International Smash Community Influence

[KingofCereal]

How much do the different regions influence each other? Does Midwest play differently to West Coast? Are there inherent styles in each region?
Each region has their powerhouse players and each of them have their unique styles of course, but how much influence do each of these have on the other regional players?
Then the next step is to take this question even further. How much do regions affect each other internationally? Europe certainly has a different "flavor" to American melee. This could be a PAL vs NTSC change, but might not. Either way, the American smash community (and the European one too) remains vibrant and evolving. But what if the American melee scene had dropped significantly after Brawl, or if the key players truly retired.
If there were no American melee scene, or if it died down... would there be a Europe scene?

 

[Massive]

Hypothetical question thread go.

• Regions definitely influence others, thanks mostly to smash boards and traveling to tournaments.
• Midwest style (in general) is markedly different from most others, usually emphasizing spacing and defense over tech skill and aggression.
• Each region has its own style, some may be very similar to others. Some very different.
• A player from a region plays people with certain styles, so they frequently end up deriving their own style to counter the tactics regularly used there, many times influencing the tactics of others of the same main.
• The best players in a region are almost exclusively the ones who have learned how to counter all the prevalent styles in that region most effectively.
  • Whether or not these adaptations translate to a national or international scale is what separates the "best in the region" players from the "top level" ones.

I would wager that if American melee died with brawl, European melee probably wouldn't be as big as it is now.

To be fair we're not a very big community regardless, there's probably not many more than a few thousand active tournament level melee players in the whole world.

 

[Redact]

Australia has this style that we suck ***. Thats our style over here. Ask mango rofl

 

[DerfMidWest]

Lol this topic got ignored.

Anyway, yes different regions have different styles.
As massive said, midwest is all spacing and whatnot.
Another obvious example is south america. They are all super duper flashy and technical, but also tend to not be very good.
Australians are usually boooring.
West coast has **** style.
And yea...

 

[KingofCereal]

Europe has the will to win. And the talent to back it up. USA will always be on top. Regionally I'd say Socal's got it just based on quantity of crazy good players. Keep it up boys.

 

[Armada]

Europeans overall actually care less about winning and the community in USA are more competitive.

 

[Pink Reaper]

ןɟoɹ obuɐɯ ʞsɐ ˙ǝɹǝɥ ɹǝʌo ǝןʎʇs ɹno sʇɐɥʇ ˙*** ʞɔns ǝʍ ʇɐɥʇ ǝןʎʇs sıɥʇ sɐɥ ɐıןɐɹʇsnɐ

Edited for accuracy. I didnt even know australia really had a scene anymore. I know of some ooooooooooooold *** players but i sort of assumed the country as a whole had just kinda fell off. Who's the current best?

 

[Juggleguy]

I definitely think the American Smash community has affected things internationally. KirbyKaze and I were talking about this a couple weeks ago; we both think the Wombo Combo, by itself, bought the entire Smash community another year of activity just with the hype and awareness it gave to the game. And I'm pretty sure the presence of YouTube and livestreams has helped Smash a ton. When it comes down to it, grassroots events like Smash tourneys are all about hype, and anytime a storyline like the Wombo Combo or Armada's North American debut or Javi's run at Apex comes along, it's great for the community.

 

[Redact]

Edited for accuracy. I didnt even know australia really had a scene anymore. I know of some ooooooooooooold *** players but i sort of assumed the country as a whole had just kinda fell off. Who's the current best?

I won the last major tournament but I wouldn't say im the best. It's between dekar (marth player from melbourne) and zxv (sheik player from sydney) otherwise myself and CAOTIC (you have to know this guy) are not far behind. There's a few players in QLD around the same level so it's actually pretty close over here. I plan to go to apex 2013 too lol, hopefully I can rope some other players into coming with me.

 

[DerfMidWest]

It'd be awesome to see some ausie representies come over to the US, you definitely should if you are able.
But bring your amazing dancing with you.

 

[KingofCereal]

There are definitely underrepresented regions, and players that are isolated. Who knows how good Australia, Israel (I know I've seen players post from there) are? Is there a China scene?

 

[DerfMidWest]

I have never heard of a chinese scene...
Was the game even released in china?
Or korea?

Also, it'd be cool if we brought some of the chileans up here or something.
They probably wouldn't do very well, but they are super fun to watch ^^

 

[KingofCereal]

You never know! Mexico did pretty well at Apex.

 

[DerfMidWest]

Javi isn't the same as mexico...
But Javi is also a lot better than the chileans...

 

[Jonas]

I'm pretty sure Melee was released in Korea (the South one, obviously). Culturally it's kind of like Japan mixed with USA, so I don't see why not.
As for China, I'm not even sure the Gamecube is released over there. There was a N64/GC like machine built into a controller that plugs into the TV (made that way for piracy-related reasons. Idk, look it up), but few games were released for it.

 

[DerfMidWest]

Well obviously i meant sourh korea..
North koreans don't even have TVs lol...

 

[KingofCereal]

Or food. But if they had Peach then they'd have turnips... or bombs.

 

[abcool]

The USA played a big role in a Smash scene happening in the Bahamas. I was already hugely into smash at a competitive level before i knew about Ken. Then i went online to see how "sucky* all the other players were around the world compared to me. --This is the general smash player mindset. Well to my surprise i was the "sucky" player and i started asking in the comments about wavedashing and so on. (This was before the WAK vid was out) I learned one or two things, then the vid was released and i learned everything else.

Being in this country Sun, Sand and Sea. People hate being at home and would rather just be out cruising and just plain and simple going clubbing etc, etc. It was hard to find players outside my group of friends luckily i had a big group of friends to begin with lol. That slowly started to decrease as we all were about to finish high school. So looking at videos online i saw another Bahamian posting about living here and not understanding brackets lol. That introduced me to another set of people i didn't even know played the game at a competitive level. I am a lucky ******* because i found half the competitive bahamian players on youtube in the comments section.

Long story short. I grew a scene had almost 35 players, Brawl got released when everyone was about to commit to Melee and they were like why bother if Brawl doesn't have it the same At's. That killed 25 of those guys interest. I refused to get into Brawl, got reduced to about 10 players, increased by 5 more. I quit and it kinda died. One or 2 still play, but no tournies much until i decide to get back into it.

 

[Bones0]

**** barlw.

 

[Devil Ray]

south korea definitely has a scene for melee. we've been going on for about 2-3 years. not that active on the boards, but we do play fairly often. just no tournaments. thread: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=295750

one thing that sucks about korea is that its region locked by nintendo. in fact, south korea is its own region for some reason. and from the timing of melee's release, not many copies were made for korea. although it's possible to hack the wii to play any copy of melee, many koreans weren't really aware of melee's popularity to begin with.

 

[oukd]

Adding my 2 cents here...

China does not have a scene...or rather, it is impossible for China to have a scene, considering console gaming is straight up banned there. Even if it was legal, there are no Melee videos on youku (China's verison of youtube). Funnily enough there are a few videos of competitive Brawl on youku.

From my own experience, Melee players go to Taiwan (and get to play each other if they're lucky) every once in a while, but as far as I'm aware there is no scene there. There is still a possibility though, especially if there is spillover from Japan's scene hype...I just can't find it, online or otherwise.

 

[DerfMidWest]

Wow console gaming is banned there?

 

[Froggy]

Adding my 2 cents here...

China does not have a scene...or rather, it is impossible for China to have a scene, considering console gaming is straight up banned there. Even if it was legal, there are no Melee videos on youku (China's verison of youtube). Funnily enough there are a few videos of competitive Brawl on youku.

From my own experience, Melee players go to Taiwan (and get to play each other if they're lucky) every once in a while, but as far as I'm aware there is no scene there. There is still a possibility though, especially if there is spillover from Japan's scene hype...I just can't find it, online or otherwise.

Are you sure about what? One of the best Street Fighter 4 players(probably the most popular fighting game in the world right now) in the scene right now is from China. He got 4th place at evo. It's kinda hard to imagine he gets that good in Arcades(which if legal, I can't imagine is popular in China anyways)

 

[DerfMidWest]

Uhm... You can get pree good via arcade...
Most SF players use a fightstick anyway, so it wouldn't be difficult for him to switch.

 

[KingofCereal]

Arcades are pretty popular in Chinese cities. I was in Nanjing and got wrecked by some 10 year old kid at Tekken 5. I'd never played before and he just flew up as Devil Jin and shot me with a laser like 6 times to kill me. Eugh. Console gaming banned though... I dunno. I know PC gaming is a big thing.

 

[oukd]

Sounds like Falco

But yea arcade gaiming is huge in China, partly thanks to the ban in consoles lol. You can't stop FGCs