To look at Super Smash Bros at first glance is to see perhaps the world’s brightest fighting game: it makes a nice change from the genre’s usual bloody, gothic gloom with the odd neon highlight. In the same vein as violent games such as Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Combat and Soul Calibur, Super Smash Bros has been a series that, literally, looks like the contents of a toy box came to life with a thirst for blood. Homicidal Noddy. It’s, inevitably, joyous.

But beneath that camp surface is something that even fans of the games might not notice. Starting with the second instalment, Super Smash Bros Melee, Smash became more than just a family party game. It became a rich seam to mine for the early days of competitive video gaming, a land of exciting button combos and speedy play. Smash has held its own as one of the great competitive fighting games ever since, even without the financial support from the developers of something like Tekken. Smash Bros has a huge, and very passionate, grassroots fanbase, some of whom now make their living from streaming and competing. Super Smash Bros Ultimate, the game’s fifth instalment, comes out this week and we wanted to know if players are excited. While early responses are overwhelmingly positive, Smash Bros has a two-pronged competitive community: one which plays the newest game and one which sticks to Melee. Can Nintendo lure some of the Melee purists over to the latest instalment?

I’ve been a huge Smash fan since the first game came out for the N64 in 1999. Back then it had the enormous roster of 12 – count ’em, 12 – Nintendo superstars (and Ness) who could beat each other up on classic Nintendo backgrounds such as Hyrule Castle, Yoshi’s Island or Saffron City. It’s a classic. Like every Nintendo-loving teenager I couldn’t get enough of the GameCube sequel, Melee. I played Brawl when it came to the Wii U and, since, have dropped off a little.

While I loved Melee, and could absolutely win the odd match against friends, when I got round to watching competitive players in the top tiers it no longer looked like the game I remembered. All the components were the same, but my friends and I had never moved with the speed or inelegance of competitive play: characters effectively move just through rolls, dodges and leaps rather than anything else. When you see people talking about matches, they’re talking about frame rates and surface areas and details that a casual, understandably, wouldn’t give a damn about.

To get to know why Melee became such an iconic competitive fighting game, I spoke to perhaps the world expert in the Melee scene, Travis Beauchamp, otherwise known as Samox.

The golden age of Melee

“Melee was an upgrade in a bunch of different ways – it had more characters, way better graphics and was a lot faster than its blockier, simpler predecessor,” explained Beauchamp. “If the original was the Model T – a proof of concept – Melee was the sports car, a tool to explore creative, fast-paced gameplay.”

The competitive scene grew out of players wanting to prove they were the unequivocal best, but it was back in the days before players could just take each other on online. “We were still a few years from the emergence of major video-sharing sites like YouTube, so you never knew exactly what you were going up against,” he explained. “You'd hear rumours about this guy or that guy and you’d debate on forums about who would beat who.”

“During the days before recording matches on YouTube and streaming them live on Twitch, people were uploading their camcorder recordings of matches to DC++,” explained Corey, a streamer who goes by the name False.

“Back then, with no parent-company support, grassroots events were essential to creating a scene,” added pro gamer Juan DeBiedma, otherwise known as Hungrybox and a legend in Melee. “Players [brought] their own setups to tournaments also hosted by players.”

‘Sakurai hoped his Smash Brothers series would exemplify something most fighting games were not – inclusivity’

From here, different areas began to develop different styles: in America, which had the largest and most dedicated player base, you might find that one part of the country was good at grounded fighting, or was great with particular characters. These schools would produce prodigious players who would take each other on in tournaments – such as Ken, known for his mastery of Fire Emblem character Marth – or, in the case of legendary player Azen, become known for always playing as the opponent’s chosen character to establish his superiority with the entire roster.

The age of Melee tournaments happened to come about at the same time as the larger boom in gaming competitions. “Major League Gaming started its tournaments in 2004 and, along with Halo 2, Melee experienced what could be called a ‘golden age’,” explained Beauchamp. Players were travelling all over the US to win huge sums of money. Big names with new characters appeared – Isai the Captain Falcon master, PC Chris and his Falco – who challenged the age of Ken and Azen. In 2007, Ken retired and the golden age, in some ways, came to an end. “Subsequent years could be called a ‘dark age’ for Melee and not coincidentally coincided with the release of a new game in the series – Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii,” explained Beauchamp.

Seven years later, there came the next addition to Smash Bros, called Smash Bros Brawl. “Brawl was by design not a sports car,” says Beauchamp. “Masahiro Sakurai had been a fighting game player himself and had hoped his Smash Brothers series would exemplify something most fighting games were not – inclusivity.”

The Brawl years

Brawl aimed to focus less on complex combos of button presses and be a more approachable game for a new player to the series. It also brought an influx of new talent to the scene and was very popular to start with before players began to move to Melee or mods of the game. Brawl had some majorly overpowered characters, such as Meta Knight and Ice Climbers, and introduced mechanics such as tripping (which could mean a character would be dazed for a brief moment during combat or movement) that players like Hungrybox didn’t care for. As a result, there became a divide between those who loved the way Melee played and the people who competed on whatever the latest Smash was.

A very unexpected factor also played a role in the renaissance of Melee: Beauchamp’s documentary, The Smash Brothers. Available for free on YouTube, Samox recounted with real detail the history of the competitive scene: the major tournaments, the major players and how the game’s ecosystem came to be.

“Brawl is tiny – there are about two or three events a year for it – and as far as I know the community is primarily a small group of players on Wi-Fi,” explained 25-year-old professional gamer Dabuz. “Despite ‘dying’, Smash 4 has a moderately sized competitive scene. Melee is probably bigger.”

False says that players who loved post-Melee Smash just ended up moving on to the Wii U version, and that is completely normal. “I’ve noticed in the FGC (Fighting Game Community), a big base portion of the competitors make it a habit to play the newest iteration of the game competitively. When Street Fighter V came out, players shifted their competitive focus on that. Same thing with Tekken, Injustice, MvC, etc.

“Melee is an anomaly for that reason. It rivals Wii U in terms of active competitors, despite it being the second iteration out of five in the Smash Bros series. The Melee and Smash 4 community are fairly similar in size, but I would say that peak viewership for Melee can be pretty dominating,” explained False. “The game is a cult classic that is very entertaining to watch visually because of the fast movement.”

‘It's as easy to get into as a party game, but if you really feel like you’re better than your friend who likes to smack-talk you, then the game is more than happy to show you a whole new world’

“Melee will always be the game that justifies the ‘competitive’ part of Smash,” said Beauchamp. “It's as easy to get into as a party game, but if you really feel like you're better than your friend who likes to smack-talk you, then the game is more than happy to show you a whole new world where your hands can do the talking.”

Is Ultimate going to live up to its name?

While everyone will pick up the latest Smash for fun whenever they come out, for tournaments many will always revert to the GameCube classic; there’s a reason that Ultimate, coming out 17 years after Melee, still includes a version of that console’s controller for players. What’s even more interesting is, with the exception of one or two players, almost nobody is in the top ten for both Melee and the games that succeeded it: each game is dominated by a different group of players who have perfected the same characters in different iterations.

However, Ultimate has received an overwhelmingly supportive response from fans of the series. Mechanics from Melee that players have missed are making a return and the footage has a more Melee-like pace. “The game looks and feels very fast, which is a plus for everyone,” explained full-time Twitch streamer Jestise “MVD” Negron. “It truly feels like the peak Smash game.”

Hungrybox agrees: “I expect there to be heavier overlap between the Melee scene than before, and I do think that it will offer a massive number of opportunities for people wanting to get into esports.”

‘They've made their predictions for which characters will be the best in Ultimate – Pikachu and Olimar’

Already the data is being pored over, and people are interested in the changes: there are nerfs to overpower characters such as Bayonetta and Cloud and old favourites have leapt to the top of the heap. “Many people are very excited about Snake, Inkling, Young Link and Pikachu,” said Dabuz. Others are super excited for the game’s new characters, such as Castlevania’s Simon Belmont or Donkey Kong’s King K Rool.

Some of the game’s cutest and weirdest characters have been predicted to leap to the top of the tier system with this game, according to some of the game’s most ardent analysts. “[Professional Smash Bros player] ZeRo [has] already analysed what seems like dozens of hours of footage from the game,” said Hungrybox. “They've made their predictions for which characters will be the best in Ultimate – Pikachu and Olimar.”

Other people are less convinced that, even with the poring over of hours of preview footage, anything can be predicted. Perhaps, tellingly, it’s Smash 4’s best Pikachu player Eric “ESAM” Lew who said, “The game isn’t out yet, so calling for character nerfs already is really dumb and community outcry for that type of thing was one of the most annoying parts of Wii U.”

But, generally, the consensus is that no matter how much the game hits the sweet spot between Melee and its successors, there will remain two strains of competitive Smash: those who play the 17-year-old version and those who play the latest one. But with it sitting in the golden mean between previous games, it may also help unite the scene in a whole new way, as well as growing Smash’s place in the world esports scene. “I hope more sponsors and companies become invested in competitive Smash,” said Hungrybox. “I want tournaments to fill arenas.”

But the game’s long-lasting legacy, whether it captures the same blend of fun and technique as its predecessors, won’t be known until the game is loaded on people’s consoles. “You just don't know how a game will play until you feel the controller in your hands and watch what your character does with your inputs,” said Beauchamp. “Of course, it won't be Melee, but nothing else ever is.”

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