Link to original post: [drupal=5106]My Journey in Smash[/drupal]
I feel kinda sick today, so I figured it would be a good use of my time to put down some of my thoughts and feelings on smash.
--Early Days--
I guess I could say I first started getting in to smash on the 64. I played the crap out of SSB64 every day with my sister(s) and friends from school. It was awesome, but I wasn't terribly good at it. When I first started playing 64, I used Yoshi. Yoshi sucked, so I switched to Link. I thought he was cool, but, when I started playing friends, I got the crap kicked out of me. That's when I started getting into Pokemon and, so, that's when I picked up Pikachu. It worked well for me, and I began improving.
Fast forward to me getting my GC on Christmas in 2002 along with SSB Melee. I played that game for every waking moment of my life for the next few years stopping only for a few days at a time to play new games I got. One of those games was Metroid Prime. God, what a fantastic game. After playing and beating that, I went out and got Fusion. Then Zero Mission. I then downloaded ROMS of Metroid, Metroid 2, and Super Metroid. I had loved the Castlevania series prior to this, but never even tried Metroid before. It changed my life and I feel in love. After going on my Metroid binge, I came back to smash and absolutely HAD to start playing Samus.
I continued to play the **** out of the game all the way through high school. As a Senior, I made a few friends that also loved playing the game, so we ended up playing all the time. Getting competitive. Striving to be the best. In order to do so, I started looking for ways to get better and it led me to the Melee boards on Gamespot/Gamefaqs. I started looking at tricks and videos of other players and began realizing just how bad I was, but we didn't care. We just kept on playing and beating the ever-loving-**** out of each other. Soon after that, I moved out of West Virginia and went to Arizona to pursue my college education.
--Beginner Times--
The most exciting thing about UAT, for me, was the fact that they, basically, had a GC dedicated to playing Melee. There was ALWAYS a group of ten or so people huddled around the TV and I jumped right in. All of orientation week I sat there and learned the new people and noticed that I was a cut above the rest. Yeah, we played 4player free-for-alls, but they were awesome and fun and I usually got to stay in on rotation by placing well. There was only a few people that were better than me, but, damn, were they ever better than me. Over the next few months of going to school, I would draw every breath in front of that TV if I wasn't in class. I even missed a few classes because I didn't see how much time I was spending there. After a while, some of those good kids asked if I wanted to go to a tournament with them. They were Ch405 Theory, LtBlue Panther, and Mess (Trent, Ryan, Rob for anyone who might know who I'm talking about.
I don't remember how many other people were there, but one player stood out. Wobbles. This guys had the most amazing Ice Climbers I had ever seen. He was freakin good. I ended up getting 4th and took home a poster as a prize. I was happy. 4th place at my first legit tourny of people that weren't just my close friends? That didn't seem too bad. The school also hosted several tournaments over the year by way of our fighting games club. I always took 3rd or 4th seat, and I was happy. I was having so much fun.
--Entrance into the Competitive Scene--
I use to have the thread bookmarked, but whatever. Anyway, I went to my first major tournament. It was out of a Bookman's in Tuscon that we had to drive down to. We? Oh yeah, we was myself, Ch405, Wobbles, and this guy named Tony Jackson aka Taj. We got there and I got my *** handed to me, but I met some cool people there including this Pikachu playing kid going by AXE. As a matter of fact, he was the one that knocked me out of bracket in our games (1 win 2 loss). I money matched some people, played some friendlies, got some tips, etc. It was boss.
Life continued like that for a long time. I would play every day at school, go hang out with Ch405 and Blue at their place to play, go to school hosted tournies to kick ***, and then go to bigger tournies to get my *** kicked. It was beautiful. One tourny in particualr, SAST 2, was a regional tourny in Tuscon that brought in a bunch of SoCal players. My first Out of State tournament, and a lot happened there. I played AZ players I had never played before. I met legends like Gimpyfish and Forward that I had never seen before. In bracket, I got knocked out by this really young kid that played puff, his name was Mang0. The whole thing was amazing and I'll never forget it; it's one of the highlights of my smash career.
--The Dark Ages--
It was early 08 and a project I was working on at the school got us sent, for free, to GDC. There, I got to try first-hand the new smash game, Brawl. We had been keeping up with everything, watching updates, the write-ups from E for All, etc. We were pumped to actually try it, but then... we actually tried it. It was AWFUL. I couldn't move, it was like trying to run underwater. Everything was super floaty and all the characters lasted forever. My mobility was ruined, recovering was awkward. Everything felt so wrong, so terrible. In only a few play sessions, I quickly found out that Metaknight was super powerful and I could win back-to-back games just by flying around and destroying everyone. I left there feeling like smash was going to be ruined.
I got home later that week and made a huge write-up for AZ talking about how crappy the game was, but no one listened. They were still so excited, but I had lost my faith. The game came out and everyone started playing it. Casually, like when I first played 64 and Melee, it was awesome, but the competitive side of me just wasn't having any of it. By this time, Ch405 and I shared an apartment and we had been playing Melee together almost every day. When Brawl came out, we only had it about a month before selling it back. It was disgusting, repulsive to us.
After that time, AZ started holding tournaments for it. I gave it a shot and showed up. I played Pit because I didn't want to play MK and Samus wasn't Samus anymore. I did pretty well, but got taken down by a Marth to losers where I had to face an Ike. Our game was pretty close, but I had him at a decent percent when I came back on my last life. He was on the far left side of the stage, so I ran to him, shielded, rolled behind him. He turned and started to charge a Fsmash, so I ran forward to grab him. I tripped, got hit with the full charged hit, and died of the side... from 0% to dead in one hit... my fury was unimaginable. I vowed to never put money on a Brawl tournament again so long as tripping was a problem.
I wasn't the only one that felt that way about Brawl, but the majority of people were content with playing it. I was upset and frustrated with the game and the people that continued to play it. I started trolling the boards 24/7, I talked **** about anyone playing the game. When I went to school, people would be playing Brawl instead of Melee and I couldn't get them to change back. I stopped playing there because I couldn't force them to play Melee. I hated Brawl like no other inanimate object I've ever hated. Talking **** about Brawl became my full time job. No one was hosting Melee tournaments anymore, and that added to my anger. That's when I decided to take control of it myself. Spite tournament; a melee tournament just to have one instead of Brawl. I set the date a month in advance and had a pretty good turn out RSVP'ed for it. However, at the last minute, an Atomic Comics announced they were holding a Brawl tournament the same day and my entire tournament, with the exception of two people (Tai aka "Tee Ay Eye" and KosukeKGA). My anger reached an all time high and I decided to quit Melee.
I was done with it. So many people wanted to play a ****ty game, so many people turned their backs on me, so many people hated me for hating Brawl. I was done. I had enough. I made a write up of all the **** I had been through with the game, not to unlike this post, and tried to make my grand exit.
I couldn't.
I couldn't do it. I really loved playing Melee. I would sit at home and play by myself or with Ch405 when he had the time, but it was intermittent with other games like Guild Wars. I continued to troll the boards, but I never went to anything. I became a ghost, haunting the Brawl players and being a ******* to everyone around me. I had issues, but I didn't see it that way. The rest of the world had problems, I was one of the few that was right.
--Rising Sun--
I dropped out of school that summer and was planning on going home at the end of the year. Moving back to WV meant going back to a place where there was absolutely no smash scene. I took my pride, threw it away, and gave holding a Melee tournament another shot. http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=190679 I wanted to leave AZ with the gift of Melee before going. It went better than I could have ever imagined. I'm not sure if it would be right/accurate to say, but I feel like I jump started the Melee scene in AZ again. After that, I made my exit.
Back in WV, there was one crew active in Melee/Brawl. The didn't really do much, but said they would hang out. They never did. I only played them once at a smash fest and was better than them, but they had no drive or strive to become better. They were also mostly high school graduates about to go into college and weren't interested in going to tournaments or anything. So, my drive took a dive. It took months for me to find anyone that would play Melee with me, and I found it in a friend I met at work while home. He was way into Star Craft, as much as I was into Melee, and wanted someone to play with. So I struck a deal with him to learn SC if he learned Melee. It worked wonders. Every day after work I would hang out with him and play melee and every night I would go home and play against him in Star Craft. I learned a lot about being competitive, composure, timing, positioning, tactics, etc. from him, things that I could apply to other games: Melee. I tried holding tournaments in WV, but attendance was less than 0 both times. I had to do something, so I started traveling.
I took an 8 hour car drive to Virginia to play in a tournament there. After months of being out of the scene, my rust was more than noticeable. It wasn't like I was an amazing player prior to that, but my skill had definitely dropped off and fallen behind the rest of the community. I didn't place well at all, but I did win a few money matches I wasn't expecting to. A couple months later, I took me and my friend to Ohio to a tournament in Columbus. I don't remember most of the notable people there, but there was Watty. Great Samus, but that dude is crazy as ****. Once again, I didn't place well, but it was awesome to see my friend go to his first Melee tournament. It's kinda cool being the older mentor instead of always being the young newcomer.
--Returning--
I tried living in WV for a while, but I couldn't take it. I decided to move back to AZ where all of my college friends were, not to mention Melee. When I got back out here, I immediately had to go to work. I started working a job 40 hrs a week and got on a game project again. I didn't have any time for Melee. I worked that job for a year and almost completely stepped out of the scene. When I was... let go... I then moved to Jimmy Johns and had a bit more free time. I got caught up with my old smashers and found out Melee was on the rise again. More people were playing it, at least, instead of Brawl dominating the scene. I was happy with it, but I still didn't have a lot of time to spend on the game, not like I did in college.
It was about this time that things in my life started catching up with me. I was depressed, anti-social, unsatisfied and I didn't know what I was doing with myself. I dropped out of smash again to take care of my personal life. I started transitioning to be a girl. I was worried about what my smash friends would think, so I never said anything about it to any of them and avoided all contact with them. After a long time of being out, open, and public with myself, I asked to get back into the scene. I went to a smashfest at Taj's place, and was treated like nothing was different. It was awesome. So, since September of last year, I've been regularly attending tournaments.
--Present Day--
I'm here to play Melee. Come to Nyte in April if you want to take a shot at me, I'd love it. <3
I feel kinda sick today, so I figured it would be a good use of my time to put down some of my thoughts and feelings on smash.
--Early Days--
I guess I could say I first started getting in to smash on the 64. I played the crap out of SSB64 every day with my sister(s) and friends from school. It was awesome, but I wasn't terribly good at it. When I first started playing 64, I used Yoshi. Yoshi sucked, so I switched to Link. I thought he was cool, but, when I started playing friends, I got the crap kicked out of me. That's when I started getting into Pokemon and, so, that's when I picked up Pikachu. It worked well for me, and I began improving.
Fast forward to me getting my GC on Christmas in 2002 along with SSB Melee. I played that game for every waking moment of my life for the next few years stopping only for a few days at a time to play new games I got. One of those games was Metroid Prime. God, what a fantastic game. After playing and beating that, I went out and got Fusion. Then Zero Mission. I then downloaded ROMS of Metroid, Metroid 2, and Super Metroid. I had loved the Castlevania series prior to this, but never even tried Metroid before. It changed my life and I feel in love. After going on my Metroid binge, I came back to smash and absolutely HAD to start playing Samus.
I continued to play the **** out of the game all the way through high school. As a Senior, I made a few friends that also loved playing the game, so we ended up playing all the time. Getting competitive. Striving to be the best. In order to do so, I started looking for ways to get better and it led me to the Melee boards on Gamespot/Gamefaqs. I started looking at tricks and videos of other players and began realizing just how bad I was, but we didn't care. We just kept on playing and beating the ever-loving-**** out of each other. Soon after that, I moved out of West Virginia and went to Arizona to pursue my college education.
--Beginner Times--
The most exciting thing about UAT, for me, was the fact that they, basically, had a GC dedicated to playing Melee. There was ALWAYS a group of ten or so people huddled around the TV and I jumped right in. All of orientation week I sat there and learned the new people and noticed that I was a cut above the rest. Yeah, we played 4player free-for-alls, but they were awesome and fun and I usually got to stay in on rotation by placing well. There was only a few people that were better than me, but, damn, were they ever better than me. Over the next few months of going to school, I would draw every breath in front of that TV if I wasn't in class. I even missed a few classes because I didn't see how much time I was spending there. After a while, some of those good kids asked if I wanted to go to a tournament with them. They were Ch405 Theory, LtBlue Panther, and Mess (Trent, Ryan, Rob for anyone who might know who I'm talking about.
I don't remember how many other people were there, but one player stood out. Wobbles. This guys had the most amazing Ice Climbers I had ever seen. He was freakin good. I ended up getting 4th and took home a poster as a prize. I was happy. 4th place at my first legit tourny of people that weren't just my close friends? That didn't seem too bad. The school also hosted several tournaments over the year by way of our fighting games club. I always took 3rd or 4th seat, and I was happy. I was having so much fun.
--Entrance into the Competitive Scene--
I use to have the thread bookmarked, but whatever. Anyway, I went to my first major tournament. It was out of a Bookman's in Tuscon that we had to drive down to. We? Oh yeah, we was myself, Ch405, Wobbles, and this guy named Tony Jackson aka Taj. We got there and I got my *** handed to me, but I met some cool people there including this Pikachu playing kid going by AXE. As a matter of fact, he was the one that knocked me out of bracket in our games (1 win 2 loss). I money matched some people, played some friendlies, got some tips, etc. It was boss.
Life continued like that for a long time. I would play every day at school, go hang out with Ch405 and Blue at their place to play, go to school hosted tournies to kick ***, and then go to bigger tournies to get my *** kicked. It was beautiful. One tourny in particualr, SAST 2, was a regional tourny in Tuscon that brought in a bunch of SoCal players. My first Out of State tournament, and a lot happened there. I played AZ players I had never played before. I met legends like Gimpyfish and Forward that I had never seen before. In bracket, I got knocked out by this really young kid that played puff, his name was Mang0. The whole thing was amazing and I'll never forget it; it's one of the highlights of my smash career.
--The Dark Ages--
It was early 08 and a project I was working on at the school got us sent, for free, to GDC. There, I got to try first-hand the new smash game, Brawl. We had been keeping up with everything, watching updates, the write-ups from E for All, etc. We were pumped to actually try it, but then... we actually tried it. It was AWFUL. I couldn't move, it was like trying to run underwater. Everything was super floaty and all the characters lasted forever. My mobility was ruined, recovering was awkward. Everything felt so wrong, so terrible. In only a few play sessions, I quickly found out that Metaknight was super powerful and I could win back-to-back games just by flying around and destroying everyone. I left there feeling like smash was going to be ruined.
I got home later that week and made a huge write-up for AZ talking about how crappy the game was, but no one listened. They were still so excited, but I had lost my faith. The game came out and everyone started playing it. Casually, like when I first played 64 and Melee, it was awesome, but the competitive side of me just wasn't having any of it. By this time, Ch405 and I shared an apartment and we had been playing Melee together almost every day. When Brawl came out, we only had it about a month before selling it back. It was disgusting, repulsive to us.
After that time, AZ started holding tournaments for it. I gave it a shot and showed up. I played Pit because I didn't want to play MK and Samus wasn't Samus anymore. I did pretty well, but got taken down by a Marth to losers where I had to face an Ike. Our game was pretty close, but I had him at a decent percent when I came back on my last life. He was on the far left side of the stage, so I ran to him, shielded, rolled behind him. He turned and started to charge a Fsmash, so I ran forward to grab him. I tripped, got hit with the full charged hit, and died of the side... from 0% to dead in one hit... my fury was unimaginable. I vowed to never put money on a Brawl tournament again so long as tripping was a problem.
I wasn't the only one that felt that way about Brawl, but the majority of people were content with playing it. I was upset and frustrated with the game and the people that continued to play it. I started trolling the boards 24/7, I talked **** about anyone playing the game. When I went to school, people would be playing Brawl instead of Melee and I couldn't get them to change back. I stopped playing there because I couldn't force them to play Melee. I hated Brawl like no other inanimate object I've ever hated. Talking **** about Brawl became my full time job. No one was hosting Melee tournaments anymore, and that added to my anger. That's when I decided to take control of it myself. Spite tournament; a melee tournament just to have one instead of Brawl. I set the date a month in advance and had a pretty good turn out RSVP'ed for it. However, at the last minute, an Atomic Comics announced they were holding a Brawl tournament the same day and my entire tournament, with the exception of two people (Tai aka "Tee Ay Eye" and KosukeKGA). My anger reached an all time high and I decided to quit Melee.
I was done with it. So many people wanted to play a ****ty game, so many people turned their backs on me, so many people hated me for hating Brawl. I was done. I had enough. I made a write up of all the **** I had been through with the game, not to unlike this post, and tried to make my grand exit.
I couldn't.
I couldn't do it. I really loved playing Melee. I would sit at home and play by myself or with Ch405 when he had the time, but it was intermittent with other games like Guild Wars. I continued to troll the boards, but I never went to anything. I became a ghost, haunting the Brawl players and being a ******* to everyone around me. I had issues, but I didn't see it that way. The rest of the world had problems, I was one of the few that was right.
--Rising Sun--
I dropped out of school that summer and was planning on going home at the end of the year. Moving back to WV meant going back to a place where there was absolutely no smash scene. I took my pride, threw it away, and gave holding a Melee tournament another shot. http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=190679 I wanted to leave AZ with the gift of Melee before going. It went better than I could have ever imagined. I'm not sure if it would be right/accurate to say, but I feel like I jump started the Melee scene in AZ again. After that, I made my exit.
Back in WV, there was one crew active in Melee/Brawl. The didn't really do much, but said they would hang out. They never did. I only played them once at a smash fest and was better than them, but they had no drive or strive to become better. They were also mostly high school graduates about to go into college and weren't interested in going to tournaments or anything. So, my drive took a dive. It took months for me to find anyone that would play Melee with me, and I found it in a friend I met at work while home. He was way into Star Craft, as much as I was into Melee, and wanted someone to play with. So I struck a deal with him to learn SC if he learned Melee. It worked wonders. Every day after work I would hang out with him and play melee and every night I would go home and play against him in Star Craft. I learned a lot about being competitive, composure, timing, positioning, tactics, etc. from him, things that I could apply to other games: Melee. I tried holding tournaments in WV, but attendance was less than 0 both times. I had to do something, so I started traveling.
I took an 8 hour car drive to Virginia to play in a tournament there. After months of being out of the scene, my rust was more than noticeable. It wasn't like I was an amazing player prior to that, but my skill had definitely dropped off and fallen behind the rest of the community. I didn't place well at all, but I did win a few money matches I wasn't expecting to. A couple months later, I took me and my friend to Ohio to a tournament in Columbus. I don't remember most of the notable people there, but there was Watty. Great Samus, but that dude is crazy as ****. Once again, I didn't place well, but it was awesome to see my friend go to his first Melee tournament. It's kinda cool being the older mentor instead of always being the young newcomer.
--Returning--
I tried living in WV for a while, but I couldn't take it. I decided to move back to AZ where all of my college friends were, not to mention Melee. When I got back out here, I immediately had to go to work. I started working a job 40 hrs a week and got on a game project again. I didn't have any time for Melee. I worked that job for a year and almost completely stepped out of the scene. When I was... let go... I then moved to Jimmy Johns and had a bit more free time. I got caught up with my old smashers and found out Melee was on the rise again. More people were playing it, at least, instead of Brawl dominating the scene. I was happy with it, but I still didn't have a lot of time to spend on the game, not like I did in college.
It was about this time that things in my life started catching up with me. I was depressed, anti-social, unsatisfied and I didn't know what I was doing with myself. I dropped out of smash again to take care of my personal life. I started transitioning to be a girl. I was worried about what my smash friends would think, so I never said anything about it to any of them and avoided all contact with them. After a long time of being out, open, and public with myself, I asked to get back into the scene. I went to a smashfest at Taj's place, and was treated like nothing was different. It was awesome. So, since September of last year, I've been regularly attending tournaments.
--Present Day--
I'm here to play Melee. Come to Nyte in April if you want to take a shot at me, I'd love it. <3