One of the things I don’t know the exact details of is the tier list in any Smash game. I can tell you who is high or low, but not in what order. I know that my main, Sheik, is considered high tier. But why does this matter? I am a dime-a-dozen player, a Sheik main among many. I started off playing Kirby, then Pikachu, then picked up Sheik when I first started learning competitive meta game.

Screenshot from The Flame of Courage New (Useless) Link Tech from CnB I ChandyWhen I was at a smashfest Friday night, I talked to Danny (Snap), a NorCal player who was previously ranked in 2006 and mains Game and Watch and Fox. I asked about why he plays Game and Watch - asking “Why?” in Smash always turns up an interesting story. He told me that he started playing Game and Watch because he always beat a friend with Marth, and it led to a lot of complaining. So he turned to playing “the worst character in the game” - Game and Watch.

One upon a time, I dreamed of getting to be the best with Kirby or Pikachu. But I’m honest with myself. I know I’m not going to put in the time to learn the characters and experiment. I want to put my focus into other areas. I do, however, love watching lesser-played matchups when I’m at a tournament. I spent Justice 4 watching a Donkey Kong and Jigglypuff player instead of Armada and Hax.

I then came across Chandler (CnB I Chandy), when Alison (WHISKEYTITS) kept posting about his videos of ~revolutionary tech~. The first video I watched of his was The Flame of Courage, and I was hooked. It’s a move by Link that is admittedly maybe not useful, but it’s cool that people still figure out how to pull off random/interesting combinations like this, 13 years into the game. He mains Donkey Kong, and also has a great story of where he came from to become a DK main today.

My high school smash friends, as much as I love them to death, were in that phase where you just started playing and the opinions of the competitive community are practically gospel. The tier list is basically law, and if you play characters that aren’t in the upper half then you’re either a troll or a casual, neither of which are particularly good labels to have when you’re constantly seeking recognition like I was at that point (not that I’m not constantly seeking recognition now, har har har).

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Like pretty much everyone else, I started out playing the game casually with my brother and not knowing anything about the competitive scene. In the early days (when B-moves were the best moves and just about every important match was settled on Temple, 10 stocks, pokeballs and starman ONLY), I rotated between playing Luigi, Link, and Game and Watch and I was downright awful. As I started getting older I still knew nothing about the competitive scene but there comes a point where, as long as you play the game enough with your friends (and you actually want to win), you’ll start to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t (and then you go on the SSBM GameFAQs forums and tell everyone that you’re the best Link player in the world because you beat all 51 event matches). It was around late middle school/early high school that I started to gravitate towards DK, even though I was still more or less in the casual mindset. Regardless of the character I play, I’ve always liked getting grabs and comboing out of my grabs, even back then, so a character like DK with one of the most unique grab games out there seemed like the perfect choice.

Right around my sophomore year of high school I started playing Melee regularly with some guys who actually knew about the competitive scene. At that point Melee went from a party game to something I actually put time and effort into – during the early days it wouldn’t have been weird for me to have 3 or 4 Ssbwiki (back then it was super-smash-bros.wikia.com, so try typing that shit all the time, youngsters) tabs open on any given day. This was also right around the time that I was first told that nobody would take me seriously if I played DK. My high school smash friends, as much as I love them to death, were in that phase where you just started playing and the opinions of the competitive community are practically gospel. The tier list is basically law, and if you play characters that aren’t in the upper half then you’re either a troll or a casual, neither of which are particularly good labels to have when you’re constantly seeking recognition like I was at that point (not that I’m not constantly seeking recognition now, har har har).

I never really liked the tier list, if we’re going to be honest. I understand why it’s an important reference tool and I certainly don’t disagree with any of the rankings but at the same time I also feel like it has way too much influence on how people approach playing the game. It has always been my opinion that Smash, no matter how competitive and advanced it becomes, is about having fun. Don’t let some fucking wiki page tell you you can’t play the characters you enjoy, period, end quote, print that shit out because it’s gold. The argument can be made that playing a low tiered character isn’t fun, because it’s much harder to win and their playstyles can be countered in a way that makes certain match-ups frustrating (as a DK main, if you play Falco then I hate you, I hate the bands that you like, and I actively wish for your failure. #sorrynotsorry). It’s true that the life of a low tier main is frustrating sometimes, but that’s just part of the path you choose in the wacky world of B and F tiers.

Because of this influence from my friends I decided to sell out and play Marth. I like grabbing and juggling, so Marth was basically the closest approximation of DK that existed among the high tiers. Thank god I didn’t play Sheik; I don’t know how I would have lived with myself if I’d done that. Sheik is the boring 9 to 5 desk job of Melee; safe, unexciting, sufficient for the win and nothing more than that. You play Sheik when you want to say “I don’t want to have fun, and I don’t want anyone else to have fun either” and then you probably kick a dog or something because you play Sheik and that seems like the kind of thing you would do. I threw away my fresh, exciting, new-to-the-scene up-and-coming years as some unremarkable Marth player forever at the bottom of half of brackets in ATX Melee (thank god I had a different tag at the time, but I’ll never tell). I can’t honestly say I regretted my Marth years that much; the smash scene is just fun enough on its own that it didn’t really matter that my heart wasn’t entirely behind my character. Some of my Marth fundamentals really help my DK play today as well (which I think sets me apart from other DK players), so it wasn’t completely a wash. But I’ll always wonder what my career would have looked like if I stayed with DK from the start. The turning point in my Melee career came when I watched Phish-It vs The Moon at Zenith 2012, which remains the hypest set of high level DK play in Melee’s history (in my very educated opinion). Phish-It showed me that even some forgettable B tier character (in the hands of a skilled and knowledgeable player) can take down a top level Marth (and he beat The Moon again at Zenith 2014, along with Zanguzen HOW DOES HE DO IT?!?!?!?). Mind you, this was before aMSa exploded onto the scene and showed everyone the same thing (except with bigger wins and the whole subreddit behind him). This might sound really sappy, but that YouTube video pretty much made me decide that I would pursue Melee DK seriously from there on out. Side note, I’m the biggest Phish-It fan in the world. I will fight anyone who tries to challenge this claim. Unfortunately this decision came a little too late, and after graduating I had to move to a completely new place with a new scene.

When I went to college there basically wasn’t a Melee scene in College Station (all the cool kids call it cstat), there was only PM. I’d played a little of the previous builds before but I was generally unimpressed. By necessity (and at the recommendation of my good friend and co-sponsored player CnB | SparkingZero) I picked up PM (my other option was to become a competitive Zoo Tycoon 3 player, and I’m not really about that life) and with it, I had an opportunity to play DK in a game where he wasn’t hot garbage and nobody laughed at me for choosing him. Say what you want about PM players, they are an accepting bunch of people and unless you played Lucas, Diddy, Mario, or Mewtwo (the 3.02 “we didn’t have time to balance them because Strong Bad was drunk during release week” club) nobody gave you shit for having a certain main. I won’t dwell on my PM career too much here, but within my first semester of playing the game I was ranked top 10 in College Station. By defeating Axxo in DK dittoes (at RoC2) I became the best PM DK in Texas, and at the end of KayB’s 3.02 PM top players by character redux thread, I was ranked the third best DK player in the nation, behind Strong Bad and POOB (shoutouts to POOB, luv u boo). PM was my primary game for a while (it even earned me a sponsorship from CnB Gaming), and I really enjoyed it. Melee will always be my one true love, though, and so when cstat’s Melee scene started picking up again (shoutouts to G-Rabbit for being an excellent community leader), I finally had an opportunity to give Melee DK a serious try.

Which brings us to today. The future is now! I’m very happy with where my DK play is at the moment, but I’m still working hard. I placed 49th at Forte 2, my first national, going all DK (even though hardly anyone expected me to make it out of pools). Because cstat hardly ever gets anything recorded or streamed, I’ve been trying to get my name out there with highlight reels and **REVOLUTIONARY** tech videos, and that seems to be going pretty well! The most recent one, The Flame of Courage, just recently broke 30k views on YouTube. I also recently got listed as a notable active DK player (alongside Phish-It and Green Ranger) on the Melee DK ssbwiki entry, so now I’m #wikifamous!!!!!!1111!!!11 Huge shoutouts to all my #chandyfandys for supporting me, and to all the people on the r/smashbros subreddit. For every five r/smashbros douchebags who goes around starting shit, there’s at least one nice guy who takes the time to thank me for making my videos, and that’s honestly enough for me to continue doing them.

My immediate goal right now is to become the best DK in Texas. I still have to officially challenge Mouf from Houston and JF from Round Rock to become King of the Jungle, but I have high hopes for how that’ll go. Watch for me on stream and stuff! Yeah! Fun!

5:15 pm • 6 January 2015 • 5 notes