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Monday Morning Marth: July 29

Edwin Budding
Published July 29, 2024

Melee is in exciting times. Warehouse War 4 just concluded (as did the Monday Morning Marth Curse), Supernova (FKA Super Smash Con) is coming up, and we also have the Summer Top 50 coming out. Personally, I’m thrilled to see how the list will turn out. We will have a lot of returning players, some newcomers to the Top 50, and potentially even some players who will be ranked for the first time. No one outside the ranking team will know until the final product comes out.

At the same time, we still have quite a bit to celebrate from this year. In fact, long-time readers will remember that I, myself, have created something that I very quickly learned mattered more to people than I previously thought. I am, of course, talking about the Eggwin Awards: my informal way of shouting out people whom I want to commend for their contributions to the scene. But with that in mind, we still have five months left in the year. Technically I can’t offer a real “Eggwin Award” quite yet. What do I write about?

For those of you who like my otherwise orderly column, stick with me for a bit. Today’s column is going to involve me taking a stream-of-consciousness approach. More or less, consider it a rambling review of the last seven months, and my personal picks for coolest storylines across the entire Melee community.

The Past, Present, and Future Voices of Melee

When you think of the Melee commentary GOATs, there’s an easy Mt. Rushmore: Toph, Scar, HomeMadeWaffles, and Phil. You could tell anyone that this is your top four of Melee commentary, and nobody would bat an eyelash. However, we have a lot of worthy representatives on the mic, and in recent times, we’ve actually seen this craft dominated by three people.

Out of curiosity, I looked at every major and national top eight that’s happened in 2024. For subjective purposes, I deemed Warehouse War, CEO and Full Bloom as nationals, in order to give ourselves a little more data. Only three people have cast more than 20 sets by our criteria: turndownforwalt, HMW, and, most surprisingly, Studebacher Hoch,. In fact, over the last seven months, Stude has become Melee’s most visible commentator at big events.

To see if the numbers changed across a larger time span, I went to check every major from the start of 2023 to right before Super Smash Con 2023, just to see if there was any difference in the Melee commentary landscape. Truthfully, it wasn’t that different for HomeMadeWaffles (25) or Walt (18). It was, however, a shocking contrast for Stude (0). Looking at the era between Super Smash Con 2023 and now, which would include Smash Con, The Big House 11, Arcamelee #4, and Santa Paws, our top three remains the same three we began with, but with Stude and HMW tied for first at 40 sets a piece, and Walt nearby at 37.

Now, I wouldn’t say Stude has passed a titan like HMW, and he’s had fewer major opportunities than his peers, but quietly, Stude has become one of the premier voices of Melee, as well as one of the biggest commentary grinders. Best of all, he doesn’t even have a Twitter. We have to get him to more majors; maybe we get Melee Stats Danny to become his social media assistant.

Amazing Videos

For all that we can nitpick and point to as misinformation, Melee content is actually pretty good. Although the shutdown of GG Melee over the last year, as well as Beyond the Summit, deprived the community of some of its best multimedia content, I still think we have many strong content creators who deserve acclaim for their contributions. The first person I thought of is wusstunes, whose documentary on competitive Giant Melee really stands out.

In a sense, I come to expect this level of quality from wusstunes, as I already enjoy their content quite a bit. However, the subject matter of this particular video – a wacky game mode of Melee – isn’t something I’m otherwise very interested in. What makes this video especially great is the voice behind it. Their production is really strong, but I really enjoy wusstunes leaning into their brand as the niche competitive fighters person – someone who really enjoys getting into the nitty gritty of something you might otherwise not care about. I think this person is a wonderful representative for introducing obscure elements of Melee to newcomers and getting them into the game through a fairly non-traditional manner.

Obviously, you have Walt’s greatest sets of all-time series too. By themselves, they provide fun nostalgic value for a lot of us already in the scene who may have learned a thing or two about something we otherwise fondly remember. AsumSaus’ “A video about Melee,” though a bit abstract, is, per his standards, always enjoyable as well. I feel similarly about “Melee isn’t fair,” another amazing showing from Melee Moments.

Regional Shout Outs

The first region I’d like to give a shout out to is SoCal. As a matter of fact, the work that someone like Aiden Calvin has put into his scene with the experimental ideas behind Star League is honestly fantastic. Though it isn’t practical for every region, I still believe each region should learn from how Aiden has brought talent of all kinds to these events, including out-of-region competitors, mid-level players, and otherwise potentially dormant top players like Mango and Jmook.

The second region is one I’ve come to admire a lot, especially in the wake of some very bad faith-criticism it has received for entirely reasonable decisions. I am, of course, talking about New York City. Funnily enough, the disgraceful reception this community has received online from a very toxic segment of the scene – one disavowed by the player it claims to represent – actually hides the fact that this has been a phenomenal year for the local community. It’s recently had multiple 100+ person events between multiple Nightclubs, Spit Your Game, and the NYC Arcadian. By every measure, this is how you build and maintain a community: by focusing on people who go to events, representing them, drawing attendance, and tuning out noise.

The last region, in my opinion, is the one that’s quietly taken the reins of the scene over the last twelve months in the Southeast. I don’t quite know what’s happened, but I’ve noticed each of Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina stealing the spotlight in one way or another. For Tennessee, it’s either through the exploits of its regional champion Grab, rising talent Paladin, or the success of Warehouse War. Georgia obviously has Tipped Off too, and Alabama had Santa Paws happen late last year. Meanwhile, North Carolina just had a notable regional in Patchwork, and former South Carolina No. 1 Logan has nicely taken over the Philadelphia scene, with a quietly incredible start to 2024 on the national stage.

Sets of the Year

I’ll start with a pick that is frankly so obvious that I don’t think it can be really considered a sleeper pick, but it somehow will still come across as one in Hungrybox vs. SDJ at GOML X. Simply put, you just don’t see Jigglypuff dittos at this high of a level on a main stage in Melee history. I also think the casting for this set is totally outstanding and engaging, with Walt, Radar, and epengu all elevating the quality of what’s happening on the screen.

Coincidentally, at that same event, we have BING defeating Cody Schwab, a set that was tragically played off-stream. Simply put, there hasn’t been anything like this in Melee history. Do not fall for the hipster impulse to say it’s not that big of an upset: it’s unprecedented. Although we’ve seen instances of top seeds losing to unranked players in tournaments early before, it’s never been a combination of someone being relatively obscure and playing a lesser represented character in a best-of-five. This upset is like Kage defeating Mango levels of notoriety for the winning character involved, with the skill gap between Fizzwiggle and Mango, and the relative obscurity of someone like Albert defeating Hungrybox. It is a tragedy that we don’t have full footage of the set. Maybe it’s obnoxious for me to call this a contender for set of the year, but being obnoxious is in my DNA.

My last pick for the set of the year is Mango vs. Hungrybox at Tipped Off 15. This was an all-around stellar set and quite frankly one of the best Mango/Hungrybox sets of all-time. Both players play incredibly well for most of the set, with each of them taking turns looking like the player who’s about to run away – right before the other one takes over. Fun fact as well: including online sets; this was their 100th set, which gives it even greater narrative value.

Most Notable Regional Wins

Since we’re talking about tournament wins, I may as well incorporate another storyline in this section: 2024 being the year of low and mid-tier success. We’ll start with three of the most notable DK successes of this year, with Junebug winning Patchwork 2024, ckyulmiqnudaetr winning an edition of BODIED, and BING, the Cody Schwab-slayer coming out on top at Float 3. As I talked about previously, we’ve been living in a DK era, and it appears that this character isn’t going anywhere.

Apparently, neither is Sheik. Both Krudo (who won approximately 99 other regionals) and Spark had incredible loser’s runs to win, respectively speaking, Altitude Sickness and Eggdog Scramble 2 as well, defeating multiple Top 25 players in each of their performances. Although it didn’t involve a lengthy loser’s run, another top performance from a Sheik came from Ben, who defended the Midwest from the invading Wizzrobe at Invincible VIII – even crazier, shortly before Wizzrobe won CEO 2024 that same month over Jmook and Hungrybox.

There’s many other regional wins I’d like to make mention of here. We’ll begin with the first two, which come from Fox players. Aklo’s Spit Your Game victory warrants mention, as he went from losing an early set to Fro116 to making this huge run from ninth place matches to grand finals and actually taking home the gold there while basically beating all of Tristate (who had apparently eaten their own in Chem and Rishi, as well as sent The Function 3 champion S2J home early; in some ways, the craziness of the event itself is a bit more notable than the fact that Aklo won). The second one is Joshman, who won Phantom 2024 after losing to Skerzo, only to then apparently beat him in the runback with Sheik, of all characters, in a thrilling series of grand finals. Another highlight of this event was HOBORG’s huge loser’s run to third place, as well as the crazy loser’s finals vs. Joshman.

We then are going to extend the definition of ‘regional’ to point out a more experimental weekday result that I think is wild: KoDoRiN taking home the first place trophy at an iteration of SoCal Star League. In that particular week, he defeated all the Sheiks (Joshman, Fiction, and Jmook) to win the event against the odds. I feel like this is actually one of the most shocking results of the year in a vacuum; it just got slept on because it happened in relatively lower stakes. And finally, I’ll end with glock in my toyota’s historic Mass Madness win, which I wrote about before as the biggest tournament win by a Mr. Game & Watch ever. Just kidding: I have to mention Loadspiller winning Boston’s main weekday local with Bowser.

The Continuation – And Possible End – of the Cody/Zain Era

For about eleven straight months, the scene saw arguably the most dominant duo in the history of Melee take turns winning our biggest events. And now, after so long, it feels like we’ve entered a new era where the field suddenly looks less constrained than it previously was, with Mango winning his first major and doing so in dominant fashion. If 2023 was the year of Cody/Zain, 2024 continued that theme for a while before suddenly being put into question.

Keeping this in mind, Tipped Off is really just one tournament. Much like how Mango winning Royal Flush put a brief pause to the era of Armada and Hungrybox winning the largest majors, rather than fundamentally changing the dynamic at the top level, it’s possible that we witness something similar here. Maybe we go back to Cody and Zain taking turns winning everything. Or perhaps we’re in for something new.

The Rise in Major Attendance – Real or Not Real? 

As I’ve discussed previously in this column, major attendance is actually on pace to exceed every other year of this decade. At the same time, obviously, the news of Big House’s hiatus has thrown a wrench in our tournament ecosystem. We’ve lost a huge cultural institution for this year, and that our tournament calendar will suffer greatly without Big House.

However, we also have to be real: when one tournament falls, many others often rise to the occasion. No Melee tournament organizer wants to see a supermajor absent from the major calendar, but strictly speaking in terms of a relationship to major attendance, Riptide, Wavelength, Let’s Make Moves Miami, and Don’t Park On The Grass (along with anything else that isn’t announced) are going to suddenly have larger spotlights than they have had in an ecosystem where The Big House was present.

It’s a seller’s market for tournaments; without a bonafide supermajor in the picture, players are not going to have many opportunities to prove themselves on the biggest stage. As a result, there’s more events that could take the next step up in attendance and prestige.

Keep in mind that this is a big “could.” It’s possible that these events don’t scale well at all. What if attendance, contrary to prior trends, doesn’t actually shape up? With last year’s fall as precedent, is a decline in attendance becoming the new norm? Personally I doubt it, but the last half of this year is going to show us which events and TOs are going to step up the plate. And more than that, it will also highlight an especially nice surprise that we’ve seen in the first half of this year from another group of people:

Top Players Are Back

Top players quiet quitting has long been a running gag among hardcore Melee fans. More than being taken as anything serious, this half-ironic idea points toward the disproportionate amount of sway that top players have over an event’s success or not. Simply put, there’s about five people who every prospective major wants to bring one (Zain, Cody, Mango, Hbox, Jmook), and if your event does not strictly cater to their needs, they probably won’t come and you probably won’t have a major. The perceived pickiness of these players has long been a source of frustration among fans of the scene and tournament organizers alike.

Or at least this is how the story has gone in the past. Because this year, it’s not true at all. Top players – in large part due to the use of their streams as white-label channels to market events – have been unusually active at tournaments. I examined what Top 10 attendance has looked like for each year in SSBMRank history, and here’s what I’ve found for previous years:

Year Avg Top 10 Major Attendance Number of Majors In The Year Major Attendance Rate
2013 2.9 4 0.73
2014 6.8 11 0.62
2015 10.8 16 0.68
2016 13.9 20 0.70
2017 13 18 0.72
2018 9.9 16 0.62
2019 8.1 12 0.68
2022 10.9 16 0.68
2023 8 11 0.73

Now, to be clear, we don’t have a final count on what the Top 10 of 2024 will look like. But to just give a rough estimation, I’m going to examine the attendance of what my personal Top 10 would be. This would be Zain, Cody, Mango, aMSa, Hungrybox, Jmook, moky, Wizzrobe, Soonsay, and Trif.

Player Number of Majors Attended Major Attendance Rate
Zain 6 1.00
Cody 6 1.00
Mango 6 1.00
aMSa 4 0.67
Hungrybox 5 0.83
Jmook 6 1.00
moky 6 1.00
Wizzrobe 3 0.50
Soonsay 5 0.83
Trif 3 0.50
“Average Top 10 Player” 5 0.83

The fact of the matter is that 2024 is on pace to be the most active year for Top 10 attendance at majors in SSBMRank history. Although Plup and Leffen’s relative absences do muddy the waters a bit, the overwhelmingly majority of our top echelon has shown up in a big way for 2024. Contrary to previous fears of top players quietly quitting; they’re not. They’re attending majors, regionals, and some of them are even going to locals. As far as positive developments in the scene go, this is one of the best ones, as is the fact that all of these players have sponsors. Maybe that has something to do with their attendance.

The Stacked Second Half of the Year

Do you want to know what the most stacked second half of any ranking period is? If your guess is 2016, surprise: you’re actually wrong. The correct answer is 2022, the year we had multiple circuits (right before they died) and a new level of sponsor investment into Melee. All in all, we had ten majors: Super Smash Con 2022, Shine 2022, Riptide 2022, Lost Tech City 2022, The Big House 10, Ludwig Smash Invitational, Smash Summit 14, Apex 2022, Mainstage 2022, and Scuffed World Tour.

This year, we have seven publicly announced major (or major-leaning) events: Supernova 2024, Eggdog Invitational, Riptide 2024, Wavelength 2024, Let’s Make Moves Miami 2024, Don’t Park on the Grass 2024, and the Nounsvitational. We haven’t even accounted for any potential surprises down the line, such as an announcement from Ludwig or possibly other events from different regions, like New York City or SoCal. Three extra surprises would be enough to tie 2022; four would make history.

A Quick Summary of What’s On The Line for Every Major Contender

Obviously, as fun as developments throughout the scene are, we’d be lying to ourselves if we weren’t interested in what’s on the line for the best players in the world. I won’t go into too much detail; consider these quick bullet points for what you need to know for nine players of note.

Zain could basically lock up number one for this year with another supermajor win or two major wins. Although truthfully, he’s looking beyond that. Sitting at 14 major victories already, he could soon tie or pass Ken for fourth-most major victories ever (16) and start marching toward Armada (22). That, or maybe the Poisoning has given him a new obstacle to overcome: the draw of Ultimate as a source of income. Another interesting part of his year – the rise of Loser’s Bracket Zain, as two of his most notable tournament victories this year, Full Bloom and GOML, came from loser’s bracket. Meanwhile, Cody, isn’t as far behind in the number one race as you’d think. Having just won a national (though not major) over Jmook, he too has historic stakes to his success. Beyond the mere idea of “first solo Fox No. 1” turning into “two-time solo Fox No. 1,” Cody has ten major wins and could close in on Leffen (13) in the all-time major count.

Beneath the top two, we have Mango, who finally snapped his streak of majors without first place finishes. If he plays well enough, he could re-enter the race for No. 1, throw a wrench into the top echelon and further cement his case as the greatest player of all-time. Then, there’s Jmook, a player who’s probably out of the running, but could still win a major and snap a cold streak. For whatever it’s worth, another victory would tie him with aMSa (three) for all-time major wins. Speaking of which, that player has a chance to showcase that he didn’t just have the hot hand for a few months. An especially crazy byproduct of an aMSa major win, would be that he’d tie Plup, PC Chris and Azen on the all-time major win count (four). In other words, aMSa could effectively cement himself as a Top 10 player of all-time.

Following that group, we get into the largest wild cards in Melee. Plup basically has nothing on the line because he never attends events. And yet as it stands, he’s signed up for each of Supernova, Riptide, and Let’s Make Moves Miami for this year. I could talk about a Plup major win bringing him to five wins (just below PPMD at seven), but honestly, I think a pretty cool undercurrent of Plup’s Tipped Off run was that he beat everyone he played except for the presumptive number one and two players in the world. Following Plup, there’s Wizzrobe, who hasn’t won a major since Mainstage in 2021, but did win CEO 2024, a national, and, more itnerestingly, has been quite a bit more active this year than he was in the prior two years. After that, you have moky, who’s still looking for his first major victory (as well as trying to check off the final name on his “to-beat” list in Zain), and Hungrybox, who’s in the middle of the longest stretch of majors without first place finishes that he’s had since he was in school (Apex 2010 to Paragon Orlando 2015). Pretty wild that one of the greatest players of all-time is now arguably the biggest longshot among major contenders.

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