Another Nintendo franchise boasting a considerable competitive following is Super Smash Bros.
In Smash Bros. games, players fight using characters taken across the video gaming world, from Mario to Sonic to Solid Snake. The game differs from traditional fighters for focusing on players knocking opponents out of the stage instead of the normal depleting life bars. It is the result of a creative amalgamation between fighting games, 3D and platformers, the latter being Nintendo’s native land.
The original Super Smash Bros. was released for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. Its initially small budget was rewarded with worldwide success and millions of copies sold. In 2001, a sequel (Super Smash Bros. Melee) was released for the GameCube. By 2008, a third (Super Smash Bros. Brawl) was made for the Wii.
A competitive crowd immediately adopted the franchise’s 1999 originator. However, that crowd was sparse and loosely organized at best as was the case with many competitive console titles in the 90s. A coherent competitive scene was not formed until the sequel arrived.
"The community was tiny," wrote MLG_JV (later hired by MLG) on Smashboards.com. “Any state, region or group was lucky to have more than 10-15 competitive smashers in it. Most did not have a handful or any at all yet.”
Online, websites such as GameFAQs, GameSpot and even MeetUp played host to the forming on the competitive Smash community. Active forums sprung up around the net. In 2000, Smashboards.com was born thanks to passionate Smash players who were looking for ways to compete or learn advanced strategies.
Nintendo’s negligent role with the Pokemon community seems downright hands-on when compared with the Smash community.
"National tournaments were virtually non-existent [in 2000-2002]," wrote MLG_JV. “Local tournaments [were usually played in someone’s house and] ordinarily consisted of 10 or so people from your state and a few different awesome people that would drive several hours for a 10-15 man tournament just cause they wanted to compete.”
At this time, advanced play was emerging.
"This higher level of play consisted of very restricted and controlled play," wrote BattleForums.com. “The goal of the rules was to eliminate any possibility of randomness. Items for example could be abused or the game can be lost when a random bomb appears next to you as you set up your attack. Any stages that causes any damage are also banned so that a player would not lose due a random event. What also propel the game were glitches or anomalies in the game engine called ‘advanced techniques’.”
Techniques such as edge hogging, wavedashing, chain grabs, waveshines, Falco’s sort hop laser, Jiggly’s up throw rest and more were discovered and refined then.
The advent of this advanced play pushed the skill ceiling of the game many times higher than it had been, creating an much larger challenge for competitive players.
"The game and community was in a constant state of discovery and learning," wrote MLG_JV.
"The first of its kind that could have been called a national tournament within our community was ‘Tournament Go’ [in 2002] in SoCal. It was hosted by MattDeezie in his parents’ house. Free airport rides were provided, everyone got to stay/crash at his house and it really just set the standard for what the level of hospitality and community contributions would be for Smash events. I do think this was a really important even in the history of our community and something that really put us on the right track."
Tournament Go is seen as the birth of Smash as an esport in the United States.
Over the next several years, the online Smash community grew, including active forums and vibrant video hosting websites such as Punch Crew and IHOP. In the days before YouTube, this was worth boasting about. It was technically impressive and financially challenging given the cost of bandwidth.
Outside the internet, competitive Smash was spreading throughout the country.
"The birth of Midwest Smash occurred in the summer of 2003," wrote MLG_JV. “Snex, perhaps the most well known poster and troll on GameFAQs that trumpeted Smashboards.com’s superiority, had trash talked enough people into coming to create overflow conditions at a comic book store whose owners had clearly gotten more than they bargained for. The tournament went late into the night and by closing time the tournament was still far from over. Thus, the tournament was relocated to a nearby hotel where four rooms were rented. Because the brackets were poorly drawn, the winner’s semis became a 3 person FFA to eliminate one person to losers. The comical part is that few people thought anything of it. Matches continued to occur among the top eight players and almost no one left.
"In the end, the Californians proved their dominance as Recipherus and Isai secured the top two spots over Eddie and Eduardo who would themselves continue to own the Midwest for the next six months. In all, 48 Smashers gathered from all around the Midwest, 20 of which would create the base of the community as it grew and developed."
On the East coast and throughout the country, tournaments were popping up. This was in significant part thanks to the growth of Smashboards.
In 2002, four friends and passionate Smash players in Virginia discovered Smashboards. Shocked and pleased to find others with their passion for the game, the group set about putting on an August tournament to test their skills against the growing competitive set.
"The final turnout was 14 entrants [as opposed to the 30 we’d hoped for]," wrote chillindude829 on Smashboards. “Anden, Azen and I were extremely excited regardless. Finally, other players who were serious about Smash.”
The tournament took place in a venue with two televisions and consoles, a relatively good set-up for early Melee tournaments.
"As the first round started, we [the group of friends] realized something," wrote chillendude829. “If we were good at this game, we were at least not bad. All three of us won our first round matches. Azen and Anden won theirs with ease. Keep in mind we were unaaware about how most people played Smash competitively. In fact, it’s questionable how many people played Smash competitively at the time period. As such, we had certain items on and set to very low and had every stage on random select. It was a five stock single match.”
The tournament continued on, an example of organic growth in competitive gaming.
The Smash competitive scene had become a mainstay at dozens and then hundreds of American colleges and universities all over the country. Clubs sprang up and makeshift events like the tournament described above became more and more common.
Ken Hoang was the greatest Smash player of this era. Ken attended his first major event in early 2003. Tournament Go 4 boasted the best Smash players in America, several of whom had attended all three prior Tournament Go’s. Ken, on the other hand, did not even have a strong local scene to speak of.
Despite that, Ken won the event over 89 players, the largest event ever at the time. He played Marth, his best character, along with Fox.
Seven months later, Ken competed in singles and doubles at TG5. He won the singles tournament.
In the doubles, he teamed with Isai. The team won and began one of the most incredible winning streaks in esports history.
The dynamic of their team work has been described as perfect, so perfect that they went years without losing a single set in any competitive match, "long past Isai’s prime as a single’s player." Ken would continue to dominate in singles, capturing every major title until 2006 and earning over $50,000 in prize money.
The two players dominated MLG and independent Smash competitions for three straight years before their first lose in 2006’s MLG. The long stretch of wins has been dubbed "the single greatest streak in the history of Melee" by MLG_JV (a peer and competitor of theirs) and ought to be seriously considered as one of the most impressive competitive accomplishments in any esport ever played.
"They won every doubles tournament they entered until MLG Chicago in July 2006," according to SmashWiki, “where they were defeated by Azen and Chillindude829 in the finals and received second place. However, they reclaimed their title later that year in August at MLG Orlando where they defeated Azen and Chillindude829 6-3 in the finals.”
On the singles side, Ken dominated nearly ever tournament he entered for two years. His "quick, smart and aggressive" style with Marth was the peak of play. He was dubbed the “The Duper” by Electronic Gaming Magazine in 2006 as one of “The World’s Most Dangerous Gamers”. He did not place anywhere but the top nine until 2005 (the exception being 2004’s TG6). For the most part, he simply won whenever he played.
Despite Ken’s dominance of the Melee scene into 2007 (when he won Evo for Melee), he would become a non-entity when the sequel, Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii, arrived.
"We later found out his long hiatus prior to the event was due to him being a [reality show] Survivor contestant," wrote MLG_JV, “where he placed fifth.”
Ken was featured on the show for three months in front of an audience of over ten million per week. He was introduced as a professional gamer. Later on, several Smash players such as KillaOR and Compton appeared on MTV’s True Life.
All of this added up.
By 2004, a large and promising enough scene had developed that Major League Gaming (MLG) added Smash to their national line up. Tournament attendance skyrocketed as a result of the new exposure.
"MLG started running Smash tournaments back in 2004 with Melee," said Chris "AlphaZealot" Brown. “It took guys from within the MLG community in order to run the tournaments and used the community rule set, which were positives. In 2005 and 2006, MLG also broadcast Smash occasionally on their live [video] stream, which helped the community’s exposure.”
MLG’s tournament head Jason "M3D" Rice became the game’s major arbiter, forging a standard national rule set out of what had been two different East (who preferred items off) and West (who preferred items on) coast rule sets. Eventually, MLG_JV would replace M3D.
Both MLG and the "independent" scene grew in this period, providing prizes and exposure to the community.
Ken won 16 MLG championships over the course of his career, including two national championships.
"The final season for Super Smash Bros. Melee in MLG, 2006, featured the strongest lineup of Smash players in history," wrote MLG_JV. “Combined with the independent tournaments, prizes for the year well exceeded $100,00. MLG, of course, eventually purchased Smashboards” and went on to operate Brawl tournaments.
Virtually out of nowhere, in the lead up to Evo 2008 (Brawl’s first Evo) and after an extended and total absence from major competitive play, Ken announced he would return for Evo.
"Ken managed to get 2nd place at Evo 2008, losing to CPU in the Grand Finals," wrote MLG_JV. “If Evo served any real purpose, it was showing that Ken could compete in any ruleset.”
Ken, who no longer competes, retains the name "The King of Smash" to this day.