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. 

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!