Written by Craig Alphonse

The Smash Community banded together once again to raise money for charity while doing what we love: playing Smash and…dancing to Darude – Sandstorm.

#SmashTheRecord was an event organized by the active community at the University of Central Florida, which go by the moniker of Gaming Knights. The event was constructed in an attempt to beat the Guinness World Record for “Longest Video Games Marathon Playing a Fighting Game”. The students of Gaming Knights decided to use the occasion to delve into philanthropy and raise money for Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

The event lasted 72 hours, beating the past record by a whole day, and by the end of the weekend the community had raised $13,902. This was achieved through an exponential increase during winners semis, where the charity had a massive surge and collected over $5,000 in the span of an hour.

The donations were well deserved, as Gaming Knights had created a very entertaining stream. They were able to get Crs. HungryBox, C9 Mang0, and P4K Mew2King to come out for the tournament, making for exciting finals play. They had the aforementioned Sandstorm party, which even featured some M2K moves, and they had a boss rush for Hugs against Florida’s finest.

There was even a Full Roster Iron Man event with M2K facing Mang0. M2K had 21 stocks left by the end of the first battle, and since people were not satisfied they played again, and M2K 20-stocked him on the second try. Obviously, viewers want to see close matches, but M2K is just a master of too many characters. It was still fun to watch, and it was fantastic to see the various matches and ideas Gaming Knights put into the event.

The actual matches were fun to watch as well. HBox showed a lot of dominance, landing many puff combos and just playing spectacularly overall. His matches were stellar, and even if you don’t feel like watching the whole archives, there are plenty of gifs being uploaded to r/smashbros of the work he put in. Mang0 lost to both M2K and HBox, deciding to go Falcon for all his matches. I am uncertain if his fox would have faired much better, because HBox was really on point.

Overall, great tournament from Gaming Knights, and awesome job to everyone who supported the charity. It seemed that at the very least, #SmashTheRecord was a fun event for all involved, and it is heartwarming to see a tournament that leaves smiles on everyone’s faces.

The full streams can be found at twitch.tv/vgbootcamp



or on the VGBootCamp youtube channel in a few days