Humble beginnings

[GeflGabe]

I'm curious, how did you guys first start out in the smash community?

I was pretty much your average casual, until one day, I begun to look at character guides for sm4sh and how the real world played caught my direct attention. And so I was interested in playing in a fast paced competitive style and started to research it. Soon after I started to train myself day by day after I found the character I wanted to main and I continue to train to date.

All day and all night. (Not really that long but at least 2-7 hours everyday.)

 

[Green Zelda]

I was a casual who absolutely HATED the competitive scene, until I started watching alpharad's videos sometime in october.
Around christmas 2015, I decided to get "serious" about smash, and mained toon link and cloud (eventually dropped cloud for lucina), and here I am now!

I was pretty much your average casual, until one day, I begun to look at character guides for sm4sh and how the real world played caught my direct attention. And so I was interested in playing in a fast paced competitive style and started to research it. Soon after I started to train myself day by day after I found the character I wanted to main and I continue to train to date.

Just a question, what about marth attracted you when you were a "casual"? I thought casuals hate marth, because of his tippers/sourspots

 

[FamilyTeam]

My friend started getting into competitive Smash sometime around the release of Smash 4.
To be honest, when I saw the trailers for Smash 4 the first time, my reaciton was "Great! I don't actually give a crap.". I was in a long Smash hiatus between early 2011 and late 2014, so I guess it's understandable.
Since both me and my friend used to play Brawl back in the day, he obviously tried relentlessly to drag me back into Smash, and slowly but surely he managed that. So basically I was already brought back into Smash after so long with a competitive mentality.

 

[Wintermelon43]

My favorite stage switched from Palutena's temple to Final Destination in a month.

(Final Destination isn't even my favorite stage now though. That would probably be Dream Land now.)

I found out about competitive smash when... Actually, idk. But somehow I saw footage of Apex 2015. Which made me want to play like that.

 

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

I started way way back during Melee in 2004. I was your typical free for all items on very high with friends kinda player and was going to a bunch of different video game message boards and wanted to look for one for Smash particularly. That's when I found Smashboards.

And at that point I was your typical person who didn't know what I was doing. I remember quoting the player's guide in posts and thinking I was smart lol. But i eventually figured it out. Didn't really get serious though until right before smash 4 when i found out I was close enough to Xanadu that I could attend some. I took it as a sign to start really playing more then. I attended a Melee/PM Xanadu, met some awesome people, and have been part of the community ever since

 

[Lazerpants]

way back when (not actually that long ago) back when brawl was released, my big brother rushed out to get it. and me being a little brother, wanted to play with him. he let me and sevenish years later i got smash 4 3DS, at this point i was still a casual always playing on Gaur plain w/ items. some time later my cousin got a wii u and smash wii U. luckily for me, i got to go over there every other weekend. June 2015 is when we started playing more seriously. and i got my own wii u last christmas the rest is history.

 

[Kapus]

I always played Smash Bros in a casually competitive fashion. One day my college hosted a SSBB tourney, though, which caused me to become more interested in competitive play and the community as a whole.

Before the SSB4 was revealed at E3 and hype/speculation was at an all time high, I lurked Smashboards and eventually joined to become part of the discussion. I feel SSB4 is far more fun and interesting to play competitively and the improved online capability makes it far, far more accessible.

That said, I'm still definitely a passive lurker in the community at best and am hardly involved in any discussions or tournaments. I do not really have any friends either, nor do I follow streams.

 

[Green Zelda]

I always played Smash Bros in a casually competitive fashion. One day my college hosted a SSBB tourney, though, which caused me to become more interested in competitive play and the community as a whole.

Before the SSB4 was revealed at E3 and hype/speculation was at an all time high, I lurked Smashboards and eventually joined to become part of the discussion. I feel SSB4 is far more fun and interesting to play competitively and the improved online capability makes it far, far more accessible.

That said, I'm still definitely a passive lurker in the community at best and am hardly involved in any discussions or tournaments. I do not really have any friends either, nor do I follow streams.

Nice post count ya got there!

 

[Wnyke]

I played smash with my friends and that was it... for a lot of time... Brawl, melee without that competitive stuff, using items, using no items, making up random rules, playing free for all with 4 players, not really that many 1-1...

Then I started playing street fighter (IV) competitively, since the comunity was small to none existent in my place, I ended up moving to the MVC3 community, it wasn't that big either, but at least 10 persons to play with weekly, I started going to tournaments... until someday the community just dissapear around 2/3 EVO's ago... We still play from time to time, but not as much as we used to...

Anyway... so I still wanted to play comeptitively fighting games, but the only community that I knew existed was KOF, and I didn't like the kind of people that they were... I felt really weird when playing with KOF players... so I drop them...

And then the new smash arrived, and I had already seen that smash players had tournaments of 30+ people locally in brawl, so I gave it a try, and ended up not sucking at smash, and enjoying both the game and some of the people in the community...

and that's how I started in Smash4...

 

[zzmorg82]

Just like other people, I started out casually with Brawl until I watched videos of competitive play. Then I started looking at the series in a different perspective.

 

[C3CC]

I played 64, Melee and Brawl casually and got more interested in playing Smash 4 in a serious way. Admittedly, some times it bores me and I throw some items on to twist things a little. I'm not very involved anyway; I've only attended two tournaments (one of which I somehow won :D) and I don't watch streams either.

 

[MockRock]

I first discovered Melee at a friend's house and played the hell out of Kirby, but it was extremely casual. I did have some vague notion that there was a competitive scene, and watched a few of the crappy early YouTube videos around it, but I was basically a totally casual player through that and Brawl. It was honestly For Glory that got me into the competitive scene. I was so used to destroying my friends that I was convinced I was pretty good, so it was a real wake up call when I went online and was getting destroyed by competent players. So I started looking up guides online, and the rest was a pretty natural trail. "Oh, this guy named ZeRo made a character guide." "Oh, he's a pro? Let's see some footage from him." And a year later I'm in my local scene and have my own YouTube channel

 

[MidwesternHawk]

My father got Brawl when I was younger, I only played when I could, and I usually played subspace, after hearing about Melee at Evo on IGN as I got more used to brawl on Wiimote(only), then really got in with various media about the games, then started to get more into the games, and started to read the boards about a few years ago on and off(I started to read much more post Smash 4 3DS release)

 

[Ax^2]

I always loved smash but never played the game all that much. I remember i had borrowed Melee from my cousin when i was 7 years old and was a regular casual, never did i know that there was a competitive scene back then in 2002... I kind of doubt there was. I had it for a month and only played it once a week, it wasnt until Brawl that I actually got a taste of competition.

A good friend and neighbor of mine used to go to the same high school as me back in 2013. He invited me to his house one day and we started playing together. We regularly played with eachother for about 3 months during the weekend. We were evenly matched, we wanted to beat eachother every time. Still, I did not know the existance of smash as a competitive game, i just thought that it was just a party game we were taking too seriously. And then... I moved over here to Dallas and after a few months of settling I bought a Wii U and Smash 4, along with a pro controller back in Sep, 2015.

I began to play and practice the fundementals until i found my main, Sonic. I kept practicing and just playing against CPU's until I mastered fighting lvl8s. After a while, I got bored... so I texted a friend that I know from another forum named Shade. He told me he had smash 4 and wanted to fight me. We faught... I got creamed... bad. He told me I had yet to learn, techs to discover, moves to master. It was then that I understood that smash was truly more than meets the eye. So i kept on practicing, both in training mode and online. I found videos of TSM Zero, 6wx, Seagull Joe, Esam. Observed how they handled their characters and wanted to do the same. Then I came across SmashBoards, the home of competetive smash. I could never see smash the same way as i used to again. For me, this is the best competitve scene yet. I eventually want to get into hardcore competitions and maybe be good enough to go to nationals. Im nowhere near that good yet, but im pretty sure I'll have my time to shine as long as i keep trying.

Thats the full story of my journey to competitive smash. I still practice getting better with my main, Sonic, and am trying to also pick up Shiek. Lol.

 

[MrStardustRicon]

Pretty standard stuff for me really. Played N64, Melee, and Brawl casually until I found out there was a competitive scene for Brawl. I looked stuff up and watched Brawl tournaments whenever I could, played Project M for a bit trying to learn the ins and outs of it. Unfortunately there wasn't a scene for either brawl or PM near me at the time so I got all the experience playing Lvl.8 CPUs could give me. E3 2014 got me so hype with the trailer for Smash 4, when the game finally came out I bounced around from character to character just having as much fun as fun as I could.

Eventually I grew to be the best out of my group of friends and sought a greater challenge. Fast forward 3 months I find out there is a tournament only four miles from me, at this time I still had about 17 characters I considered my "mains", I decided that this wouldn't be a great habit to have. So for about 2-3 weeks before the tournament I decided on a main, Lucina (this didn't last long, lol), and practiced solely with her.

Finally the time came and I went to the tourney and was completely awkward about it. At first I went to the wrong building for the tournament, once I realized this I just stood around wait for a group of people to go to where the actual tourney was and followed them. My doubles partner skipped out on me, so I felt really alone and awkward standing around for 4 hours until singles started.

Pools for singles opened up and I got absolutely demolished. I was the most free person in our pool so I obviously drowned that day. I stuck around the rest of the day since I discovered one of my friends from highschool who graduated earlier than I was at the tourney. That friend ended up getting 2nd at the tournament and that day I told myself "if he can do it, I can too!" I approached him after the tournament, caught up a little bit on life affairs, and asked about more tournaments. From him I learned about weeklies that were only 5 miles from me. I've attended every weekly since and have improved greatly at the game.

 

[Apek]

This was a cool thread to read through. I'm in my humble beginnings right now! I played smash 64 a ton as a kid and then more in college (mostly just drunken smash fests). It's been a few years since I really played at all. I just moved out to North Carolina for a job promotion (Knowing no one) - Picked up a Wii U and getting into smash as a way to meet some like minded folks locally rather than just playing different online games with hometown friends.

Pretty excited to get into the tourney scene out here - unfortunately it looks like most are about an hour away from where I live but that's not to bad of a drive!

 

[ZafKiel]

I was a mad casual up until a few years ago when I got tired of getting destroyed by my friends. One of them told me that Melee would help me greatly if I learned so I got into the Melee scene too. I'm still a bit of a skrub but I hope that all this time spent on Smashboards will help me out in some way.