The popularity of video games has been on the rise for a long time. After the video game crash of 1983, it seemed that playing video games at home was a thing of the past until Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan in 1983 during the crash. It took a few years, but the video game market began to recover, and the United States saw the release of the NES in 1985 alongside Super Mario Bros. The console ended up selling nearly 62 units within its 12-year lifespan.
With gaming back on the rise, gaming communities began to form, and from that, the need to compete also grew. Tournaments were growing in popularity with each new console generation that exploded with the sixth generation of consoles. The consoles in this family included the GameCube, PS2, and Xbox.The surge in tournament popularity was amplified by the rise of the internet and streaming platforms. During this time, Nintendo’s relationship with its fan base, particularly the Smash community, began to strain to a near breaking point.
Underground Days
During the early days of Melee’s competitive scene, tournaments were held at people’s homes and some electronic stores. Streaming matches wasn’t a real possibility yet, but there are videos from these early tournaments. YouTube revolutionized the way matches were filmed and watched. Before its advent, matches were recorded on tape using unreliable hand cameras and commentary. YouTube made matches widely accessible to people all over the world.
Smash continued to rise in popularity, and it found its way onto the Major League Gaming circuit in 2004, leading to its Golden Era, helmed by Ken, also known as The King of Smash. MLG would bring a much-needed boost to the community with larger prize pools, with PC Chris earning $10,000 in Las Vegas in 2006. MLG dropped Melee in 2007, but the Evolution Championship Series picked it up that year. Melee wasn’t regarded very well amongst the other fighting games with its casual appearance, but that wouldn’t have much of an effect on the popularity of the game.
The Dark Age
This is where the rift between the Smash community and Nintendo started. In 2008, Super Smash Bros Brawl was released. Despite the excitement within the community, once the game had been released, that excitement had begun to falter. The dedicated Melee players quickly realized that this game was very much the opposite of its predecessor. It included a trip mechanic that disincentivized dash-dancing. This mechanic would cause you to trip if you ran too much and added a bit of randomness to the game.
While Brawl saw its tournament scene, it wasn’t the spectacle that Melee was. It was slower, and the advanced techniques that sped up the game were removed, and it rewarded a more defensive play style. While that isn’t necessarily what makes it a bad tournament game, it does make it a bad Smash Tournament game. It later surfaced that Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Super Smash Bros., was unhappy with the direction the competitive scene was taking with Super Smash Bros. Melee. He identified several issues that required attention. Following the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, there was a visible decline in the number of Melee tournaments held. In fact, for a whole year, there were no significant Melee tournaments until the Revival of Melee tournament came into existence.
The Rift
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When Brawl came out, it nearly destroyed the Melee community. The community split with the Brawl and Melee players, trying to figure out how to make things work. It seems that a portion of the fanbase has decided to leave the Melee community in order to attempt to make Brawl work in a setting for which it was not originally designed. Meanwhile, the Melee community was trying to push forward with the game they loved and spent so much time on. The future of Smash on a tournament basis was looking uncertain.
After the Revival of Melee, the smash community seemed to be on the mend. This era of Melee also saw the rise of what is known as the Five Gods of Melee. This marked a long period of domination of five players: PPMD, Mang0, Mew2King, Armada, and Hungrybox. In any tournament they entered, one of these five players won. This is the era I came onto the tournament scene. It was clear by watching these guys play they had a grasp of the game that was years ahead of the current meta. It was also around this time when Nintendo started to actively strike back against the community.
EVO 2013
EVO 2013 was the first major attempt of Nintendo to try and cancel a tournament, and it wouldn’t be the last. This tournament was a charity-funded tournament where members of the community would donate funds to have Melee added to the game roster. At first, it was a trickle until the news got out about what was happening. Then, the full force of the Melee community came together to have Melee added. Fans raised $94,000 for breast cancer research, adding the game to the roster. Twitch planned to livestream the event with several big names slated to appear. About a week before the tournament, Nintendo denied Twitch streaming rights to the tournament, but that wasn’t all. They even sent a Cease and Desist in an attempt to have Melee removed from the tournament.
During this time, developers generally did their best to support the tournament scene for their games. They saw it as giving back to the community, a community that purchased their games to play in a competitive setting. Most developers saw it as free advertising. Nintendo, on the other hand, did not share this way of thinking. Nintendo has a reputation for being a family-friendly game developer, so to see their game in an adult setting outside of their control bothered them. For Nintendo, it was an affront to their reputation. What Nintendo failed to see was how their actions would be received from the fanbase. Public backlash quickly followed after word got out about what Nintendo was doing. Nintendo reversed their decision after receiving negative feedback, resulting in Melee being featured at EVO 2013.
It Wasn’t the End
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Nintendo’s war against tournaments didn’t end with EVO 2013. The Smash World Tour Championships had to be called off due to legal challenges that emerged from Nintendo. While other developers like RIOT, Blizzard, and Activision were pumping millions into the tournament scene so their games could get out there, Nintendo took a more frustrating approach. The Panda Cup was a tournament that Nintendo was actually running; maybe they saw Smash World Tour as a threat to their tournament and decided to take legal action. This would only lead Smashers to boycott the Panda Cup.
It’s extremely hard not to get frustrated at Nintendo as a fan of their games. Other developers saw this as an opportunity to invest in a community, their game, and their fans. Nintendo just doesn’t see this. Tournament Organizers don’t even necessarily want millions in investments from Nintendo, they just want to be able to play the game they love. To play Devil’s Advocate, I somewhat understand where Nintendo is coming from. They built their success with the Nintendo Seal of Approval, a seal that let you know the game was legit and well made. It was a form of brand protection born from the crash of 1983, and it was that protection that allowed Nintendo to prevail. The problem with that kind of thinking is that the 1983 crash happened over 40 years ago. This community was built out of passion, much like the early games on the NES.
If you like this article, you’ll love the one I wrote on How Tournaments Work.
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