School Stories

The Time I Participated in a Smash Tournmanet (and got dead last)

I was a big nintoddler fanboy back in the day. Especially back when I was in elementary school. I would often debate and bicker with my peers about how the Nintendo 64 was the superior console compared to the Sony PlayStation. I would say shit like “Nintendo has the best platformers, the best shooters, and the best racing games” and “Gaystation only has “Story” games (A term I used to describe JRPGs like Final Fantasy) and Mario Rip-offs (Crash and Spyro). There were also some Sega fanboys in my school though they were never brought up in debates. Poor lot they were. They only had Sonic the Hedgehog for leverage and the Dreamcast/Saturn fighting games. I got respect for the Sega brand but Sony can still fuck itself (even though there were some decent games for the PlayStation 1 and 2). When the Gamecube came out, I was fucking hyped. The graphics looked even better than it’s competitors and there was a decent line of launch titles (even compared to the PlayStation 2 which for a while had no games and was only noteworthy for being a inexpensive way to get a DVD player). Of course, when the sequel to Super Smash Bros was released, I was dead set on begging my parents to get a Gamecube for Christmas. I eventually did get one for my Birthday the following year after it released and one of the first two games I played on that system were Pikmin and the Super Smash Bros Melee. Both were great games but Melee in particular was the life and soul of sleepovers at my house or at my cousin’s place. We would play for hours on end on the weekend, trying to unlock all the characters and hosting tournaments with our friends from school. Good times.

Imagine my excitement when I hear from my peers in school that there’s going to be a Melee tournament being held right here in our small town. There was going to be a prize of a $100 for the victor who placed 1st place in this tournament. My cousin also was aware of this contest and the both of us were hyped to compete and become the top players in our town. For the majority of the week prior to the tournament, my cousin and I would practice for hours on end against each other and level 9 bots on the state Final Destination. It seemed like we were getting really good. So much so we started adding more high level bots to increase the challenge. By the time the day of the tournament arrived, we thought we were more than ready to take on the other gamers.

What we didn’t expect as we were dropped off by the comic store by our parents was that our competition was not what we were expecting at all. We both assumed we would be going up against our peers from school but none of our classmates showed up. Instead, we were greeted with this awful stench of sweat and horrible body order. We were the youngest participants in this tournament. Everyone we were going to go up against were mostly sickly looking or overweight teenagers and college age adults whom as we were soon to discover, were extremely dedicated to this game. So much so that once we were up for our first match, both of us were completely annihilated in the first round. We didn’t stand a chance. We didn’t stand a fucking chance. These players live and breathe Melee like their lives depended on it. We were just kids. We were kind of bummed out from losing but at the same time, we were also thinking “What the heck?, Why are all these grown ups playing this game.”

That day has served as a reminder (or a red-pill) for the reason why Smash Tourney Fags are some of the most bottom dwelling creatures on the planet. What we thought was going to a fun and wacky tournament was composed of nothing but tryhard losers who think getting good at a party game counts as some sort of ideal to strive for. Yes. Smash is not a fighting game. It’s a party game about cartoon mascots from kids games beating the shit out of each other. You can’t compare fighting skills in a game like smash to Combos in a game like Street (Shitter) Fighter 2, or Blaze Blue.