Last weekend was a fun time to watch Melee. While there were no definitive ‘majors,’ the scene had a trio of extremely interesting nationals or regionals featuring top-level talent. On Saturday, Khryke ended up taking home the gold at Garden Brawl, defeating fellow invader (and MD/VA player) Kevin Maples in two of three sets. Over in Florida, and a day later, Hungrybox won CEO 2025, not only winning his first big Florida national in years, but also by the margins after a grand finals reset from Wizzrobe. And lastly, in the United Kingdom, Aklo finished his successful conquest of Europe, winning Avant Trois: Rebelote over Nicki.
Needless to say, there was quite a bit to watch over the weekend. Today’s column is a stream-of-consciousness style breakdown of last weekend’s results, what I found most notable, and what they could possibly point to for the rest of the year.
Hungrybox’s Return to Glory at CEO
Back in Hungrybox’s prime, he always showed up in his home state, and especially at CEO. While he was not entirely impervious, he nonetheless won at least one edition of this series each year from 2016 to 2020. On an old episode of the Waiting for Game podcast, I said that if Hungrybox ever slumped at a major tournament, and he needed an event to turn things around, you could practically always count on a Hungrybox victory at CEO. Broadly speaking, if you were to manufacture what a typical Hungrybox win looks like, it’s probably him beating Plup or Wizzrobe in a random CEO grand finals after he sleepwalks by a bracket of Pikachu, Peach, and Ice Climbers, or something like that.
Here’s the funny thing though: Hungrybox had actually struggled more often than not at CEO since the end of the pandemic. In 2022, he notoriously fell to KJH and Plup for a then-unthinkable fifth place. The following year, Panda knocked him out of the winners bracket early and Hungrybox finished in a ho-hum third-place. And of course, there was last year’s heartbreaking conclusion to CEO 2024, in which Hungrybox blew a massive lead on championship point and was promptly denied the trophy by Wizzrobe. Imagine if the Undertaker at Wrestlemania suddenly started losing all the time; that’s what it’s been like for me, as a longtime Melee fan, to see Hungrybox continuously disappoint at CEO.
Funnily enough, his CEO 2025 did, in a way, look like my vision for the stereotypical turnaround Hungrybox performance. There was the Pikachu (JChu), the Peach (lloD), the Ice Climbers (MOF), and Wizzrobe in grand finals, and yet this run was absolutely not free. Although Hungrybox ended up dominating JChu to a 3-0 victory, the round before, Captain G took Hungrybox to the limit in a game five set. More than that, each of lloD and MOF to Hungrybox to game five and last stock too. Combined with Wizzrobe’s utter 3-0 beatdown of Hungrybox in the first set of grand finals (as well as controller issues that visibly plagued Hungrybox practically the entire event), this was a victory by a razor’s edge.
I’m not sure what this means for Hungrybox in the long run. During the event, I saw comments in the Melee Stats Discord calling this an inspirational win from Hungrybox because he played at a “3/10” the entire time and still won. I myself openly speculated on if Hungrybox was merely demonstrating his masterful ability to turn should-be-guaranteed victories into close sets for content. I was joking though…I think. This was a very awesome and somehow very dumb showing from him. I don’t really know what to make of it.
Character Scorigami at CEO
The other thing I noted from CEO was the lack of Fox deep into its top eight. Once Panda was knocked out of the tournament by JChu, there was not a single moment where Fox was on the screen. How strange. Jigglypuff (Hungrybox), Captain Falcon (Wizzrobe), Peach (lloD), and Ice Climbers (MOF) were in the winners bracket, and waiting in the losers bracket was a Pikachu (JChu) and a Samus (Wevans). Even more bizarrely, we had a winners finals of Jigglypuff vs. Ice Climbers (after MOF upset Wizzrobe for another top win of her career), and then in loser’s bracket, we saw the Pikachu player come within a stock of defeating Wizzrobe, and the Samus player actually straight up defeat the Peach player in a big upset. Yes, Panda was there in top eight, but opposite of him in seventh place was a Donkey Kong player with a Marth and Dr. Mario secondary.
If there was a “Scorigami” for character representation within a national top eight, this CEO would have it. In a spreadsheet I’ve made that tracks all-time major data, as well as tournaments that I’d consider just below ‘major’ status, I have yet to find another ‘national’ top four of Jigglypuff, Captain Falcon, Ice Climbers, and Samus in any order. In fact, I can’t find another major that’s ever had this specific combination of characters (though Smash Rivalries comes surprisingly close). Guys, what the hell were Donkey Kong, Samus, Pikachu, and Dr. Mario doing in a top eight? It’s a testament to Melee that 24 years after its release, the game’s biggest tournaments continue to take these amazing twists and turns for character representation.
Khryke’s Rising Star
A long time ago, I tried to see if I could name a Marth player for every letter of the alphabet that their tag begins with. My biggest regret was not naming Khryke. Granted, he happens to share a first letter with the literal king of Smash, so you can’t really blame me, but I still feel bad about it. Khryke has really hit his stride as someone who has broken out to the next level. He also occupies a unique space as a committed Marth/Ice Climbers dual main at the top level.
It’s already impressive enough to beat Kevin Maples twice at an event. In addition to that though, Khryke beat JoJo and Wally at the same tournament, as well as beat Seven and bonn, regional stars in their own own respective right. Outside of MD/VA events, where he’s continued to compete at a high level, he’s taken sets in the year over Wizzrobe, Zamu, and mvlvchi, among others. In general, it’s pretty rare to see Khryke suffer a significant upset. While it can happen, if you notice Khryke has a low placement somewhere on a big weekend event, it’s usually because he ran into another Top 100 player early, played a top seed, or lost to Maelstrom, who has lately been a local demon for him, but who also just beat last weekend’s CEO champion.
On a more personal note, Khryke has a creative way of articulating his thoughts on the game, as well as approaching different situations. He has a really strong grasp on the cast and when it comes to Melee mechanics in particular, he has a unique perspective that comes from his time as a dual main. In my opinion, he’s one of the only top Marth players that really commits to reaction tech chasing and understands the granular details of it (percent, positioning, DIs, etc), with Faith being the other one. I really enjoy watching Khryke compete; seeing the results bring him to a higher level of prominence makes me excited to see more of him in the future.
Nicki’s Losers Run & Where His Results Stand
It is not controversial at all to say that Nicki could win any tournament he enters because apparently SDJ is the only person in North America who has figured out how to consistently defeat him. That’s what made Nicki’s early loss to Sharp at Avant Trois so surprising. To my estimation, it’s the first regional set that Nicki’s Ice Climbers has lost to anyone in Europe outside of Trif, Pricent or Kins0 since his switch to Ice Climbers as his main.
Sidenote: this was a fantastic victory for Sharp, a Swedish Peach player and a dear friend of mine, who was part of the first Melee Stats Showcase, made the Top 100 ballot in 2022, and remains a Top 15 player in Europe. While the Nicki win is undeniably the best one from the weekend, it’s worth noting that they also double eliminated Jah Ridin’ at the pre-local and have a win earlier in the year over Rikzz at Firestarter. That looks especially wild in the wake of Rikzz beating both Trif and Wally since.
With this in mind, nobody ended up being surprised with Nicki’s monstrous loser’s bracket run through the European gauntlet of Moe, Jah Ridin’, Jamie, and Frenzy. Although he eventually fell to Aklo in grand finals, this was a very good showing from Nicki on a cumulative basis, even if he was favored to win each of the non-grand finals sets on their own. I want to note though: based on typical SSBMRank data, this gives Nicki a fourth big event with likely talent for the summer ballot. Now, I don’t know what Nicki’s plans are for the summer (EDIT: he’s confirmed to me that he plans on attending GOML), but I do think with four big events in six months (and more than that if you loosen up activity criteria a bit), what Nicki’s shown us by results is pretty telling.
| Winning H2Hs | Losing H2Hs |
| 1-0 vs Hungrybox
1-0 vs Mang0 1-0 vs Junebug 1-0 vs Faust 3-0 vs Rikzz 1-0 vs Zanya 1-0 vs Frenzy 1-0 vs Jah Ridin’ 1-0 vs salami 1-0 vs Jamie 1-0 vs Moe 1-0 vs Jamie |
0-1 vs Cody Schwab
0-1 vs Aklo 0-1 vs Joshman 0-1 vs SDJ 0-1 vs Fiction 0-1 vs Sharp |
These are only four events, but I think this is a really great resume. Pound for pound, it seems like Nicki should be a top ten seed at any event he enters, though when it comes to rankings specifically, he’s in the nebulous range of Top 9 to 15 contenders that includes other people like Junebug, Aura, lloD, Soonsay, etc. Regardless, he’s effectively gone back-and-forth with the top echelon, has a loss against a tricky contender for Top 25 right now (by results), and has demonstrated incredible consistency against the whole field. Depending on how he performs (or if he travels, as I believe he will) in the summer, he could add another major top eight to his resume, guarantee a spot in the Top 10 (or higher), and effectively prove, if he hasn’t already done it, that he’s here to stay in the top echelon.