Melee: History Lesson 2002-2008
By: KishPrime
Let's start the countdown of the 25 most influential events in Melee history!
25. V-Games Crashes (2004) – After touring the country for many months and promising their weekly tournament winners a trip to the finals, V-Games shut down without ever awarding any kind of significant prize. The reason given was some type of copyright dispute over their name, but it led to a substantial amount of mistrust from the community toward outside operations and a reenergizing of the independent scene. This mistrust recurred when MLG was initially late on sending out prize checks for the first year, and many feared that MLG would also shut down without issuing their promised prizes. Eventually, though, MLG would catch up on the prize checks, regaining the trust of the community and driving forward, though it was not without competition.
24. Splitsies (2005-2006) – Possibly the worst thing to happen to competitive Smash. The Splitsies group of Smashers formed an alliance that would actively share tournament revenue, not just to cover costs but to avoid competing with each other. In multiple events it became obvious that players were screwing around in tournament finals. The splitting became so egregious that MLG found out, and threatened both bans towards the players involved and concern that Smash would no longer be viable for continuation in MLG. That drove the practice deeper underground, but no one is still quite sure how long it lasted and how many events were affected.
23. Ken’s loss to Chillindude at Game Over (2004) – Ken’s losses were so rare for the first couple of years that every loss sent waves across the country. Chillin’s victory at Game Over was the first time Ken had lost to someone from the East Coast, and gave those players the hope that they finally had surpassed the WC (there was an unquantifiable amount of generic EC vs. WC debate at this time, since crews were still few and far between). It was also a huge win for Fox, and gave tier proponents a considerable amount of leverage at the time for his status when Sheik was still considered the best in the game. Ken later blamed his loss on hunger, and after eating he indeed played much better. In the end, he went straight through loser’s bracket, defeated Chillin, and matched up with Azen for the finals. In the final set, Azen played 4 or 5 characters in attempt to use his knowledge as “Master of Diversity” to overcome Ken’s skill advantage, but it was for naught. Ken won the title, keeping the title of champion for another day.
22. Punch Crew/IHOP Videos (2002-2003) – In the early days before youtube, videos were extremely rare. If you could even create them, they were extremely large, you still had to have a place to share them and free webspace for downloads were rare. The Punch Crew’s videos of live gameplay became extremely popular for their live chatter during matches as much as for their skills, and they became extremely popular icons in the earliest days. They also were some of the first to travel long distances, as they made several trips to California and the Midwest long before such trips were common. Meanwhile, AOB and Grid (later branding themselves IHOP) were busy in Illinois creating some of the first direct-recorded videos from home and at tournaments and distributing them through their website, posting both full matches and music/combo videos. AOB's video PuffStuff was one of the first real sources of Jigglypuff inspiration for many players, as she was not used very often to that point.
21. Snexus 2 (2003) – The birth of Midwest smash occurred in the Summer of 2003. Snex, perhaps the most well known poster/troll on GameFAQs that trumpeted Smashboards superiority, had trash talked enough people into coming to create overflow conditions at a comic book store whose owners had clearly had gotten more than they bargained for. Part of Recipherus’ crew had made the journey out from California, and Jarrod and Mike from the Punch Crew made the trip from Canada. The tournament went late into the night, and by closing time the tournament was still far from over. Thus, the tournament was relocated to a nearby hotel where 4 rooms were rented. Because the brackets were poorly drawn, the winner's semis became a 3 person FFA to eliminate one person to losers. The comical part is that few people thought anything of it. Matches continued to occur among the top 8 players, and almost no one left. In the end, the Californians proved their dominance, as Recipherus and Isai secured the top 2 spots over Eddie and Eduardo, who would themselves continue to own the Midwest for the next 6 months. In all, 48 Smashers gathered from all around the Midwest, 20 of which would create the base of the community as it grew and developed. Other regional tournaments could probably also go into this spot, but I'm not sure any of them were as transformative for a region as Snexus 2 was. Fond memory sidenote: it was also the first tournament that the entire Ship of Fools attended together. We got our name because Joshu entered the teams tournament under the name Joshu and the Ship of Fools (Iggy).
By: KishPrime
Let's start the countdown of the 25 most influential events in Melee history!
25. V-Games Crashes (2004) – After touring the country for many months and promising their weekly tournament winners a trip to the finals, V-Games shut down without ever awarding any kind of significant prize. The reason given was some type of copyright dispute over their name, but it led to a substantial amount of mistrust from the community toward outside operations and a reenergizing of the independent scene. This mistrust recurred when MLG was initially late on sending out prize checks for the first year, and many feared that MLG would also shut down without issuing their promised prizes. Eventually, though, MLG would catch up on the prize checks, regaining the trust of the community and driving forward, though it was not without competition.
24. Splitsies (2005-2006) – Possibly the worst thing to happen to competitive Smash. The Splitsies group of Smashers formed an alliance that would actively share tournament revenue, not just to cover costs but to avoid competing with each other. In multiple events it became obvious that players were screwing around in tournament finals. The splitting became so egregious that MLG found out, and threatened both bans towards the players involved and concern that Smash would no longer be viable for continuation in MLG. That drove the practice deeper underground, but no one is still quite sure how long it lasted and how many events were affected.
23. Ken’s loss to Chillindude at Game Over (2004) – Ken’s losses were so rare for the first couple of years that every loss sent waves across the country. Chillin’s victory at Game Over was the first time Ken had lost to someone from the East Coast, and gave those players the hope that they finally had surpassed the WC (there was an unquantifiable amount of generic EC vs. WC debate at this time, since crews were still few and far between). It was also a huge win for Fox, and gave tier proponents a considerable amount of leverage at the time for his status when Sheik was still considered the best in the game. Ken later blamed his loss on hunger, and after eating he indeed played much better. In the end, he went straight through loser’s bracket, defeated Chillin, and matched up with Azen for the finals. In the final set, Azen played 4 or 5 characters in attempt to use his knowledge as “Master of Diversity” to overcome Ken’s skill advantage, but it was for naught. Ken won the title, keeping the title of champion for another day.
22. Punch Crew/IHOP Videos (2002-2003) – In the early days before youtube, videos were extremely rare. If you could even create them, they were extremely large, you still had to have a place to share them and free webspace for downloads were rare. The Punch Crew’s videos of live gameplay became extremely popular for their live chatter during matches as much as for their skills, and they became extremely popular icons in the earliest days. They also were some of the first to travel long distances, as they made several trips to California and the Midwest long before such trips were common. Meanwhile, AOB and Grid (later branding themselves IHOP) were busy in Illinois creating some of the first direct-recorded videos from home and at tournaments and distributing them through their website, posting both full matches and music/combo videos. AOB's video PuffStuff was one of the first real sources of Jigglypuff inspiration for many players, as she was not used very often to that point.
21. Snexus 2 (2003) – The birth of Midwest smash occurred in the Summer of 2003. Snex, perhaps the most well known poster/troll on GameFAQs that trumpeted Smashboards superiority, had trash talked enough people into coming to create overflow conditions at a comic book store whose owners had clearly had gotten more than they bargained for. Part of Recipherus’ crew had made the journey out from California, and Jarrod and Mike from the Punch Crew made the trip from Canada. The tournament went late into the night, and by closing time the tournament was still far from over. Thus, the tournament was relocated to a nearby hotel where 4 rooms were rented. Because the brackets were poorly drawn, the winner's semis became a 3 person FFA to eliminate one person to losers. The comical part is that few people thought anything of it. Matches continued to occur among the top 8 players, and almost no one left. In the end, the Californians proved their dominance, as Recipherus and Isai secured the top 2 spots over Eddie and Eduardo, who would themselves continue to own the Midwest for the next 6 months. In all, 48 Smashers gathered from all around the Midwest, 20 of which would create the base of the community as it grew and developed. Other regional tournaments could probably also go into this spot, but I'm not sure any of them were as transformative for a region as Snexus 2 was. Fond memory sidenote: it was also the first tournament that the entire Ship of Fools attended together. We got our name because Joshu entered the teams tournament under the name Joshu and the Ship of Fools (Iggy).
