How you got into competitive Melee

[F V T S]

i have a couple friends i play with and i'd always get my ass handed to me. like, seriously. i am talking about regular and inevitable

total
butt
blastings.

strange enough, even though i'd get blown out i'd still have a great time with the game. i started to play on my own (prior, i'd only play socially) against CPUs until i got to a point where i could at least stand even with my homies -- but then i accidentally stumbled upon I'm Not Yelling. i'm a big fan of pro league, but always hated how seriously they took themselves; they try so hard to mimic actual sporting events and it takes away from the fun. at one point, scar and toph commentated an entire match while barely mentioning it. rather, they sat there and complained about a guy that was supposed to get them food but didn't follow through. furthermore, not only were these guys just chilling out and having a good time, the gameplay is astounding! it was definitely something i wanted to become a part of.

i play drums, and the more i got into melee and its mechanics the more i realized it's really a rhythm game at core. it fit me. you can put your soul into it. you can express yourself with it. another thing i found in smash that i didn't find in league of legends was personality: there's only one way to play a champion, but a billion to play your character.

i haven't gone to a tournament yet, but it'll happen soon enough :']

 

[Level 99 Lil B]

I played 64 when I was really young, never knew what I was doing just mashing and having fun. After that I really never touched another fighting game until around 16 when I started playing Street Fighter 4, and actually got pretty good. I still place ok in Michigan tournaments, even got on the front page of Eventhubs which was pretty hype. During the time I was heavily playing SF I was looking at other fighting games but none really interested me, even smash for the longest time. Now about 2 months ago I met someone at my high school and he loved smash, and him and his friends all played quite a bit and thought why not go play. I was hooked immediately lol. I quickly got better than them mainly because it turns out they're pretty casual, but after going to a few get togethers I see how far I am away just competing with players in my town, and I love that. I want to really work, and study to get better. I also plan on going to my first smash oriented tournament this Saturday. Most likely going to go 0-2, but I don't care as long as I play sets all day.

 

[ErXtDe]

The first ever smash game I played was Melee with my brothers. I had a likeness towards link and G&W. But that is not where it started. My brother opened up SSB3DS on christmas. At my suprise, I liked it. I wasn't a big smash player, but I learned that the game was very fun. I played G&W, Marth, and Captain Falcon. I got a call-up from my friend telling me. "We should play melee, It is waaaay better." So, we played it. I had such fun with the game. I played G&W and loved him. Now I play Melee competitively at 14. I main (from best to worse) G&W, Marth, Link, Roy, Samus, and Dr. Mario (and no, no spacies :D)

 

[Darth Tobito]

I played Brawl with my friends a lot towards the end of Summer last year and we all got pretty competitive over it. Once Smash 4 came out we switched to that. As I started getting into competetive Smash I started browsing r/Smashbros on Reddit. One day I came across a thread talking about Armada vs Leffen at Paragon 2015 so I decided to watch the set. Oh my God I have never seen such hype and skill in Melee before so I decided to pick it up after that. Since I mained Marth in Brawl at the time I picked him in Melee and studied Mew2King and Ken because I found their Marth gameplay to be both elegant and impressive. I play both Melee and Smash 4 and while I'm complete garbage at Melee I still prefer it over Smash 4 despite being better at that one. I guess the stylish combos in Melee is what attracts me to it.

 

[Squelchyman]

I just realised that I haven't actually gotten into competitive melee yet but I've already written too much so I've decided to keep it here, if it's okay.
[collapse="Spoiler"]
My story starts way back in 2005 I guess. I used to play a lot of Melee when I was young, I was only 5 then, I used to main Yoshi and we were both really bad so I just used to camp by the edge of Corneria (as shown in my avatar) and wait there until he ran into me, then I'd do a neutral B and he didn't know he could just move back onto the edge so it killed him every time. He got so angry seeing the little Yoshi egg slowly drift off the edge.

Then, we pre-ordered Brawl and thought it was pretty cool. Finished Subspace Emissary pretty quick and introduced most of our friends to it. In the end, my twin started to main Metaknight, but I had yet to know how OP he was so just thought he was a lot better at the game than me (which he was). I kind of gave up as he used to absolutely trash me and my friends.

Years later, me, my 21 year old brother and my twin started to get back into melee (this was around 5 months ago) but our controllers were too messed up so we gave up again.

Then, around 3 months ago, I got a real bargain: A Gamecube, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart Double Dash, and 4 other games such as Tony Hawks Pro Skater and an official controller for £20. We started to play again but my and my older brother got really salty and so we both stopped playing it, another obstacle in my Smash career.

Finally, around 2 months ago, me and my twin started to have our two best friends over for the night every weekend, but it started to get a bit boring. We needed something, we felt something was missing. That thing missing was a bit of smash. We started to play pretty much all night, the first night, Joshi was born. Joshi is another story for another day. Then, me and my twin seemed to get better and better. He naturally became a Doc, he subscribed to /r/smashbros and became really into it, he was always better than me. We introduced our friends to smash and they fell in love and we play it nearly every week end. Also, Tuesday Night - Smash Night became a thing. We always hated Jigglypuff and would sigh if ever we got him when we did randoms. Despite that, he had his main, I wanted to get my own main. Fox and Falco, no, too fast pace, I was terrible with Sheik, Kirby - I found out was terrible, I thought of maining Peach but no, in the end, I chose Jigglypuff, purely because I thought it would be funny to repeatedly rest my friends using him, which I do to my really bad friends today, but I can't do it on my twin, as quite a lot of rest combos don't work on Doc. Even without the rests, Jigglypuff really felt natural and how I wanted to play.

Now, I've been improving and seem to be better at Smash than my twin (maybe because his main is Dr. Mario) and so I'm more into it. I want, someday to go to a competitive tournament (whoops, only just realised we were only supposed to write about how we got into competitive melee ) around my area but travelling to it seems hard (especially at night) but my twin doesn't seem fond of the idea.
Anyway, I'm loving Jiggs at the moment and don't regret the decision for a second.

[/collapse]

 

[TheCandyman]

Back in like Auguest or September of last year my friend came over in the middle of all the hype of Sm4sh and brought over Project M. I had never played it before in my life and I had an incredible amount of fun while playing it. I soon looked up professional PM matches between players like Proffesor Pro and M2K and when I saw the M2K vs Neon at LTC2 I was like, "Damn, I wish I was as good as them" so with my new found PM love for Marth and Lucas I watched a lot of Melee Marth because I heard it was the best game and I had watched The Big House 4 and was rooting for M2K the whole time on youtube and I got really hooked into the game. Then this Christmas I decided to order Melee on Ebay and got it 2 weeks later and I have been playing the **** out of it with Marth and Falco as my mains. Then in March I went to my first tournament (Toasted Ravs 7) and got absolutely obliterated. Nearly JV5ed by ihavespaceballs's Samus using Marth. Got knocked out in pools and decided that I would use that motivation to get better.

 

[Dolla Pills]

I had SSB64 when I was really young, then my brother got a gamecube for his tenth birthday in 2003 (I was 7) and he got Melee with it. I just played with my two brothers and some friends, but I had a blast.

Then Brawl came out. I kinda liked it (was a super casual) but it never seemed to have the right feel, so I still generally preferred to play Melee. To date my Brawl file only has ~50 hours played. My current Melee memory card has like 500.

Then I started playing CoD and Halo and all kinds of Xbox games, and I stopped playing Nintendo and actually sold almost all my stuff. But then last year I was a senior and I was looking for new stuff to do with all the extra free time I had after AP exams, and I turned to my Gamecube. I was having a blast with Melee again but didn't take it that seriously (though I had a friend who was more into it than me so I had some exposure to the techniques and to the scene), then at some point in the summer I was bored and watched the whole documentary and I decided to start trying to learn the game better.

Since then I've just had a lot of fun with the game and even though I still don't frequent tournies I love the game.

 

[yttik]

i saw this when it was first uploaded

 

[Abel SSB]

I got into Smash when my brother showed me the Documentary and I was opened up to this huge world with competitive smash. I've only been into smash competitively for a year now and it's been very fun.

 

[Oatmeal.]

Obscure person telling a story.

Spoiler

In high school I had this friend who is really into card games. He talked to me one day about a little video store down the street. One Saturday we went down there to play. In between card tournaments, he asked the manager if we could hook up a TV and play. The manager agreed, and my friend took a copy of Melee out of his backpack.

I had been playing Smash since the original, and I was psyched to try my hand at competition. We had great matches, it was lots of fun. The next day I told my other friend about my experience at the video store.

All of a sudden, he gets excited, and starts telling me about technical stuff, Project M, all that jazz. I thought it was possible, but I never knew there was a scene for this game. So I Invited a bunch more friends out to the store for next Saturday.

Today the card game/video store is home to the Leavenworth, KS local scene. We have grown so much, it almost makes you wanna cry.

Shameless advertising: Gators Video is holding "Eggs in Your Face 2" this Saturday! Check out the details in The Events section.