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History of a Smasher

Fortress | Sveet

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Joined
Dec 21, 2005
Messages
16,256
Location
Northern IL
man when this was going on i was still playing BW

also, late to announce but i was the first view and subber. :)
 

chillindude829

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
4,804
Location
Northern Virginia
Part VII - Tournament Go 5

Tournament Go was a tourney series held in California by Mattdeezie, one of the best early Melee TO’s. TG had already gotten big, with TG4 being a decisive battle of SoCal vs NorCal; Ken prevailed, giving SoCal a temporary victory. But these regional rivalries became meaningless when East Coast was involved; there was only one rivalry that really mattered, and it was EC vs WC.

When Azen and Anden found out they could make TG5, H2YL’s trash talk floodgates were opened. Mild and I’s parents were very strict, and thoughts of traveling to California for a Smash tourney were still completely unreasonable for us. Despite this we hyped up Azen like he was the next coming of Jesus. We were hoping well for Anden too, but we had already seen him lose matches he shouldn’t have in local tournies so we were skeptical about what he could do on a national scale.

Being that TG5 was in west coast home turf, items were going to be on. We were concerned about this but we practiced a bit with items to try to help Azen get ready. These training sessions only served to strengthen our theory that items weren’t fit for competitive play, but clearly there was nothing we could do about it at that point; the tourney was less than a month away and Cali definitely wasn’t budging on the items issue.

The tourney attracted attention from everywhere, and DA ended up bussing (I believe) across the country to attend. WA players, including Sastopher, also attended as well as players from Crystal City, Texas, like Caveman and Rob$. As I previously said, TG5 was definitely the first Melee major, as well as the first tourney for Smash on a national level. It was extremely hyped, but unfortunately since I couldn’t make it, I can’t give you a very detailed description.

In the end, while Azen thoroughly impressed nearly everyone at the tourney, he placed 4th. He lost to Jeremy and Isai, both Sheik dittos. Azen liked to say he was a “Master of Diversity” at the time, and enjoyed dittoing people in friendlies regardless of who they used. However, in the tournament, he stuck mainly to Sheik. Some on the West Coast were critical of this, asking why a self-proclaimed master of diversity stuck to one character during the tournament. Azen later told us that he felt Sheik dealt the best with items and that was the only reason he used her all tournament.

Ken won, Recipherus/Jeremey took second, and Isai took 3rd. Azen had a good display getting top 4, but in the end, this was a victory for West Coast. Teams weren’t as big a deal back then, but Ken and Isai also showed signs of early teams dominance when they won finals over Wes and Hein, a powerful DA team. With WC prevailing in both events, EC had to bite its tongue for the moment. Of course, items were on this tournament, a fact we weren’t willing to let go easily.

In the aftermath of TG5, while the EC vs WC rivalry temporarily died down, H2YL vs DA was as heated as ever. DCSS2 came around in September 2003, and DA was coming to take on H2YL in full force.

I was a bit humbled during this time. My mentor and the player I looked up to, Azen, had just lost on a national scale, and I was fresh off losing badly to DA during the first H2YL vs DA fest. My Fox was still a work in progress, but my training never stopped, and I tried to play with Azen as often as possible.

Luckily for me progress was being made. When DA got to the venue for DCSS2, Wes sat down next to me at a TV I was playing on and called next, or as he said: “Yo I got brext *****.” The other members of H2YL nearby gathered to watch me take on Wes, although it was just a friendly.

Wes clearly messed around the first game, obviously sandbagging, although he was Samus vs my Fox. I went up 3 stock to 1 and taunted him before finishing him off, then he immediately pressed start again and returned to FD for a rematch.

He pulled out all the stops and started going to work. He had an early lead, and everytime he landed a hit, he would talk smack: “good clux in the tournament *****.” Wes liked to get mental advantages on his opponent, and certainly this would’ve done the trick on me – if I hadn’t stepped my sh*t up.

Despite the fact that Wes was now “playing serious,” I found that unlike the fest a few months earlier, I could actually go toe to toe with him. I ended up making an awesome comeback and barely won, and I remember as soon as the match ended, I looked straight at Wes and said “good clux in the tournament.” H2YL cheered me on, and despite the fact that it was just a friendly, it was huge for me at the time.

The tournament started and I ended up losing to two of my own – Anden and Chu. Chu had started using ICs, while Anden was still Jiggs, and at the time these weren’t very good matches for Fox. Since H2YL was there in full force and DA only had a few representatives, we ended up taking our own members out a lot.

By the end of the tourney there were 4 players left: Chu, Wes, Kamaal (DA’s Luigi) and Azen. Chu and Wes played in loser’s semifinals, and this match was significant because it was one of the first rules issues we’d encountered in the middle of a tournament set.

Stock match time limit had been established, but matches timing out seemed near impossible. Wes took Chu to Corneria during game 3, and we witnessed camping at its finest when Wes went down 1 stock to Chu’s 3. He stayed on the right side of the fin, and Chu, not thinking about the rules, continued attacking.

As time was getting close to expiring, Wes managed to get Chu down to his last stock while he was over 100% on his last stock. He then camped out the rest of the 30 seconds or so with up+B’s on the fin, and the timer ran out. Good thing Chu had that 100%+ damage lead, right?

Nope. M3D’s rule was that in the event of stock ties, sudden death would be played out. This seems silly now, but his reasoning at the time was, “it would be lame if someone lost by like 2%.” So instead, Wes beat Chu in sudden death and despite being on his way to 3 stocking Wes, Chu lost.

H2YL was outraged by this but M3D stood his ground and there was nothing we could do. We watched as Wes beat Kamaal, then Azen’s Falcon put on a clinic and demolished Wes in finals. Still, the tourney left a bittersweet taste in our mouth; two members of H2YL in the top 2 looked much better than Azen followed by two members of DA.

After this tourney, I felt more confident about my skills as did the rest of H2YL. While before we had been clearly bested by DA overall, this time we went back and forth and the rivalry was heating up. But both we and DA had something else on our mind: Ken, Isai and the west coast. We wanted another chance to take them on, this time on our turf. I hadn’t hosted a tourney since the very first one in August of 02, but slowly plans started to come together for the potential runback of TG5. After we secured Ken and Isai’s attendance, it was confirmed: Game Over was EC’s chance for redemption.
 

Banks

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 17, 2005
Messages
5,861
Location
Maine (NSG)
Last time I read an H2YL bio, I got more than I bargained for.

So of course, I am going to start reading this.
 

Violence

Smash Lord
Joined
May 31, 2010
Messages
1,249
Location
Vancouver, BC
I love how this is being posted on Veteran's Day. It's like an account of the Smash Civil War and the brave veterans who fought.
 

Reptar

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Nov 11, 2010
Messages
111
Location
401 REP
Violence your right, I know exactly where your coming from because I was thinking the same exact thing. Its like their going into battle and it was released today on vets. Hes got me hooked and i always check for the next addition.
 

Hax

Smash Champion
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
2,552
Location
20XX
i hope chapter 14 of this lives up to chu's chapter 14
 

Pi

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 5, 2008
Messages
6,038
Location
Lake Mary, Florida
oh mannn
this gettin me hyped and i wanna practice and practice and become dominant!
too bad my crew is flaky

also inb4 bel air
 

Signia

Smash Lord
Joined
Feb 5, 2009
Messages
1,157
it'd be nice if you could get all the parts on the first page. since this would be entertaining for any gamer you might see players from other communities read this (like day9 daily 100 "life of starcraft") not everyone is willing to sift through pages of forums to read it.
 

chillindude829

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
4,804
Location
Northern Virginia
it'd be nice if you could get all the parts on the first page. since this would be entertaining for any gamer you might see players from other communities read this (like day9 daily 100 "life of starcraft") not everyone is willing to sift through pages of forums to read it.
I like this idea but I think the smashboards character per post limit would make it impossible, maybe I can get a mod to do it somehow
 

Zodiac

Smash Master
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
3,557
This is to good, I love this thread and reading the smash story of someone who's been around. I could the story of my smash career start to finish but it would just be "I started playing...Oregon had no players...The end"
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
This thread is so good that it makes me happy to be a scrub.
 

chillindude829

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
4,804
Location
Northern Virginia
not gonna post another chapter tonight, but right around the end of the last part i posted is when we made the H2YL rap aka Good Clux:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9KSum12sEg

if youve been reading this whole story, the lyrics of this song should make a lot more sense

edit: oh yea one thing i havent mentioned is "ballskick," its what wes and DA called samus' uptilt, rofl

wes came up with some crazy ****
 

TheTantalus

Smash Hero
Joined
May 19, 2008
Messages
6,887
Location
Hampstead, MD
This is pretty awesome seeing as I read up on some melee history but I didn't experience it so its good to have someone's account to reference to help understand everything.
 

chillindude829

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
4,804
Location
Northern Virginia
Part VIII – BOMB1 and Preparing for Game Over

I secured the very same venue as our first tourney ever, the American Legion in Woodbridge, VA, as the location for Game Over. I remembered having over 80% of the space remaining with 14 people, so I figured the venue would hold 100 people easily. The date was set for January 10, 2004, and Ken stated that he and Isai would only attend if an Out of State bonus was provided for teams. We had to guarantee their attendance to truly make it national, so we posted about a $300 OOS bonus and started holding biweeklies at Jtanic’s house to raise money. Ken and Isai bought their tickets, and Game Over was ready to go.

DA was coming down in full force, although we didn’t play them between DCSS2 and GO, so we didn’t know how our training was compared to theirs. We just continued regular H2YL fests, and got ourselves in the winning mindset. We recorded the H2YL rap trash-talking both DA and West Coast, and let everyone know we didn’t plan on having anyone come to our state and beat us. The trash talk on Smashboards that had died down after TG5 was back stronger than ever, and although East Coast was a bit subdued because of losing at TG5, we made sure WC was aware that they only won because of items and it wouldn’t happen on our turf.

Another developing in the crew in the MD/VA area was Power Underwhelming or PU, which consisted of Muffin King, AlphaZealot and Kiraki. Muffin King was an early Mario player and got decent pretty fast, along with his crewmates. He decided to hold his own tourney and hosted the Best of Maryland’s Best, or BOMB.

At first we viewed BOMB as any normal local event, until Mild and I discovered that Azen had a church event that day and couldn’t go. Chu, Anden and Jtanic were also not going to be attending, meaning Mild and I had our first chance to win a tourney. I considered myself better than Mild at the time so I expected to win easily.

BOMB1 was notable because it’s the first tournament in MD/VA I can remember having “advanced slob picks,” or counterpicking both stage and character. The losing player picks the stage, then his opponent picks his character, then the losing player picks his character. This is the system we ended up using at Game Over and it is still the standard today; counterpicking characters was still a rarity, but since the system was in place, it started to become more and more common.

We got to the finals and I was extremely excited to win my first tournament. Unfortunately this is all I was thinking about: winning a tourney finally, not actually playing the match. Mild ended up destroying me, and it was one of the first times I let tourney pressure get to me and had it greatly affect my play. Mild would never let this victory go (seriously, he still brags about it sometimes, lol), and my first tournament win wouldn’t end up coming for almost two more years.

Despite BOMB1, H2YL’s training was still entirely focused on Game Over. There weren’t many local tournies during this time other than Jtanic’s biweeklies, and some more up and coming players started playing with us during fests occasionally (Husband, Wife and Oro for example). Our training was consistent and we all noticed improvement which got us excited for Game Over.

Items were going to be off, so we knew that we weren’t going to lose to random BS. It was 2 out of 3 matches, so we knew one bad match wouldn’t doom us. Team attack was off which we considered better at the time; really, we just didn’t play teams often enough to see that TA on was definitely preferable. Teams was still not as important as singles, although Ken and Isai took it very seriously. H2YL’s teams were iffy at best, with Azen being held back by Anden and Chu/Jtanic being perhaps H2YL’s best team as double Samus. Mild and I had attempted teaming in the past and it always went terribly, so I decided to team with Eddie, a Ganon player from the Midwest. Eddie dominated the Midwest and had been to TG’s, and now he was trying his hand on the East Coast.

The tourney approached and I started to realize it was kind of overwhelming running a tourney of this scale. I had to worry about flights and rides among other things, and I consider myself lucky now that it was only a one day tournament because I don’t know if at age 14 I was capable of handling a 100-person, 2 day event.

The week before the tourney I went to Azen’s house regularly to practice. Azen had moved to within 5 minutes walking distance of Mild and I, which allowed me to amp up my training right before Game Over. The Friday before the tournament I remember going to school and not being able to think about anything else. Game Over was here: East Coast vs West Coast part 2 and H2YL’s biggest test to date.
 

DJMirror

Smash Master
Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
4,809
I kinda wanna spoil the next part of the reason why team attack is on lol Kira told me about it and I thought it was pretty funny
 
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