Behold
My pre-tourney days scene story isn't that interesting, although since I am a human and thus like talking about myself, I have a lot to say about it anyways.
When the game came out in 2001, I initially didn't like the feel of it. I became more comfortable with it in about a week, after which I loved it. I mostly played the one-player modes since I had roughly three friends at the time and I would only see them on weekends; my use of spot-dodges impressed them greatly. I started high school around 2002, and I still didn't play people very often, but I did get a few more friends whom I would play with once in a blue moon. At this point, I played Mario and Luigi, with the occasional Jigglypuff here and there because I thought Puff was cool.
Over the course of the next several years, I learned CPU habits on all of the stages exceedingly well and had fun impressing my friends by saying exactly what the CPUs would do next and also by screwing around with the CPU immobilization glitch. I did outperform my friends in VS mode, too, but that wasn't saying much. Around 2004, I had realized that short hop aerials were pretty good, as were ledgehop aerials. In 2005, I discovered wavedashing/wavelanding while doing All-Star Mode with Luigi; I was trying to figure out the fastest way of getting out of the rest area, and air-dodging into the ground towards the light seemed like a natural way of cutting the distance down. I remember being surprised by just how fast I could go if I air-dodged into the ground and I then realized that since you can airdodge as soon you jump, there was no reason I couldn't do the same right after leaving the ground. I initially found this excruciatingly difficult and deemed it impractical, but after a month of practice, gradually going from 1/4th speed to normal speed (a terrible way of learning it that made it take way too long to get down than it should have, but I was stupid and didn't know any better), I got it down pretty well, after which point I beat all of my friends with Luigi doing pretty much nothing but short hop aerials, wavedash -> ftilt, wavedash -> dsmash, and when I anticipated an attack or wanted to pass through a projectile, wavedash -> spot-dodge -> grab/dsmash/up-B.
In 2006, I graduated high school. During that summer, on a whim, I decided to venture onto to the internet to see how other people played the game. I heard about Ken, went to Youtube and searched for something like "Ken SSBM", and found a Bombsoldier vs. Ken match. I was blown away and realized that I wasn't as inconceivably amazing as I thought I was. Shortly thereafter, I found Wak's "How to Play" videos and SWF, and I somehow also came across Nsider's SSBM board. I frantically tried to learn all the major ATs before college started since I had a reputation for being good that I felt I must preserve, and I became technically proficient by the end of 2006.
I arrived at Harvey Mudd sometime in late 2006. I quickly found a couple groups of SSBM players. One was a casual group that I felt was a community that I fit in well with and the other was a competitive group that partied harder than a nerd like me was comfortable with. Nonetheless, I went over to play with them often anyways since I never had good competition before and there were two people notably better than me there, as well as a couple others around my level. The two best were Charlie and Richard, a DK/Puff/Fox/Ganon and Marth/Falcon/Falco/Doc, respectively. Charlie impressed me by just being a pretty smart player with good reads; Richard was HMC's best at the time, although we weren't sure what put him above the rest of us then. In retrospect, I realized that he was the best because he was the only one of us who had really good spacing and a good sense of stage control.
About a month after the school year started, there was a little tourney at HMC. I, to my surprise, took second, beating Charlie and Richard in winners, but losing to Richard in GFs. I actually had an edge on Charlie for the next several months since he didn't know how to deal with my ingenious run-away-and-pill strat, although he would surpass me again when he started using Fox more against me later on. Anyways, not long after that tourney, there was another tourney that Richard and Charlie invited me to go to in one of the neighboring cities. It was at a game store and it was terribly organized; the host initially tried to run the whole event, which actually had a lot of people, on one Gamecube in tournament mode. Somebody eventually knocked the Gamecube down while angrily removing his controller, at which point a lot of people left and the tourney started over as a slightly less bizarre single elimination tournament. As for the people at the event, there were a bunch of randoms and DSF. I had to play DSF, much to my chagrin. We did Doc vs. Marth on FD in a 5-stock round and he two-stocked me, which I was happy about since it was better than I expected to do, although it's obvious that he was sandbagging in retrospect.
Over the course of late 2006 and the first month or two of 2007, I gradually went from Doc/Luigi to Fox/Falco and I surpassed my HMC peers. A few months before the end of the 2006-2007 school year, Charlie told me about a Melee tourney at Pomona College. He couldn't attend, but he told me that he wanted me to go and beat somebody named Atul. He claimed that Atul was a CMC Sheik player who acted like he was really good, but wasn't that great, as Charlie had beaten him over and over again with Puff a year beforehand. I figured he was some random ego-freak and I would gladly satisfy Charlie's request, but he ended up not showing up to the tourney; I wouldn't meet him until a few months later. What I couldn't have possibly anticipated then was that Atul would become one of the most influential people in my development as a smash player.
The actual tourney was at a little eatery whose name I can't recall. A respectable number of people showed up, but it felt like a huge event since the venue was small and it was crowded as hell. The tourney had two events: singles and low-tier singles. While watching people play friendlies, there were four people in particular whom I was nervous about playing in tournament. One was a Fox player named Noah whose tag is Yomi. Another is a Peach player named Charlie who goes by Thor (some of you may actually know him!). The other two were Todd and Adam (the former never had a tag to the best of knowledge and the latter went by Squee), who evidently had some grasp of the game, although they didn't seem like as much of a threat as the other two.
I had to play against a DK player in the first round. At this time, my strategy against mid/low tier characters with bad traction was to go Fox and just drillshine "infinite" them, since nobody had a clue how to SDI, and this worked fine against him. If I recall correctly, I had to play Squee next, and beat him without too much trouble. At this point, I was in WFs/GFs (single elimination ftw) and waiting on the outcome of Thor vs. Todd. To my surprise, Todd's Sheik beat Thor's Peach pretty soundly. However, Todd's Sheik/ICs were no match for my amazing stationary laser camping with Falco, and I won the event. Noah congratulated me and gave me the great prize that was a Pitzer sweatshirt, which was a little odd since the event was at Pomona, but I had no complaints. He then told me about Pomona's smash club, which was actually intercollegiate, IIRC, and I gave him my email address so he could notify me of future tourneys/smashfests. All in all, it was a really fun time for me.
There was another tourney at Pomona a month or two later; I did have to play Thor this time and the set against him was close, but I managed to pull of a victory. Somewhere right around that time, Adam/Squee mentioned Atul and said he was amazing. Thor also said this, which seemed to contradict the impression I had gotten from HMC's Charlie. Always hungry for new competition, I intended to contact him shortly thereafter, but he actually contacted me first and invited me to come over and play at his dorm room. He was notably better than the other 5Cs players I had played against and he won more rounds than I did; his brother, a Samus player named Aseem (not to be confused with Azeem) also gave me a hard time. Atul told me that he was holding a tourney in his dorm soon that would have big names like Ken, Chu Dat, DSF, etc. At the time, I didn't really believe this since I couldn't comprehend a bunch of world-class smashers convening in a lowly dorm room, but I was excited to attend it anyways.
When the event rolled around in early 2007, I showed up early with HMC's Charlie and James, a Peach player from HMC whom I felt was decent, although he became increasingly drunk over the course of the tourney and ended up going Game & Watch when the bracket started. Before the actual tourney, Charlie and I sat down at a TV with a Fox/Luigi player who repeatedly stomped us. I noticed the letters "ROFL" on his controller and asked him if he was ROFL (I actually pronounced it letter by letter, i.e. Ar Oh Eff Ell). He said yes; Charlie thought it was ridiculous that I knew who he was and called me a nerd. Anyways, I first had Aseem in the bracket, but he wasn't there, so I advanced to play DSF again. The first round was my Fox vs. his Falcon on Dreamland and he 1-stocked me. I CPed FD, he went Doc, I went Falco, and he 3-stocked me. I was thoroughly demoralized, but he was actually pretty encouraging and my spirits were somewhat boosted. Next, I was against James, but he had left because he was too intoxicated to play. I then advanced to play Fabian, who 1-stocked my Fox on FD first round and 2-stocked my Falco on FD the next. Being out of the tourney, I spent most of the rest of the time just watching matches. Ken had really entertaining sets with DC and DSF. He 2-0'd DC, but both rounds were really close and exciting. In his set against DSF, he actually lost the first round. It looked like he would lose the second one, too, but Ken landed a clutch tipper to take it. Ken then procedeed to 4-stock him on Dreamland, which seemed a little surreal after seeing the first two rounds. Meanwhile, Charlie pointed out a Puff player to me, saying "Hey, this guy looks pretty good." It was a player I didn't recognize, but he was absolutely trouncing DC. I later heard that this unknown player's tag was Mango. As the tourney drew to a close, I played a few friendlies with a Sheik player whose name I didn't catch and Dodger, the Kirby player. Although I was beating both of them, I ended up feeling depressed as the day drew to a close. I felt utterly far behind the pros and that I couldn't possibly catch up before the next iteration in the smash series came out, so I told myself that I would just wait for Brawl to start seriously competing.
I didn't play all that often near the end of the school year. When I did, it was usually with the casual group at HMC. I still enjoyed their company, and their light-hearted approach to the game was fun. I continued to dabble in a few other characters around this time, although not with any serious intention of becoming competent with them. I was really impressed with how Chu Dat was doing so well with ICs whereas nobody else was, and I also just found ICs to be a really neat character, so I started playing them a bit. On the few occasions that I would play with HMC's Charlie, he'd always get upset whenever I used ICs since he had a scrubby, anti-CG'ing mentality, which I just found amusing. He was also upset about my tech-chasing with Sheik and proclaimed me to be the "gayest smasher at Mudd," which also amused me to a certain extent, but his unpleasant attitude eventually drove me to stop playing with him and Richard altogether for the school year.
In one of my last months at Mudd, I was eating at HMC's dining hall by myself; Atul also happened to be there and he came over and we talked about smash a bit. I didn't mention my plans of waiting for Brawl to start seriously competing, but I do believe I mentioned how I felt so far behind the good players. He told me something along the lines of "If you want to get good, you have to go tournaments. That's how you improve." Although I still didn't plan on competing in Melee anymore, those words stuck with me and I vowed to myself that I wouldn't repeat the same mistake of waiting too long to get into the tournament scene when Brawl came out. Incidentally, this would be the last time I ever saw Atul.
Most of my college friends weren't in the area for the summer. With less to do in real life, I became more active on Nsider's smash board. I became a regular there and was decently well-respected for my knowledge of the game and my tiny bit of tourney activity. The visitors of that board fell into four main categories:
-Clueless randoms
-Moderately knowledgeable and competent smashers who enjoyed mocking the idiots
-Stadium players
-Legitimately good players
The first category was far and away the most common category; the second was slightly larger than the third and the last group was the smallest. I only really recall Ultra Luigi and Nintendude1189, the former being a mod and the latter being somebody who at one time contributed regularly, but eventually became sick of the board and would pop in once every several months to troll. Anyways, there were a few threads there featuring goofy challenges for the stadium modes, which I started to become more fond of. On one occasion, there was a challenge to do Falco's BTT with only B-moves; I won that competition over Pokefantom, a very strong BTTer, which got me start practicing the single player modes a little more seriously, although HRCOGuy's influence eventually got me into HRC rather than BTT. All I really did for the rest of the summer was HRC, although it cost me the controller I used up until that point; fortunately, I had a very similar controller, but it was different enough to render me unable to do a lot of HRC strats/tactics with the precision and constistency I used to be able to, at which point I started to break free from my HRC trance. It also kind of hindered my tech skill with my space animals initially, so I figured that if I started to play people again, I'd main Marth and second Sheik; I also felt that their more relaxed styles better fit my attitude towards the game at the time.
At the start of the 2007-2008 school year, I was no longer at the Claremont Colleges, so I didn't see the smashers there much. I eventually heard from Noah, who told me about a tourney they were organizing. He said that Charlie/Thor and Adam/Squee had started attending tourneys and gotten a lot better; since I hadn't seen them in a while and since I didn't have anything to lose from attending a nearby event, I chose to go. In the first friendly of the day, Adam's Sheik 2-stocked my ICs, which unnerved me a little and made me drift away from the character(s) for a couple months. I then played Marth vs. Sheik against him for a while and did okay, although he still won the majority of the matches. In the actual tourney, I breezed through the mediocre players, but Noah beat me 2-0 in winners and I think Adam 3-0'd me in losers' finals. I felt reinvigorated and wanted to get back to their level. Although they never had any more tourneys, they held a few smashfests that I started to attend. To my surprise (and to a certain extent, chagrin), I found that I could still beat them the majority of the time with Falco, in spite of not investing any effort into him recently. More satisfyingly, I found that I could beat them with Sheik pretty consistently, so I had at least somewhat escaped the space animal world.
As I had mentioned, they had now gotten into the tourney scene and I started to go along with them, although they never traveled very far; I mainly recall going to the Shuffle & Cut tourneys with them. Although nobody in the actual smash community took the Shuffle & Cut events very seriously, I view them as the most important series of tourneys in my development as a smasher, as they were the first opportunity I had to play a wide variety of people. It also was easier to become aware of my biggest faults in an environment where I didn't reign supreme. I once again started feeling a strong urge to improve; I figured that Melee was in its last several months, but I wanted to see how good I could get before the end nonetheless. Oh yeah, it's also where I met P-Adam, who has provided good practice and advice ever since then.
Around this time, I started going to Noah's place to practice occasionally. It was at this time that I found out with much excitement that not only could I actually perform really well with ICs against the Claremont group, but I did about as well with them, if not better than I did with my mains. Noah actually recorded some friendlies with the Claremont smashers at these events; if anybody is interested in seeing lousy videos of me or the other guys at the 5Cs from late 2007, check out Noah's
Youtube Channel.
A little after this time, the joystick of the controller I used started severely malfunctioning. I was forced to switch to a different controller, with which I couldn't play Falco very well since I could never shoot lasers in the direction I wanted to. I didn't actually mind much since this just gave me an excuse to use more ICs/Sheik. At the next Shuffle & Cut tourney I went to, I beat some people who had previously beaten my Falco with my ICs and I ended up placing 3rd. The competition wasn't exactly great, but I still was very happy with my performance and this event solidified my will to main ICs, which I've done ever since then. Oh, it was also at one of the Shuffle & Cuts around this time that I met Replicate and Embracethe12.
At the last several tourneys before Brawl's release, I placed decently well; not usually great, but better than most, and I was content with that. Once Brawl rolled around, I did start playing it and I did view it as my main game for a while, but I didn't have any desire to stop playing Melee and I saw no harm in attending the scattered events that were still being held for it, so I continued to play.
In the strange and quiet world that was the post-Brawl Melee scene, to my surprise, I was one of the stronger players left. Of course, this was mainly because most of ye olde players had vanished, and I was now mostly competing against people like me; people who had started getting into the Melee scene really late, but didn't want to stop with the advent of Brawl. I think we've all progressed quite nicely since then.
) and i went all the way to stockton to get hmw, meep, tc1, and darkmike so we could to go a NCB
