It’s another slow news week in Melee, but I have good news for you. In about three weeks, Melee’s going to be back and better than ever at Genesis. Excuse me: Genesis X2. Other than the fact that it’s going to take some time to get used to, I’m pretty excited for this tournament. In general, Genesis is the event that most of us in the community look forward to each year. It has more history as a major than any other active tournament series, it’s the birthplace of the game’s greatest rivalry, and when it launched in 2009, it essentially marked the start of a new era for the scene, one separate from the ghosts it previously chased in the MLG era.
Most of you know that my entry point to Melee content wasn’t just playing the game – it was also my appreciation for Melee history. The Genesis tournament series has played a unique role in shaping my understanding of the game, but it’s also offered the community some truly great stories. That’s why in today’s Monday Morning Marth, I’m going to do something very silly: for each of the previous Genesis events, I’m going to tell you whom I saw as the “protagonist” for each iteration.
Who is the protagonist? Well, for the most part, it depends whom you ask, but for the purpose of this column (me desperately trying to find something to talk about during a down week), it’s whomever I have personally deemed to have the most interesting and event-defining story at that particular event. I’m also going to add another rule in here: I am not allowed to pick multiple events for one player. The long story short: this is the anti-Mang0 and anti-Armada clause. In my opinion, it’s more fun to pick different people for each event.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis X?
We’ll begin with the tournament I found most difficult to care about in the moment. Honestly, the fact that I feel this way probably has more to do with personal turmoil I was dealing with around this time, as well as burnout with Smash, but I’m getting distracted. Back to the main topic, I struggled to find a clear protagonist for this tournament. Was aMSa’s run a bit of a surprise? I guess so. moky had a stupidly hard bracket, and yet there’s nothing that wild about him being in the top four considering he just finished 2023 ranked in the top five. There’s Leffen’s return, which came with him losing to the two best players in the world. Eventually, I realized, the answer was staring me in the face: Cody Schwab.
All in all, this event basically capped off a historic stretch for him. Obviously, Cody had just won The Match, winning the number one rank over Zain in an unprecedented organized first-to-ten that will probably never happen again. Before that, he had won stacked regionals in Santa Paws and Arcamelee 4, while also casually having the greatest loser’s bracket run of the SSBMRank era at The Big House 11 and winning Shine 2023 over Zain. I’m being slightly glib here when I say this, but from August 2023 to January 2024, Cody basically won six ‘big events’ (The Match was technically an ‘event’ of sorts) over top notch competition. Winning Genesis was basically the icing on the cake for Melee’s best – and somehow unsponsored – player.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis 9?
This one has a more clear cut answer. Before we get into it though, I want to talk about who wasn’t the protagonist at Genesis 9, and that would be Mang0, who sandbagged with secondaries because he was upset about finishing No. 3 and not No. 2 on the 2022 Top 100. It also wasn’t aMSa, who relatively bustered out of the tournament at ninth place, and it wasn’t Zain, Hungrybox, nor Plup. Generally speaking, there’s two clear options here in Jmook and moky. It really becomes one when you consider what happened at Genesis 8 (more on that later).
moky basically showed that he was legitimately capable of winning a major in this run. Now, earlier in his career, he had made top eights, and during the online era, he even had that wild run to third place at LACS 4. In a sense, it wasn’t the most surprising thing in the world that he did well, because there was something close to precedent. However, the crazy part was the fact that moky put it all together in one run. Before it happened, you might have looked at moky’s bracket path (Hungrybox into Cody Schwab into Plup) and thought it had the potential for a breakout, but that’s not the same thing as it being the expected outcome. This was the first real major that made Melee fans see those type of paths for moky and start thinking of them as repeatable.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis 8?
I’m not even going to waste time on this; it’s clearly Jmook. As I’ve written about before in this column, Jmook’s run at Genesis 8 is one of the greatest overperformances by seed in two decades worth of major tournaments. If you were to make a top underdog runs list of all-time today, in 2025, your list would straight up be wrong if you did not have this in the top five. Although Jmook had been known as a hidden boss among hardcore Melee fans and Tristate players for years, there’s a big difference between expecting someone to be good with enough opportunities and seeing them get second place at their first Genesis.
This run was more groundbreaking than the run in which he won the event itself. At least by that point, we knew that Jmook was capable of winning majors; he just needed to not get Clutchboxed for the ninth time in a row. One of the craziest things about this run isn’t just the fact that Jmook outperformed expectations – it’s that the expectations were actually pretty high, relatively speaking, for Jmook in the first place. Remember: it wasn’t that long before the event in which Jmook finished in 13th place at the Smash World Championships. It sounds so insane to say today, but back then, it was actually a pretty good performance for him. Incredibly, the 21 seed he had at Genesis 8, all considered, was somewhat bullish.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis 7?
Imagine winning your first major within four years of playing Melee. You got into the game through watching your favorite players and seeing a documentary with multiple of them, and in a short period of time, you’ve started beating your former heroes. But then after that, they start beating you. A lot. You have an entire year of heartbreak against one player in particular, who just keeps beating you over and over again. It’s so consistently close and yet so consistently far. People are literally coming up with unhinged theories that this opponent is intentionally playing worse and throwing stocks just to psychologically mess with you and deliberately bring sets to last-stock situations where he can clutch out wins over you. As more time goes by, the less meaningful that first major win seems.
That’s basically the story of Zain abridged before Genesis 7. Yes, he had won his first major at Shine 2018, but he had basically an entire year’s worth of events where Hungrybox kept beating him, essentially gatekeeping him from winning another event. It’s worth noting that Genesis 6, by the way, was the last event where Zain missed a major top eight, so it wasn’t even an series that Zain had a great history of performances in. We all know what then happened: Zain won Genesis 7, his first bonafide supermajor, and he’s basically been at the top echelon since.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis 6?
Okay, this one is also obvious, so I’m going to take a brief detour to talk about something that isn’t related to Melee at all. I was at Genesis 6 and skipped this top eight to watch the Super Bowl with two of my friends, and I had a great time. It’s genuinely one of the fondest memories I have in the scene. In no order, I oscillated from watching my favorite football team in a Super Bowl, objectively noting that the quality of the game made for a boring entertainment product, checking my phone occasionally to see how top eight was going, and then noting how both the top eight and Super Bowl were just objectively wack. Good times.
Anyways, yeah; this one is Axe. While everyone remembers the fact that he got second place here, it’s easy to forget that his path was pretty wild. He ended up having a pretty crazy losers bracket run due to losing to S2J in the winners bracket. In order, he took down Kalamazhu, Rishi, Zain, Ginger, PewPewU, aMSa, and Plup (the most shocking win of all) before then taking Hungrybox to game-five in the closest Pikachu-Jigglypuff set they had since Axe beat him all those years ago. I think before this run, people understood Axe as somewhere within the ‘demigod’ tier of players, but there was never really serious consideration that he – or any Pikachu player – could win a major until Genesis 6. Months later, he ended up winning Smash Summit 8.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis 5?
One of my favorite bits of dumb Melee trivia is to ask fellow hardcore fans to name all the players that won Genesis through losers bracket. Almost all of them remember Mang0. However, none of them remember the fact that Plup was in the losers bracket (or Armada at Genesis 3). Want to know why? Because Hungrybox, whom Plup defeated in winners finals, literally bulldozed Plup in basically five minutes. This is the part of grand finals that nobody seems to remember: a whole ass set that was so thoroughly convincing that people in the venue preemptively began to leave, having seen a similar story happen at The Big House 7.
Most of you reading this know that Plup went on to eventually win that event – his first supermajor win and, at the time, basically proof that he was here to stay at the top echelon as the ‘new god’ of sorts. The other hilarious dynamic of this grand finals, by the way, is the fact that Hungrybox inexplicably allowed Plup to counterpick Pokemon Stadium twice in the same set. I have no idea why this happened. Years later, when Hungrybox, in similarly baffling fashion, used Rest on Plup’s third stock when he was at KO percent himself and on his last stock, I thought of this moment. Huh. Maybe the Hungrybox-chooses-to lose-truthers are right.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis 4?
I initially wanted to pick Armada here, given the nature of his legendarily close call with S2J, the lowkey banger winners finals against Mew2King, and his epic demolition of Mang0 in grand finals. But was I really going to use my Armada card on this event? Clearly not. I could have gone with S2J, but he doesn’t really have enough sets. Mew2King does technically have two memorable sets in his game-five win over Plup and the aforementioned set against Armada, but there’s not exactly a clear narrative of him at this event.
Honestly, I think the protagonist at Genesis 4 was Leffen. This was mere months after his visa ban ended, and while he had technically gone to previous events within the United States since his return, a Genesis appearance feels significantly more impactful than the other events. To Leffen’s credit, he had even vanquished the Samus gauntlet of HugS and Duck – two people who had previously beaten him – in winners bracket before then losing to Plup and having a solid run in losers bracket, where he beat ChuDat and Axe (in a runback from Smash Summit 3, where Axe beat him). The conclusion of his run came somewhat early in losers quarterfinals, but it also came in the form of one of the greatest sets of all-time against Mang0.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis 3?
Alright, here we go. I’m using my Mang0 card on Genesis 3. It might seem strange to place him as the protagonist of a tournament he ended up not winning, but I think this is the one that works best for this tournament, as well as fits our constraints most appropriately. His actual run isn’t merely impressive in terms of the people he beats either – it’s the full context of Mang0 clawing his way back to grand finals in the context of Genesis finally returning to the Melee community after a five-year hiatus. The fact that it happened to be a repeat of the previous two iteration’s grand finals just makes it that much sweeter.
At the same time, let’s not forget what a sick run this ended up being. After losing to Axe in the winners bracket, Mang0 proceeded to then 3-1 Plup with one of the most iconic clips he’s ever had in tournament. When top eight begins, Mang0 then runs over Nintendude in an utterly dominant 3-0, only to then 3-0 PPMD in another fairly convincing set. Following that comes another 3-0 for Mang0 in a runback with Axe before an intense back-and-forth game-five classic with Hungrybox in losers finals. Then comes the matchup everybody’s been waiting for in Mang0 vs. Armada, where Mang0 takes the first set, but falls short in set two. The broader context of Genesis coming back to Melee significantly adds stakes to his run here, but frankly, it’s just a great performance.
Who was the protagonist at Genesis 2?
While it’s tempting to go with one of Armada or Mang0 here, there’s also the option to go with the definitive breakout story of the event: Taj. I’ve written an in-depth column about Taj’s performance at this event, but I’ll try not to repeat too much of myself. Essentially, after years of being known as a strong player within Arizona, unfrequent traveler, and someone who could occasionally defeat top players in smaller stakes regionals, Taj has one of the most out-of-nowhere performances at Genesis 2, where he beats PPMD in pools, defeats Hax in the final bracket, and then shocks Mang0 in a matchup that Mew2King was starting to give up (funnily, Falco-Marth).
Obviously, you can’t talk about Taj’s amazing performance at this tournament without talking about the somewhat unfortunate ending, in which Mang0 beats him so bad that Taj forfeits after a four-stock loss in game two. But hey – the protagonist doesn’t always win. It is, technically speaking, a conclusion to a story. I don’t even think that’s the worst part of Taj’s run. For what it’s worth, I think the most wack part is that Taj decided to play Mewtwo, of all characters, in winners finals against Armada for two whole games. To me, that was a bigger waste of time (selfishly as a viewer).
Who was the protagonist at Genesis?
It might be sacrilegious for a Melee fan to put anyone other than Mang0 as the protagonist for the original Genesis. After all, this is literally the guy behind arguably the greatest moment in the history of the game, the winner of multiple of the greatest sets in in the history of the game, and the greatest player in the history of the game himself. His legacy is absolutely tied to Genesis, which itself is the greatest tourney series in the history of the game. When everyone in the original Genesis venue was watching grand finals, they weren’t rooting for Armada, were they? Well, consider the fact that I already used my Mang0 card, but let’s be honest with ourselves too.
The real hero of Genesis isn’t Mang0. It’s clearly Armada. I would honestly go as far as to say that he is the most important competitor in the history of the series. This was the true “Rocky” story of Melee history – a dude coming all the way from an obscure continent that everybody assumed sucked at the game, playing a relatively unusual character at an extremely high level, and then consecutively defeating arguably the three best players in America to get to grand finals. While he didn’t ultimately win, that’s not really the point. The community had never seen someone like Armada before – a huge wild card traveling across the globe in an established competitive ecosystem, purely out of a chance to prove himself within his favorite video game. Even without a first place, Armada left this event a champion. His breakout at the first Genesis established a precedent of sorts – a possibility of this type of event happening at every subsequent Melee tournament.
Not only does it define the ethos of Genesis itself; it embodies so much of what makes our community great. It’s not just the game – it’s the choices we make together; the fact that we choose to care this much about Melee in the first place; that anyone can enter an event and leave with a story that people care about. Ultimately, every event is another opportunity to create and share lasting memories with other people. While today’s column has been a silly little detour through Genesis history, as well as a little bit of fan-fiction writing, we shouldn’t forget what makes this event, our game, and our community special.
When is waiting for game returning? please I need it in my life.