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! 

Different Styles of Play

Alright so there isn’t too much happening in the smash world right now, StR or Smash the Record is the next big tournament that’s going to go down and there is also the voting for who the people want to see in the smash summit. I'll cover those events when we get to them. But for this post I’m going to just marvel about melee a little bit more and share some personal opinions as well.

               So like I stated in an earlier post melee is widely considered to be a beautiful accident, just to recap, this is stated because it is still played today, it is still the most popular smash game (in terms of the competitive community) because we are still learning things about this game. That’s the biggest thing in my opinion, even as the game moves to more optimized play styles, not only are we learning new things but there is still so much difference in a players style. Now if you are new to competitive smash and you watch a high level mirror match or ditto as some people prefer (meaning both payers playing the same character) you probably won’t be able to see the differences in how the two players play the character, which is understandable if you don’t watch a lot of smash, melee specifically though has so much little intricacies about it which make it even more prevalent that players have different styles, melee isn’t just a hard game to play at a high level it’s hard to understand as well. Mew2Kings Marth is very different from that of PPMD or Ken, Leffen’s Fox is very different from Armada’s. if you understand competitive smash you can see it in the way they play

               Now I’ve done all this talk about different styles of melee but now I’m going to try to do an easy breakdown of what exactly makes someone’s style different.

         Choice of options. Now options in melee are very complex but for the sake of this explanation options are simply going to mean the characters move set. For example, if you watch say, I don’t know, let’s just use Leffen for this example. If you watch Leffen play he usually always goes for the correct or “Textbook” option. Now Leffen plays Fox, shine spiking (which is using fox's reflector move off the stage to hit someone) aside Fox’s most reliable way to kill someone is upwards, having two of the most powerful upward killing moves in the game in his up-aerial move (up-air) and up-smash. Leffen kind of always follows this fox flow chart of throwing the opponent above you and then trying to hit them with as many up-airs as possible, which when you think about sounds like that’s exactly what you should be doing as Fox, and to some degree I agree. Melee is more complex than that though. so Leffen is textbook in his play. But now on the other side you have Armada’s Fox. One of my favorite things about melee is that just because you are doing the best option that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the correct option, melee’s game engine allows for a lot of creativity. Armada while very efficient is more creative in his play style. Armada doesn’t always go or the textbook option, I’ve seen armada mix up his options after up throw with a neutral air or a back air. I personally feel it’s important to mix up the options you use for a follow up because it catches the opponents off guard, people always expect the best option to be used, so they always prepare for it. Up-air, while fox’s most reliable kill move in the air isn’t a perfect move as it is a multi-hit move which means the opponent can SDI (smash directional influence) out of it and survive (SDI is when you smash the control stick on one side as you get hit with a move, it can it essentially makes you look like you teleport a small distance if done correctly).                                                                               

                                         Smash Directional Influence Example couldn't find this video on the blogger YouTube searcher so here is the link

this video is 5 seconds long at about 3 seconds in you notice that fox throws the Mewtwo upwards and then when he uses his up-air the Mewtwo instantly shifts to the left but doesn't get knocked upward at all 

            Movement. Melee is a very fast paced, this is a result of the various movement options each character has.

  

The video provided is what is called a tech skill or technical skill video, these videos essentially showcase the movement of a character. In an earlier post I provided a video of fox and how fast and technical he is, it showcased how smoothly he was able to move across the stage. This video however is of Yoshi and even though he is considered a low tier character, even he is able to perform such complex movement.

Movement is also what really differentiates a person’s style of play, there are so many movement options one can make in the game of melee and as a result each player can essentially control their character the way they want to, this is possible because of the advanced techniques such as wavedashing and L-cancelling. 

Now I want to make it clear to everyone that this is just a basic overview of what differentiates a players style for the sake of readers who don't know too much about melee, what makes a players style can be broken down into a much more complex explanation.

A little about me, Lunar

So upon writing this blog it occurred to me that the readers (if there are any of you out there) don’t really know anything about me, so for this entry I’m going to give a little bit of back ground information on me, at least from a smash perspective.

So my name or rather my handle in the smash community is Lunar, I’m a smasher from the state of New Jersey. Now I’ve been following the competitive smash scene since 2006, I found competitive SSBM online one day randomly surfing the web for things about melee. Now melee was already my favorite game back then but after finding the competitive scene it just strengthened my love for this game, once I found out about tournaments, the fact that there was a place to prove yourself, your prowess at this game, I immediately wanted to be a part of the smash community more than anything. However I had a few road blocks and wouldn’t enter my first tournament until the same year I made my tag, 2012. Now to start with I was young, very young back in 2006, in fact I was in middle school. I didn’t really know how to do anything being so young and by that I mean finding people to play with as well as finding tournaments. Secondly NOBODY and I mean NOBODY played melee or even smash for that matter where I lived. I remember I wasn’t even looking for a competitive player as a kid, I literally just wanted somebody to play with. Another road block and probably the biggest one was my parents (not that I blame them, I love you mom if you ever read this). My parents back then didn’t really understand competitive gaming (they kind of do now) nor did they really approve of me playing so many videogames, so I never really had the support of my parents to play competitive melee sadly. I practically had to beg my mother to let me go to apex 2012 which thankfully she did and I had an amazing time at that tournament. My lack of parental support though is also my fault, I didn’t really know how to explain the smash community to my parents, and I made the smash scene sound like a bunch of nerds going nowhere in life because all the do is play melee to them. Now of course if I could go back I would explain to them that these tournaments are more like big social events where a bunch of people who happen to have a similar interest congregate to not only play melee but to meet new people and make new friends. I bet my mother would have been much more open to smash tournaments if I explained it like that as she was always worried about me being anti-social. However even now though that I’m older and smarter I still don’t attend as many events as I would like too, I have a group of friends now that play smash competitively back in NJ however I go to school about 6 hours away and don’t have a car so I really only see them during breaks. I also am a collegiate athlete so as much as I love smash I have other priorities at the moment. After I graduate I hope to become a more active player and to make a name for myself. Call it nerdy or geeky if you will but I’ve had a dream of being a top melee player for a long time and I’ll never find out if I have what it takes unless I try.

So that’s a little about me and my smash “career” I guess, as much of a “career” as you can call that. But like stated earlier I’ve been present in smash since the golden age and even though I wasn’t there to experience all of it I’ve been there watching from the outside, back when ken dominated to when mango dominated to the now era of the gods and I don’t ever plan to stop watching so long as melee is still alive.

Big House 5

Hello world!

So this past weekend one of the largest melee tournaments off all time concluded. I’m referring to of course The Big House 5 (TBH5). This tournament was quite a spectacle as many notable things would go down at this tournament. Ok so before I get to talking about the event itself I just have to point out that THB5 had 1500+ entrants making it the second largest melee tournament of all time siting just behind Evo 2015. Quite an impressive accomplishment for a community run event. Something else to note is that Nintendo actually helped out and sponsored this event which is always nice to see, Nintendo known in the past for being very reluctant to support competitive smash in any way, shape, or form but in the past 2 years or so Nintendo has sponsored both Apex and Evo so it’s great to see them helping out yet another tournament franchise!

So I think the biggest shock to everyone happened before the event even started. Leffen, a player picked as a potential favorite if not the overall favorite was not able to compete this past weekend. Leffen being a Swedish player was denied access into the United States upon his arrival in Michigan. To the best of my knowledge it had something to do with his work visa, whether or not some paperwork wasn’t updated or if he even had a work visa or not isn’t all too clear to me however. This was also strange as Leffen has been able to enter the U.S. several times in the past with no problem. But with Leffen out of the picture for this tournament it definitely raised some questions as to how different this tourney may have been. Something else to note is that PPMD did attend the big house, sadly though it wouldn’t be to play. He came to help out on some commentary as well as to be a part of the analyst desk and while I personally wish I could have gotten to see PPMD play it’s still nice to see him being an active part of the community.

Moving on to the event itself there weren’t too many surprises in top 8, it was a tournament for the gods as the top 4 places were all taken up by them with Armada taking first, HungryBox taking second, Mew2king taking third and Mango taking fourth. Bracket however was a different story, we had Axe very far outside of top 8 as he lost to Abate, a Luigi main from the Pittsburgh area in winners side round 1 which was a pretty big upset, Axe then lost to Shroomed in losers side. Shroomed having a great tournament himself making it into top 8 but getting double eliminated by Mew2king. I have to take a quick second here to talk about Abate, the Luigi mentioned earlier, Abate had quite the breakout performance this tournament not only beating Axe but beating S2J, a Falcon from southern California as well, another big upset. During his set with S2J it went to game 5 and in the final moments of the match it looked like S2J was about to win as he had the perfect set up for a spike but as he hitbox of the falcon spike connected with Luigi, a very rare glitch happened causing Luigi to go absolutely nowhere and as a result Abate won the set. To top it all off he made it into top 8 as well! Sadly though his run was ended by Shroomed in the first round of top 8 after some unfortunate SD’s (Self-Destructs). Over all though a great performance from Abate, it’s great to see characters outside of the considered “viable” top 8 do so well. Another notable set was Nintendude, and ice climber’s main vs Mango. Nintendude took Mango to game 5 on winner’s side and almost caused a huge upset as it was still early in the bracket, and although he didn’t win its fun to see the gods get challenged the way Mango did.

All in all I think it was a great event, I’m aware there are a couple events I’m leaving out such as the region crew battles but if I mentioned them right now I would have to take the time to explain a crew battle and how it works which I will talk about at some point but for right now it would take too long and also it wasn’t too surprising as the considered strongest melee region (SoCal) won the event pretty handily.

Here is a link to a video showing the final moments of the Abate vs S2J set

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuqFTiVr6Ac

Credits to VGBootCamp for the clip

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.