There is shame in being defeated at a game you once mastered. Not like a Quake 2, old school FPS player picking up Halo: Reach for the first time and losing to some younglings online; I’m talking about something far more irksome.

Hear this legend friends:

My High School friends and I consider ourselves world class contenders on the N64 Super Smash Bros. stage. And when I went to university I introduced it to a new group of warriors.

Later, when Super Smash Bros. Melee was released for the GameCube, I was living with some of these warriors. I wouldn’t say we became world class contenders, but we were certainly downright fierce competitors.

One night one of our warriors came back from a pilgrimage and told me he had been beaten at Melee. He said he was “outmatched.”

I am a proud practitioner of Sophykhon-Do — the fighting game philosophy that states you to train every character. But it seems these Melee opponents trained one character and instead mastered the game.

I might not have personally been defeated but it felt that way. And I will feel this way until I’m in a melee with these legendary beasts. Even if they play like this; we self-proclaimed masters will crash our pride into anyone else’s.