Central Canada Smash Circuit
It kinda surprises me that this thread still exists too, but it seems like ever since me and my legion of Pro Impact followers began
doin' stuff, Central Canada smashers are coming out of the woodwork. Clearly there is still enough interest in this game to warrant playing it and in fact, here we are six years after its release, and the local tournament scene is on the
rise.
How does this budding community compare to those that have an established and respected following elsewhere in the world? Not bad, actually. Though it could definitely be better and with a little initiative and hopefully more than a little cooperation, we could make this game a whole lot more fun than it already is. At the same time, it can also offer incentives for players to improve their game and strengthen the overall Smash ability of the country. This isn't so much of an issue as of yet, but when you find yourself hopping on a plane to California a couple years from now for an SSBB Canada vs. USA crew battle extraordinairé, you're really gonna be hoping that your fellow patriots have been practicing as much as you have.
Regional Smash Networking
For those of you unfamiliar with how the Smash community works on a larger scale, I'm going to offer an example from our well-established friends south of the border. In the American Midwest, there is a very active tournament scene with new ones popping up all the time. Some are larger than others, but the community is flourishing and there is a distinct difference between who hosts the "major" tournaments and those who are inviting six friends over for Smash at a rural farmhouse in Kansas.
Nevertheless, several reputable smashers from the area have arranged the
Midwest Smash Circuit, which pretty much encompasses anything and everything related to competitive Smash from the northeast corner of the Dakotas to the southwest end of Ohio and all that lies in between.
But what does it mean?
Well, I don't know, I don't live in the Midwest, so all I can gather is pretty much based on forum posts. Either way, more important than the meaning of the Midwest circuit is what it
could mean for Central Canada.
One-stop shop at Smash World Forums
The biggest problem with finding other smashers from this region is that we have waaaaay too much land and not nearly enough people. With population densities confined to major cities that lie hundreds of miles apart, potential smashers coming on to SWF for the first time will usually poke around the International Community forum for awhile, run a search or two, find nothing, make a thread called "Any Lake Athabasca smashers? =p" and leave, never to return. It's a wonder we have a community at all.
Well, the Central Canada thread is already well on its way to solving these problems by staying active enough to hang around on the first page for more than a day. Canadian smashers will know to look here, and that's good, but once infused with the power of the Central Canada Smash Circuit, FastFox's already-gangsta thread will be an unstoppable force of praire spam! **** tha RCMP!
Suppose a random smasher from, oh say, Plato, Saskatchewan comes into the Central Canada Thread looking for fellow Plato-area smashers. With a little initiative (and hopefully more than a little cooperation), we can edit that first post to include general information about the Central Canada Smash Circuit, a list of links to current and past tournaments in the area, bi-weekly smashfests, random get-togethers, important websites and, of course....
Central Canada Smash Circuit Power Rankings...
Oh yes, we sure do love our power rankings. This was an idea that Carl tossed in my general direction some time ago when I was suddenly appointed to be a panelist to decide for Alberta Power Rankings. Of course, this was at a time when we had fewer active Smash players than we did empty spaces to fill on the list and I
still don't think Alberta alone has enough activity to warrant power rankings. However, between myself in Calgary, Carl in Edmonton, Victor with the occasional Red Deer tournament and even stretching further east all the way to Rex in Winnipeg, the CCSC has enough tournament directors and community-savvy individuals to expand and grow.
With the expansion of any community whose focus is a competitive and skill-based game also comes an inevitable desire to see how you and those you compete with stack up against the rest. That's how power rankings all got started in the first place. The position criteria is something that has fluctuated somewhat across the various regions depending on who the panelists in charge are. My personal favourite critieria is that of the
Washington Power Rankings, who place an emphasis not only on your tournament placings and win-loss record, but also factors in a certain amount of human discretion to consider the stage, the match-up, the broken controller, the sudden power outage, etc.
But whoa!wait! we're not there yet. Don't start nominating people for a list that doesn't exist yet (and I know some of you were gonna); I would really prefer to take up the discussion with some of the other tournament figureheads within this geographical scope before drawing names from a hat to decide who belongs and who doesn't. Out of principle, I actually don't like assessing another player's skill comparative to someone else and I think it's silly and pointless to make a list of rankings in that regard. In any case, we'll have to come up with panelists for that sort of thing first and
that is what I would prefer to discuss outside of this thread.
Ties to existing Smash communities...
By creating an intangible organization of regional smashers, we will also naturally develop connections to other existing communities. Currently, the would-be CCSC community is bracketed by the flourishing eastern Canada smash scene and an equally noteworthy group of smashers from coastal B.C. The reason that that is so important is because the folks on the eastern front occasionally travel down to Midwest and East Coast USA tournaments and vice versa. Also, the guys in B.C. occasionally make the trip down to Washington too, and vice versa.
And of course, the reason this is important is because the Washington community has ties to even larger communities and EC USA is a massive one in and of itself. We're not as detached from the global scene as I once thought.
CCSC-sanctioned tournaments and website...
The best idea to come out of my research into the Midwest Smash Circuit is the idea of a "season." At the end of the Midwest Circuit's season, they held a large tournament which was dubbed as the 2006 Midwest Circuit Championship tournament or something like that. It was a large event that tried to support as many Midwest smashers as it could and one was ultimately crowned champion of the region, as recognized by everyone he just beat.
A CCSC Championship tournament could occur once a year to gather all of you from your various huts and dwellings. Who knows, maybe we can even carve an epic victory statue out of solid gold for the
victor. Even the existing annual tournaments (like Carl's) would be considered "CCSC-approved"; why not? I've always wanted to give out seals of approval for stuff.
Now that I've hosted several months worth of bi-weeklies, I've embarked on a website project at
www.proimpact.ca (currently non-existent) which will cover a wide variety of information and goodies related to smash competition in Calgary. However, I am also open to the idea of hosting information about other Central Canada tournaments with appropriate links to the appropriate threads, etc. Additionally, I will also have a pretty comprehensive statistics page that can be used to host tournament results, track player progress and view standings in the "league." This goes well with the "one-stop shop" theorem from earlier, as it would provide one website with all the Central Canada information you could ever need in one place. It's such a pain to go searching around the forums for tournament threads that you're not even sure
exist yet. With the website, you can be sure that if there's a tournament anywhere from Thunder Bay to the Rockies, the info is going to be there.
So let these ideas swim around in your head a bit. The ultimate goal of the Central Canada Smash Circuit would be to build a community of smashers, crews, tournaments and information about each, as well as offering a convenient place to discuss the whole thing with everyone else who is involved. You know, a place like this thread.
However, in order to actually build the community, I'll have to have a chat with you other tournament people or anyone else who feels they know what's going on in their community and would like to offer insight:
<- Additional contact options on profile.
Ho well.
