TABLE OF CONTENTS 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2
QUOTE FROM SAKURAI
3-4
A “BRIEF” HISTORY OF MELEE
5-6
TECHNICAL HISTORY OF SMASH TIMELINE
7-8
SMASHBOX AD
9-10
SMASHBOX LEGALITY
11-12 FUTURE OF THE FIVE GODS 13 14
CRIMSON BLUR:
PROTECTOR OR DESTROYER OF CRTS? 20XX TOURNAMENT EDITION MEMORY CARD
15-18 PROJECT: M REVIEW
19
20 CREDITS
"MELEE IS THE
SHARPEST
GAME IN THE SERIES.
SPEEDY ALL AROUND AND ASKS A LOT OF YOUR COORDINATION
IT'S PRETTY
SKILLS. FANS OF THE FIRST SMASH BROS. GOT INTO IT QUICKLY, AND IT JUST
FELT REALLY GOOD TO PLAY ."
- MASAHIRO SAKURAI, 2010
A “BRIEF”
HISTORY OF MELEE By Lucas Florendo
On November 21, 2001, the second installment in the Super Smash Bros. fighting game franchise was released in North America. This “Super Smash Bros. Melee”, dubbed just as “Melee” by fans, went on to become the best selling Gamecube game of all time, selling one copy for each Gamecube console sold! Lead game designer, Masahiro Sakurai, reminisces on the development cycle of his game: "On a personal level, Melee had an extremely grueling development cycle. Some of my other games did too, but Melee sticks out far ahead of the pack in my mind. I worked on that game for 13 months straight. After all, without a single Sunday or holiday off that whole time during parts of it. I was living a really destructive lifestyle — I’d work for over 40 hours in a row, then go back home to sleep for four.”
using these newly invented techs were rising to the top. This period is notable for having one of the longest reigns in fighting game history: a Californian Marth main Ken “SephirothKen” Hoang quickly rose to the #1 status in the world, easily taking every single major tournament worldwide, and defeating even nondomestic players in their own country. His grasp of the game over his peers is still to this day unprecedented. GOLDEN AGE (2006—2007)
After a several year dominance over the game, more players had began closing in on Ken’s level of skill. Ken no longer was seen as an undefeatable force, and other players such as Christopher “PC Chris” Szygiel, Daniel “Chu Dat” Rodriguez, and notably future god Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman had began taking sets off the seemingly unstoppable player Ken. Also at this time was the first time Melee had entered the mainstream genre of fighting games as, due to its This is the history of an unlikely game surging popularity, was finally recognized whose legacy spawned a new age of as a competitive fighting game by the fighting game players. FGC and featured at Major League Gaming (MLG) tournaments. Prize money for Originally conceived as a party game, tournaments began to skyrocket, particuMelee was perceived as a casual game among friends. It was often overlooked by larly in the MLG circuit. At this time, an the FGC (fighting game community) as a unprecedented amount prize money, $10,000 dollars, was awarded to player non-competitive game that was directed toward children. This time period for the “PC Chris” for his victory over Ken at MLG New York 2006. The community game is known as “Early Game” had finally gotten more exposure and was no longer seen as an underground joke of a fighting game. Internet culture had beEARLY GAME (2001—2005) gan integrating with Melee’s community, and legendary viral video “WOMBO Throughout this time period, competitive COMBO” was created during this Golden Melee tournaments were just budding, and Age of Melee. This era is most notable for the scene had not been established. Tour- Mew2King’s dominance over the game, neys and their attendants were mostly lo- who had a grasp over the game not unlike cal, and the rulesets between regions had Ken before him. regularly differed. In this era, some of the earliest fundamental techniques, known as DARK AGE (2008—2009) “techs” were being discovered, namely “wavedashing”, “L-Canceling”, Early 2008 had been proceeding as regu“chaingrabbing”, “dash dancing”, etc. lar, with the surge of popularity and the This time period was crucial in the devel- acceptance of Melee into the FGC fueling opment of the competitive scene of the the drive for the game and its community. game, as players who were capable of Breakout player and future God
Joseph “Mango” Marquez had defeated Mew2King at Melee national tournament Pound 3, and became the new number 1 ranked player in the world, which was especially notable due to the fact he rose to the top with a unused and seemingly unviable character Jigglypuff. This time also marked an end of North American domination over the game. Swedish player and also future God Adam “Armada” Lindgren was the first non-American player to be able to compete, and even win on the international level of the game. Placing 2nd at the largest tournament at its time, Genesis, only losing to Mango, Armada had cemented himself as a force to be reckoned with. Finally, in late 2008 the Dark Age of Melee truly began with the advent of the newest addition to the Super Smash Bros. franchise: Super Smash Bros Brawl. Disheartened with the competitive appeal of Melee as opposed to the casual intended audience, Sakurai purposefully removed many mechanics in Melee that the community loved and exploited in their various tech. Brawl, as a result, became a vastly slower game, rewarding slow, defensive play as opposed to its predecessor who flourished with its exciting high speed levels of play. Brawl was an instant success in the video game community, however it was cataclysmic in the Melee community. Previously in fighting games, a community would move onto the next game as soon as a new game of the franchise is released, a natural progression of the community. Melee’s community, however, did not see this smooth transition to Brawl, and instead the community was immediately divided between the two games. The Great Schism of Melee had split the smash community into a petty feud between fighting games: Melee and Brawl, and backed by the removal of Melee as a featured game in the MLG Circuit, Melee quickly was thrown back into the undergrown fighting scene in which is was born in. REVIVAL (2010—2012) While only a pocket few of the Golden Age players still remained, the community still continued to host their own tournaments. This time period, and the current state of Melee, is all thanks to the pivotal tournament of the game, Revival of Melee. As per its title, Revival of Melee, or ROM, was thought to be the last major tournament for this game before everyone switched to the newer game Brawl, and on account, all of the major names in the community attended
this tournament to see their beloved game off before it truly was shelved and put away. Revival of Melee was an unexpected resounding success, and a fiery match between Mew2King and Bronson “DaShizWiz” Layton had sparked the fires of a new era for the game. In a sense, this very match was the match that revived the game. The 4th game in the match was the very essence of the game, with the two players seemingly pushing new boundaries that created this era of the game. The revival era was short-lived, but arguably the most important, and ended with the same tournament it had begun with: Revival of Melee 5. For 11 years, the game had gone without a complete, universally accepted ruleset, so the community finally banded together and created the podcast “Melee It On Me” or MIOM, which created the first official ruleset for the game. EARLY PLATINUM AGE (2013—2014) With the newfound high spirits from the revival age, the Melee community seemingly shifted gears and was full force in terms of progression of the game. The return of popularity for the game had redrawn the attention of MLG, as well as other popular video game organizations such as Team Liquid. With the guidance of MIOM, Melee had reunited its old and new players to lead the new era of the game. At this time, Evolution Fighting Game Tournament Series, or EVO, had put up a poll for which game to fill up its empty panel for EVO 2013 national tournament, and Melee had won by a landslide. Skeptical of the overwhelming success of a perceived “ancient” game, EVO then changed the poll to a charity drive, which Melee had won once again. The success of Melee in the EVO polls was not just of its community, but that of the entire Nintendo community as well. Many wanted to see the return of their beloved game into the national level of tournaments, and had poured together $94,683 dollars just to see that happen. Then, the unexpected happened. Nintendo of America company completely pulled the plug on Melee, and banned the streaming of any kind of Super Smash Bros Melee content at EVO2013. The backlash of the Melee community in conjunction with the Nintendo community was enormous. The topic quickly became the number one story on Reddit and many Nintendo fans attacked the customer service lines demanding a reversal of the ban. In just 6 hours, Nintendo
reversed the ban, and Melee was once again rolled around and Mango, who expected to allowed to be featured in EVO2013. win a third EVO, lost to Hungrybox, and a period of Mango losing to the non-space The entire community rejoiced and the Me- animal playing Gods: Armada and Hunlee panel at EVO2013 was a huge success, grybox, had began. Many national tournawith over 700 participants, more than any ments at this time were being taken exclutournament at this time, and a record break- sively by Hungrybox and Armada, while ing 134,000+ people watching on Mew2king and Mango struggled at 3rd and livestreaming network twitch.tv. After 4th place regularly. Finally, Mango did anMango performed a legendary losers brack- other legendary losers bracket run at GENet run and taking the tournament, Melee had ESIS3, another largest tournament of its exploded. “The Smash Bros.”, a documen- time, the first tournament to take place in a tary covering the history of Melee, had re- stadium. He defeated every single God in leased its first episode following EVO2013, the losers bracket, before losing to Armada and the proclaimed “Summer of Smash” in the losers bracket reset. Mango’s imhad begun. With the success of the competi- pressive performance had once again cetive community, Nintendo of America be- mented his status as one of the best. gan seeing the community as a target audience, and invited many top players to play This time period also saw a dramatic inat the Smash Bros. Invitational, a premier crease in the average level of skill. Players tournament featuring many influential were beginning to be able to take sets off Smash players to demo the new game, Su- gods, and the Top 15, excluding the gods, per Smash Bros. for WiiU, or Smash4. As were being called demigods due to their the next year rolled around, EVO had once ability to take sets off the Gods now. Touragain invited Melee to be one of the feanaments are now increasing exponentially, tured games of the tournament, and once and each of the nationals make Melee the again, Mango had taken the tournament, a most watched game on twitch.tv. back to back EVO win had made many claim that Mango was the “Greatest Of All THE FUTURE? Time” or GOAT. Mango, who had taken The future of Melee is still unknown. Many the tournament exclusively playing Fox, had inspired the community joke: 20XX, a are skeptical of the amount of life this beautiful game still has, and others are doubtful post-apocalyptic future where everybody plays Fox, as all other characters are unvia- of a time of when Melee will ever stop being played. New innovations are still being ble, and everyone can play at the level of perfection, so matches are instead decided discovered, and the game is just getting faster and faster, until the seemingly far by Rock-Paper-Scissors. away time of 20XX is beginning to be in reach, however one thing is for sure: Melee The Early Platinum age was the era that defined the “5 Gods of Melee”, players who has proved itself to be one of the most influential video game of all time, and its legwere unstoppable, and took every single national tournament. These 5 Gods of Me- acy had lasted over 15 years, a feat impreslee were: Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman, sive for a competitive fighting game, and Kevin “PPMD” Nanney, Juan “Hungrybox” even more impressive for a game that was Debiedma, Adam “Armada” Lindgren, and never meant to be competitive at all. of course, Joseph “Mango” Marquez. The 5 Gods were untouchable during this time period, and the only people who were capable of taking sets off these select few were other Gods. PLATINUM AGE (2015—Present) The current age, the Platinum age, began with APEX2015, the first Melee tournament ever to have over 1,000 entrants. All 5 Gods attended the tournament, and the inactive and seemingly weakest God, PPMD, unexpectedly took first place in the tournament, destroying all skeptics of his godhood and having 2 APEX tournament wins in his name. After his win, PPMD returned to his hiatus, due to health concerns. EVO 2015
That’s pretty much the gist of it. If you want to learn a more in-depth history of Melee, consider watching “The Smash. Bros.” documentary on YouTube, various archived tournament sets on the VGBootCamp YouTube channel, or visit
CREDIT TO
KOREANDERSON
ERGONOMIC. TECHINCAL. AFFORDABLE. 20XX coming too soon? Hand pains from playing Fox?
Pick yourself up a SmashBox today No w o n Kicksta r ter !
LEGALITY OF THE
SMASHBOX (IN TOURNAMENT)
PROS: -ergonomic, great for people with hand pains from GC controller -100 percent accuracy as opposed to control stick -accessible to new players from traditional fighting games -difficulty to master, rewarding technical prowess CONS: -too much flawless input accuracy -lack of uniform controller medium, other competitive games have a strict requirement -button directional movement is too precise, trivializes tech skill
Personal Opinion?
BAN IT! The issue comes down to the directional buttons instead of a control stick. There is too much precision in the buttons that precision in certain tech becomes essentially a macro command, which is illegal. Competitive console first person shooters do NOT allow a mouse-and-keyboard modification to be used in tournament, simply because of the benefit over the default peripheral—a controller, and the SmashBox is no different. While some argue that its too difficult to learn, those are all experienced Melee veterans who give the argument, while an experienced traditional fighting game player will find it an easy pick over the standard Gamecube controller, essentially removing the biggest negative that the SmashBox supporters had argued for.
FUTURE OF THE FIVE GODS BY: MICHAEL SANDOVAL
Mew2King. Hungrybox. Armada. Mang0. Long ago, the 4 Gods lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when Armada went on a win streak. Only PPMD, master of the Armada Peach and Fox matchups, could stop him, but when the world needed him most, he vanished. About a year or 2 has passed and my group and I discovered a new God, a Falcon main named MioM | Baby. And although his tech skill is great, he still has a lot to learn about viability and matchups before he’s ready to be a God. But U believe MioM | Baby can beat Armada. (TL;DR PPMD went missing and now there’s only 4 Gods instead of 5. Due to inconsistency of tourney results, we could not put PPMD in this article. RIP.)
So, a lot of people have been wondering... how the Gods are doing so far as of 2/26/17. Well, thanks to us here at lovely Tafostats, we can tell you with surprisingly accurate, well, accuracy. So here’s how they’re doing so far:
HUNGRYBOX We’ll start off with my personal favorite, Hungrybox. Hungrybox is a Jigglypuff main that is ranked #2 in the world. His Win:Loss against the other Gods since the beginning being: Mew2King 35:19, Mang0 18:35, and Armada 13:25. Winning a total of 18/23 tourneys so far this year. His best matchup being against Peach with a 100% win rate, and his worst being against Fox with a 58% win rate. His worst stages being Yoshi’s Story and Pokemon Stadium both at a 62% win rate, and his best stages being Dreamland and Fountain of Dreams at 68% win rate.
MEW2KING Next would be Mew2King. Mew2King’s mains would be Marth, Sheik, and Fox. He is ranked #4 in the world. His Win:Loss against the other Gods from the start would be: Hungrybox 19:35, Mang0 25:34, and Armada 3:21. Winning a total of 11/14 tourneys so far this year. His best matchup being against Marth with a 82% win rate, and his worst matchup being against Jigglypuff with a 50% win rate. His worst stage being Fountain of Dreams at a 52% win rate, and his best stage being Final Destination with a 71% win rate.
MANGO Then we have Mang0. Mang0’s mains would be Fox and Falco. He is ranked #3 in the world. His Win:Loss against the other Gods would be: Hungrybox 35:18, Mew2King 34:25, and Armada 18:22. Winning a total of 6/8 tourneys so far this year. His best matchup being against Sheik with a 77% win rate, and his worst matchup being against Marth at a 57% win rate. His worst stage being Final Destination at a 38% win rate, and his best stage being Battlefield at a 75% win rate.
ARMADA And last, but apparently the best, we have Armada. Armada’s mains would be Peach and Fox. He is ranked #1 in the world. His Win:Loss against the other Gods would be: Hungrybox 25:13, Mew2King 21:3, and Mang0 34:25. Winning a total of 12/12 tourneys so far this year. His best matchup being Sheik at a 94% win rate, and his worst matchup being against Jigglypuff at a 59% win rate. His worst stage being Battlefield at a 63% win rate, and his best stage being Fountain of Dreams at a 85% win rate.
PPMD Unfortunately due to personal (testosterone) problems, PPMD has not competed since Genesis 3 in 2016, but from what we’ve seen, he’s definitely still in the top 15, able to keep up with the likes of Armada, before dropping to a losers bracket running Mango.
CRIMSON BLUR: PROTECTOR OR DESTROYER OF CRTS? BY: IAN ANTHONY LOMIBAO
As a tournament organizer, Smash community ambassador at Twitch, founder of Team OXY, and commentator, Adrian “TheCrimsonBlur” Fathieh is a prominent figure within the Smash community. He is well-known as being an advocate for the protection and care of CRTs, making statements against CRT destruction and commonly using the hashtag, “#stopCRTabuse”, on Twitter. “Is it ‘recycling’ or is it systematic GENOCIDE,” questions Blur in one of his tweets. As a result of his open statements on the issue, he is widely considered to be the figurehead/leader of the anti-CRT abuse movement. However, during November charity marathon event, Smash the Record 2016, there was a $35,000 donation goal that was met, which was for Blur to destroy a CRT with his own hands. Although he initially seemed unwilling to do so, especially as a leader of CRT protection, Blur gave in. With pressure from his peers and a lot of protest from Blur, he eventually followed through with the barbaric action, which was caught live on video and was published on Youtube. Do we place responsibility on the Smash community, for ushering Blur to kill what he was known to love? Or does the responsibility lie on Blur alone, for allowing the execution of a CRT to happen by his own hands? I believe the responsibility belongs to Blur, since he could have prevented this from happening and not fall into the trap of peer pressure. He does not deserve his title of “Protector of CRTs”. He has disgraced not only himself, but the movement as a whole. Since this incident, Blur has not publicly advocated for CRTs, and has only left us with this one image:
REVIEW BY: IAN ANTHONY LOMIBAO “Project Melee”, or better known as “Project M”, is a popular modified version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii. It features the Brawl cast of characters + a few additional characters from Melee. However, its main feature that made it so popular is the addition of Melee mechanics, making it feel akin to the fast-paced SSBM rather than the rather slow and boring SSBB. This will be a quick review of Project M, briefly analyzing various aspects of the famous Brawl Mod. (This review is based off of Project M ver. 3.6)
CHARACTERS Based on the Brawl roster of 39 characters, Project M gives Zero Suit Samus, Sheik, Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard their own slots on the character selection screen (the latter 3 replacing the Pokémon Trainer) while including Mewtwo and Roy (who were both absent in Brawl) for a total of 41 characters. All 41 of these characters offer unique playstyles and interesting mechanics, so most people end up playing multiple characters rather than sticking to just one. Also, most of the roster is competitively viable in some fashion, so people can play their favorite characters without having to worry about them being completely trash.
STAGES Project M features a wide selection of stages, old and new. Melee’s Fountain of Dreams, 64’s Hyrule Castle, Brawl’s Smashville, Project M’s unique Bowser’s Castle – these are only a few of the many stages available. Graphics were updated to HD for most of the classic stages, making stages such as Dream Land and Saffron City nice to look at. Reworks were also made to some of the stages in order to make them competitively viable, expanding the stage list for competitive play.
GAMEPLAY As mentioned previously, Project M’s mechanics are based around Melee’s. Tech skill, hitstun, and physics are extremely similar to Melee’s, making matches very fast-paced and combo-oriented. And since most of the Project M roster is viable, gameplay becomes a lot more unique and fun as you play around with characters. The variety of stages also makes matches more fresh in general. If you love Melee, you’ll most likely have a lot of fun when playing with friends, especially with the amount of diversity in characters and stages.
REVIEW CONT. BY: IAN ANTHONY LOMIBAO
COMPETITIVE PLAY Like Melee, Project M strives to be a competitively viable game, and it does accomplish that. You would think that with such a large cast of powerful characters, it would be difficult to create a balanced meta-game. However, before its discontinuation, Project M received multiple balance updates, ensuring that none of the characters were able to completely dominate the meta-game. As a result, we see a large cast of characters being used in competitive play. The Melee-esque gameplay also contributes to Project M’s competitive viability, since most people enjoy the fast-paced matches. Project M has a decently sized competitive scene, so while you might not be able to find a tournament available in your region, you will usually be able to find a match on Netplay. The only thing truly obstructing the competitive scene of Project M is GimR, the president of VGBootCamp, who single-handedly banned Project M off of Twitch and greatly reduced its exposure.
CONCLUSION Overall, Project M is an enjoyable, quality game of its own, bein g a goo d ca ndi date fo r a sequel to Mel ee and a
projection of what Brawl should have been , which is probably why it was discontinued by Nintendo in the first place. An yhow,
if you love Melee , but ei th er wan t
to play a viable version of your favorite character (my boy Ro y) o r wa n t to have some fun wi th va ri ety ,
I would definitely recommend trying out Project M.
CAN’T WIN GAMES?
TRY SALT!
That Ice Climber player wobbled all of your stocks? Peach brings you to 60% because you tried to crouch cancel her down smash?
Don’t switch to fox. Don’t nod your head. Just use salt.
K9 and Kiraflax approved!
CREDITS TITLE COVER A “BRIEF” HISTORY OF MELEE SMASHBOX AD LEGALITY OF SMASHBOX FUTURE OF THE FIVE GODS CRIMSON BLUR CRT 20XXTE MEMORY CARD PROJECT M REVIEW MORTON SALT AD
LUCAS FLORENDO LUCAS FLORENDO LUCAS FLORENDO MICHAEL SANDOVAL MICHAEL SANDOVAL IAN ANTHONY LOMIBAO IAN ANTHONY LOMIBAO IAN ANTHONY LOMIBAO MICHAEL SANDOVAL