What was it like 2 years ago? Like...the year before Brawl came out?
Was BC starting to get good then and the community starting to grow?
I like history lessons :D
It goes back as ancient as the cosmos. Before the dawn of Ken. The best players that I had heard about in canada were Mike and Jarrod. They attended some of the EARLIEST national scale smash tournaments in North America, doing quite well. I think one time Mike even beat Ken but I'm not 100% sure about that. I didn't really like melee before this time. I thought everything falled too fast and too quickly. I forced myself to like it by playing more and more. Of course, I always had Eric to play with and our interest in the game grew as our skill did.
This is back when I didn't have a SWF account. I had an account on "gameFAQs". "The kirby cheat", "how to unlock sonic", "Sheik is broken", "Marth is broken". All these phrases were heard time and time again and for some time, Sheik was on top of the tier list. Then one day I heard about this guy named "gamepro88" I was looking for people to play to test my ability against. I mained sheik at the time and thought I was pretty good. Eric mained falcon at the time. This is back in 2003. So, I got a hold of gamepro and invited him over. I could beat his peach (which held the WR for Peach BtT at this time) but not his sheik. He was grabbing me repeatedly and I could not escape. 'WHAT IS THIS!?' I cried. He was 2 and 3 stocking my sheik by chain grabbing me every stock and I didn't know ANYTHING of this so called "DI".
I talked with gamepro and he said he had recently gone to Edmonton to play the LEGENDARY "Punch Crew". This was the earliest "smash crew" I had ever heard of and was composed of Nick, Aaron, Mike, and Jarrod. gamepro claims to have beaten everyone except Mike. "Mike is good" The first combo video I had every seen and oh MAN! I was impressed! Mike's DK looked so good!. Anyways, shortly after this, Eric and I hosted our FIRST tournament at my moms place in Richmond. I was a favorite to win and in the grand finals I had to face "Nintensity". I was using Fox at the time and to my dismay, this FALCO knew how to Short-hop Laser. "How do I get around this!?" I thought to myself. "It's so unfair". Nick ended up beating me 2-1 in the grand finals (only best of 3 at the time). There WERE videos up but they have been lost for years now.
2004
Wilfred, Darius, Victa, Ryan (Not cow ear)
Now let me tell you about wilfred. Wilfred and I were the FIRST smashers in BC besides gamepro88 to travel OOS to a tournament. We went to Edmonton for a tournament and took 3rd in doubles and Wilfred got 3rd in singles. I got like 7th.
Victa was another peach main, like wilfred. Back in the day his "cheap" tactics caused him to win all of our tournaments, that is until SKYPAL came up for the first time. SKYPAL was a legendary crew from Washington, also near the dawn of the cosmos. They came with teching, they came with L-cancelling, and they came with mad skills. Kei could not be stopped, he was the first person we had ever seen to TRULY **** Victa. He used fox and was WALL TECHING PEACH's Downsmash!!! We were all in awe at this spectacle of broken'ness.
Darius was another of the original players, and his friend Jeremy as well. Darius was a marth player and in 2003 or so, he created the best DI thread of it's time on SWF. I'm sure if you dig around somewhere you'll still be able to find it. Jeremy was his friend, also used marth. He was never amazing but he could give us all some good matches.
Ryan.... oh my god... the ness. This was the best Ness I had ever seen! His spacing, mindgames, and timing were so good and since none of us knew advanced techniques or utilized them well enough he was able to beat all of us. I think him and victa had a crazy insane close set and it was really hyped.
This went on for almost a year and then... well I'm done for now. I don't have time to do this all night, I'll edit this post and re-post later on.
