When Project M ceased development on December 1st, 2015, much of the Project M community's strength and confidence began to waver. Players wondered if the game would die, if there would ever be another update, or if there would even be any more tournaments. Amidst the confusion, many players took arms and refused to let their scenes, let alone their game, fade away. The determination of Project M players has kept the game alive on its own (something they were already used to doing) for almost a full year now, and with what may be the largest Project M tournament to date on the horizon, things are looking up.
Among all the Smash scenes, there’s one that’s been a key factor in the survival of Project M for several years. Hosting some of the best players, one of the largest weeklies, and some of the most dedicated players, TO’s, and viewers, the New York City scene has been asserting its dominance in the Project M scene since 2.0.
One of the earliest weeklies to feature Project M was D’Ron “D1” Maingrette’s Sudden Death series, hosted at Mage Gaming (and later Next Level Arcade), which ran side tournaments for Project M version 2.0. At the time, Project M was only just starting to gain notoriety, and most still didn’t know about its existence. While this meant a small attendance for most of the events, the players who did enter were there to stay.
Around this time, there was also a fairly large PM tournament hosted at the NYU Game Center. With only 15 entrants, this was fairly large for a Project M 2.0 tournament. The event didn’t even have any PM dedicated setups, so the players had to wait for the Brawl bracket to end at around midnight before they could even start playing. The winner of the PM bracket was Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman, with Eli behind in second. Eli’s placing at this tournament would set a trend for the NYC Project M scene that would last until the release of Project M 3.0.
Many of these players were from the NYC based crew Free Saltines (FS), who have been showcasing their skill since the first demo of Project M. According to FS member Anthony “Gallo” Gallo, FS isn’t “A ‘Smash Crew’. We are a crew that also plays some smash.” Free Saltines formed in 2013, when players Christopher “Gurukid” Berrios, Eli, Gallo, Leelue, Doowop, and SMKO wanted to improve at PM. From there, more people were added to their crew, some of whom didn’t even play Smash.
It was at the Sudden Death series that NYC’s Project M scene began to form. Eli dominated the scene, with his only large contenders being the famous Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman and Hendrick William “DJ Nintendo” Pilar. After a long hold on Project M in New York, Sudden Death stopped hosting the PM side events at around the release of version 2.6. The community did not take this loss lightly, and began searching for a new venue.
On the evening of March 12th, 2014, 18 competitors gathered in a small gaming cafe in Astoria, New York to compete in the first ever Project M Hype Night. Organized by Tournament Organizers Anthony “Gambit” King Jr. and Gurukid, this new series would set the story for NYC PM.
Despite the small, arguably worse venue, Project M Hype Night began attracting more players than Sudden Death in no time. While most of the entrants at Sudden Death were just Melee and Brawl players entering for fun, PM Hype Night saw a new set of regulars who attended only to play PM. The event’s location and the hype surrounding the recent release of version 3.0 allowed for it to become the largest Project M local in New York. Each Wednesday, 10 to 15 players would attend the events to prove themselves against the best NYC had to offer. This let players like Gallo, Jake “Frozen” Somma, StereoKidd, and Gurukid garner more attention as they tore through brackets to challenge Eli and Ninjalink for first place.
Right below the upper escalon of players, there were players who still attended every week, but couldn’t quite make it to a consistent top 5 placing. Among these players were two members of FS: Amine “DarkBlues” Ridaoui, who had what seemed to be the best Bowser in Project M at the time, and Cristian “Narq” Claros, with his technical Lucas play.
Around this time, more Smash players were hopping on to the Project M bandwagon. Players like John “John Numbers” Goldberg and Dj Nintendo attended the events and made a name for themselves in the Project M scene.
During the midst of all this, Eli had decided to focus more on his academics and life, and stopped attending PM events. This let players like Gallo and Frozen truly begin to show off their skill, with Gallo replacing Eli as NinjaLink’s rival, and Frozen trailing not far behind. One step ahead of Frozen, however, was John Numbers, who was able to go compete with both NinjaLink and Gallo.
The main TO of the PM Hype Night events, Gambit, was no stranger to running tournaments, so the bracket ran fast and efficiently, despite the venue not having nearly enough space or setups. Gambit started his career as a TO by hosting tournaments at his high school as fundraisers back in 2006. His experience, along with help and cooperation from the community, allowed for his tournaments to flourish.
Along with strong TO’s, the tournament also hosted a fairly high quality stream. The stream was run by DarkBlues, who had previous experience streaming his own speedruns. Although larger PM streamers like VGBootCamp were at a much higher quality, Project M Hype Night’s streams were still higher quality than most streamers, and featured better players than most other tournaments. Almost all VODs from the stream were also uploaded onto this Youtube channel, and are still avalibe today.
Although Project M Hype Nights did see a period of growth, the tournament stagnated after a short while. The small venue wasn’t enough to hold all the players the event was attracting. The NYC scene needed a new venue, and they found their answer in a collectibles and gaming shop in Chinatown.
The new venue was originally acquired by popular NYC TO Jesse “HectoHertz” Hertz for hosting Melee tournaments, but Hertz also pushed for PM tournaments when he saw how badly the scene needed a new series. Hertz welcomed the PM community with open arms, and Gambit was back again as the main TO of NYC PM events.
On May 3rd, 2014, the first ever Nebulous Smash event was hosted, featuring both Melee and Project M. This event served as a new era for NYC Smash, with a larger venue, a better location, and a new series all together. Nebulous’ PM tournaments consistently received double what PM Hype Nights received, and on some nights, triple.
With the stream helmed by Darkblues, known previously for streaming Beast Mode, the event soon became well known to the PM community. Every week, dozens of viewers would gather to watch some of New York’s best players play.
At around this time, Eli’s hiatus allowed for NinjaLink to begin his reign over the NYC scene. Aside from dropping a few tournaments to players like Gallo and Frozen, NinjaLink won 6 Nebulous PM tournaments, only stopping when Smash 4 released on 3DS.
During NinjaLink’s reign, new players began to rise. A new crew, “RiBB”, began to show off their skill, with Nelson “Moxie” Matos, Malachi, and Cypher, their best players, making quick work of many players. Despite RiBB’s growing list of up and coming players, FS were still the dominant force in NYC.
For a while, Nebulous PM saw similar results every week. Top 3 would usually consist of Frozen, Gallo, Gurukid, StereoKidd, and Malachi. Occasionally, New Jersey would invade with players like Michael “Emukiller” Silbernagel and take first place, but for the most part, the brackets and results were similar. Attendance was stagnating at around 17 players each week, with no growth aside from the aforementioned New Jersey invasions. That all changed, however, when NinjaLink began playing again.
For the first week, NYC saw a repeat of what happened during NinjaLink’s reign. He won the tournament without dropping a set, with only Gallo and Frozen giving him trouble. Players were ready for a repeat of what had happened months ago at PM Hype Nights and the first two months of Nebulous PM.
The next week, NinjaLink showed up again, but the scene was thrown a curveball. A player by the name of Jaden “Jaden” Carr (formerly known in the Melee community as Vanz) entered the bracket and won. FS was not present that week, so the only opposition Jaden saw was NinjaLink, who he dropped a set to in grand finals, but beat him 3-0 immediately after to take first place.
The next week, FS was back, but there was also some other talent at the event. Gallo ended up placing the highest of the FS players that week, with DJ Nintendo taking first, Jaden taking second, and Antoine “Anther” Sledge taking third. At this point, NinjaLink had stopped attending Nebulous again after only 2 weeks.
At around this time, the large growth of the Melee Nebulous events had left the Melee players with little space, making their decent sized venue seem incredibly cramped. A new venue was found in Manhattan, able to accommodate up to 200 players, and Nebulous was reborn as Neo Nebulous. With this move, Project M at Nebulous had one last hurrah before moving on to Neo Nebulous. This last tournament had 30 attendants, and saw participation from the likes of DJ Nintendo, Jaden, Gallo, Frozen, and most of RiBB. With the stream once again manned by DarkBlues, this event attracted a much larger viewer base than ever before. After almost a year of tournaments, it was time to move on.
Aside from two small side event brackets to test the waters (one of which saw Gallo beating Aaron “Professor Pro” Thomas in Winner’s Finals, and again in Grands), the first Neo Nebulous was hosted on February 16th, 2015, and had 28 entrants, with players from MD/VA and New Jersey coming out for the opening event. This first tournament saw DJ Nintendo placing first, ahead of Joseph “Seagull Joe” Raucher and Jaden.
The player who Seagull Joe knocked out of winners was Nicholas “Boiko” Boiko, a Ness main from Long Island. Boiko had attended one of the previous two side events for PM at Neo Nebulous, and had taken a set off of Jaden. Although Boiko was able to make some strong upsets seemingly every bracket he entered, he wasn’t able to make it past 5th place for quite some time.
At first, Neo Nebulous saw an average of about 30 players, but the scene was growing every event, and attendance from out of state players was becoming more and more common. One of the new regulars at Nebulous was Giuseppe “Messi” Messina. Although he began attending NYC events before this, he also provided commentary at Neo Nebs PM events, which garnered him popularity as one of PM’s go-to commentators.
His commentary first gained recognition at the Pennsylvania tournament “Shots Fired”, where he covered top 8 for Project M. Messi was already known for his podcast “The Salt Mines”, which featured many good East Coast Project M players, and at Shots Fired, a special Salt Mines was held live. According to Messi, everyone on the podcast that night, as well as Mark “Chibo” Korsak (founder of Clash Tournaments), had heard his commentary on the grand finals for Project M doubles that had happened earlier, and said “You’re sticking around tomorrow, and you’re doing top 8”. Both Messi and Ahmed “Apollo Ali” Ali Akbar commentated top 8 the next day, solidifying them as one of PM’s best commentary duos.
Luckily, both Messi and Apollo were from NYC, so they often commentated the Neo Nebs streams together. This, along with the talent the events boasted and the stream quality, established the Nebulous streams as one of the go to sources for Project M footage, along with PMCentral.
With the growth of Nebulous, we also saw the growth of players. Frozen now asserted his dominance in the scene, consistently beating the higher level players like Jaden and Gallo to take first at 2 tournaments in a row.
During this high point in Neo Nebulous’ timeline, a player by the name of Luis “Raz” Alonso began bringing his laptop and capture card to the events. His setup was used for large off stream matches or money matches, and is still used at nebulous to this day. All of the matches from his recordings have been uploaded to his youtube channel.
NYC’s Project M tournaments saw yet another name change, with the Neo Nebulous PM weeklies being changed to simply Nova. Frozen continued to show dominance, winning the first Nova over Seagull Joe. One player who was also becoming a larger threat at the time was Malachi. Malachi began to place within top 3 at the Nova events, despite the increased talent attending every week.
Whilst Nova continued to gain traction, an old FS player made his return. Trent Michael “Zhime” Moss, who rarely attended tournaments, became a regular at Nova. His Zelda tore through brackets, asserting himself as one of New York’s hidden bosses.
With Nova becoming one of the most popular Project M weeklies, and the NYC scene gaining new players every week, NYC had become arguably the strongest Project M region. It was at this point, when NYC PM was at its strongest, disaster struck.
In April of 2015, the Nebulous Smash team was kicked out of their venue. Without anywhere left to go, NYC Smash hit a low point. The only tournament available for the Project M players was “Honor Strength Smash!”, a Long Island weekly. HSS was hosted in a small venue, and they were not able to accommodate the new influx of players, making the tournaments run later than normal. That, combined with the train fare it took to get out to Long Island, made even HSS seem like a poor option. With nowhere left to go, NYC PM was at a loss.
In June of 2015, an Indiegogo campaign for a new Nebulous venue went up. The Smash community got together and donated over $11,000, crushing the $9,000 goal. Without missing a beat, Nebulous began anew with a spacious new venue. It almost seemed like an improvement over the old one. The 4 month tournament drought was over, and NYC PM began to recover.
During this drought, many NYC players were still attending tournaments, such as HSS, or New Jersey’s tournaments hosted at Hitbox Arena. This allowed for the first ever NY/NJ power ranking to be made:
Image credit: Billy "GP" Hand
After a few weeks, the attendance at Nebulous Prime dropped to about 30 to 40 people a week. With more time and space to run tournaments, Nebulous Prime began to experiment with both pools and an amatuer and pro bracket. If you finished 3rd or 4th in your pool, you moved on to the amateur bracket, where you would play against other players for a chance at free venue fee the next event. If you finished 1st or 2nd, you were put into the pro bracket, where you played against other players for a chance at the prize pot.
Although the somewhat inconsistent number of attendees didn’t permit for this style of tournament every week, it was done when possible and was met with positive feedback. Many other Project M tournaments, specifically large regionals and majors, have adopted this system.
Throughout the first 6 or 7 weeks of Nebulous Prime tournaments, the same 5 or 6 players finished at the top, but the order they were arranged in changed every week. Malachi, Frozen, Gallo, Zhime and Jaden continued to beat each other in different sets, and trade off for first every week.
With several weeks of Nebulous tournaments, the results were available for a new Power Ranking- one made just for NYC players. With a PR panel made up of the best players and frequent attendees, this was the first ever NYC only PR:
Image credit: Billy "GP" Hand
During this time, however, Twitch.tv began to discourage Project M from being streamed on their website. Streaming the game was not against the website’s rules, but doing so was frowned upon for legal reasons. This made it impossible for Project M streamers to get a sub button, making it impossible to make any money from streaming PM. This, combined with more legal issues, led to Project M getting the cold shoulder at most majors. The PM scene didn’t see any more main events at tournaments, only side events that were streamed by a third party, or not streamed at all. While some streamers turned to Patreon to make money, others turned to Hitbox.tv, who had just recently opened up their policy on revenue sharing for streamers, making it easy to get a sub button on your channel. Several rumors and ideas were thrown around about switching to Hitbox.tv for Project M streamers.
This idea came to fruition on September 9th, 2015, with the creation of PMTV. PMTV, helmed by Messi, was a group of the 8 most popular Project M streamers, one of which was Nebulous’ stream. This group was making the bold move to Hitbox.tv, whether the rest of the community followed or not. Luckily, Hitbox.tv had saw this as an oppurtunity to grow, and accepted the Project M community with open arms. This allowed for streaming Project M to be a viable source of revenue for Project M tournaments, and also led to several official partnered tournaments with Hitbox.tv.
The stream was run by local NYC Falcon main Mike “Nox” Gucciardo. Nox frequently supplied a recording setup for important matches, and once DarkBlues saw his knowledge on streaming and media production, he handed the keys over to him. Although DarkBlues was a great streamer, the quality that Nox brought to the streams was a huge leap forward.
With 2016 on the horizon, Nebulous was growing more and more popular, and the tournaments reflected that. Gambit had begun recruiting other players onto his task force of TO’s, including Gallo, Raz, and frequent Nebulous attendee Kyle “Arr0w” Friedland, making the tournament run smoother than ever. Gambit believed that “ It's important for us [Nebulous] to continuously breed the feeling of community”, so many of the new TO’s on the team were players who had simply offered to help out and showed their responsibility in the past.
Around this time, the second NY/NJ Power Ranking was released. This version included less New Jersey players, and more Long Island players. Among the players on this PR, Malachi, Gurukid, and Zubat all saw huge improvements in their placing:
Image credit: Billy "GP" Hand
As the calendar moved forward, so did Nebulous. On Janurary 30th, 2016, Nebulous announced an official partnership with Hitbox.tv. From then on, every Nebulous stream, including those for Melee, was hosted on Hitbox.tv, and several Nebulous events were sponsored by Hitbox.tv to allow a larger prize pot. One of these events was SuperNova, a PM national announced the same day as the Hitbox partnership. SuperNova was to be held on April 16th, 2016. With that date in mind, players from all across the country began training to see what New York City had to offer.
The NYC scene also needed training, however. In order to help prepare their non-PR’d players, the first ever Nebulous Arcadian was held on March 5th, 2016, one month before SuperNova. This tournament saw a top 3 that consisted of all Long Island players, with Luke “Yung Quaff” Ferris placing first, Ben “Vortex” Geoghean placing second, and Nicolas “Little Turtle” Giuffrida placing third. Most of top 8 was also comprised of LI natives, with only 3 New York players (Airex, Royals, and Koro) representing their region. This established Long Island players as some of the “Hidden Bosses” of New York, and proved that many LI players could live up to the expectations put on them by the NYC scene.
The one thing that every player will always remember from that first Arcadian was the legendary commentary duo of Boiko and Long Island Fox main Billy “GP” Hand.
After the Arcadian, players went back to training, for the day of SuperNova was fast approaching. Almost every NYC player was confirmed for the event, and other players from all around the country had also confirmed their attendance. Players from Tri-state, Michigan, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and New Hampshire attended the event, just to name a few.
However, many of these regions’ players were overshadowed by the West Coast representatives. The East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry had its first real chance to blossom, in both bracket and crew battles. With 11 players representing California, an 8 vs. 8 crew battle between Tri-State and California emerged.
With tensions higher than ever, the fated day of April 16th finally came, and players lined up at the doors to Nebulous at 10am. Many players’ first (and only) impressions of the Nebs venue came from this day, which started with an old caesar salad discarded on the ground by the door of the venue. Despite the less than stellar presentation of the entrance, the inside left players in awe. Attendees were greeted with friendliness and professionalism from the Nebs TO’s, and the welcoming aura of a venue full of setups, room, and couches. The tournament was already ready to begin, despite not actually starting for another hour.
The event totalled at 164 entrants. There were some issues with players being sick, or not making it to the venue on time, as with any tournament, but the number competing remained over 150. The TO’s were tasked with running a doubles bracket, singles round robin pools, a Super Smash Sisters event and both amatuer and pro brackets for singles after pools, all within a span of about 14 hours.
Doubles bracket concluded around 3pm, with a top 3 of Dustin “Darc” Hayes and Anthony “Slox” Detres (East Coast) for first, Emukiller and Kyle “Switch” Carlon (East Coast), and Tom “Aero” Silva and David “iPunchkidsz” Vargas (West Coast), with 4th place going to Frozen and Corey “Machiavelli” Fields (East and West Coast).
With doubles finished, round one of pools started at 4pm. The schedule continued to go smoothly, and most pools generally went as seeded, with a few small upsets here and there. With 20 8 player pools to get through, pools ended at around 6pm, and everyone in the venue was ready for one thing: The crew battle.
Although the amateur bracket and some pro bracket matches were supposed to run during the crew battle, most players had their attention drawn to the matches. For the first time, the venue truly felt crowded, as two thirds of the attendees surrounded the stream setup to watch history transpire. With each crew putting $400 on the line, the winners would be met with more than just glory.
After what seemed to be the loudest moment in NYC PM history, the Tristate crew emerged victorious with 6 stocks left. California's last player Machiavelli’s two stocks were no match for Messiah “Phresh” Williams’ 4, as Phresh took out Machiavelli’s Ivysaur with only a few grab setups and re-grabs with Ice Climbers.
After crews, much of the venue died down, aside from the occasional hype match in pro bracket. Most players had left the venue to buy food, stepped out for a breath of fresh air, or had just begun to play friendlies for the rest of the night. As top 8 approached however, the venue livened up again.
It was already late, almost midnight, but the venue was almost as alive as it was during the crew battle.
There were only two West Coast players left in the bracket; iPunchkidsz and Jake “Venom” Hefner. With top picks like Arjun “Junebug” Rao and Jonathan “Sosa” Sosa out before top 8, the bracket was beginning to heat up.
On the loser’s side of the bracket, iPunchkidsz went up against Alex “Hyperflame” Mireles after taking out Junebug, and lost 3-2. Switch played against Brian “DVD” Sherbert, a matchup they were both used to seeing as they were both from New Jersey, and won 3-0.
On winner’s side, Nick “Flipp” Flippides beat Malachi 3-2, after Malachi had just knocked Junebug into loser’s. On the other side of winner’s, an unexpected match was about to take place. After placing 13th in doubles and only taking 3 stocks in the crew battle, Venom was not exactly the favorite for Socal, but he faced off against Zhime, one of the best players NYC had to offer. After a long, intense set, Venom emerged victorious, beating Zhime 3-2.
Going back to loser’s side, Malachi now had to play against Switch. Malachi beat Switch 3-1, advancing to loser’s semis. The other side of loser’s quarters saw Zhime vs. Hyperflame, which Hyperflame won 3-1 with quite an upset. Malachi defeated Hyperflame 3-2 in loser’s semis.
Moving on to winner’s finals, Flipp vs. Venom began. Flipp showed Venom why he was dominating the East Coast scene and won 3-1, knocking Venom into loser’s finals to play against Malachi. Although Malachi had showcased his dominance in the Falcon Peach matchup in the crew battle by eliminating Venom, Venom was set on getting a runback of winner’s finals with Flipp. This time, he beat Malachi 3-0.
Despite his best effort, Venom saw a repeat of winner’s finals and lost 3-1. Even though Venom lost the tournament, he gained more fame outside of his own region, and was now considered a big threat to see in bracket.
All Supernova results can be found on its Smash.gg page here.
With Supernova coming to a close, the NYC scene went back to their standard schedule: Running nebulous events, hosting fests, and preparing for the nationals. The next national to prepare for was We Tech Those 2, which wasn’t until July 23rd, giving the NYC more than 2 months to train by organizing crew battles, money matches, and so on.
During this grace period, the scene saw some players improve rapidly. Some of these include the Wolf main Dirt, known for his stylish play, Nebs TO and Snake main Arr0w, RiBB member and Toon Link main Zork, and content manager and Zelda main Raz.
We also saw the release of yet another PR:
Image credit: Billy "GP" Hand
After We Tech Those 2, which much of the NYC scene had attended, and a Summer of tournaments, it was time for another Arcadian. On August 6th, the Nebulous Summer Arcadian took place. This time, the Arcadian ended with a top 3 of Dirt, Spencer “Mr. Watch&Learn” McLaughlin, and Ryan “Kunai” Romanos. As of now, this is the most recent Arcadian.*
With a season of tournaments, an Arcadian, and We Tech Those 2, the Summer PR was released with an accompanying video made by Nox. This ranking is current as of now:
Image credit: Billy "GP" Hand
Released in September, the Summer PR saw the rise of more Long Island players, like “Mr. Watch&Learn, Vortex, and Yung Quaff, and the rise of more NYC players, like Zork and Moxie. The top 10 stayed relatively the same.
Most recently, Nebulous has been hosting Project M monthlies along with weeklies. The most recent monthly was “Get Schooled”, which was held last month. The event featured an 5v5 “Nerds vs. Bullies” crew battle. The stream for the event featured a Fall themed Project M build and a school themed overlay on the stream.
With the NYC scene stronger than ever, and its neighboring Long Island scene growing faster and faster, there’s no telling what’s in store next. Players from New York like Dirt and Raz, and Long Island players like Mr. Watch&Learn and Anthony "Ant" Scoppio, are becoming more known on a national scale. Much of FS and RiBB are still active and improving. That’s not to mention the current power struggle between Malachi and Jaden, and the still active national threats like Gallo, Gurukid, Frozen, and Zhime.
Every day, players from the NYC scene are improving, and they're looking to show this off at Olympus this weekend.
Special thanks to Anthony Gallo, Mike Gucciardo, Anthony King Jr., and Giuseppe Messina.
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