MLG

So this past weekend MLG wrapped up, for those who don’t know MLG stands for Major League Gaming. MLG events usually features games such as League of Legends, StarCraft, Dota, Call of Duty, Halo etc. you get it. This past MLG event included both smash brothers melee (SSBM) and smash brothers 4 (SSB4). Now before I talk about the event I want to give some background information. So back in the period of 2004-2006 what many people refer to as the “Golden Era” of smash, melee was a main event in MLG tournaments, In fact the MLG events or just MLG’s were THE smash tournaments to go to, hosting tournaments in a circuit fashion and having events all over the country in such places as, Orlando, Chicago, New York City, Anaheim. It was a great time to be a smasher. Sadly however in 2007 melee was dropped from the pro circuit and by 2008 dropped from MLG all together, although I don’t know the exact reasons why I assume it was because of Nintendo’s very reluctant attitude towards competitive gaming back then. Regardless, melee pressed on in its underground roots. So fast forward to 2014 in what many are referring to as the “Platinum Era” of smash and melee is all of a sudden back on the MLG main stage at MLG Anaheim, and although melee was only at that one event it was still nice to see smash being represented by Major League Gaming again. So now about a year and a couple months later smash is at yet another MLG event, this time in New Orleans. Now as cool as it is to see melee being a somewhat more consistent thing in MLG this event was very lack luster in terms of attendance, coverage, and advertisement. Now the first thing I have to say is that the smash community represents itself well these days, whenever there is a big tournament or event coming up its very well-known through the community. MLG however seemed to get no representation…. At all, I In fact only found out about it through a friend. Now while I don’t think that had a HUGE impact on the attendance it was still very strange to see. So on to the attendance and why it was so lack luster. Usually for an event of MLG’s caliber you would expect to see really big names going to these events, at least going off the big names that have attended the MLG’s in the past. This tournament however only had two of the top 6 players attending in HungryBox and Mew2King. Even when you look at the other top 10-15 players there was a low turnout with the only real notable names going being, Wizzrobe, Chillindude, and Axe, no Westballz, no PewPewU, no Shroomed, and as implied earlier no Mango, Armada, Leffen, or PPMD. Of course with such low competition there the grand finals was between HungryBox and Mew2king with HungryBox taking it. Now on to my last gripe, coverage, now it’s only been a week but MLG has posted close to nothing in terms of the matches on YouTube, they have posted the winners and losers’ finals as well as the grand finals of both singles and doubles for both smash games, but that’s it, no bracket matches, no pools matches, nothing. All in all I was pretty disappointed with pretty much everything about this tournament.

             

Now usually I talk about melee here, however that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the other smash games as well so I’m going to take a moment to talk about a big moment in the timeline of smash 4. Smash 4 has been dominated by a player named ZeRo pretty much from the time it was released on the Wii U last year, and when I say dominant I mean DOMINANT, as ZeRo hasn’t lost a single smash 4 tournament. That unblemished record however game to an end as he was defeated by probably his strongest rival Nairo (Nye-row) not only in one set but two back to back sets as Nairo was fighting from behind in the losers bracket. I felt I had to at least mention this in this blog as it is such a big moment for the newer game in the franchise and as much as I love melee I really do care about the smash community as a whole.

Side note: Smash tournaments or rather fighting game tournaments in general are double elimination meaning that there are two brackets, a winner’s bracket and a loser’s bracket. Grand finals is the set played between the victor of the winner’s bracket and the victor of the loser’s bracket. The person coming from the loser’s bracket has to win two sets over the player coming from the winner’s bracket. While the player from the winners bracket only needs to win one set, sets being played in a 3 out of 5 manor. This is because the person coming from the winner’s bracket needs first be knocked into the loser’s bracket, which happens when you lose a set. From there they need to be defeated again for the person coming from the loser’s bracket to take the tournament.

Here is the Smash 4 grand finals set between ZeRo and Nairo in case anyone was interested 

The Smash Summit

So for any readers who do follow super smash brothers you know that the big thing that everyone is talking about right now is the smash summit, in terms of smash this is really a one of a kind event. Smash tournaments are usually open to everyone, no matter how big they are or what the status of it is. Evo for example is the world’s largest fighting game tournament that happens every year out of Las Vegas. Even with all of its prestige, anyone can sign up to play at Evo. The smash summit however is a little bit different, the organizers of this event invited 10 of the world’s best smash players to compete at this event, in addition to those 10 players 6 more will be able to attend this event, and these 6 however get voted in by the fans. Now before I talk about who I want to see make it into the summit I want to name off the players that were invited. 5 of the top 6 are going with the exception of HungryBox, I believe he was invited but had to decline for conflicts with the real world. So that means we will be seeing Armada, Mango, Mew2king, Leffen, and surprisingly PPMD. For those who don’t know PPMD doesn’t go to very many events these days as he has been struggling with illness and depression, my hopes go out to him for a full recovery. So because of this it makes me very happy as a big PPMD fan to see him attending this event. The other 5 players that were invited were PewPewU, Axe, Westballz, Plup and Lucky. So those are the faces you can expect to see at the summit. On to the voting aspect. So I have a few gripes with this one, so currently there are 2 players who were in the voting process that are already guaranteed a spot at the summit, these players being Kage (pronounced Ka-gay for those who don’t know) and Alex19. This is where my issues start. I understand this is a vote to give all the players an equal chance to get in however I sometimes cannot understand the thought process of other smash bros fans. I don’t have a problem with Kage what I do have a problem with is alex19. Now before I go on my rant let me just say that I have no problems with alex19 as a player, person, or even personally, I’m happy for him that he got this opportunity. I personally just don’t think he deserves this chance. To elaborate I just don’t see what’s so special about him, he’s a friend of Mango and Lucky, cool, but he really has no accomplishments to speak of, he’s not that well known and truthfully I don’t think he’s that good, at least in comparison to everyone else who was in contention to go and especially compared to the 10 invited players. I just feel there are more worthy players out there such as Ice and Wizzrobe who both got eliminated. I don’t know what the fans see in him or what they expect out of him when the summit rolls around. That’s my main gripe with this whole thing but anyway onto who I want to see make it in to the summit. Luckily for me my top 2 picks for the summit since the day the voting started are still in contention to make it. Let’s talk about my first pick Sephirothken or just Ken, or as he has been known for the past 2 years Liquid Ken, Team liquid being his sponsor. So I want to see Ken go for a couple reasons. Ken is known as the “King of smash” he received this title because back in the early days of competitive smash, way before brawl and smash 4 even existed he dominated the scene, he was the undisputed best in the world at this game for so many years, and since I found competitive smash back in 2006 I have always been a Ken fan. Now while he still holds the title “King of smash” he’s not the best in the world anymore, his last active year of competitive play was 2007 where he essentially left the smash community to handle real life before finally making a rather surprising return 2012. Since his return he has been making many strides yet again in smash and even surprising a lot of people by placing 13^th at Evo 2015 despite the meta-game changing so drastically in his absence. Of anyone that was in contention to be voted into the smash summit I think Ken deserves it more than all of them and I would be thrilled to see him go. The other player I want to see make it into the summit is Druggedfox, Druggedfox has been around for a while but has recently having some huge breakout performances such as almost taking out Leffen at Evo 2015 and even defeating Mango at HTC Throwdown. He’s a very skilled reactionary player and as of late I have become a big fan of his. I think making it to the smash summit would be a great opportunity for him, not only because of the experience he’ll get but also to show how much improvement he has been making. I hope some of you out there share my views on who should make it into the smash summit, don’t forget to vote! The voting ends in just 2 days!