first ever smash game was released on the Nintendo 64 console in 1999) in terms of a competitive standpoint. Why is this though? That a game played on an outdated console is still the most popular? Well to understand this we have to look at melee's game mechanics. So the one thing I have to emphasize is that melee was never meant to be played at a competitive level, nor was it designed to be competitive. Masahiro Sakurai (the series creator) has always had a vision for smash that it should be a party game. Melee however is considered to be, as quoted by many smashers (the term for people who play the game on a competitive level) to be a "beautiful accident" we say this because even though melee wasn't designed with competitive play in mind the game mechanics or physics engine of the game allow for very fast paced, exciting and technical game play. I think the best way to show everyone what I mean is by showing you a video, if you look below there is a URL to a YouTube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONZsGuQvGPg  

This video show cases the technical aspects of both melee, and its sequel brawl. While watching this video I think it’s clear to see that melee is a much faster paced game than brawl was. For example, in the video it showed you many different clips, but there was two in particular I want to point out, both used the character Fox McCloud but one was brawl and one was melee, it was quite clear to see that the fox in melee was able to move around the stage much easier and quicker than the fox that was playing in brawl. This is because of the "advanced techniques" that one was able to perform in melee that were ultimately cut out of the game entirely in brawl. While I’m not going to explain all the differences between melee and brawl (because believe me there are A LOT of them and it would take far too long and be far too confusing through writing) some of the names (as dubbed by the melee community) of the advanced techniques that were taken out were techniques known as wavedashing, L-Canceling (Lag Canceling) and jump cancelled grabs. Those are just some of the most used techniques in competitive play however there is quite an expansive list of techniques or "technical aspects" of melee. Brawl is slower not just because of the removal of such techniques but the game engine itself is much slower paced than melee's was.

Back to the original question of "What makes Melee the most popular smash game at the competitive level?" I believe it’s a combination of its speed and those advanced techniques mentioned earlier. Those two things put together allow for a certain level of control that frankly just isn't present in SSBB or SSB4. Melee lets a player be so in control while playing the game and as a result, players can be so precise with every little movement they make. This is ultimately what I feel separates melee from the other games, precision.