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A Smashing Good Time By Lucas Dyke
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There are very few video games in which you can fight a mustachioed Italian plumber wearing overalls while controlling an anthropomorphic fox with a laser gun and bionic legs. In fact, there are only four in the world, and all of them are installments in the Super Smash Bros. series of fighting games. This series has been around since 1999, and its most recent installment was in 2014, with the release of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and its handheld counterpart, Super Smash Bros. for 3DS, both commonly referred to as Smash Bros. 4.
Both games originally sported 51 playable characters, and now, with the inclusion of downloadable content, have a total of 58 characters. This is an incredible number by fighting game standards, and considering that each character has at least 20 moves, Smash Bros. 4 contains over 1,160 moves, each with their own unique properties and effects. All of these characters and moves, each of which can be linked into multiple other moves at certain points in a match, come together to create a fighting game with considerable competition appeal. A competitive scene that many had previously assumed would die out quickly has flourished and is still going strong after almost two years. To this day, people are still discovering new combos, setups, strategies, and uses for each character, a continuous cycle of innovation and improvement fueled by the desire to win with one’ s favorite character( or, in many cases, with characters considered the best in the game). Smash Bros. 4 is constantly evolving, the meta changing, and the competitive scene just as diverse as the community that loves this game, items turned on or not.
In late 2014, Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS had just been released, and all those who had played the previous games in the series started flocking to it, curious about which mechanics had changed and which had stayed true to previous games. The tournament scene slowly developed with the handheld version of the game, but took off with the release of the Wii U version. The first player to make waves in the Smash Bros. 4 community emerged not long after the Wii U release. Gonzalo Barrios, more well known by his competitive alias“ ZeRo,” started his winning streak in that fateful November. ZeRo placed first in fifty-four consecutive tournaments, a streak lasting until the MLG Finals tournament in October of the following year where Nairoby“ Nairo” Quezada defeated him in the Grand Finals, ending ZeRo’ s almost year-long