The year is 2017. Everybody is playing Smash at levels of perfection that were previously unheard of. There are tournaments every weekend, players taking home salaries on top of $10,000 grand prizes and organizations are looking to invest in a 15-year old scene. Because of this, we need a circuit. Or at least, the pros think we do.

Super Smash Bros. Melee has exploded over the past few years. Tournament prize pools are expanding rapidly, esports organizations are looking at players outside the MIOM Top 10, and major tournament organizers are even holding non-grassroots tournaments. The game might be more than 15 years old, but the rise of esports over the past decade has created a newfound interest in Smash from organizations with deep pockets, but a lack of orgnaization is holding the scene back. There's never been a better opportunity for a circuit, and if we don't see one soon, it could start to really damage both Melee and its best players.

As it stands, the highest prize pool in Melee's history was a $30,000 pot for singles at DreamHack Winter 2016, and Armada's win at the event saw him pocket a cool $15,000. Sure those numbers don't rival the prizes that were dished out at Dota's The International or League of Legends' World Championships, but a $30,000 prize pool is rare in Melee. In fact, only nine tournaments in the game's 15 year history have paid out $10,000 or more to the winner, and two of those were at EVO, which is primarily driven by entrance fees. Melee doesn't often get huge pot bonuses, and many pros believe that without the money to promise huge prize pools, the game's growth is limited.

"I want to get to the point where if someone wins a tournament, they can get $100,000," Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma told theScore esports. "They can have all of their finances paid for for a year, or two years. We have the viewership, we have the numbers, we have the personalities. You got a guy like Mang0, a guy like Leffen. There's so much being churned out of the community, we're the content creators, we're the backbone. We're the foundation, the backbone and the sprinkles on top. We're a self-sustaining community. But if a company like Nintendo just embraces it and really gives us the opportunity to push ourselves to the next level, the sky is the limit."

Super Smash Bros. Melee wasn't always a completely grassroots esports scene. In 2004, MLG added Melee to its pro circuit and ran Melee tournaments at 27 events over three years. MLG bought SmashBoards in 2007 and owned the biggest and most comprehensive competitive Melee resource for five years. Melee definitely started out as an underground scene, but MLG operating national tournaments helped the game a lot during its golden era.

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It wasn't all glamorous, mind you. We're still talking about early-to-mid-2000s esports here, which means that most of the time, prize pools were small compared to what the pros are winning today, and livestreams barely existed. Ryota "Captain Jack" Yoshida won $500 for taking first place at MLG San Francisco 2004, not even enough to cover his flight from Japan to the event, and we don't even know the full results of the tournament.

But MLG tournaments were the majors of the golden age of Melee, which meant that they made stars out of the game's first pros. Ken "Ken" Hoang, Jose "Isai" Alvarado, Daniel "ChuDat" Rodriguez, Christopher "PC Chris" Szygiel, even a young Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman all played on MLG's circuit.

The era of MLG's circuit points and organized world finals has long passed, but as the game gets more and more professional, some players want the circuit back. 2016 saw 27 major tournaments, averaging out to about two a month, not counting smaller events that pros attended in between. Mid June and early July were particularly egregious, with six major tournaments in six weeks, two of which ran at the same time. We've reached peak tournament, and the pros are getting exhausted.

"We don't have a season, we're going to 14-15 tournaments throughout the year, which is draining," Joseph "Mang0" Marquez told theScore esports. "It'd be nice to just be January to whatever month, we're gonna do this, then we have three months break. You can chill, you can practice, whatever, just like sports players. They're not playing all year, they take a break because you need to recharge. We don't have that, and it's why a lot of guys get burned out. The money, that's cool, but I think it's more about having an offseason, you don't have to travel as much, you can stay home.

"It's rough, you fly Thursday, get home Monday, sometimes you travel back-to-back weeks. It'd be nice to be at home with the family, see my mom and hanging out. It'll be like, my sister's birthday but I have to travel, and that happens all the time. They understand, it's work, it's unfortunate, but it'd be nice to have the time off. No Melee, I'm free this weekend."

While the players don't all necessarily agree on the the exact system, the general structure of a potential circuit is the same for everyone. A set of existing tournaments given qualifier status that bring everyone to a world championship at the end of the year.

For Armada, the ideal Smash circuit would be similar to the Capcom Pro Tour, Street Fighter V's tournament circuit. Eight international majors would give out assigned points that qualify players for a world final which would crown the best player and give out a decent chunk of prize money. But there's more to it than just wanting organization. Armada believes that the format would take the game to a new level.

"I feel like a circuit could help all the other communities grow a lot. Maybe we can make Melee into more of a worldwide esport," Armada said. "Sometimes when I watch Smash 4 or Street Fighter I'm like, 'Why dont' we have this?' Smash 4 at EVO, you have all four people in the Top 4 and none of them were from the U.S. That would never happen happen in Melee. It's more like the exception to the rule. It's rare to see people place very high when they are not from the U.S. But Smash 4 and Street Fighter have that all the time. I think a Smash Circuit could maybe help us get there."

Armada thinks an eight-qualifier circuit, with tournaments in Canada, the United States, Japan, Europe and Australia is the way to go, then cap things off at a year-end world championship in the States. He thinks it could get people to travel more, and that's what Melee really needs right now.

"We'd have a big, massive final," Armada said. "Nintendo would be involved, doing it our way, with a big prize pool. That way I could see the American players travel to Japan, Europe, Australia, and hopefully Europeans travel as well. Not shots fired, but we are behind."

A consistent circuit could help launch careers and stabilize income for up and coming smashers all around the world. It stops tournaments from stepping on each others' toes, since circuit events wouldn't usually run in the same weekend, which would let players strategically choose which events are the most important to attend to qualify for the finals. On top of that, the MLG circuit helped Ken pay his college tuition back in the day, and it could do the same for plenty of younger players, along with paying the bills for the older pros.

"What I want is not to only give the pot to the top players," William "Leffen" Hjelte, a younger player himself, told theScore esports. "The top four players at most tournaments are pros already, and I want to be able to bridge that gap. Give money to everyone in Top 8, not having it so that first place gets 60 percent of the pot, just using the circuit and the extra money to create more Smash competition. I feel like if you kind of make it so that everybody gets something from it, it's also going to be a more positive thing for Nintendo or whoever sponsors it as well."

Of course, there are issues. A circuit on the scale the pros are looking for would require outside investment, an organization that's big enough to be able to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money every year. People want it to be Nintendo, but Nintendo hasn't really ever shown an interest in pushing their esports scene. However, whoever picks it up could very well use the existing Melee infrastructure to build an esports scene like no other.

"I want other people who feel the same way, or feel like there's more they could be doing with themselves as a gamer to have the opportunity I've had," Hungrybox said. "But it could be a little closed off unless there's other, bigger companies providing them. Saying 'here's an official sanctioned tournament in New York, in Las Vegas, in London.' A Nintendo event, open to all ages, all people."

Daniel Rosen is a news editor for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.

