Party Game Sundays: Watching EVO

I haven't written one of these in the two weeks since I've been back and for very good reason. The first week I skipped we played Birthday Party Bash as a belated celebration for my Birthday, after which we played Scattegories. The week after we were feeling rather lazy, so after eating ourselves to the brink of destruction we decided to watch videos of competitive Beyblade players, and some super hot advanced techniques. For those that don't know Beyblades is an anime where characters fight with spinning tops. There are toys of the tops, which people apparently get super into. It's super funny.

That brings us up to this past Sunday, where we would have played some games, but EVO was happening. I love watching competitive fighting game play, and EVO is the tournament to end all tournaments. I don't like using the analogy, but it's basically the Superbowl of fighting games. So inevitably Noukeo and I forced Landers, who doesn't know anything about fighting games, to watch the EVO finals. It was actually quite an educational experience. Landers asked a whole lot of questions and we tried to tell him as much about what was going on as possible. We specifically watched Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Ultra Street Fighter 4. If you've never played Marvel before it is basically incomprehensible flashing, so we had to explain a whole lot about that. Street Fighter on the other hand is two people beating down on each other much slowly, so he had a pretty firm grasp on it.

When my brother started getting way into fighting games about five years ago he started watching streams of tournaments all the time. This made it so that I also ended up watching a lot of tournaments, and quickly got to know all the prominent players of both Street Fighter and Marvel. It's one thing to watch a tournament online, but it's completely different to go to an actual tournament. Philadelphia, PA is a few hours away from where we live, so we go to quite a few tournaments there. It's surreal to see all the players who you respect playing in person. What's really nuts is how loud everything is. When people cheer it's earth shattering. When something amazing happens the whole room erupts and it's deafening. That's one of the reasons I love watching EVO, because it's on a whole different scale. When you can hear the crowd super loud on the stream, it's probably out of control in the actual venue.

Thousands of people show up to EVO every year.

I'm personally super terrible at fighting games, but I understand what I should be doing in order to do well. So when I watch competitive play I can tell what's super lame and what's going to bring the hype. Since I know the players it's easy for me to latch on to who I want to win a match and it gets me way more invested in it. Even when we go to tournaments I just watch, but it's incredibly fun for me. I scream fairly loud when things get crazy and watching EVO is absolutely no different.

When we were with Landers watching the finals nothing particularly bananas happened, but I still got a little amped up. In Marvel the only thing I want to happen is for Chris G to lose. I've got nothing against the guy, but he always wins with what I find to be a boring strategy. He uses the succubus Morrigan to fill the screen with colorful projectiles in order to lame out the opponent. Much to my pleasure he did end up losing to Justin Wong, who is arguably the best fighting game player in America. Watching Justin win is always entertaining, because he's just so damn good at everything. You can't dislike him. I always want my boy IFC Yipes to win, but he never gets far enough for me to cheer him on anymore. I had to settle for Justin winning, which is always a fine alternative.

I was so happy Justin won. He jumped onto the ground and rolled around for a bit.

Street Fighter was much more hype for me, because I didn't really know what was going to happen. Unlike Marvel, Japanese players actually do well in Street Fighter, so there were a bunch of them in the top 8. There were however two American players and a French player in the mix as well. One of the American players SnakeEyez is incredible. He's been doing super well for the last year or so and his play is only getting better. He didn't win, but he did have some amazing matches. The day before Party Game Sundays he had a ridiculous match where he won at the last second against a previous EVO champ. Take a look at the video below. As you watch the end imagine me losing my shit in unison with my brother, who was on a different floor of the house.

I bet that most people who watch this video with no context will think I'm crazy, which is how I feel when I watch most sports. For some reason fighting games are just exciting to me. When watching I yell, scream, and occasionally want to cry. Sometimes I feel like I'm alone in this excitement, but after going to tournaments in person, I know that I'll never be alone in my hype.

If you don't know anything about EVO or fighting games you should just search for some EVO videos on YouTube to see some people lose their minds over a video game fight. Next week I promise we'll play something new. I just had to watch EVO, or I would have missed the hype!

10 Years of Melee

This year, more than most other years I have been noticing that a lot of Iconic game franchises are celebrating their 10 and 20 year anniversaries. The first two that pop into my mind are Sonic, and the Jak and Daxter franchise. These anniversaries have been notable because major game journalism outlets and the game companies themselves have been making a big deal out of it. This prompted me to start thinking about other franchises or games that are having their ten year anniversaries. After a bit of searching I came across the fact that one of my favorite games ever is having its tenth anniversary today!

That's right! Today Friday December 2nd, 2011 is the tenth anniversary of Super Smash Brothers Melee. It's crazy to think that I've been playing this game for close to half of my life. Sadly I do not have my Gamecube memory card with me at the moment, but I am confident in saying that I've put more hours into Melee that any other video game. I played Melee so much that my controllers would break from too much use. I'm not normally a huge fan of multiplayer video games, but there is something about Melee and the Super Smash Brothers franchise in general that's grabbed hold of me and refused to let go.

The original Super Smash Brothers came out in 1999. When I first heard about it I was nine years old and my mind almost exploded. The fact that all of my favorite Nintendo characters could fight each other was a ridiculous concept. I didn't have a Nintendo 64 in 99', but I made sure to play Super Smash whenever I could. Two of my friends had the game and we would get together and play all the time. Characters and items would fly all over the screen creating a blissfully chaotic experience, which we loved. My go to character in the original was Kirby and I was ridiculously good with him. I haven't played the original much since 99', but it's my understanding that Kirby was pretty overpowered. For some reason I don't personally own an original Super Smash Brothers cartridge. They're fairly cheap now, so  might have to pick one up.

When Melee was released in 2001 I didn't have a Gamecube. Only one of my friends did and I would be at his house almost every single weekend to get in as much Melee as I could. Melee improved upon the original Super Smash Brothers in almost every way (Some may disagree with me on this). There were exponentially more characters, stages, and items. They even added a story mode, and trophy collecting. Melee was the ultimate Nintendo fan-service experience. 

The Summer of 2001 I received a Gamecube for my birthday. I didn't get Melee immediately, but when I did I played it all the time. At first I would play with my younger brother. I was a lot better than him so we'd mess around a whole lot. I didn't use Kirby as my main anymore, because I didn't like him as much. Melee was a much faster game than the original and Kirby didn't pack as much of a punch. During my first few years of Melee I mainly played as Ganondorf and Fox. One day when I was messing with my brother I bet him that I could beat him with Princess Peach, who I had only been a handful of times. I ended up crushing him and finding out that I wanted to use Peach all the time.

From that point on I got a lot more serious with Melee. I practiced with Peach all the time. Lucky for me a few of my friends got deep into Melee at the same time. We'd often turn off all the items so we could fight with our pure gaming skill. I move from game to game quickly, so I don't really linger on one long enough to get super good at it. Melee was a different story. I practiced for years and never seemed to get bored. I even entered a tournament at my local mall when the sequel Super Smash Brothers Brawl was released for the Wii.

I liked Brawl well enough, but it'll never be as good as Melee to me. Brawl was much more floaty and not as fast as Melee. I'm not necessarily saying that Melee is one of the best games ever made, but it's certainly one of my favorites. When I play Melee I genuinely have fun and I'll always remember it fondly for that. There's something special about the extreme chaos that the game has to offer.

Happy Tenth Birthday Melee!

     -Manny