Melee is Sick

Like a lot of people, I discovered this game through the Smash Bros Documentary that came out in 2014. I immediately got hooked, bought a gamecube controller, and started practicing wave dashing, l-cancelling, and all sorts of tech skills. It was around this time too that a lot of people in our school picked up melee and it became something we carried with us throughout our time in high school. By seinor year, our AP Physics class every morning was just 4-6 of us taking turns around 2 game cube controllers and a laptop. Its sad to say I never got good at the game. Right now I would get washed by a bronze player on slippi, but to this very day I'll still watch some melee tournaments and zain streams and be in awe of the level of gameplay. This game itself is a "beautiful accidental mess of a masterpiece." While most of it may not have been intended, the mechanics of the movement and combat are so sharp and so crisp that its not only by far the best in all smash titles, but one of the best in all fighting games. Although it's hard to compare to fighting games like SF, Tekken, or Marvel Capcom, I feel that the sandbox nature of the game along with different stages/platforms allows for a higher degree of freedom in skill expression. There are combos and flowcharts, but the game is much more than just memorizing button sequences. Ultimately, this is what melee is to me. It's art; it's jank; it's culture. It's S2J losing to some weird invisible ceiling glitch. It's M2K vs Armada, Mang0 vs Hbox, Zain vs Cody. It's Chillin getting 5-0'd by Leffen. It's "Happy Feet. Wombo Combo. that ain't falco." It's the fact that over 20 years in, it is still too early to make a tier list, and mid-tier characters like Pikachu and Yoshi can win majors and even low tiers like DK will have top 20 players. Falco will always be my boy. PPMD Kreygasm