Gamma-Rayz
Smash Rookie
Super Smash Brothers. One of the most iconic game series to ever be made in this world. It has given many people a new form of interaction, a way to find a new side of themselves, and a way to identify with people they normally wouldn’t even give the light of day towards. This is a little story of how the scene in Kuwait began, where it faced bumps and bruises, and where it has reached now.
Starting things off with the game that got many people’s undivided attention, Super Smash Bros Melee. It became a huge hit in Kuwait; many people have the game and still revere it as one of the best titles to ever grace the GameCube’s library. If you had a GameCube, you had Melee. However, in those days the internet was still a fledgling thing, not many people were able to connect to the internet and even if they were able to, it was a dial up connection. Therefore players weren’t able to find each other and meet up. Adding to that the nonexistence of the thought of tournaments, the scene didn’t live long. However, everything changed when Brawl came out.
During the time when Brawl came out, internet had become widely available and everyone quickly began understanding what the internet meant, from forums to games and much more. As a result the people who were interested in games were able to meet up consistently. Lo and behold, tournaments started popping up. The most relevant and prominent being the ones hosted and held at the “Rehab” Complex in Hawally. Rehab, (its name is weird I know) is the complex where all our gaming needs are met, that is where we buy our gaming consoles.
After I met a few Brawl players in my school I found out about competitive play, advanced techniques and much more. I found a world I had not known of until just then. I had fun, learning and playing competitively was something I hadn’t done before except with my cousin and brother during the Melee days and even then the most epic thing we could pull off then was pull out a bomb with link, jump up, and throw it downwards. That right there was basically our Mango level plays. So suffice to say I was really happy during those times and I couldn’t wait to enter a tournament.
In 2010 my dream came true, a small local team called Saracens Tournaments held a Brawl tournament. This came as a surprise since they only held tournaments for Street Fighter and a few other fighting games at the time like BlazBlue. We attended in droves. It was the first smash tournament they held and we managed to rake up an astounding 48 player entrance, a number that was only matched by Street Fighter 4. That was a sign for good times to come. The tournament was extremely beautiful, the games were hype to watch, and while the number of players slowly dwindled to the top 4 everyone was ready to witness the great matches that were going to happen.
One of the greatest sets I had ever seen in my life happened there. It was between two of my very close friends, Dr.Smex and Grand in a Snake vs Fox duel we had seen time and time again. The doc always had the upper hand when they played for as long as I remember and so I felt kind of sad for Grand. That sadness didn’t last long, the best of three set went underway and immediately the room fell silent as Fox McCloud showed resilience none had seen that day. The game plan was obvious; keep Snake at bay no matter what the consequences. Retreating lasers, throwing grenades back at Snake and avoiding the incredible hit boxes that were his F-tilts and U-tilts, to the point of power shielding his Dacus and punishing as he saw fit in the situation. Game one went to Snake, game two went to Fox and game three is where everything blew up. Last stock, both were above 130%, FD. Fox was retreating and firing lasers, Snake slowly approached with carefully placed grenades. In the blink of an eye. Snake found his chance and tried to DACUS, the key word here is “tried”. Snake failed to DACUS. Why? Because he simply tripped. This was Fox’s golden chance. He ran up to up smash, but whiffed. Snake got up and as Fox tried to retreat he also tripped; this gave snake the chance to finish it with an up-tilt, which also missed. The room at that point had exploded into a giant screaming heap of hype. The game ended with Snake as the victor and even though he lost in the finals to another Snake main named Qamberco no one had any regrets. We reveled that this tournament became as huge as it did and we couldn’t wait for the next one to come along. It never did. 2010 was the last year a smash tournament was to be seen in Kuwait for many years to come.
TO’s threw Brawl to the curb, on the main reason that it “isn’t a real fighting game” and they shifted their focus completely towards “real fighting games”, which weirdly enough ended up becoming Street Fighter 4 only and with that one two punch, not only smash, but almost every fighting game scene in Kuwait disappeared. Most of the Brawl players ended up switching to Street Fighter and shortly afterwards also started playing BlazBlue. The little gatherings we had to play Smash became Street Fighter gatherings and slowly but surely, we said our farewells to Brawl. We played it every now and then for fun, items on and all that jazz, but it wasn’t the same. I tried to bring back the competitive side of Smash by trying to host a point based league between the guys I knew. It was basically just like the English football league (aptly known as soccer in the US). That didn’t last long either; no motivation coupled with my absolute lack of experience hosting any kind of event caused that to go nowhere real fast.
The years went by without a glitch in this newly reformed “fighting game scene” until Fikra appeared. They held tournaments for Marvel vs Capcom 3, Tekken and Mortal Kombat as well. That’s when a new flame appeared in my little candle of hope. I went up and asked them to host a Brawl tournament, considering how big the player base is and the response I received was this; “we won’t hold a smash brawl tournament. maybe if there is a fourth installment in the Smash Bros. series then we might hold one for that game”. With a really small puff of wind, my little candle was blown out and that was when I finally truly gave up.
Fast forward a few years and we reach 2013. The fact that Melee was able to enter Evo's line up was a miracle. I didn’t know much about Melee except that it has L-cancelling and wave dashing at that point, but I was so excited to see a Smash tournament; for a while I didn't even watch apex for some reason. I just forgot about competitive smash during that period, maybe the fact that Melee, a Smash game that wasn’t a "real fighting game" managed to get into Evo, was why I became so infatuated with the news.
After Melee was announced I tried getting the guys into playing it but no one cared. It was mainly because, "the graphics are old", "the sound effects are weird", and because they were Brawl players, they didn't like the fact that your character weighed a million tons in Melee. Some tried but quickly got discouraged and stopped. Then and there I remembered seeing something called "Project M", a Brawl mod that was trying to change the game into Melee. So I went on YouTube and Google and searched for Project M, hoping with all my heart that it existed and thank the heavens there it was, Project M 2.6b.
I fell in love! The game was beautiful, the Pokémon were split into three, and the game felt like Melee with the new characters getting weird and interesting ways of being played AND IKE WAS FAST LIKE IN HIS REAL GAMES OMG!!!! So i showed the guys PM, and yet they still didn’t play because it was a “mere hack” so i just practiced l-canceling and wave dashing on my own until Evo came about.
Evo 2013 Melee top 8: the hype that was generated and Mango's comeback through losers was more than enough to get the blood pumping. Soon afterwards someone told us that there are people who play Brawl and wanted to play against us. Being the nut jobs my brother and I were, we accepted to play against these people. A flicker of light started appearing again.
Demna and Geno came over to Deadfishes's house and we played against them. It was only me and my brother. I went first to "check out the competition" because my brother was/is much better than me so if i lost he would have the chance to study them. I lost convincingly to both Geno and Demna 2-0 and I could almost see the disappointment in Demna's eyes; one that said “these guys aren’t all that good after all”. My brother went in using Marth instead of Snake because at the time we stopped playing Snake was second only to Meta Knight and he didn’t want to use snake against them and destroy their hopes right off the bat. He lost 2-1 to Demna and I'm guessing that ticked him off because he went Snake against Geno and took that set convincingly. After that Demna and Beta Rayz became rivals, this was also the first time I saw my brother actually practicing his movements in Brawl again. He spent around an hour or so just dashing around Smashville making sure he landed smoothly on the platform and got his sense for the measurements of the stages up and running again. Surprisingly enough, in comes October with the release of an interesting documentary all about Melee.
That documentary is probably the sole reason people started playing smash seriously again. Jin dominated in PM, Demna dominated in Brawl, and come May of 2014 after holding numerous small scale tournaments at RKB's house we finally managed to host a major smash tournament. PM and Brawl, singles and doubles, with the arrival of a great player from Canada in V115. Major 5ashoom (pronounced "Major Khashoom") was a great success, 36 Brawlers, 32 PMers and over 20 teams in both doubles tournaments marked the beginning of our march towards creating a scene. Gone were the days we waited for others to do our work for us and as a result a few months later we finally formed an organizing team called “Super Smash Kuwaiti Bros.” and our goal was to create, sustain and grow a Smash community in Kuwait.
We managed to host small scale tournaments for Brawl and PM where we would get around 16 players for each. We avoided Melee because we couldn’t get our grasp on any Melee players during that time. We slowly but surely maintained the scene until the famed release of Smash 4.
When Smash 4 came around, the influx of new players was astounding and thus we shifted our focus towards these new potentials in Smash 4. From December 2014 onwards, the scene for Smash 4 grew exponentially. To the point that our small scale tournaments became semi majors, garnering up to no less than 30 players per tournament.
We have also made a great achievement as from the end of April, to the end of May we did not miss a single weekend without hosting a Smash 4 tournament. We hosted two tournaments as training for Kuwait Battle Royale Spring Edition which was held by Fikra (the guys who promised a Smash 4 tournament when the game came out). After we had one week of training for Furycalls and then finally hosted Furycalls. That was a hectic time for us and thankfully, during KBR Spring Edition, we managed to surpass the previous record of 48 players with an amazing number of 56! Numbering more than both Street Fighter and UMVC3 combined! For Furycalls we invited Mr.R over and he graciously accepted the invitation to wipe the floor with us and show us how much we need to grow as players in Smash 4. With that we managed to solidify our position in the fighting game community in Kuwait. From mere “Smash players” playing a “fake fighting game” we are now considered one of the most relevant communities in Kuwait.
During the time we were growing, the community throughout the Middle East expanded with the release of Smash 4 as well. Smash Arabia is a Facebook group dedicated to all things Smashy in the Middle East, a front for the organizers and players of the various countries to meet and help each other grow. This was probably the first time the ME as a region began interacting together. This lead to an unbelievable boom in all of our communities, KSA is still struggling as the cities their players live in are extremely far from each other but only time will help them close that gap.
After meeting with TheArabSamurai of Qatar and Fro from the KSA, we managed to bridge the gap between the countries even more. Helping each other spread the word about our tournaments and try to facilitate players who come to them from different countries. The harder we worked the more recognition we got from the rest of the world and now, with Fro and TheArabSamurai leading the charge we are hosting a side Smash 4 tournament in Qatar this Friday 5th June 2015 at KOFGCC; a premier King of Fighters tournament that is held annually in Qatar since last year. This measly side tournament will become the most definitive Major of our region, with players coming from all over the ME to join. UAE, Kuwait and Qatar are going to face off in the most hyped up tournament to date!
Many of us are planning and working hard to grow this community. The new players are extremely motivated. Zash and Badapple have the potential for much growth. Madara, Zanbashi and Scorpion are getting better by the day. Galaxy Space needs to give himself more credit and raise his overall self-esteem. XFO needs to keep up his great attitude towards the game in order to keep improving.
The old players are slowly getting their flames ignited. Jin beat Ally and in the process gave all of our PM players a huge boost in morale. Dr.Smex, (known as Fhaid511 now) should keep calm and stick to his gameplan. Azizchaos needs to think more while playing, his randomness comes off as a double edged sword.
Our top players keep pushing the rest to get better as well. Demna has a work ethic I have not seen in many people of his age nor older. Fairess is always the guy with the surprises no matter how far behind he may be in the game. Tyrant is a solid brick wall, staying calm no matter who his opponent is. He isn’t called “The Daigo Slayer” for nothing. Last but not least Beta Rayz, my dear brother, needs to know his limits. When he does, he manages to focus on raising them.
We faced many challenges and rose to meet them and we won’t stop. We will nurture this scene and its people and we will grow with them; the bonds we have already formed are nigh unbreakable. This is only the beginning. Hopefully one day we'll be able to pass a torch to the next generation; a torch that can stay burning even during the darkest of nights.
Hope to meet you all in the future - Gamma Rayz
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To see what Smash in the Middle East has to offer be sure to tune in and watch KOFGCC June 5th. Its Smashboards thread can be found here.
