Pika vs Pika on Dreamland is a really intense and pure test of the neutral game skills of the players. At Apex 2013 I must have spent 8+ hours playing this matchup against players like Banze, Boom, and Sensei without getting bored. Good spacing and neutral gameplay is endlessly fascinating whether I'm watching it or executing it myself. Really, this aspect of the game is the most important part of high level competitive play. Isai is so good primarily because he beats everyone else at the neutral game; his combos are but an entertaining bonus in the face of his prodigious spacing and prediction skills. I know everyone loves the combos, but there's a lot more to this game than that. Besides, what exactly is interesting about Falcon's random free dash dance/hit confirm -> grab -> death combo strings once you've seen them a few times? Also, remember that Boom vs Isai at Genesis 2011 were longggggg matches on Dreamland despite *gasp* neither player using Pikachu!
Spacing intensive matches where the players try to grind out an advantage on Dreamland are fine. They typically only take 5-6 minutes at most because neither player can just break off and run away whenever he wants (unlike Hyrule). SSB combos are great fun when they happen (for both players and spectators), but the sky isn't falling if a match doesn't contain three death combos/gimps from each player.
I do understand the desire to see more characters used at the high end in tournaments, but the SSB64 tournament scene has always been heavy on Pika/Kirby/Falcon/Fox. The only difference at Zenith is that we saw a lot of Pikachus instead of a lot of Falcons and Foxes. Big whoop. It's awesome that good Yoshi players are coming out of the woodwork, and it would be awesome if some DK lords appeared too. DK can wreck **** on Dreamland, and I think it would be hella hype if Isai goes DK at Apex 2014, for example. But we can't exactly force players to play these more esoteric characters if they don't want to. Picking Pika isn't exactly a panacea either - for instance, Nintendude totally should have stuck with Mario, his Pika has good movement and spacing fundamentals but had a lot of weird aerial move choices.
As far as commentators go:
- Nintendude + Battlecow at Apex 2013 were excellent. Nintendude knows the game very well and Battlecow gets on the hype. I'm sure the pro-Isai bias will be worked on a bit.
- Boom was excellent at Zenith. He knows the game inside and out and is able to articulate good insights into the match being played out. I had a hell of a time discussing Apex 2013 GFs with him as they played out, and he brought that same quality to his commentary. No one else seems to be hype for his commentary though, perhaps he comes off as less approachable than I think or I simply jive well with his commentary? I dunno.
- Honestly wasn't feeling the other Zenith commentators much and found myself disagreeing with their statements and conclusions a fair amount of the time.
