winning streak.
Throughout that year, there was a mad rush for someone to knock ZeRo off of the throne, to claim the title of best Smash Bros. 4 player. This led to a period in which competitive players were doing all they could to find new combos, new ways to secure knock-outs, or K. O.’ s, and all the while making themselves better players and gradually evening out the field. The competitors innovated, they optimized, they trained. These days, when a national tournament is held, there are an assortment of players who are all capable of taking the title, ZeRo included. All of them have put in the work, all of them have spent countless hours fighting against other top players and many more in training mode with their best characters. People decide which characters are good and which are unsuitable for tournament use based on combos, safe K. O. setups, data about the delay, or lag, of each character’ s moves, and each move’ s size and duration. Playing a character is nowhere near a simple mathematical calculation; people can underestimate characters who, when put in the right hands, can come close to winning national tournaments who were never before seen in the Top 16 of any national tournament.
One of these underdog characters was Villager, a new fighter to the Smash Bros. series who hails from Nintendo’ s Animal Crossing series. They were available to players as early as the pre-release demo for Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS., but was perceived as one of the worse characters. As the competitive scene evolved and the game was patched multiple times, Villager still found little use. Finally, January 2016 rolled around. Genesis 3 was a much-anticipated national American tournament, highlighted by the appearance of notable Japanese players. One of these Japanese players was Ranai, who had been taking the Japanese tournament scene by storm- with Villager. Ranai plowed through the bracket at Genesis 3 and took an unprecedented third place. He showed off aspects of the character that no one had ever thought to explore. Ranai made Villager look like a completely new character by optimizing their tools and moves in ways people had ever seen. Post-tournament, the rise of new Villager players has been tremendous. People discover new things that you can do with Villager on a consistent basis, and now regularly use them competitively. Ranai sparked a revolution that brought Villager out of the dark and into the
The medal presentation at the Smash Bros. 4 tournament at Evo 2016, considered to be the largest tournament for fighting games in the U. S.