The Book of Melee

By Edwin Budding

Since its 2001 release, Nintendo's crown jewel, "Super Smash Bros. Melee," has inspired multiple generations of players to sustain a grassroots community. The Book of Melee is a deep dive into the universe of competitive Melee, gaming's greatest and most unlikely underdog story.

In The Book of Melee, longtime Melee enthusiast and gaming journalist Edwin Budding covers the history of competitive Melee through the lens of its greatest legends, including "The Five Gods of Melee."

- Adam "Armada" Lindgren: The two-time EVO world champion, named the no. 1 Melee player of all time in 2017 and 2018.
- Joseph "Mango" Marquez: The two-time EVO world champion and most successful Melee streamer on Twitch, with over 5,000 subscribers.
- Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma: The current world no. 1 Melee player and Genesis 6 champion. Listed by Esports Earnings as having made the most prize money out of any Melee player ever ($320,000+).
- Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman: The Smash Summit 6 champion, named by Guinness in 2017 as having the most esports tournament results of all time.
- Kevin "PPMD" Nanney: The Apex 2014 and Apex 2015 champion, having his journey partially documented within Travis "Samox" Beauchamp's upcoming "Metagame" documentary.

Despite being followed by three sequels, Melee continues to draw thousands of its most hardcore players, as well as hundreds of thousands of viewers, to community-run tournaments. Together, the members of Melee's thriving scene have transcended the game's role as a casual party game to establish it as one of the greatest esports of all time.

Simultaneously absurd, heartwarming, and tear-jerking, The Book of Melee tackles the evolution of the most passionate cult following of the 21st century, from crowded restaurant basements to packed arenas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edwin Budding
• Release date: May 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463970966

Edwin Budding

Hi! Some of you know me by my gamertag, "EdwinBudding", but my real name is Anokh Palakurthi. I compete, write, and podcast about competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee. Currently, I've finished one book, "The Book of Melee," which covers the evolution of competitive Melee across its nearly two decades of history. In the future, I'd like to work on a few other editorial projects, including writing about the history of hip hop, heavy metal and more.

Book preview

Prologue: February 2019

It’s February 3, 2019. Oakland’s Paramount Theater is set for the final day of Genesis 6, the newest edition of an annual three-day convention and tournament series dedicated to Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. crossover fighting-game franchise.

The date: Championship Sunday, but not for the reasons one might expect. Instead of watching the Super Bowl, more than three thousand die-hard fans have packed themselves into the theater, now watching two grown men battling on stage for thousands of dollars and the title of world champion at their unlikely game of choice: Super Smash Bros. Melee, the second iteration of the Smash series.

One of the two competitors is Juan Hungrybox Debiedma, a twenty-five-year-old former chemical engineer and the reigning world no. 1. His unwavering resolve and dominance with his character, Jigglypuff, from the Pokémon franchise, has made him a community villain in the eyes of several peers, who resented his success and barely tolerated his penchant for over-the-top celebrations.

His opponent is Jeffrey Axe Williamson, a twenty-seven-year-old and longtime fan favorite. Axe plays Pikachu, another Pokémon representative. Notably, Pikachu is a mid-tier character, one considered far weaker than many of Melee’s top tiers, such as Jigglypuff. At this moment, Axe finally has a chance to do the unthinkable: win a supermajor with Pikachu.

Like a wrestling match, Axe and Hungrybox’s battle is recorded, with commentators and a broadcast team handling the live cast. Just as thousands of Melee fans are directly witness to their bout for glory, hundreds of thousands more are viewing it from the comfort of their homes.

The Melee fan base ranges from kids in school to adults. They hail from a variety of cultural backgrounds; most live in the United States, while others are from Japan, Europe, South America, and Australia. Those lucky enough to attend Genesis 6 the previous two days have been in the Oakland Convention Center, crowded around small televisions, either watching others play or competing.

Genesis 6 is just another chapter in Melee’s nearly two decades of lore. The game’s most fervent players are more than acquainted with their community’s highs and lows, its structure and chaos—even birth and death. A decade ago, the game’s greatest competitors played for pride, often in people’s homes, dusty arcades, or stuffed lecture halls, frequently for little or no money at all.

Today, the competitive Melee community is gaming’s greatest underdog story, unusually having survived multiple sequels and remaining in the spotlight of competitive gaming. It boasts major year-round tournaments, and some of Melee’s very best players earn tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars per year.

***

Just under two decades before Genesis 6, Nintendo released Melee in Japan, on November 21, 2001. Two weeks later, on December 3, Melee came out in North America. By the end of 2001, it was the nineteenth best-selling video game of the year, despite only being out for a little over a month. It’s now the highest-selling GameCube game of all time, with more than five million copies distributed internationally.

But Melee’s impact transcends sales. To its most hardcore fans, Melee is more than just a game. It’s a source of self-discovery, a way of unlocking hidden potential. Through playing Melee, a meek student by day can don a secret alias by night, transforming into a fearsome competitor.

The drive to keep Melee’s competitive community alive has faced many challenges over nearly two decades, and not just from concerned parents of its initially young fan base. The scene’s greater enemy and shadow lurking over its shoulder was Nintendo, its creator.

Unlike companies like Capcom, which made the Street Fighter series and runs official tournament circuits that actively promote its most hardcore players, Nintendo refused to be anything more than a distant father to competitive Melee. Occasionally, it was hostile, forcing players to take the initiative in maintaining interest, cultivating hype, and growing resources for their community.

This is their story.

Chapter 1: Before Melee (January 1999 – December 2001)

In order to understand Melee’s appeal, it’s important to recognize the impact of its predecessor, the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64. Without it, the foundations for competitive Melee would not exist.

On January 21, 1999, Nintendo released its first ever Smash title, initially only in Japan. Directed by chief architect Masahiro Sakurai and developed by HAL Laboratory, it featured twelve of the most popular Nintendo characters—all of them ready to jump into the next all-out, knockdown, drag-out fight.¹ For the first time, Nintendo fans could duel as Mario and Link, or rumble in the jungle with Ness and Donkey Kong.

Above all else, Smash’s multiplayer mode received critical acclaim. GameSpot writer Jeff Gerstmann wrote, If you've got a crew of friends ready to pick a Nintendo character and throw down, then Super Smash Bros. is definitely worth a purchase.

Smash boasts a unique twist to the standard fighting game formula. Instead of depleting a health bar as characters take damage, they only lose a stock—or life—when they’re knocked off the stage and are unable to recover. While taking more damage causes a character to fly further when hit, it’s not the inevitable death sentence most games have trained players to expect.

2D fighting games typically require players to memorize combos and are more difficult to learn. Smash emphasizes movement, basic controls, and intuition. The goal: to eliminate the opponent’s stocks.

By its American release on April 26, 1999, Smash already boasted over a million sales in Japan.

Following the release of Smash, Nintendo Spaceworld ’99 became the first documented event to host a Smash tournament. Though specific details about the tourney are difficult to dig up today, Nintendo held Spaceworld from August 27 to 29, 1999, marking a cornerstone moment in Smash history. A year later, Super Smash Bros. grew in popularity when the Japanese TV show 64 Mario Stadium broadcasted a competitive Smash event.²

From here, Smash’s popularity began to transcend Japan. In 2000, thirteen-year-old Ricky Gideon Tilton created Smash World Forums, a central hub for smashers everywhere to discuss the game and meet fellow players. Today, this website is called Smashboards, and it’s a historical goldmine of old-school Smash subculture.

Unlike today, where social media platforms like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter have largely subsumed the role of message boards as discussion hubs, back then, Smash enthusiasts had to take a leap of faith in order to meet other fans. Smash World Forums was the primary medium for these connections.

Especially when it comes to Smash, you invite strangers you have never seen before and had no relationship [with], except on boards or MSN Messenger, in your house, Japanese smasher Ryota CaptainJack Yoshida wrote on his blog. His words reflected the perceived risk that most players took when attempting to meet fellow smashers online.

Smash was a significant part of the late-1990s and early-2000s entertainment boom. Nintendo had a large share of the gaming market, one that they needed to protect from hovering competitors like Sony, Microsoft, and SEGA, each of which looked poised to release new gaming consoles at the dawn of the new millennium. Since the Nintendo 64 had been out for close to half a decade, Nintendo needed to respond with upgraded hardware of its own.

On August 24, 2000, Nintendo announced the development and release of the Nintendo GameCube. Its launch titles included Luigi’s Mansion and Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. And the gaming giant had one more trick up its sleeve.

Banking on the immense popularity of Smash, Nintendo knew that it could cash in by releasing an immediate sequel to its newest and most promising franchise. The developers of the Nintendo 64 classic began working on a sequel: Super Smash Bros. Melee.

In a column for Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, Sakurai wrote that the thirteen months he spent working on Melee were some of the most demanding and challenging times of his life. Satoru Iwata, a gaming programmer who would later go on to become president of Nintendo, also played a huge role in its rapid release. He worked countless nights and holidays to hasten Melee’s development.

At the 2001 Electronic Entertainment Expo in late May, Nintendo finally revealed its most ambitious project yet. Melee had a larger cast than the original Smash, gorgeous graphics, and promising gameplay, which included the addition of two characters in one: Zelda and Sheik, from the Legend of Zelda series. Their ability to smoothly transform into one another mid-game was a graphical marvel at the time. ³

These factors built an unbelievable amount of hype for the anticipated sequel. Before the game’s official release, Nintendo ran Premium Fight, the first-ever Melee tournament. Gaming outlet Source Magazine estimated it to have occurred sometime in Japan during Nintendo Space World 2001, from August 25 to 27, although the date of the tourney itself remains unknown.⁴

When Melee released in Japan, the game received a 37/40 score from Famitsu, winning the outlet’s first ever Platinum Award. Following its release in North America two weeks later, it didn’t take long for its most dedicated players to discover Melee’s wealth of techniques.

Chapter 2: Competitive Infancy (January 2002 – October 2002)

On January 24, 2002, a Smash World Forums user named Ultimate posted about a new technique he dubbed mad dashing. This consisted of air dodging into the ground at an angle, allowing different characters to slide varying distances. It would go on to become Melee’s best-known advanced technique under a new name: wavedashing.⁵

Many wondered if wavedashing was a glitch or if the game’s developers intentionally kept it in the game. In an interview with Nintendo Power in late 2008, Sakurai verified that he knew about the technique from early on.

Of course we knew you could do that in the development period, Sakurai said, quickly dismissing the idea of wavedashing as an accident. However, Sakurai said he envisioned wavedashing as a way for players to quickly return to the ground while in free fall. He could have never predicted it becoming a staple of competitive play.

Before wavedashing became commonplace, Nintendo held Melee’s first tournament circuit in Japan, the Melee Fighting Road circuit, held from late January to late February. Its final event happened in Hiroshima on March 3.

Nintendo tournaments typically featured free-for-alls, a two-minute timer, and items—aspects of play that smashers had no clear consensus on at the time. Because of its contrasts with what competitive Melee eventually grew into, the Nintendo-run circuit is often ignored today when discussing the community’s early beginnings.⁶

However smashers might feel about those early beginnings today, shortly following Melee Fighting Road came the birth of North America’s grassroots competitive Melee scene. It started on the other side of the Pacific, in San Jose, California.

***

On April 6, 2002, Matt MattDeezie Dahlgren hosted Tournament Go at his home, where he lived with his parents. Only eighteen years old and looking to have fun with his friends, he advertised his event online, leaving his invitation open for anyone who wanted to join the party.

No public documentation of the exact attendance count exists today. Most estimate that around twenty people came out to the first two editions of Tournament Go. Many of them were looking to compete; others came by to watch and make a few friends.

Deezie had unknowingly taken the first step to becoming the forefather of competitive Melee. In particular, Tournament Go was the first significant tournament to use a double-elimination style bracket, which later became standard throughout the scene.⁷

In the post-tournament thread, Deezie talked about how much running the event meant to him. He felt impressed by the sense of community it created.

Very few people try and break the friend barrier and find outside competition. I urge people out there: host tournaments, go out and meet other people. This will build a community, Deezie wrote. Groups of friends will be able to get recognized [for] their strength and people will be able to challenge them. To me, this is what fighting games are all about, and it is the one thing that up until yesterday, SSBM lacked.

Deezie didn’t expect so many strong players. Before running Tournament Go, he and his friends assumed that no one could beat them. When challengers actually came to his event, it sparked a new competitive fire within everyone who attended, including Deezie himself.

Several logistical challenges of running the tournament frustrated Deezie. It was his first-ever notable tourney: one that he competed in and organized for a larger crowd than he initially thought would come. Many of the matches started over two hours after Deezie’s planned noon start time. This led some attendees to leave early.

Players at the event also argued over the presence of items in the tournament ruleset. Deezie addressed these concerns afterward online. He saw items as an innate part of the game—though using items could be considered cheap, usage was inherently a legitimate tactic.

However, Deezie also acknowledged that not all items held the same value. For instance, gaining a Heart Container could replenish a major sum of health, which was a far greater advantage than using a Parasol. Moreover, items that spawned on the stage were randomly chosen by the game itself, adding little to no strategic element for competitors.

For now, most players remained split. Deezie ultimately stuck with items for Tournament Go 2, which garnered similar success despite the grumblings of a few members of the no-items crowd.

Just two months later, he held a successful Tournament Go 3, this time boasting an estimated fifty-entrant turnout. While Deezie continued to cement his legacy as a tournament organizer, other regions took note of his success, beginning their own local Smash scenes. Of note, Chicago held semi-regular get-togethers, birthing the greater Midwest community. ⁸

Because of Melee’s immense popularity and competitive appeal, tournaments could be hosted anywhere. In the early days, smashers held tourneys at their homes, dormitories, the grubby backrooms of local game stores, and restaurant basements. No external resources existed to sustain the competitive Melee scene, so the onus remained on players to run their own events.

Melee tourneys weren’t easy to run, either. Players needed a GameCube and a memory card that had all the unlocked characters and stages. Most tournament organizing was a hobby, and few-to-none of the organizers earned any kind of sustainable profit. At best, running a Melee tournament could be considered volunteer work; at worst, fruitless labor.

Playing competitively also came with a price—many tourneys were pay-to-enter. Most tourney leaders used the funds to