Smash History

[Battlecow]

So I've been thinking a little about like the history of smash 64's competitive scene. I wasn't there, but I was just wondering about stuff. Were people playing it "competitively" before melee came out, or did its scene evolve out of melee's? Who were the super-early on players? Are there any cool old-timey threads on smashboards that I should take a look at? What were their rules and tier lists like? When did online smash first start to be used?

Probably no one else cares, but I've got this weird curiosity. If anyone who was around then still exists, I'd love to bask in your ancient, ancient, ancient wisdom.

But then, they'd have to be, what, like 25 years old at least. No one on here is that aged.

 

[Fynal]

im re-reading this thread looking for shenanigans and not finding any

is this some kind of twisted battlecow april fools joke?

 

[Surri-Sama]

Yeah it seems like a legit thread eh?

I havn't been around long enough to answer most of your questions, but i can tell you we used to play with 8 frames delay....which was awful...

 

[NixxxoN]

...like 25 years old at least. No one on here is that aged.

hmmm? Im more than 25.
I'd say everyone has its own local little smash history before online came out, then with online everyone was exposed. Some had a more talented and intense history and some not. If you search this forum, the oldest posts show that this place was full of noobs and low level players (kinda normal thing tbh), and eventually people like isai came out, posted videos and impressed everyone.

 

[SuPeRbOoM]

Oh man, SSP was the best website.

 

[SilentSlayers]

hmmm? Im more than 25.
I'd say everyone has its own local little smash history before online came out, then with online everyone was exposed. Some had a more talented and intense history and some not. If you search this forum, the older posts were full of noobs and eventually people like isai came out, posed videos and impressed everyone.

Yeah, what a poser.

 

[B Link]

SsB Honor Code

The Honor Code is an integral part of playing Super Smash Brothers. You can know how to play, sure, but are you honorable? Will people enjoy playing with you? Follow these characteristics and you should be on you way to being in SsB.

General SsB Honor Code Characteristics

You:
-Are polite and good-natured
-Don't use Hammers
-Hearts/Tomatoes are weird. If you're under 15%, it's generally accepted that it's ok to get it. But, if you're over 15%, that sort of seems unfair to some people. You have to read your opponent and see if he makes a mad dash toward it. This part is one part that isnt an officail rule. You have to choose.
-Stars, you get, then go far away from your opponent and do your taunt. lol
-ITEMS: Either turn them all off with cheats, or abide by above rules
-Know how to use PJ64k/1964 intelligently (read all that stuff here)
-Know how to use the Cheats in PJ64k/1964 (Here)
-Have the required cheats on (All Characters/Mushroom Kingdom(ItemSw))
-Have consistent fast speeds on PJ64k/1964 (here, particularly Lag)
-You dont pause irregularly. When you do, you ask if the person is ready before you unpause, and only pause when the players are not close together
-Don't taunt excessively. 3 per match, max.
-Have some easy skill requirements.

 

[The Star King]

Probably no one else cares, but I've got this weird curiosity.

I've always been curious, too.

If anyone who was around then still exists, I'd love to bask in your ancient, ancient, ancient wisdom.

But then, they'd have to be, what, like 25 years old at least. No one on here is that aged.

The obvious person to ask is malva. But he might be unwilling to share, IDK. Fireblaster has a pretty early join date.

 

[NixxxoN]

Yeah, what a poser.

I hate when I try to contribte and then I get: "you've done a typo"

 

[Battlecow]

Well, no offense, but you're kind of from Europe, Nix. I get the feeling that the metagame out there didn't evolve too well before y'all got ahold of Kaillera.

 

[dandan]

you forgot about maltfox and friends, they do not play online

 

[Battlecow]

*cue animated laugh track*

Anyways, my point isn't that Europe wasn't good or anything. I just wanna know stuff about the early days of smash, tournaments and stuff, which I imagine happened mainly in Socal. Obviously the scene was divided and scrubbish immediately after the game came out.

 

[B Link]

SSB history looks like:

1999 ssb comes out -> 2000-2002? offline play? XP -> 2003-2005 ssp/jimbot (raw64life boards)/emutalk/gamefaqs/ with ONLINE tourneys -> 2006+ more good players at smashboards with more or less ONLINE tourneys, most likely less given what I've read

with some offline tourneys here and there, there would probably be too many in the world to keep track of xP

and the post I put before this one was a ruleset from 2004 for online tourneys from an old player called jimbot who hosted tourneys

you can just look this kind of stuff up on wayback machine

ruleset for the 2nd raw64life tourney (2004) pretty interesting since some rules are pretty specific heh, e.g. they played semi-finals on 10 stocks and finals on 10min TIMED:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050427111613/http://ssb.emulation64.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=73

 

[The Star King]

TG4 - *Ken dominated this tournament*. Eddie (Ganon) from Chicago was the only person to beat him in a set in Melee which was a $50 money match. Ken also had an epic SSB64 set with Isai which got a ton of hype, with Isai managing to pull a close win Bear in mind no one could take more than 1 or 2 stock off Isai in 64. Fast forward 9 years and Isai is still the best at 64. Dayum...

This was back in like 2002.

 

[NixxxoN]

Well, no offense, but you're kind of from Europe, Nix. I get the feeling that the metagame out there didn't evolve too well before y'all got ahold of Kaillera.

So you're basically saying that "america is the best and the other places suck"? How typical.

Well anyway, I bet that the slower, sh¡ttier PAL version thing contributed to make smash not quite as popular in Europe.

 

[ciaza]

So you're basically saying that "america is the best and the other places suck"? How typical.

Have you not read any of Battlecow's posts in the past? This is basically the message behind every other post. =P

 

[Surri-Sama]

All in all i wonder how japans smash scene went down.

Keshiki posted something about it about 3 years ago but it was very general and revolved mostly around the fact that prince is flashy, and everyone wanted to be like him, then Malva00 showed them the truth about smash64....by destroying them all instantly in a hell fire like fury.

 

[Battlecow]

I'd like to see that post.

 

[Surri-Sama]

Lemme go on a dig, I'll edit into this post when i get it

In Japan, we think the most important aspects of this game is Combo and Tactics/Playing smart.
and we do not know which is more important. well, it does not have to be stated, they are both very important, and people think differently about this.

Here is a brief history of Japanese SSB scene.

Most Japanese players had been working on Tactics last 2-3 years or so, mainly because Redmario was on top of Japanese SSB64 scene even though he mains in low tier character, Mario. But Prince came into this and showed his beautiful combos, so a lot of players (even though they do not have much technique as Prince does) went for trying fancy combos which reduced their accuracy of combo.

So for a long period of time, many Japanese players (including me) were like
"I know tactics is very important but I wanna do fancy combo like Prince does."
If you play this game purely just for fun thats OK, but it is contradicted if you want to win.

and then Isai came to Japan, and killed us all pretty much.
We didn't understand why he was so devastating, but there was one thing we knew for sure.
If you get hit from Isai, you will be comboed to death pretty much.

so, we were reminded of the importance in the accuracy of combos.
(if you can make it fancy like Isai does thats great but its not essential)

Now, many players, like Tsukuru, started working on accuracy.
when I last played 4-stock match against him online,
he first did easy stable U-air falcon combo twice, which is very hard to DI out of especially in Japanese version.
I was now tired of doing DI. and the last two stock, he noticed that I was not gonna do DI anymore, and started trying some fancy combos.

I lost but I thought it was such a beautiful way of winning and applauded him.

He knows
what he is capable of
what he is not yet capable of
and what he wants to do.

 

[malva00]

FUN FACT: a few years ago Keshiki told me that he thinks the american version has too much DI XD wonder what he thinks now

"If you get hit from Isai, you will be comboed to death pretty much." maybe in the dumb japanese version XD

"I was now tired of doing DI" i'm sure a lot of other people would get tired in the j version XD

Prince has played others for a long time (longer than that post might lead people to believe), cuz Captain Jack told me he used to play with him back in the day (before I even met Captain Jack in 2004 btw Captain Jack didn't even play ssb anymore when i met him).

If you wanna know what Red Mario thought of me, we would need a translator like HAMBURGLAR (I bookmarked the mixi posts where he talks about me). Also I think i've seen lots of mixi posts talking about ssb strategy. In conclusion, mixi would be a valuable source in figuring out how japanese think about smash and prob some history

 

[Blade689]

wait...... what? So smash64 history there are untranslated documents to explain ancient secrets of the japanese? Why hasn't someone become an historian and dedicated their life to translate old forum posts yet?

 

[#HBC | ѕoup]

i'm a fairly old smasher myself, but i didn't go under this name back in 05.

 

[Battlecow]

wait...... what? So smash64 history there are untranslated documents to explain ancient secrets of the japanese? Why hasn't someone become an historian and dedicated their life to translate old forum posts yet?

That's what I wanna know. Where are the weeaboos when you need 'em?

 

[JaimeHR]

SSP boards, good times.

I remember that we used to play with items on Jimbot's online tournament until the item switch code was realeased (early "versions" of item modifier codes where just too big and hard too apply) and the rules on items where that you couldn't pick the Hammer, Hearts, Maximum Tomatoes and the Star; if you accidentally picked the Star or the Hammer you had to wait until they wore off, if you took a Heart or a Maximum Tomato you had to give up that stock (unless your initial % was 0).

Also for anyone interested on ancient online smash64 topics there's this site http://www.emutalk.net/archive/index.php/f-88.html? there's some threads on Jimbot's tourneys and how the netplay/online smash scene was quite small and almost non-existent.

 

[Battlecow]

Read some of that

cool stuff.

People couldn't just unlock item switch?

 

[O.o-RITH-o.O]

nice curiosities ... here in Brazil , our national tournament is in the 13th edition already =D

 

[hack3r]

I never entered any SSB64 tournaments or anything when it first came out. Then again, I was like 6. I did play hard though. I think I could have kicked some serious *** had the opportunity arisen, and I know I can now.

 

[Battlecow]

Better back that **** up son, we've seen too many empty talkers to take you for anything but a clown if you haven't played us.

Tank and SheerMadness both play somewhere in Florida, see if you can get them to deign to tear you a new one.

OR you could COME ONLINE like the cool kids and play ALL OF US and finally learn just how far you have to go.

 

[hack3r]

I'd love to play some competitive smash64 with people that actually know what they're doing. I've been kicking all of my friends' ***** for far too long. If by online you're referring to pj64k then I'd rather not use that lagfest (not to mention I'd be playing with my keyboard), but I'd definitely be down to play anybody who's nearby. I'm currently living in orlando.

 

[ciaza]

Project64k doesn't lag if you have semi-decent internet and know how to avoid lag. You can also buy a N64 adapter to use on your PC.

 

[TANK64]

*calms*




MM?

 

[sharksquail]

lol tank's gonna take all your funds son.

 

[hack3r]

*calms*




MM?

You've got me all excited now. What area of orlando do you live in?

 

[TANK64]

I actually live in Lake Mary (like 20min from Downtown).
Sheer lives about the same distance away.
We both are busy a lot, but I try to find time for smUsh.
Just private message me your #, and I'll hit you up.
I go to school in Orlando so yea.

 

[hack3r]

coolness, I'll do that

 

[Fish641]

Does anyone have old tier lists? I'd love to see how the metagame/perception of characters has evolved as skill has gone up.

 

[asianaussie]

Gamefaqs list

Top
Pikachu
Kirby
Ness

High
Fox
Falcon

Mid
Jigglypuff
Mario
Yoshi

Low
Donkey Kong
Luigi

Bottom
Samus
Link

Spoiler

SmasherLink's epic legit amazing super-awesome cannot-be-proven-wrong sex list

Top Tier
Pikachu
Jigglypuff
Ness
Fox

High Tier
Donkey Kong
Mario
Link

Middle Tier
Luigi

Low Tier
Yoshi
Kirby
Captain Falcon

Bottom Tier
Samus

Current

SS Tier
(1)Pikachu

S Tier
(2)Fox
(3)Kirby

A Tier
(4)Falcon
(5)Mario

B Tier
(6)Yoshi
(7)DK
(8)Ness
(9)Jigglypuff

C Tier
(10)Link
(11)Luigi
(12)Samus

changed a little bit, not really noticeable

 

[Fynal]

waaaaaaat when did that happen?

thought it was still

S: pika, fox

A: kirby, falcon, mario

B/C: order listed there

 

[asianaussie]

it didn't happen, it's my personal opinion based on my experience rather than numbers

and you missed the link luigi switch

 

[MTKO]

I'd love to play some competitive smash64 with people that actually know what they're doing. I've been kicking all of my friends' ***** for far too long. If by online you're referring to pj64k then I'd rather not use that lagfest (not to mention I'd be playing with my keyboard), but I'd definitely be down to play anybody who's nearby. I'm currently living in orlando.

Your name wouldn't happen to be John would it? Joking aside, looks like you're new to the boards. So welcome to smashboards :D There's a lot of valuable information on here to digest and some really really knowledgeable players to learn from that post.

(Back on topic) Pretty interesting topic. I laughed a lot at the historian post earlier. I'm also interested in Smash history. It's interesting to see how the game has evolved. Right now I'm working on a short paper (maybe a series of articles) on how I first started playing Smash. I didn't include anything about 64 because I only played 64 back when it was first release with a school friend after school on Fridays for a short time and never knew about the competitive scene. I've been playing melee since 04 (I think) and was aware of the competitive community for quite a while but didn't actually go to my first real tournament until last month. If someone wrote a big series of articles on the history of Smash 64, the players, and other in depth stuff that would be awesome. That would be a great read. I really don't much about 64 so it's interesting to me and gets me into learning more about it.