“Super Mario Multiverse” – Super Smash Bros. Melee (GCN) by CakeMatrix

Super Smash Bros. Melee

by CakeMatrix

Along with Tetris Attack, Soul Calibur II, Final Fantasy Tactics, and to a certain extent, Tecmo Super Bowl, this is one of the few games I can say with one hundred percent confidence that I played waaayyy too much. At the height of my addiction, I was easily logging 50+ hours a day in front of my roadside-pickup 32” CRT television. Maybe I’m exaggerating slightly, but I was definitely playing Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube far too often, when I should have been doing my homework, getting a healthy amount of sleep, or practicing the bass clarinet like a responsible adult. If I were to load up my old memory card — and I f*cking will — I’d probably cringe at the total number of games my college friends and I recorded between 2011 and 2013.

When I went to my first tournament, though, I learned that most competitors in the Melee scene played anywhere from three to six times as much as I did. And it showed, because I got whoopt pretty bad, but I understood exactly why they were so passionate about this game that was 13 years old at the time: It was just pure fun to play.

And some of those guys were unemployed, but I’m not really judging.

I don’t really know what the point of this article is going to be. On the surface, Melee seems like such a simple pleasure, and it certainly can be if you just want to explore some casual, absurd mayhem with your friends. I’m not one of those elitist goons who uses the term “casual” disparagingly, because literally the point of videogames is to have fun. But Melee is such an oddly nuanced and brilliant creation that I want to incoherently ramble about it at all times. If that sounds good to you, keep reading. This game means a lot to me, and I just want to share.

I didn’t get into Smash Bros (N64) until I visited a college friend around 2008. He lived in a small house on the Union College campus with four friends or so, and they were all pretty competitive, so the first time I joined one of their games, I got knocked around like a pinball during an earthquake, but imagine if some guy was inexplicably playing pinball during that earthquake instead of finding safe shelter. I’m saying I wasn’t very good at Smash Bros.

I visited them a lot, especially since my older brother happened to attend the same establishment of education and I could “visit two friends with one stone,” to use a popular American phrase. But the atmosphere was inviting, and I wanted to do nothing else but play this four-person battle royale with a bunch of people I just met. And drink a lot of Keystone Light, which was the cheapest and most efficient way to become inebriated on our college kid budgets.

It’s absolutely bizarre to think that some of those guys have earned their PhDs now, especially when you consider that one time we all recycled 1,569 cans of Keystone F*cking Light at the local grocery store so that we could cash in the bottle returns to buy more Keystone F*cking Light. I am both proud and embarrassed by this accomplishment.

At some point I started watching videos of Isai — arguably the greatest Smash Bros player of all time — and decided I would git gud. I didn’t, but I at least tried for a serious year or two. I even won a few local tournaments in Louisiana and Connecticut, but this article ISN’T ABOUT ME.

Fast forward to the time I went back to college in 2011. In fact, fast forward to my second semester at the University of New Orleans, after I had made enough friends that at any given time, there were at least two other people in my dorm room playing Super Smash Bros. Melee. As a player who made the transition from Nintendo 64 to GameCube, I had a hard time learning how to dodge and land the slower downward spikes, but I stuck with it because it was just fun. Melee somehow never became any less fun to play.

I think this is what I want to focus on, at least a little. Out of the hundreds or maybe even thousands of videogames I’ve played in my thirty three years on planet Earth, I’ve encountered a few that I will never become bored with. At the top of that short list sits Super Smash Bros. Melee. It was so much fun for me, that I sort of accidentally stumbled into the game’s hidden mechanics, and competitive techniques, much like I did with the first Smash game. I wanted to be good at Melee.

I mean, ultimately I didn’t, but I had a blast trying to get there. I made some exceptional friends, attended some fantastic Smashfests (a few that doubled as crawfish boils) and generally always had something to look forward to on my calendar. All because of Melee (and later, Project M, which had a relatively sizable scene in NOLA). The morning of my brother’s wedding, he, his college friends, and I hooked the GameCube up to our hotel room TV and played doubles for like an hour. Doubles is the best format, by the way.

Fast forward once more, to two years ago. I had just moved to Portland, Maine after a crushing breakup with my ex-girlfriend. Someone who had been there for me since the days of Melee in my New Orleans dorm room, but I could no longer be around because sometimes relationships just burn. I drove from Kansas City, Missouri all the way to New England to start a new life, but without any friends to game with, I turned to Facebook of all places. I had some pretty unfavorable (and downright weird) experiences trying to find Smash Bros friends on social media in the past, but I’m just not the kind of person to look at a set of undeniable data and draw any sort of logical conclusion. So I invited a random person from the Internet over to play Project M (a modification of Brawl that makes it play much more like Melee). Two years later, he’s pretty much my best friend, so thank you, Melee, and all the Smash Bros. games, for being such a strangely important part of my life.

And thank you, the reader, for listening to me gush about this stupid game I love so much.

Wahoo! You are a Super Reader! But the adventure doesn’t stop here… There’s more of this project in another castle! This article is just one level in an entire Super Mario Multiverse, a galactic collaboration between writers around the world sharing a bit of our hearts and memories about our favorite Mario games. Visit the Center of the Multiverse to see more: