Gimpy, right, with Washington Smasher Vish © Northwest Majors

In today’s Melee metagame, there are only a handful of characters of the cast that see regular use. While Fox and Falco are commonplace, among others, characters like Link, Pichu, and Roy see little to no use. Even early on in Melee’s fourteen-year lifespan, it was clear that some characters just weren’t cut out for the rigors of competitive play. But for a brave few, low tier characters were not a deterrent; they were a challenge.

Gimpyfish was one of those players. Through hard work and dedication, Tony “Gimpyfish” Dennis took Bowser and made him a menace. Despite playing one of the slowest characters in the game, Gimpyfish found a way to accentuate Bowser’s strengths and cover his weaknesses and give himself a fighting chance against the Foxes and Sheiks of the world. He never wanted to be the best – just the best Boswer. And in that, he succeeded.

His One True Love

Gimpyfish has been playing Smash Bros. practically since its inception. Like so many, he played with his friends after school and had a blast. But it was the announcement of Melee – and Bowser – that really got Gimpyfish started. “The trailer for Melee blew my mind. Every so often I go watch the Melee reveal from E3 because it’s just super powerful. I saw that Bowser was going to be in it and my very non-competitive mind was like, ‘Oh my gosh, YES. That’s the BEST!’” This reaction came from both his love of Smash, and of Bowser. Anyone who’s spent time around Gimpyfish can tell you that he absolutely loves Bowser, something he’s happy to admit. “Bowser's been my favorite character since Super Mario RPG - his first game where he had a real personality. That's only gotten better with the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi series, too.”

Gimpyfish can be a bit of a goof sometimes © Gimpyfish

When Gimpyfish found his way into the competitive Melee scene around 2005, YouTube had only been around for three months; it barely existed at all, and nobody had even thought about uploading video game footage to the site. Instead, he ended up finding the DC++ hub, where he started to learn more about the game. “When Shined Blind came out, I watched that video and it was so foreign and crazy to me that it almost didn’t even compute… I thought, ‘I want to do THAT, but with Bowser.’” From there, Smashboards and the DC++ hub became his home. “You'd go to DC++ to talk about whatever. How to improve, what to practice, how to start training and stuff. The other great part was that if you actually wanted to see some competitive Melee you could download from the VERY few matches that existed on the internet at the time there. Stuff like Ken vs. Isai or Azen matches, or random people who were bad with some low tier character. It didn't matter back then. ANY match that became available, we all watched.”

School of Hard Knocks

When he finally ventured out to meet new competitive players, it was a lesson in courage – and humility. “Meeting people from the Internet wasn't comfortable back then at all. It was scary! When I asked who to play, people said ‘SKYPAL.’ They told me it was a crew from Seattle that was very good nationally, and they'd be the people to meet up with.” Gimpy and another friend he’d met playing Smash online, Bladeswise, set up a smashfest with SKYPAL.

It was a slaughter. “This was my eye opener experience. We had an eight or nine hour smashfest in a garage and I literally did not win a single match. I'd never expected the difference to be so vast. Bladewise ended up winning one match that day. At that point people either quit forever, or they get inspired to get better. Thankfully it just made me want to improve.” Shortly after, he went off to college in Hawaii and played against FireFly and and TenYearWarranty, two solid players in their own right, and continued to learn. By the time he got back to Seattle after college he really started to make some progress, but with Bowser, it wasn’t easy. “VarietyBarrage, another old-school players, wanted to teach me that Bowser was a bad choice, so he'd cheese Bowser out against me for hours and hours and hours at a time - he was trying to help but it just made me want to get better and better and find a way around all of it.”

King Bowser

VarietyBarrage wasn’t wrong either: Bowser was a bad choice, and Gimpyfish knows it too. But his goal was never to be the best of all time. “My goals were always similar. I wanted to prove Bowser is better than people think. I wanted to prove that my Bowser can be one of the best. I wanted to prove that I am the best Bowser. I wanted to change the way that Bowser is played to be the best Bowser will ever be.” For those who aren’t aware, Bowser is immobile, big, and notoriously easy to combo. But Gimpyfish looked for ways to hide those weaknesses while maximizing Bowser’s one strength: power.

“To be successful I sort of had to re-write the character. There was a way to play bowser back then and it wasn't good enough for the changing metagame. I needed to learn properties of moves that would change the way he was played.” One of his biggest discoveries was fortresshogging. From Bowser’s up-B animation, Bowser can slide directly onto the ledge if done right. This leaves him in a great position to edge-guard opponents. “[Fortresshogging] was a huge game changer that took Bowser from being the worst character in the game to possibly not being the worst character in the game. Back when I was in my prime in 2007-2008, if I knocked you off the stage at any percent, you were likely going to die and it barely mattered what character.”

Playing such a slow character also forced Gimpyfish to develop an incredibly strong mental game. “The biggest thing to stress with Bowser is pattern recognition and punishment. The main issue that Bowser has is that he has no way to open up players. That said, his defense is pretty good, so if you fight him sloppy he'll mess you up. Bowser always has to be three steps ahead.” For Gimpy, this meant anticipating where his opponent wanted to be before they got there. It wasn’t always easy, but with Bowser the right read at even low percent can net players a kill, so he worked and worked until he could surprise just about everyone.

King Of The SoCal

Gimpyfish really made his name when he moved to SoCal. “There were two tournaments in the first week I was there and I went to both. I got 5th and 2nd in the two events.” Both of these events were chock full of ranked SoCal players – a region that has always been considered one of the best in the world. But Gimpy shocked them all with his Bowser, and it wasn’t long before SoCal natives were cheering for the out-of-towner. “I remember reporting a match that I won and thought nothing of it, and the people there couldn't believe it. It was actually really funny because at first I'm the enemy, this guy from Washington who came down and plays a low tier character and outsiders are supposed to be bad and worse… but from those two events, I went from ‘foreign guy who's probably bad’ to ‘This guy is SoCal, we claim him.’ It was great.”

From then on, he continued to be a force in SoCal for some time. While he would still lose to players like Mango and HugS, he regularly placed high in local and regional tournaments. And in case you were wondering, he hardly had easy brackets either. One of the many top players Gimpyfish beat during those tournaments was Lucky – considered now to be one of the best Fox players in the world.

Gimpyfish Combo

Gimpyfish is well known for two reasons: his Bowser, and his videos. Earlier it was mentioned that YouTube was in its infancy during Gimpy’s career, but he was always interested in videography. As soon as he could get his hands on Melee footage, he started putting it to good use in the form of combo videos and funny clips. “The big start was when combo status started playing a lot - Combo Status was a crew of me, Eggs, Luigi Ka Master, Bladewise, Silent Wolf and a few others. We all had our own unique style and a lot of variety of characters that people didn't really see.” He’s put together a number of famous clips, including The Gimpyfish Combo , How Good Is Mango , and one that is widely considered to be the best Ganondorf technique ever performed . His only regret is that he didn’t stick to making videos for longer. “I just was doing it because I thought it was fun, and when I quit Smash for awhile I also quit the videos - a real shame.”

Gimpyfish now runs 62-Bit Gaming © Gimpyfish

62-Bit Gaming

These days, Gimpyfish doesn’t compete – his Bowser has been officially retired. But like many other former players, he just can’t stay away from the Melee community completely. Gimpy is still present as a streamer and tournament organizer. He works full time streaming under the moniker 62-Bit Gaming, named after his original tag: Gimpyfish62. He streams tournaments and Let’s Plays on top of other consistent Smash content. While doesn’t get much time to play Smash anymore, he’s happy to see the community and how it’s grown. “I lived through the life and death of Melee and didn't think it would resurface how it has, much less become stronger than ever. This is the biggest and best time for anyone who plays Smash… though I do miss the intimacy of the old scene.”

The love of the game (and Bowser, of course) brought Gimpyfish to where he is today, and he couldn’t be happier about that fact. “Smash is extremely important to me - this community has shaped my life in a huge way. I literally do not know who I would be without this game, and more importantly the community. I can't promise that I'm going to play Smash competitively again, but I'm never going to leave this community.”

Tune in next Tuesday for another installment of Friendlies, our weekly series profiling the members of the Smash community.