In a word — it is motion. It is speed and fluidity and speed and speed.

When I was 11, I had been playing Super Smash Bros. on the N64 for a few years. It was the best game I had ever touched. So when my friend invited some people over to play the new one, I was excited.

That night, fueled by Mountain Dew and grease-caked Hungry Howie’s, that small group of 9-year olds — all 64 veterans — fired up Super Smash Bros Melee, ogled over the opening cinematic, started a 4-player game and all cried at pretty much the same moment:

“What is going on?! I can’t tell what’s happening!!”

The game was blisteringly fast. After years of playing Smash64, Melee was just chaos. Four-person matches on small stages with items on were fucking glorious in their sheer insanity.

Many years passed, and when I rediscovered Melee as a competitive game, I saw that familiar speed put to totally different use. Here the frenzied energy is channeled, and becomes the foundation of the game’s competitive DNA. Players had soon realized that the game’s engine would keep up as they pushed it faster, and faster, and faster. Melee’s ceiling is literally inhuman; just understanding and reacting to everything in a match is a developed skill which top players have spent years perfecting.

Movement tech became essential to survival. The best players will space themselves just outside of all your attacks, ruthlessly punishing you for swinging where it feels like half a millisecond ago they were standing. They will dance around the stage — and you — overwhelming your senses and causing a fumble or mistake. They will always be located in just that precise spot to deliver the absolute best follow-up to every move in every scenario. They will protect themselves, resetting dangerous situations or even turning them around to create advantage out of being in a corner.

In short: Melee in motion is an art. From the first moment I saw it played competitively, I was addicted.

But here’s the question: what is Melee out of motion? What is left when you freeze the game and take it one portrait at a time?

Can we get any of that exciting, powerful stuff out of just a shot? Can we find something deeper than just the game?

In this series, that’s what I want to do. The idea is to use portraits — in-game and -out, in no particular order, to frame and illustrate and narrate the competitive scene over the years.

This is Sixty Frames. Here is Frame One: