Super Smash Con is this upcoming weekend and will be holding tournaments for every single Smash game ever released by Nintendo. The tournament will be running singles and doubles for every game and will be filled with rank players across all games. It’s a convention put on by the Smash community for the Smash community.
Smash 64
The original Smash game that started it all will be back at Super Smash Con 2016. The event is stacked with international talent and is expected to be the largest Smash 64 in the games long history. It will be the toughest test yet for a community that isn’t used to the large turnouts, with 314 players registered for the events.
Last year’s champion, Dan “Superboomfan” Hoyt, will be back to defend his title in both singles and doubles. The Canadian Smasher has been the best player in North America for the past five years, with Joel “Isai” Alvarado not consistently showing up to events.
Superboomfan’s been the best player, but he won’t have an easy road to another Super Smash Con title with players like Texas’s Eduardo “Tacos” Tovar and the best American player Joey “KeroKeroppi” Speziale, who finished third and second at last years’ event, a solid performance for the event. Isai is always more than a threat to take his game to another level and take the event. He’s still widely considered as the best Smash 64 player in history.
The last time these players met in a tournament was at Snosa 2 in Pasedena, California where Superboomfan took out Tacos in Grand Finals. Isai finished third and Mexico’s best player Arturo “Mariguas” Hernadez finished fourth. Realistically, any of the top five players are capable of winning this event.
Expect to see the top players to be switching off their main characters constantly in certain matchups. The average characters played throughout a tournament is 2.43 and only players like Melee pro Justin “Wizzrobe” Hallett and Abacus “LD” Zilch will rarely switch off their Yoshi and Fox picks. Aside from Genesis, which just recently made its return, Super Smash Con is the biggest event with the biggest payout for Smash 64.
It will be tough to take out Superboomfan who is so proficient with all his characters and in every matchup, but he’s not unbeatable. The crowd will get a good look at a game that didn’t have a chance at making a real competitive scene, but is still extremely technical and fun to watch.
(Look back here later for a full Melee preview)
Super Smash Bros Brawl
Super Smash Brothers Brawl is the game people feel is not on par with the rest of the franchise. Brawl players will tell you the exact opposite. The one game that doesn’t ever get the love and attention of the other three will be back at Super Smash Con and should provide some intense action.
The undisputed best Brawl player of all time will be in attendance. Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman had a run in Brawl on par with the great Justin Wong runs in Marvel vs Capcom and the long run Zero had at the start of Smash 4. He won last year’s event using the controversial character Meta Knight over Eric “ESAM” Lew, who surprised everyone by taking out the second best player in Brawl’s lifespan Nairoby “Nairo” Quezada.
The tournament didn’t necessarily have the viewership or notoriety of the other events considering most of Brawl’s best players have moved on or retired from playing the game, but the game did provide hype. Watching Jestise “MVD” Negron play his zoning game with Snake, a uniquely interesting character in Brawl, or Kero play the spacing game with Olimar is something we don’t see in any other smash game.
Yes, a majority of the entrants will play the standard Meta Knight, but even Meta Knight’s style is unique to Brawl and extremely hard to take your eyes off of. Brawl will add a nice blend of old and new players and characters that all have the same goal in mind: take down M2K and his insanely good Meta Knight.
We didn’t quite get the Grand Finals we were hoping for last year with Nairo falling out of the tournament to Esam’s aggressive Pikachu, but it’s hard to see a scenario where that doesn’t happen this year. The event, like Smash 64, has an incredible prize pool. M2K walked away with $2,235 after winning Brawl at Super Smash Con 2015.
Super Smash Bros. For Wii U
Comparing this year’s event to last years is going to be difficult. The entire Smash 4 landscape has changed, Gonzales “Zero” Barrios is no longer the juggernaut he was a year ago and the field is wide open. Considering the Evo 2016 champion Elliot “Ally” Bastien finished outside the top 32 at CEO 2016 only to come back two weeks later and win Evo tells you that the Smash 4 landscape is very fluid at this moment.
Super Smash Con should be no different. It’s nearly impossible to pick a winner or which character will win at this point in the meta-game. Anyone can lose to anyone, as proven by the fact that the last four major tournaments which all have different winners with similar player pools. It’s a complete toss up at this point.
The favorite would probably have to be Ally, who lost at last week’s Clutch City Clash, but took home top honors at the biggest Smash tournament of all time (Evo 2016). Other names like Japanese best player and winner at Clutch City Clash, Yuta “Abadango” Kawamura, will be competing. The CEO 2016 champion Jason “Anti” Bates will also be in attendance.
Super Smash Con will boast the third largest Smash 4 event in the games short history which says a lot considering the next two events ahead of it were the two most attended events in Smash history. The community will also get the respect it deserves by catering to a Smash contingent audience with best of fives in all of top 32.
Expect to see a wide variety of characters throughout top 32 and names that you’ve never seen before taking out top players. Smash 4 is volatile so at an event this big upsets will happen and amazing players will fall before top 8.
Watch the entire event at: http://twitch.tv/VGbootcamp (hyperlink)
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