20XX: A Smash Brothers Story

PROLOGUE:

In the year 2014, the newest addition to the Super Smash Bros. series was released. Super Smash Bros. For Wii U and 3DS was critically acclaimed upon release and regarded by many as the best Smash Bros. game. However, many had very different opinions. Most more competitive players still played Super Smash Bros. Melee, a much faster game with advanced techniques that the later games lack. These players saw this new addition as "casual shit" and labeled it "trash 4" or "tr4sh". This story chronicles the fall of Masahiro Sakurai and the casual sack of goat feces that Smash 4 is.

CHAPTER 1

July 31st, 2015

America

The newest balance patch for Smash 4 has released. Among other character buffs and nerfs, the Mii swordfighter has received an infinite hit combo. At first, competitive players brush off this change, for Mii swordfighter is regarded by almost all as one of the few worst characters in the game. However, as players start to experiment with this new infinite, many switch mains when they realize the potential of such a thing. Soon enough, all the top players are using this character and all other characters are called low tier. The Smash 4 meta has evolved into getting the first chakrom hit. It is 20ii.

Smash 4 has become a joke in the competitive scene. Sakurai has realized that this is his opportunity to make Super Smash Bros. the party game he intended it to be and ceases all balance patches. Every day Smash 4 is losing followers and Melee is gaining them. Melee is the most popular it has ever been.

The 2016 presidential election is approaching. Donald Trump, though he is obviously not fit for office, has somehow held strong and gained enough of the people's support to be a contender. Melee has become one of the most popular games of 2015, despite having been released 14 years earlier. On the contrary, Smash 4 has been denounced by most players. Few still play, and even Zero has disappeared from the scene.

Fast-forward to the Presidential Debate. Donald Trump, who has lost much of his support due to a questionable comment regarding Michelle Obama, is not doing well. However, when asked the last question, Trump does not respond as expected. Instead, he announces that he would like to make a statement. "I would just like to say", he says, "That Super Smash Brothers Melee is the greatest game of all time."

...

Donald Trump has been elected as lifetime President of the United States. At the election he won by a margin of 100%, receiving the vote of every American citizen. Trump issues in a golden age of American civilization. There is no crime, no poverty, no unemployment. Every household features a GameCube and Super Smash Bros. Melee has become the official American pastime. The bald eagle has been replaced as the nation's mascot by the Firefox.

Sakurai is known as an anti-Melee terrorist. He continues to produce content for Smash 4 in an underground bunker in Japan even though the game has been outlawed in America and much of the world. Stopping Nintendo and Sakurai has become America's top priority.

Scar, the new head of the CIA, has been tasked with putting a team together. A team with one purpose: stop Masahiro Sakurai's acts of terrorism—at any cost. God Team 6 will consist of the highly trained professionals by the names of Adam "Armada" Lindgren, Joseph "Mango" Marquez, Jason "mew2king" Zimmerman, Kevin "PPMD" Nanney, and William "Leffen" Hjelte.

CHAPTER 2

Nintendo Direct, 2018

Japan, precise location unknown

Sakurai: "As you can see me demonstrating here.. this is what the melee competitive scene refers to as 'Hax Dashing'. Fairly difficult to do, but if you look here..." *laughs*

*Camera pans onto Sakurai's controller*

*Entire stadium unable to keep up with finger motions*

*epilepsy occurs at a world-record shattering rate*

Sakurai: *Laughing intensifies* "IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?? IS THIS WHAT YOU CALL COMPETITIVE??????"

Reggie: "Sakurai! Noooooooooooooooooo-"

Gaben rolls through the back wall, breaking the 5inch thick glass barrier and tearing through the projector screen. Hundreds of PCMasterrace members in the crowd are instantly healed by his presence. "GabeN!!! GabeN!!!" they cheer.

Gaben: "Sakurai..", he waves. "That is enough."

Sakurai: "You think you can stop me?? You and your PC members?!?!? I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!"

Reggie: "Please... it doesn't have to come to this, Sakurai... what's gotten into you?!?!"

Sakurai proceeds to wavedash and multishine in real life, twitch chat goes insane with Kreygasm spams and Klappas. HMW posts a status on FB, "Press 1 if you feel bad for WTF IS GOING ON DOG LOLOLOL"

Mango, PP, Mew2King, Armada, and Leffen walk up to Sakurai inbetween shine-cancels. Mew2King upthrows, PP dairs, Armada re-grabs, Mango taunts, and Leffen pummels for a semi-perma hitstun effect. Sakurai bleeds profusely, laughing as gallons of blood spill from his mouth between his teeth to the floor. Reggie covers his eyes, unable to take the sight. GabeN lays there, watching the battle.

"Enough!", he says, as he motions his left arm.

The pulp that is Sakurai now lays on the floor. Drips of his essence pour off the stage.

"lmaooo wtf", Mango clamors.

Reggie walks besides his old friend, and weeps. He kneels and carefully brushes aside the hair that covered his beaten face. A fire now grows within his eyes. He stands again, peering into the crowd. Closing his eyes, he takes one last look at Sakurai...

"My body is ready."

Sakurai's lifeless body rises with a light within, so brilliant the spectators except for GabeN must cover their eyes. Sakurai and Reggie become one. A new being whose aura is so glamorous that the invited players tear up from just glancing at it.

GabeN: "It's about time."

He unsheathes a knife hidden from his belly flap, with a familiar logo on the handle, with a "3" written on the upper right hand corner.

The crowd goes crazy.

Not wanting to be outperformed, Sakuregg holds out his hands, and somehow summons Isai.

"?", says Isai.

Sakuregg then knees Isai straight into the game, confirming Captain Falcon.

GabeN laughs at his feeble attempt to generate hype equivalent to HL3. He takes his knife and thrusts it into the belly of Sakuregg. Sakuregg laughs. GabeN backs off and watches as an egg is dropped from the womb of Sakuregg.

It slowly moves. Pip..pip..CRACK.

RIDLEY APPEARS and flies straight up into the auditorium ceiling, breathing fire upon the audience. GabeN swings his knife with a gusto that extinguishes the flames. Knowing he is unable to control the beast, GabeN leaps into the air, creating an earthquake within a 5 mile radius, grabs Ridley, and throws him straight into the game. The crowd's cheers and tears and so loud that audience members begin to bleed from their ears.

GabeN lands back onto the crowd, shaking the floor with all his might.

He heavily breathes.

Sakuregg shocked, stands completely still, sweating beneath his brow.

GabeN grabs Sakuregg in a flash, stabs him straight through the heart, and as his spirit slowly fades away from our realm, GabeN throws him into the Wii-U.

GabeN: "Super.. Smash.. Brothers.. U... now available on Steam."

He devours the Wii-U. Glowing radiantly now, he whispers..

"Half Life 3... confirmed."

He explodes. Millions of steam key codes / discounts come bursting out of his glorious ascended form.

People's backlogs are filled to the brim. No one ever completely finishes a game, with Half-Life 3 winning the award for having most content in a video game ever made.

Half-Life 3 continues to be played, unbeaten, winning the GOTY award every year...

until

the year

20XX

CHAPTER 3

According to the Gregorian calendar, the year is 2030, but any smash fan knows that the year 20xx is upon us. As the day of the largest Smash tournament ever dawns, the Melee metagame is now the result of 29 years of development. Over the last decade and a half, dedicated Smashers have fostered the development of the beloved party game from a silly, unconventional fighter into an art form. Nintendo's all-star cast is precisely controlled to gracefully move around each other as if locked in a dance, then exploiting the first possible opening to blitz their opposition and carry them across the stage to the blastzone. Smash allows and requires the player to improvise a composition of inputs at every opportunity if they want to push their gameplay to its maximum potential. As Prog would say, Smash is like jazz.

An impatient EVO crowd begins the chant that echoes throughout the venue. ME-LEE. ME-LEE. ME-LEE. Those Melee auteurs who were skilled and fortunate enough to make top 8 complete their respective pre-tournament rituals and begin to assemble.

Melee top 8 appears very strange indeed, as several of the usual suspects are absent from the bracket. The enigmatic PPMD's location is completely unknown, no one in the Smash community having heard from him in several weeks. Hungrybox was unable to attend due to having a job and a life outside of Smash. Tragically, Armada was eaten by a polar bear in his home country of Sweden three days before the event.

Due to the absence of three of the "Melee Gods," an intrepid Hax$ finally finds himself in top 8. As Aziz moves his cursor to Fox, an already smirking Leffen takes the seat next to the former best Falcon in the world. The first game is nothing short of a tragedy, with all four of Hax's stocks being lost to the abyss below Battlefield in little over a minute. "I can see why you switched mains." Leffen’s quip drips with condescension. The scant 32% he was able to inflict on Hjelte's lone stock at the front of his mind, Hax decides that he has nothing to lose by listening to the now desperate chants of the crowd. He switches to Captain Falcon and takes Leffen back to Battlefield.

As the pink Falcon quickly loses his first stock to a precise Shine spike, Hax refuses to lose his composure. He answers back with some of the smoothest movement and ledge play that the star TSM player has ever seen. The progenitor of the idea of 20xx would now appear to actively defy the notion, as his fabulous Falcon negotiates his way to a last stock situation, cleanly ending the game with an up-air semispike. "This game's winner is... Captain Falcon!" The announcer sounds almost relieved, and it takes Hax Money a few moments to even process what he's just accomplished. Leffen takes his adversary to Dreamland after a quick silent john as he takes his controller out of and back into the port. However, it would appear to the entire crowd that everybody's favorite Falcon was back, as Hax ends the game with a stylish Raptor Boost to Knee of Justice to moonwalk turnaround Falcon Punch in a decisive two-stock.

"I guess the year is 20GX," Hax says in that smooth voice of his as he turns to face the sixth god. However, his amusement is short lived as Leffen replies to his snide comment with a primal scream. Refusing to lose to Aziz's neglected Falcon, the slender Swede's body begins to contort as he reveals his true nature. The hulking, horned, blood-red mass of twisted flesh that emerges makes clear TSM Leffen's origin as a demon from the pits of hell. As Hax gazes into the deep, shark-like eyes of the horrible fiend before him, Leffen extends a tendril in his agape mouth, rending his soul from his body. He then proceeds to close out the 3-2 against the now withered husk.

The young Kevin "PewPewU" Toy is unable to stymie Leffen's sweep through Melee top 8, as one look into the eyes of the antichrist renders the promising Marth main helpless as his life force is drained away. The emotionally defeated crowd has fallen silent as the satanic monster tosses PewPewU from the stage after a quick 3-0. Jason Zimmerman begins to regret his decision to pursue EVO 2030 as he takes the stage. Leffen gazes upon Mew2King as he takes his seat, but to his horror he makes a discovery upon staring into the smash zealot's eyes. This robot has no soul.

The beast's shocked facade quickly turns to a snide grin, as he dismisses Mew2King as a worthy opponent considering his recent results and reputation. Leffen rationalizes that he would rather have a little fun than completely destroy another helpless victim anyway. As the match begins on Dreamland, the king of the Mews visibly struggles to get his footing, his few frantic attempts at edgeguarding the crafty Fox with his Sheik doing little to postpone the quick 3-stock. The master of diversity nervously rocks back and forth as he stares at the character select screen for a few moments before switching characters to the warrior prince Marth. Mew2King's performance on Final Destination is nothing less than inspirational, the crowd's emphatic chants of "AYY" and "MEW-TWO-KING" punctuating the scene of the stylish swordsman swiftly sending Satan’s Starfox to the blastzone by effortlessly tossing the space dog across the stage before sending him reeling into the never with a brutal dair dumpster. The visibly enraged Leffen is now unable to deal with this calculated machine as the smash prodigy’s Marth is like a shark under the platforms of Battlefield, ready at every opportunity to send the leader of Star Fox to his death. Jason is pleased with the 3-stock.

Riding the wave of hype created by the crowd into game 4, Mew2King challenges the demon's Fox with his own. The dulcet tones of "HYAAH" and "TAINT" from the space animals as well as the pew-pew's of their lasers and shines pepper the chaotic dog fight as the crowd experiences in awe the highest level melee any mortal has ever been capable of. As "MEESHUN COMPLEE" reverberates through the casino, Jason takes a few seconds to fully appreciate his performance which has defeated the minion of hell before him. Leffen throws his controller to the ground. It shatters into a pack of snakes which then slither away. However, he turns to Mew2King and realizes that the duodecuple shine which broke his shield and secured the robot the stock has caused Jason's hands to finally disintegrate. Knowing that Mango is unable to challenge him in Loser's Finals due to having been sent to jail for drunkenly stealing the cupcakes from Zero's underground Smash 4 celebration party, Leffen realizes that regardless he is assured the EVO trophy.

However, the malevolent fiend sees Mango (his bail having been paid by Juan's vast engineering wealth) entering the venue with Hungrybox on a chariot pulled by a flock of bald eagles. “Lmao nice shirt” he says as he takes his seat next to Leffen as Loser’s Finals begins. Mango’s intense training becomes apparent as his Fox cleanly 8-stocks Leffen’s over the course of two games spanning Stadium and Mangoland.

Unfortunately for The Kid, as his buzz begins to wear off, he begins to find himself pushed to the limit by the salty Swede. Drawing closer to full sobriety, The Goat finds himself 2-2 and on the receiving end of a 3-stock. He begins to sweat as Hungrybox approaches him. The two share a knowing nod before their beards intertwine, each god grasping one end of the Gamecube controller as the character select cursor moves to princess Jigglypuff. Four quick rests later and Leffen bursts into flames as he returns to the depths of hell.

The newly formed Jigglypuff hivemind turn their gaze to Mew2King as he dejectedly displays the smoking stumps which used to be the hands that took him to the top of the Melee metagame. Suddenly, the doors to the room burst open as Armada floats onto the stage, clad in the flayed hide of the Swedish polar bear Leffen had trained to destroy him. “You Americans don’t have anything on Swedish health care,” he says as he sheds a single tear into Mew2King’s wrist which causes him to rapidly regenerate a new pair of hands. The two execute a frame-perfect glasses adjustment, their minds melding to become one as they sit down to meet their challenger in Grand Finals. Armew2kingda and Mangobox proceed to exchange games until they arrive at game 5. However, just as the last stock is drawing to a close, Leffen executes his last act of defiance in the mortal realm, unleashing his familiar, MacD, to unplug the cable, ending the game before the last stock is taken.

The crowd falls silent as a beam of light pierces the roof of the venue. An angelic chorus resonates throughout the Bally’s Paris Las Vegas Hotel as the ghost of Satoru Iwata descends from above clutching a small box in his hands. “We would like you to play,” he says, extending a copy of Melee HD. The Smash gods are so enamored by Captain Falcon's high resolution, immaculately textured ass and the auditory eargasm that is the Melee HD Shine that they fail to notice the unassuming challenger approaching them. At this moment, PPMD has arrived at the event, exiting his horse-drawn carriage and dressed in his traditional Amish garb. “Sorry I’m late, y’all,” he says before plugging his butter churn into the gamecube and proceeding to 3-0 both of the fused supergods. As he unceremoniously takes his EVO trophy and returns to the mountains, the four gods share a collective sigh. As the crowd dissipates, the four play out one last game together: a four-player, two-minute FFA on Pokefloats. Items set to High. Their laughter echoes through the empty hotel lobby.

CHAPTER 4

21XX

The newest Smash game has been released, it is the 64th game in the series, and has the name Super Smash Bros 64. Long ago, Sakurai's brain was recreated by Eiji Aonuma and planted in a robot's body, calling itself Sakur-I. His mind has caused Smash to become so corrupted with anti-competitive decisions that he has removed blast zones and characters never die. Casuals have since decided that Sakur-I's anti-competitive mindset isn't healthy for the fan base and have since realized that Melee is the ultimate game. These events should have been foreseen in the midst of 20XX when Sakurai removed 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place from the game in Smash 17 and instead gave every player the title of 1st place no matter the outcome

Mew2King wouldn't stop with the cybernetic android surgeries and is now an immortal cyborg dedicated to eliminating the Fox remnants of 20XX.

PPMD has since discovered the Fountain of Youth and spends his immortal life training in the mountains; only coming back to civilization to win every Apex, claiming to participate in more tournaments in the future, but never shows up to any.

Armada has been granted access to the gates of Heaven for switching back to Peach, legend holds that he comes back to life to win a couple majors every other year.

Mango disappeared into the jungle hoping to one day bring back Falcon's meta game, having won every EVO with Captain Falcon since EVO 2032. Some say he only ages when he shaves his beard.

Leffen has been residing in hell without any hands and must watch Chillin play Adventure Mode alongside him for all eternity.

Hungrybox taught a bear how to play Jigglypuff and bears have been showing up to tournaments ever since; many bairs have been used in tournaments in Hungrybox's memory.

Ken has a golden statue in Buenos Aires dedicated to his memory as the King of Smash.

Falcomaster3000's identity is still a mystery.

...

Baby Mango wipes the sweat off of his face as the crowd cheers behind him. The EVO 21XX trophy is just within his reach. However, the last four matches have been a flurry of pitch perfect Fox techskill, with a single shine leading into perfect chaingrabs and techchase combos until death. Sitting next to him was the only other person capable of such a feat: FalcoMaster3000. The man who had been silently JV5 stocking all of the gods of Melee. Mew2Bot short circuited and died in his seat. PPMD ran off the stage, never to be seen again. HungryBox swore to use his chemical engineering skills to create a serum to make him unstoppable at Melee. Armada got stuck in a state of perpetual meditation.

The last match had taken everything he had. To avoid elimination, he had to reverse four stock him. Baby Mango was now mentally and physically drained, but he knew he only had to win one more match, and FalcoMaster3000 would be defeated for the first time in history.

However, FalcoMaster3000 didn't do anything. Was he switching characters? Was he thinking about the stage? He wasn't doing either. He spoke the first words anyone had ever heard from him.

"lmaoooo"

FalcoMaster3000 rips off the mask as he says, "IIIIT'S ME JOSEPH, IT WAS ME ALL ALOOOONG". Mango proceeds to pick Falco. "Now you will see why I called myself Falcomaster all this time!"

Baby Mango was torn. No one had picked Falco in centuries, so he had no idea how to fight him. He decided that the only way to win was to pick his own obscure character, one he had been training in secret. The announcer said "Kirby!" as he released his character token.

Baby Mango suicided every single stock using throws off the stage and inhale. As the two suicided on the final stock and died simultaneously, Baby Mango was declared the winner due to port priority. Mango hung his head in shame as his son was handed the trophy. "But how?" he said. Baby Mango smiled and said, "you already know how." He went to his father's ear and said,