We’re finally here. After a surprisingly uncontroversial SSBMRank release, weeks of watching Zain play random characters on Ranked, and basically nothing to talk about, we’re in the week of Melee’s Super Bowl in Genesis. Excuse me, Genesis X2.
The eleventh installment of Melee’s biggest major series is set to happen this weekend. Practically everyone that you could care about in the game’s top echelon is attending. For starters, there’s nine of SSBMRank’s Top 10 here, with Nicki as the only player not present. In his place, however, is Plup: the best player who isn’t ranked and potentially an even bigger threat to win majors.
In today’s column, and in line with most of my major previews, I’ll be making predictions about how this tournament will go. However, I’m also taking a larger look at the community itself and reviewing some of the most essential scene-wide storylines heading into this event. While not all of this is going to necessarily be positive, it’s been a minute since we’ve had time to reflect on Melee’s current state of affairs.
Where is the community at right now?
I talked more in-depth about scene-wide storylines in my first column of the year, but I’ll quickly recap some of them in the context of Genesis X2. The first thing I’d mention is the rise of different regional ‘factions’ in place of the triarchy we previously had of Beyond the Summit, VGBootCamp, and Panda. The North American West Coast has Galint Gaming, Level1 TV, and Eggdog Esports; on the East Coast (of which I conveniently include Ontario), there’s Luminosity, Nouns, and EvenMatchupGaming.
Within the Midwest, South, and other American regions you have a bunch of different region-specific groups that take way too much time to name here. The people at Mogul Moves and Offbrand kind of operate in their sphere. In one of the most important news pertaining to Smash this year, Start.GG was bought out from Microsoft and currently has a staff of four people trying to keep the website working. I mention this because this platform once seemed on its deathbed, enough to where tournament organizers I personally knew were considering using another platform. There’s Melee Stats too, I guess, though we’re obviously operating in shortened capacity.
In general, the scene has a mix of regionalized ‘power players,’ localized production groups, and different volunteers trying to do cool things for the scene. Additionally, players have a lot more leverage over tournaments and the event ecosystem than in years past, largely because there’s been a bigger push toward players allowing events to use their active Twitch channels. In the backdrop, we have declining viewership and a mildly disappointing conclusion to an initially promising positive trend for major attendance last year. Is that depressing? Kind of. But it doesn’t stop there.
Who Isn’t at Genesis X?
A couple of months ago, a dear friend of mine wrote to me about the number of attendees at Genesis X2, mentioning there were less than 3,000 entrants, significantly fewer than last year, also citing a decline in Melee attendants. However, he was specifically worried about the lack of Top 100 players at the event. He asked me if this time to panic about it. I said “no,” and mentioned that there was no real reason to freak out. Now that registration is over, I still don’t think there’s a reason to freak out, but I do think there’s an interesting angle here. I checked the archives of previous iterations of Genesis in the SSBMRank era to see if there was any significant reason to be concerned.
| Genesis Edition | Top 10 Count | Top 50 Count | Top 100 Count |
| Genesis 3 | 9 | 41 | 74 |
| Genesis 4 | 10 | 44 | 82 |
| Genesis 5 | 10 | 42 | 75 |
| Genesis 6 | 8 | 35 | 66 |
| Genesis 7 | 10 | 40 | 71 |
| Genesis 9 | 9 | 39 | 71 |
| Genesis X | 9 | 39 | 65 |
| Genesis X2 | 9 | 36 | 61 |
NOTE: Genesis 8 wasn’t counted due to the lack of a Top 100 in 2021.
I’m not diminishing the hard work that the Genesis staff put into this event. They overwhelmingly do a great job and I would strongly recommend that anyone able to attend still do so. At the same time though, it’s undeniable that Genesis isn’t as stacked as it used to be. Is any of this the fault of Genesis? No, not really. We are not in 2017 any more. The well of potential investors has clearly been sucked dry and nobody is naive enough to believe the false promise of esports any more.
Whatever diminished representation we have of the Top 100 at our biggest tournament is clearly more of a reflection of today’s competitive gaming ecosystem and its severe limitations. I would also argue that it runs downstream of our aging player base. Don’t be fooled by OG Kid’s inclusion on the Top 100; this is our oldest Top 100 yet. With age comes obligations that get in the way of people’s ability to prioritize a video game.
I could talk about this all day. Maybe I will talk about it in another column. For now though, we can still be excited about Genesis while keeping this in mind. Enough of me being a sourpuss; let’s get into the fun stuff.
NorCal’s Home Defenders
One of the coolest things about Genesis every year is seeing NorCal turnout. This region’s arguably more storied than any other region, as it basically spawned the modern tournament scene as we know it. Each era of NorCal is typically present at Genesis each year, and this year’s edition is no different. For this part though, I’m going to pick four NorCal players I’m excited to see at Genesis.
I’m somewhat cheating with this pick, but I can’t ignore Kevbot’s return to the region where he initially came to prominence. In recent times, he moved to Philadelphia and ended up ranked at No. 3, underneath Raz and Dawson on the most recent regional power rankings. Unfortunately, he has the 61 seed at Genesis, which approximately places him in the “moky death laser” range. But with the right losers bracket, this could be a great homecoming story for the former NorCal rising star. In fact, he recently beat three Top 100 players (Jude, Holiday, and Zanya) at Smash Valley 2025.
Although he didn’t make the Top 100 in 2024, Umarth has continued to do well for himself on a regional level. I’m pretty interested to see how he does here because he tends to do really well at Genesis. Last year, he beat Mot$, the year before that, he beat Skerzo, and in 2022, he beat Bimbo. I wonder if this will be the fourth Genesis where he takes home another top spacie win; if Umarth makes it by GUESS MONSTER in R1 pools, he has KJH to start R2.
Despite SFAT’s recent national inactivity, he’s clearly still very good at Melee. Last year, he split records vs. each of Magi and Fiction (1-1 each), maintained a competitive rivalry with S2J (4-5), and had back-and-forth sets with Salt at one tournament (1-2), as well as boasting individual wins over Joshman, Spark and Lucky. Right now, he has the 33 seed, which would set him up against Squid and Ben in R2 before Top 64. I like his chances of beating both, although he unfortunately would have to likely play against Zain right afterward. The only thing I have to say on that note is that the last time SFAT beat Zain, this song was popular.
Lastly, there’s S2J, a great contender to outperform his seed. He finished his 2024 season with a pretty wild losers run to 13th place at Don’t Park on the Grass, with wins over Spark, Faust, Medz, and Zamu. The nice news for S2J is that if the new Genesis bracket turns out as projected, he may not need to do it all through the losers bracket. Currently, his projected path to winners quarterfinals involves three people he’s beaten in previous sets: KJH (or frequent S2J punching bag Umarth), Trif, and Aklo. How much further he could get from that, I’m not really sure, but I’d love to see him challenge Zain again.
Potential Dream Run Brackets
In this section, I’m going to pick out five players that could potentially have a dream bracket run at Genesis X. If I don’t mention a player here, it’s not because they won’t do well – I merely prioritized potential outcomes that have either never happened or haven’t happened in a while. Nobody is going to bat an eyelash at calling potential top eight runs for any of Soonsay, Junebug, Spark, Axe, Salt, Krudo, SDJ, Medz, or Magi; we’ve literally seen each of them happen over the last year.
I’ll start with Aura, the main guardian of the Pacific Northwest and a Peach who frequently mauls Fox players. Assuming he makes it to Top 32 in the winners bracket, he has Cody Schwab. Now, this is undeniably a tall order. At the same time though, what exactly have we seen from Cody in this matchup? A couple convincing sets vs. Trif and close calls with Wally? Among the top seeds Aura could have played instead, Cody seems like his best shot. Beating him would bring Aura to play one of Magi or Soonsay, both still tough but also volatile players too. I also picked Aura because he’s never made a major top eight, and it’d be cool to see him do it at Genesis.
Sticking with the theme of players that haven’t made top eights at all or seem “due” for one in a long time, there’s a trio of players that I’m curious to watch here. Obviously, there’s Zamu, my pick for greatest player to never make top eight. Then you have lloD, one of the best nationally inactive players in the scene and several months removed from his third place peak at Riptide 2023. Lastly comes Panda, who has made top eights at events right underneath major status and beaten multiple Top 10 players. I picked these players because each of their respective projected opponents in Top 48 (in order, Jmook, aMSa, and Aklo) are ones that seem directly susceptible to dropping a set to them or a similar archetype of player.
I am now going to end this section by immediately bringing up Magi. To those of you immediately wondering why I brought up someone whom I previously mentioned as a non-news-worthy top eight performer, here’s the twist: I’m not saying Magi is merely making top eight. As a matter of fact, she’s got a relatively great path to winners finals for an 18 seed. Assuming she makes it by Nanami, which I’d argue is more likely to happen than not, her projected path to winners finals is relatively doable: Soonsay, a Fox, Cody, another Fox, Plup, someone she’s beaten before, and Jmook, another person she’s beaten before. Is this the expected outcome? Probably not, but it’s a cool one that I’m rooting for.
Buy or Sell In Top 16
For this next segment, I’m going to talk about the players within the 9 to 16 range for seeds. Before I start though, I want to be clear: by virtue of being in this group, each of these players are likelier to do well than they are to not do well. However, out of each of these eight people, I’m going to pick four buys and four sells relative to their expectations at this event. Why? Because I feel like it.
I do not like any of the brackets projected for Salt, Trif, SDJ, or Wizzrobe, so each of them is a “sell.” In Salt’s case, it’s downstream of having to play Zain, who’s routinely beaten her the multiple times they’ve played. For Trif, it has to do with an unfavorable matchup versus a projected lower seed (S2J). Meanwhile, SDJ, despite my praise of them, has a hard stop in moky as a projected Top 24 opponent, with a tough matchup before in Ossify too. And unfortunately with Wizzrobe, having Plup as a projected foe in Top 24 basically ends any chance of a deep run in winners bracket. With respect to our Captain Falcon GOAT – who, to his credit, has taken sets before – let’s be real. Plup could literally beat Wizzrobe with three different characters in the same set while playing on a MadCatz controller. Granted, that applies to most Melee players against Plup, but it’s rare to see someone so thoroughly dominate a peer for more than a decade.
Conversely, I do like each of the brackets for Soonsay, Joshman, Krudo, and Mang0: my respective “buys.” I know I mentioned Magi as a potential early exit from the winners bracket for Soonsay, but truthfully, he has a similar shot at making it far. I only picked Magi instead because Soonsay has already had a top three performance in 2024. With Joshman, I am pretty high on him vs. Sheik right now due to his recent stretch of success vs. Spark and Jmook, and he also won his last set vs. Hungrybox. Krudo hasn’t had a very big win in a long time, but his head-to-heads against the field are tremendous and he’s run it close with Jmook before. Mang0 is Mang0, so you never know if he’s going to buster out at Genesis or do great. Lately, he’s only bustered out, but is that really going to happen for a fourth time? Even if he doesn’t win, you’d think that Mang0’s average placement here would be more in line with what we see from him when he’s in top competing shape.
The Underdogs
From the 5 to 8 seeds (and obviously the nine seed at this particular tournament), we get into the dark horses. These are players with significantly non zero chances of winning the event, but quite a bit lower than the people above them. If someone asks you, “could this player win,” you’d say something like “totally!” but if you’re being honest with yourself, you’d know it’s still a long shot (respectfully).
The long-term success that aMSa had against Zain for most of 2024 made him one of the most unique players at majors. It always felt like his presence heavily impacted who’d win the event (usually Cody), and yet he never took home the gold outside of a for-fun side invitational. His projected path here is pretty strange in that one of his toughest opponents, lloD, comes pretty early. If he can get through lloD, aMSa has a much more favorable path of Mang0 and Zain into top eight from the winners side. Within top eight itself come potential showdowns with any of moky, Aklo, Cody, or Jmook, all scary opponents.
Plup is in a weird spot. His projected bracket to winners quarterfinals is quite favorable (Slowking into Lucky into Wizzrobe), but the key problem here is Cody, who frankly beats Plup even worse than Plup beats Wizzrobe. With that in mind though, if the opponent is anyone other than Cody in the spot, Plup’s tournament-winning chances skyrocket. You could very well imagine a situation where Plup beats Magi or Soonsay in Top 12, and then defeats Jmook and aMSa to make it to grand finals before beating Jmook, aMSa, or Wizzrobe again to win his first major since Riptide 2023. Then again, there’s always the chance that he instead plays Cody in grand finals and we know what’s likely to happen then.
I’ve gained a reputation among my readers as a prime Hungrybox doubter, and even Hungrybox told me that he used my column as motivational fuel to eventually win majors. To tell the truth, some of it is for the bit. In all seriousness, you can never reasonably count out one of the greatest players ever. At the same time though, Hungrybox has lost a lot of typical bracket “strengths” that he used to boast in the past. He’s not as reliable vs. the field, he’s lost favorable matchups even within the Top 25, and his most favorable matchup within the top eight seeds (aMSa) is on the other side of the bracket. With that in mind though, there is definitely a path for him to win, it’s just a very narrow one. If he can get by Joshman and break a losing streak versus Jmook – which is not necessarily impossible given how Hungrybox has done that vs. Cody before – Hungrybox could suddenly be in a major top eight from the winners side. From that point onward though, he really cannot run into Zain.
I previously doubted Aklo’s chances of doing well at the Nounsvitational before he went on to get fourth place. Before that, I was heavily skeptical of his chances of doing well at Don’t Park on the Grass, and he nearly won the tournament. I even thought his Link would never defeat Zain a single time, and he was even closer to winning LMMM. I’m not going to doubt him any more. Out of the opponents (Kalvar, Panda, Trif) in his path to top eight, Panda is the trickiest one, but I think the other two are very favorable draws. From then on, Aklo has a tossup Fox ditto with likely moky, Zain, and then one of Cody or Jmook. It’s not necessarily the expected result for Aklo to win this event, and I do think that Cody has had Aklo’s number for the last couple of years worse than anyone else in the top echelon, but this is one opponent. Other than that, I think Aklo is honestly a step above everyone else in this group at this particular major.
The Main Contenders
It’s no surprise that four of last year’s five major champions are in this part of the column. But picking who will win the event is also the most fun part.. There’s also an interesting undercurrent to this group of four players in that we have the two most recent major champions versus the current era’s well-established top two.
moky has a good path to grand finals here. There’s two projected Fox dittos against Kevbot and Preeminent, both of which I imagine would go moky’s way the overwhelming majority of the time. After that, he has SDJ, a Jigglypuff that isn’t Hungrybox, in a matchup we rarely see moky lose, before yet another Fox ditto in Aklo. It’s a tough call between those two, but if moky survives Aklo, his bracket can go in multiple directions. He could run into Zain, the current demon he’s yet to conquer, he could get a potential runback with aMSa, whom he farmed for several sets before dropping their last one, or, conversely, he could have a showdown with Mang0, an old demon that he hasn’t lost to or played in a truly competitive set in quite some time. Either way, moky making it by his opponent in winners semifinals would set him up nicely for a winners finals matchup versus Jmook or Cody in all likelihood.
Something similar could be said about Jmook, but in a slightly different manner. With respect to other players he could be facing in each subsequent phase of bracket, the toughest opponents he has come relatively early: Zamu and in Krudo. With that in mind though, I think that if Jmook gets to Hungrybox, the sky’s the limit. He is very favored against him in recent memory and then plays two of Cody, Plup, Zain or aMSa. Cody obviously is a notable long-term difficult opponent for Jmook, and so is Plup, but if Jmook makes it by either one of them (or whomever else could be there), it should be smooth sailing, relatively speaking.
Pop quiz time – when was the last time that we had three consecutive majors with Cody and Zain in attendance where neither of them won? The answer: Scuffed World Tour to Collision 2023, when aMSa looked like a potential No. 1 contender for the first part of it, and when Jmook looked like the early favorite for No. 1. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but all things considered, we’ve seen 23 tournaments since. Before moky and Jmook’s recent wins, you could have argued that Cody or Zain – despite playing only two tournament grand finals against one another in this entire time span – were the best top two of all-time.
Clearly, each of these two remain the leading favorites by the numbers. However, based on what we’ve discussed so far, it seems like they each have tough brackets. Can Cody make it through two of Aura, Soonsay, or Magi? What about Zain’s whack-a-mole-esque bracket? Look at the characters involved for his grand finals run: Salt (Captain Falcon) or Axe (Pikachu), aMSa (Yoshi) or Mango (Falco), moky (Fox) or Aklo (Link), and then Cody (Fox) or Jmook (Sheik). If you were to create a bracket that either player wins, it’s probably a bit more tailored to their strengths than the ones they currently have.
My Final Call
I don’t think Zain or Cody are winning Genesis X2. I’m not accounting for all possibilities here – and honestly maybe it’s my gut telling me this over actual data – but I feel like the amount of volatility in their bracket paths don’t bode well for either player’s chances. Naturally, this would leave us with Jmook and moky as my next two picks to win the event. And I think it’s reasonable enough to treat this a decision between these two.
But want to know the truth? Somewhere in my heart, I feel like this is the moment of modern Melee where all hell breaks loose. Something tells me it’s not going to be Jmook who wins this tournament, but it won’t be moky either, nor will it be Mang0. Instead, as it has fittingly done numerous times in Melee history, this Genesis will once again mark the start of a new era. What better conclusion to the era of Zain vs. Cody could there be than a tournament where we once again gain a new entrant into Melee’s pantheon of major champions?
With absolutely nothing but a look at the bracket, a bit of wishful thinking, and a proper assessment of good vibes, I believe that Aklo will win Genesis X2.