[SSBM] The Melee Games Recaps and Interviews

The Melee Games (TMG) was conceived by MattDotZeb in the student-rich city of Boston, Massachusetts at the beginning of 2014 in response to a massive influx of university-age players into the competitive Melee scene. Reminiscent of the Collegiate Starleague, TMG Season 1 rallied Melee players to join their school "crew," to practice together, and to travel to tournaments to face off against rival crews in a single-elimination bracket of all-kill style matches called "crew battles."

This fall semester, TMG Season 2 grew to include not only New England universities, but also schools from the "Tri-State" (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) area. MattDotZeb was joined by Tri-State coordinator HectoHertz to oversee this expansion. 20 New England schools and 30 Tri-State schools competed this season, and after a semester of competition, only one school remains in each region.

New England division

Since the introduction of TMG, the number of New England college players attending local tournaments increased dramatically, and a number of strong up-and-coming players emerged. Though previous champions MIT lost their ace player ycz6, their captain XPilot—who'd transitioned from Falcon to Falco to Marth—remained a strong tournament threat. Season 1 runners-up UMass Boston retained all of their top five players while adding a new freshman Falcon named Klaps, who within his first year was already placing 5th and better at Boston locals. Northeastern's Squible (Jigglypuff), Harvard's Clue (Sheik), and UConn's Barbie (Samus) also proved they could hang with New England's finest. UMass Amherst, Boston College, and Tufts boasted a good number of strong players as well.

The early rounds featured no real upsets, though Clue gave UMass Boston a scare by taking 9 stocks as Harvard's anchor and Tufts was taken to last stock against the University of New Hampshire. In the quarterfinals, UMass Amherst's buhder edged out Northeastern's Inky by stage-spiking Jigglypuff with Falco's up-b recovery, while UConn showed their superior depth against Tufts. In the end, despite valiant efforts by the other schools, the favorites MIT and UMass Boston had little trouble regaining their spots in the New England TMG Grand Finals.

New England Regional Finals

The TMG New England finals took place at the Boston University Smash Tournament (BUST) on November 22, 2014. BUST, an Apex qualifier, drew a number of strong out-of-region entrants from NYC (DJ Nintendo and G$) and Georgia (s0ft and Flow). It also featured the return of the two best players to wear the UMB and MIT tags, respectively: UMB | Liquid`KoreanDJ, who'd been nursing a hand injury, made a rare appearance, while MIT | ycz6 flew all the way from Norcal to attend. Though KDJ and ycz were both eligible for TMG—first-year alumni may still enter—both schools elected to play without their potential aces, preferring instead to prove themselves as teams, 7 on 7.

MIT chose to lead off with last semester's starter, Metlwing, who'd since transitioned from Yoshi to Fox. UMB started with Sing, the Samus who took 6 stocks from MIT last year. Metlwing has been attending many local tournaments and smashfests, and he showed some technical Fox play. However, Sing took advantage of Samus's strong crouch-cancel to down-smash Fox's neutral airs at low percents; thanks to these crouch-cancels, bad DI from Metlwing and an unfortunate SD by Metlwing while attempting a ledgedash, Sing emerged with a 2-stock lead after the first game.

MIT responded by sending Rndl, the Falco famous for getting hit by Kaiju's misfire from last semester. Rndl's patient laser play and unexpected forward smashes had taken out Sing at a recent local tournament (Mass Madness). Sing opened the game by convincingly taking Rndl's first stock, but proceeded to miss the Battlefield ledge with his up-b. After Rndl lost his second stock to a missile edgeguard from Sing, he began playing much more safely: instead of approaching with aerials on shield and spamming forward smashes, Rndl opted to stay away and shoot lasers, approaching only with laser -> grab. Eventually, Sing missed his sweetspot grapple, and Rndl closed it out with his beloved f-smash.



UMB counterpicked with Saki (Peach) on Dreamland. Falco vs Peach at low and intermediate levels is a relatively difficult matchup for Falco, since the Falco player has to play very precisely and can't extend combos against Peach; UMB was looking to capitalize on the matchup. The first stock featured Rndl again f-smashing all over Dreamland, but Saki failed to punish any smashes on the back of his shield. Still, Saki caught Falco with some stray d-smashes and n-airs, taking the first stock. Rndl responded by taking two stocks in a row, one with b-air edgeguards and one with a f-smash on Peach's slow ledge stand. Saki managed to contain the damage by n-airing out of Falco's attempted combo for the kill.

MIT then made a very interesting decision: they opted to send out their ace, XPilot (Marth), when most of UMB's heavy hitters still remained. In hindsight, perhaps MIT should have sent out one of its Peaches to ditto Saki instead, but XPilot certainly carried his weight as MIT's best player. Saki managed to grind out one of XPilot's stocks before falling. UMB countered with Klaps (Falcon), who would go on to beat XPilot 2-1 in bracket later that day; but in this crucial meeting, XPilot dominated on Klaps' Final Destination counterpick, taking advantage of techs in place and Falcon's poor recovery to get a 4-stocks-for-1 deal.



UMB, desperate to take XPilot out, called on Vudoo (Jigglyuff), who consistently manages to take a game from XPilot on Final Destination each time they meet in tournament. Vudoo did his job, yielding only two more stocks and slaying the beast. MIT's Skip (Fox) quickly avenged his fallen captain by upsmashing Vudoo's final two stocks, and MIT now held a strong 4-stock lead.



Next up for UMB was their hype-generating, hard-to-combo Luigi player Kaiju. Kaiju took advantage of some big combos and a failed ledgedash (the second Fox SD for MIT) to defeat Skip with two stocks remaining. He proceeded to take two more stocks off MIT's Rime (Peach) despite an SD at high percentage due to a missed reverse up-b. Since Rime, who often places top 8 at locals, was possibly MIT's second-best player, this was a major blow to MIT.

At this point, MIT was up two stocks, 14-12, and UMB sent in their lone Fox player, Flexed. Last semester, Flexed played terribly in Falco dittos against XPilot, taking only 1 stock; this time he was hungry to prove himself, and it showed. With impressive technical Fox play and solid edgeguarding, including some clutch shine spikes, Flexed plowed his way through Rime's last two stocks, all four of BatSox (Luigi)'s stocks, and all four of Booser (Peach)'s stocks, building up a colossal lead for UMB and swinging the momentum heavily in their favor. For Flexed to lose only a single stock to BatSox, a spacies slayer who had won the last tournament set between them, was particularly impressive.



MIT was down to its last man, the mysterious Falco player Frat Chicken. Though he has no tournament results from the past few years, Frat Chicken performed decently, but not amazingly, in earlier crew battles. Still, MIT held on to hope: he was the true "hidden boss" of their school, one who went even with XPilot and better than even against everyone else in friendlies. Regardless, taking out 9 UMB stocks would be a tall order, especially considering UMB's captain Crow remained.

Frat Chicken held the advantage for most of Flexed's final stock, but a too-low forward-b recovery meant he headed into his next match against UMB | Memory (Jigglypuff) with just three stocks. Against Memory, Frat Chicken showed how patient his Falco could be: he stayed back and pinned the Jigglypuff down with lasers, striking only when he saw a spacing mistake. Despite Frat Chicken's dominance of the neutral game, Memory found ways to land stray hits and convert them to a kill. But then, down to his last stock against Frat Chicken's two, Memory struck what was probably the death blow to MIT: he back-aired Falco's short-hop laser attempt, back-aired the resulting tech in place and blocked the panicked Falco forward-b with a forward-air, a kill sequence that began with Falco at only 44%.

UMB's final boss and captain, the Ganon player Crow, tagged in with only one goal: to take Falco's last stock. Frat Chicken played the matchup perfectly for the first minute, taking only 13% while pelting Crow with lasers and d-airs and shines. Crow valiantly lived to 219% thanks to Dreamland's huge blast zone distance and good DI, but just couldn't get a hit off. Still, he knew that it takes only a few hits for Ganon to kill Falco, and sure enough, he punished a technical flub by Frat Chicken—an aerial shine on Ganon's shield—and followed it up with an excellent series of reads to edgeguard Falco and take the stock, the game, and the match.

Tri-State division

Though the Tri-State Melee Games were new going into the fall semester, the newcomers actually outstripped their New England counterparts in the number of schools registered. Since Tri-State is so geographically dispersed, the 30-school bracket was divided into quarters by region: Upstate New York, New York City, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Cornell, led by the solid Fox main Icer, was the favorite in Upstate New York. Cornell's captain and starter Lu, Justin (Fox) demonstrated one of the first true slaughters of TMG, taking an eye-popping 21 stocks against a crew of mostly newer players from SUNY Cortland. He followed with modest 3 and 5-stock performances against Oneonta and the Rochester Institute of Technology, but strong play from the rest of their crew, especially Icer, gave Cornell two come-from-behind victories against those opponents to advance into the New York finals.

In New York City's first round, Stony Brook University (SBU)'s Falcon player Equal scored the first and only all-kill of TMG, running through St. John's University's first four players while only losing a single stock and cleaning up the last player while losing only two more; a week later, Columbia's Matt (Fox) and ZeroOmega (Falco) tore through the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), leaving MSM ace DizzKidBoogie (Ice Climbers) with an insurmountable 1 stock to 12 differential. Columbia, led by ZeroOmega and Cheezpuff (Jigglypuff), and SBU, led by Minty (Samus) and Venti (Falco), would go on to handily defeat NYU and Manhattan. Columbia went on to demonstrate the strength and depth of its lineup with its 20-15 stock victory over SBU.



Abate, one of the top Luigi players in the world and #34 on the 2014 MIOM ranking, goes to Pitt, so they naturally became the frontrunner in the Pennsylvania bracket. They faced Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Reddit's favorite non-technical Sheik player, Borp, in the first round, but Abate saw through all of Borp's tricks en route to demolishing CMU's last 10 stocks with two of his own left. Pitt didn't even need Abate to finish off Penn State, so they met UPenn in the Pennsylvania finals. Though UPenn had survived a heroic 14-stock effort from Temple's Smokey (Fox) to make it to Pitt, they also lost their last 6 stocks to Abate, yielding the Pennsylvania championship to Pitt.



New Jersey was a similar story as Pennsylvania: Rutgers was probably the strongest New Jersey crew even without their Sheik ace Swedish Delight (#56 on the 2014 MIOM ranking), but his inclusion ensured that Rutgers had an easy ride out of their state. Their New Jersey finals opponent was the New Jersey Institute of Technology, whose ace Qerb—a Game & Watch player ranked #13 in Tri-State—had taken 17 stocks from Ramapo University. Unfortunately for Qerb, Sheik annihilates low-tiers; Swedish dropped only 1 stock to the Game & Watch en route to a 7-stock win for Rutgers.

In their next match, Rutgers proved they had greater depth than Pitt, preserving 9 of their stocks going into Pitt's final boss Abate. The top Luigi player proved clutch for Pitt, entering his showdown against Swedish Delight down only a single stock. Swedish, however, had other ideas, and Rutgers took down Pitt with 3 stocks still intact.

Tri-State Regional Finals

TMG Tri-State coordinator HectoHertz hosts a New York City weekly series called Nebulous, so it was only natural that the New York and Tri-State TMG finals be held at one of these. Super Nebulous attracted 76 entrants, including NYC's top 4 (Hax, The Moon, DJ Nintendo, and G$), Connecticut's Swiftbass, Georgia's s0ft, DC's DoH, and Puerto-Rican-but-now-CT-resident Lord HDL. In the mid-afternoon, HectoHertz started the first of the two TMG crew battles, Columbia vs Cornell. Rutgers, the favorites from New Jersey, awaited the winner in the Tri-State finals.

In the New York finals, Columbia's solid lineup had little trouble dispatching Cornell in a 5v5 crew battle. Columbia's Zero Omega (Falco) and Fiya (Fox) built up a 3-stock lead, which Columbia captain Cheezpuff (Jigglypuff) preserved by taking 3 stocks from Cornell ace Icer. Columbia's FLOTUS (Peach) then converted that lead into a convincing 5-stock victory, setting his team up to face off against Rutgers.

Each team sent its usual lead-off man: Zero Omega (Falco) for Columbia and Overflow (Fox) for Rutgers. Both of these starters were used to success, having taken at least 5 stocks in every previous crew battle. Zero Omega's patient lasers in neutral and extended techchases when punishing gradually built up a 2-stock high-percent to 1-stock high-percent lead for the Columbia Falco, but a crucial missed edgeguard meant he finished with only 1 stock remaining.



Neither of the Columbia and Rutgers crews entered the match at full strength; each team was missing one of their top 5 players and had to sub in a less experienced (for Columbia) or less in-practice (for Rutgers) player instead. Rutgers elected to use their old-school player, Cheezit, to counter Falco with Peach. Zero Omega, however, repeatedly outspaced Cheezit's Peach with backairs and other safe moves. A few strong Falco punish strings, many backairs, and a low-percent SD by Cheezit later, Rutgers suddenly found itself at a full 4-stock deficit.



Though Rutgers' counterpick had backfired, they still had three strong players remaining. Internet Explorer, one of the world's top Link mains (and a programmer who's worked on Project M, the 20XX hack pack, and more) was sent to stop the Zero Omega menace, but the resilient Falco stubbornly ground out his 9th enemy stock before falling to Link's forward-tilt edgeguard.

FLOTUS (Peach), another player who'd never gone negative in a TMG crew battle, was Columbia's next contestant. FLOTUS counterpicked to Battlefield, the smallest stage available in TMG, hoping to mitigate the advantage Link's projectiles have over the slow-moving Peach. Internet Explorer ground out a slight lead despite FLOTUS's effective use of turnips, but threw away his second-last stock at 50% by overextending on an edgeguard attempt. Another traded stock later, Columbia had built for themselves a steep 6-stock lead.



Rutgers' other Fox, Takoyaki, entered the match determined to mount a comeback. On the other hand, his choice of counterpick, Final Destination, was somewhat puzzling: Peach has a chaingrab against Fox on that stage. After trading one stock apiece, FLOTUS took full advantage of this chaingrab to take Takoyaki's second stock before being eliminated.

Now it was Columbia's turn to use their newer player, Whiskers (Yoshi). Takoyaki fully abused Fox's greater mobility to run circles around his opponent, punishing whiffs and rolls to take two stocks before Whiskers could snag a nice forward-air edgeguard. The next two stocks were more of the same; Takoyaki's superior understanding of the neutral game gave him plenty of openings to rack up damage and finish Yoshi off.



Columbia, still sitting on a 3-stock lead, counterpicked with Cheezpuff's Jigglypuff. Cheezpuff opened the game by flubbing two excellent opportunities to gimp Fox at low percent, and Takoyaki was able to eke out an upsmash kill before dying.

Swedish Delight (Sheik), the final boss of Rutgers, now bore a three-stock deficit on his shoulders. He counterpicked Dreamland and immediately built a percent lead, but Cheezpuff got Sheik off-stage, grabbed the ledge, and rested the laggy on-stage up-b. The second stock again saw Swedish take the lead, but Cheezpuff again rested Sheik's recovery. Swedish finally finished his opponent off, but the damage had been done.



Columbia anchor Fiya (Fox) only needed to finish off two last Sheik stocks to win. Afraid of Swedish's famous tech-chasing skills, Fiya eschewed Final Destination, usually considered a great Fox vs Sheik stage, for Battlefield. His fears proved justified as Swedish techchases inflicted 60% before Fiya was able to get his first hit in. Both players dodged edgeguard attempts at mid-percent, but Swedish drew first blood with a shorthop back forward-air. Fiya quickly answered by up-tilt up-airing Swedish's over-ambitious attempt to drop on a 0% Fox with down-air, putting Swedish at last stock.

Swedish again managed to score big damage off grabs and techchases to take Fiya's second stock. Fiya, however, leveraged his invincibility to gain center stage, punishing Swedish's attempt to get around him with a nearly fatal combo. Then, he wisely waited beneath the side platform for Sheik to land, back-aired the landing to send Sheik offstage, and grabbed the ledge. Swedish up-b'd to the ledge, hoping Fiya would let go, but he guessed wrong, and Columbia emerged with a 2-stock victory.

The Melee Games Grand Finals

Having won their respective regions, UMB and Columbia will compete for the championship at what will be the biggest Melee Tournament of all time, APEX 2015. Though the lineups have not yet been confirmed, it seems like each school will send their top 5 players to vie for the title of "The Melee Games Second Semester Champion." I had the opportunity to interview the two finalist teams shortly after their regional victories; look out for them on stream at the end of January!