Funen1
Smash Journeyman
Link to original post: [drupal=821]Starting a Backcountry Ascent - Entering the Smash Scene[/drupal]
For those of you who don't know me, I am Funen1. You may (or may not) have seen me posting recently in the Ice Climber boards, although that may not mean too much to you. I feel that, at this point, I've been around SWF long enough to organize my thoughts, so I'm making this blog about my entrance into the Smash scene, which will be updated on a semi-regular basis (depends on if I attend any interesting events, Smash-related or otherwise).
I'm what you would call a relative newcomer to the general Smash scene. I first played Melee back in 2006, when a few of my high school friends introduced it to me. While I had heard of the game before, I had not played the game (or seen anyone play it for that matter) until then. We played the game all afternoon, with me using Pikachu against various other characters. I knew nothing of tier lists back then, of course. Needless to say, I died first in almost every three-stock free-for-all we played, but it was all in good fun. My brother bought Melee for us later that summer and I started playing as Fox, but I never became interested in, say, being able to consistently beat Classic Mode on Hard. So it rested on my shelf for a while, until college came around.
The time was Fall Semester 2007, some months before Brawl was released. I come out of my dorm's piano practice room, and I find a few people playing Melee, including who I would later find out to be Matt Wizeman (forgive me, I'm not exactly sure how to spell his last name), a Smasher from Texas. Naturally, I lost every match against him, but that night influenced me to restart the game and get a bit better. I later went back and earned a few of the more difficult end-of-match rewards, picking up Marth in the process. I still knew very little about how competitive Smash was played then, so I did some online research to find out. After looking at some other characters as well, I stumbled across one in particular that completely caught my attention. Little did I know that this discovery would shape me into the Smash player I am today, and will probably be for the rest of my Smash career.
Two child-like characters in colored parkas. Impressive pressure game with "desynched" moves. Long-range attacks that involve ice. Hands down the best grab game in Smash history. So many things turned me on to the Ice Climbers all at once that I started to fall in love with the little guys, and I picked them up as my official main. Even though I had little to no technical Melee skill, doing basic-level play with the Ice Climbers felt so natural, so comfortable to me that, should I ever decide to enter the competitive community, I knew I can do it with a character I like.
I would say the rest is history, but there's more to this story. After continuing with the Ice Climbers, I got into thinking if they had any fire-based name counterparts anywhere online, such as the Fire Climbers or Flame Climbers (how original, I know). My second searched linked me to a tournament thread on (you guessed it) Smashboards, featuring the results of a Melee doubles tournament. That would be my first contact with SWF, a great place I would eventually join as an aspiring IC main.
When Brawl came out, I still did not own a Wii, so my time on the new game was limited to when I could find one of my friends playing it. Following a long, hectic, and educational summer in which I played no Melee whatsoever (I did not have my Gamecube with me), I finally got The Setup (yes, in caps): Wii + Brawl. Now with proper access to Smash's newest installment, I had loads of fun clearly all the challenges (I'll admit I used my five Golden Hammers for this). But after I drained the 1-P part of the game to death, I began to really crave human vs. human matches, something I had tried to advertise before with little success. After "rediscovering" Smashboards when searching for videos on the ICs' chaingrabs and officially joining the site, I met up with a wonderful group of high-level Smashers in Minnesota. Luck would have it that a bunch of them live in the Twin Cities area, where I go to college, so staying in contact with them is quite easy. I can definitely say I've improved since meeting up with them, and I certainly hope I can become as good as they are someday.
This is where I stand now in the Smash scene: a happy Ice Climbers main trying his hardest to improve his game to the point of competitive play. Some things will change for a while, however. I will only be spending one more week here in Minnesota before Christmas break, and I will return home to Manhattan after spending another week in San Francisco (for the AGU Fall 2008 meeting). Obviously I won't be able to play against any Minnesota Smashers then, but I hope to get in contact with more Smashers in the NYC area during that time.
With the cold weather I love so much now setting in, and with the most fun Brawl character(s) under my command, I now strive to mark my place in the Smash scene. Until next time, see you later.
For those of you who don't know me, I am Funen1. You may (or may not) have seen me posting recently in the Ice Climber boards, although that may not mean too much to you. I feel that, at this point, I've been around SWF long enough to organize my thoughts, so I'm making this blog about my entrance into the Smash scene, which will be updated on a semi-regular basis (depends on if I attend any interesting events, Smash-related or otherwise).
I'm what you would call a relative newcomer to the general Smash scene. I first played Melee back in 2006, when a few of my high school friends introduced it to me. While I had heard of the game before, I had not played the game (or seen anyone play it for that matter) until then. We played the game all afternoon, with me using Pikachu against various other characters. I knew nothing of tier lists back then, of course. Needless to say, I died first in almost every three-stock free-for-all we played, but it was all in good fun. My brother bought Melee for us later that summer and I started playing as Fox, but I never became interested in, say, being able to consistently beat Classic Mode on Hard. So it rested on my shelf for a while, until college came around.
The time was Fall Semester 2007, some months before Brawl was released. I come out of my dorm's piano practice room, and I find a few people playing Melee, including who I would later find out to be Matt Wizeman (forgive me, I'm not exactly sure how to spell his last name), a Smasher from Texas. Naturally, I lost every match against him, but that night influenced me to restart the game and get a bit better. I later went back and earned a few of the more difficult end-of-match rewards, picking up Marth in the process. I still knew very little about how competitive Smash was played then, so I did some online research to find out. After looking at some other characters as well, I stumbled across one in particular that completely caught my attention. Little did I know that this discovery would shape me into the Smash player I am today, and will probably be for the rest of my Smash career.
Two child-like characters in colored parkas. Impressive pressure game with "desynched" moves. Long-range attacks that involve ice. Hands down the best grab game in Smash history. So many things turned me on to the Ice Climbers all at once that I started to fall in love with the little guys, and I picked them up as my official main. Even though I had little to no technical Melee skill, doing basic-level play with the Ice Climbers felt so natural, so comfortable to me that, should I ever decide to enter the competitive community, I knew I can do it with a character I like.
I would say the rest is history, but there's more to this story. After continuing with the Ice Climbers, I got into thinking if they had any fire-based name counterparts anywhere online, such as the Fire Climbers or Flame Climbers (how original, I know). My second searched linked me to a tournament thread on (you guessed it) Smashboards, featuring the results of a Melee doubles tournament. That would be my first contact with SWF, a great place I would eventually join as an aspiring IC main.
When Brawl came out, I still did not own a Wii, so my time on the new game was limited to when I could find one of my friends playing it. Following a long, hectic, and educational summer in which I played no Melee whatsoever (I did not have my Gamecube with me), I finally got The Setup (yes, in caps): Wii + Brawl. Now with proper access to Smash's newest installment, I had loads of fun clearly all the challenges (I'll admit I used my five Golden Hammers for this). But after I drained the 1-P part of the game to death, I began to really crave human vs. human matches, something I had tried to advertise before with little success. After "rediscovering" Smashboards when searching for videos on the ICs' chaingrabs and officially joining the site, I met up with a wonderful group of high-level Smashers in Minnesota. Luck would have it that a bunch of them live in the Twin Cities area, where I go to college, so staying in contact with them is quite easy. I can definitely say I've improved since meeting up with them, and I certainly hope I can become as good as they are someday.
This is where I stand now in the Smash scene: a happy Ice Climbers main trying his hardest to improve his game to the point of competitive play. Some things will change for a while, however. I will only be spending one more week here in Minnesota before Christmas break, and I will return home to Manhattan after spending another week in San Francisco (for the AGU Fall 2008 meeting). Obviously I won't be able to play against any Minnesota Smashers then, but I hope to get in contact with more Smashers in the NYC area during that time.
With the cold weather I love so much now setting in, and with the most fun Brawl character(s) under my command, I now strive to mark my place in the Smash scene. Until next time, see you later.
