Smash Bros. Tournament Etiquette

A recent first hand experience.

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Super Smash Bros is enjoyed by casual gamers and competitive ones alike. The rule of the game is quite simple: Don't get knocked off the stage. This was a tournament held by Nintendo earlier this year.

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Here's about what the tournament I went to looked like. Overall the venue was kind of what I expected it to look like, so I was prepared in that aspect, but I wasn't prepared for other things.

1. Weapon of choice

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It is apparently common sense to bring a gamecube controller to tournaments exclusively. It is notably the easiest in terms of control and mechanics, possibly backed up by an imaginary poll somewhere that determined this when the tournament scene began. Like a dweeb, I brought a classic controller. Luckily I managed to preemptively guess this would happen, and decided not to bring it in, so I luckily wasn't publicly embarrassed THIS time.

2. Rules

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It is very unlike me to not study up on something I plan to dominate in. Unfortunately this is the case, as there are some confusing rules to the smash bros tournament etiquette.

Not knowing about "banned stages", I mindlessly picked a stage I thought my competitor and I mutually agreed to play on. I was such a fool, for my rival screeched, "Oh I didn't ban any of my stages yet!" I awkwardly laughed and said "Sorry!" We restarted our game. I had so much to learn, I thought to myself.

With some of my other competitors however we both were on a novice tournament intelligence level and agreed we didn't know the rules too well so we just played the same stage however many times until one of us was the victor.

3. Tier lists & gameplay

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A tier list is supposedly a consensus on who are the worst and best characters in each installment of Smash Bros. I prefer to play as Zelda (#37! oops) and this took my competitors back a bit. In my humble opinion, I think tier lists aren't very reliable, since I put up quite a good fight in some matches. And the fact I like to choose Zelda for ulterior motives to go against the notion of the gender binary, obviously!!!

I'm a very defensive player and often wait a lot while playing for my opponent to slip up. It's usually pretty effective, and definitely annoyed someone I played with, but to be honest I kind of only just wanted to annoy him.

4. No masked player at tournmanet

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Based on this amazing article. Good thing I left my mask in my car.

5. The fireplace that set the ambiance

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Among the six television screens and one lonely sofa in the venue in which I participated in this tournament, there was also a little digital fireplace in the corner of this all white walled, florescent lighted building. I think it was the true underdog of this whole event, and I'm glad it was there, definitely helped me zen in and out between matches, so here's a 3 hour long video of this fireplace.

*Overall I placed in the semi-finals, making it through 5 matches. The process took four hours. My friends and I eventually left knowing that our other friend still in the tournament would win. He did. THE END.