I remember where I was when Lovage defeated Leffen at GT-X 2017: I was at the airport, waiting pick up an older family member from the airport. When I saw one of my friends confirm the result in Discord, I actually yelped in real life, much like how my dog does, when I come home from a long trip. I then repeatedly messaged her to jump on a phone call with me, because I assumed she was joking. She was not. In fact, it turned out that Lovage, as in, the commentator whose best playing years were well behind him, had actually destroyed him with a three-stock in the last game.
For years, I just assumed this upset would be unmatched in modern Melee. Even when Albert defeated Hungrybox at Low Tier City 7, I didn’t take it seriously; that event, unlike other majors during the time, had monitors (which were nowhere near as common as they are today). When the pandemic brought rollback Melee to the forefront of the scene, I saw some of the most shocking results of all-time, and yet I remained somewhat unfazed. The sets “counted,” but obviously had a large asterisk over them as online results. Meanwhile, Lovage over Leffen was a real, offline set, presumably played between two people with stakes at a major tournament. You couldn’t hold anything meaningful against it. Maybe – just maybe – it meant a little less because it was a best-of-three, not too different from Kage’s legendary double elimination of Mango, or, well, Prince Abu defeating Plup.
The results are in and it's determined! Lovage over Leffen is the community pick for the GREATEST MELEE UPSET OF ALL TIME!
Check out the bracket: pic.twitter.com/Fkz33FgMWD
— Melee Stats (@MeleeStatsPod) April 6, 2020
In contrast, I suppose my reaction to BING, the upstate Donkey Kong player, and iron man local legend of sorts, defeating Cody Schwab, the best player in the world, was nowhere as extreme. Then again, I just turned 30 years old; perhaps, my muted response is merely a sign of my age. Make no mistake: this is, by far, the most shocking tournament result I have ever seen.
It goes beyond the mere fact of a 64 seed upsetting the top seed of a supermajor; that, by itself, is something we’ve now seen a couple times (Fizzwiggle over Mango at Genesis 8 and, curiously, Wally taking Jada’s seed and replacing them as Zain’s opponent at Super Smash Con 2022). What really puts this result into perspective is the combination of a few factors: the fact that it features a mid to low tier character upsetting a top tier, the fact that it’s a best-of-five, and the specific players involved. Had Junebug defeated Cody Schwab, it would have been surprising enough, but this isn’t Junebug we’re talking about. It’s BING.
I won’t pretend to be overly familiar with BING, but to my understanding, this is not your stereotypical Gen Z Slippi kid here. In fact, BING has been around the block, using multiple tags, and playing multiple characters at a regionally proficient level, not just Donkey Kong. From what I could find, he has one other notable Top 100 win in his career: a set over YungWaff (HomeMadeWaffles) back at Runback 2017. He’s entered a good chunk of online events and defeated talent like Kalvar and Ben before, but this was not someone who was ever in serious Top 100 consideration. BING isn’t even the best player within Buffalo.
Remember: I’m not trying to disrespect BING when I say these facts. There’s many strong players who aren’t active enough by results or necessarily committed to the frankly unhealthy grind of trying to make SSBMRank. If anything, this is what makes his win over Cody more special. You don’t actually have to fit some box or label prescribed by other people in order to find success and happiness. You can actually just be yourself.
I don’t have anything else to say. As a matter fact, I just kind of rambled about the most shocking result from GOML X. I haven’t even talked about the other storylines from the event, such as Zain’s all-time great loser’s run to win his fourth big tournament of the year, Soonsay’s career-high bronze medal showing, Hungrybox and SDJ’s all-time classic, or Cody’s bizarrely mid-tier packed 13th place performance. But, as an attempt to try covering all this material for the rest of the column, I decided to make this column of Monday Morning Marth a special Mailbag edition. For the rest of this column, I’ll be answering questions from Patrons.
The Ethics of Popping Off
“Where do you draw the line for popoffs (that are for positive reasons)? Hungrybox has broken things multiple times and suffered little to no consequences (that we know of). Should we change the perspective on these actions?” – anakonda
A long time ago, I wrote a column about “raging,” and why the scene should have zero tolerance toward controller throws, property destruction, or anything that could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a shared space. While I still believe that much of what I said should be taken a lot more seriously, even back then, I wrote about a potential gray area of “raging” – pop offs. As I asked, “is there a double standard between tolerating a public figure kicking a chair in comical triumph and warning a player who does something similar after a loss?” Later in that same part of the column, I brought up Leffen’s controller toss after he lost to Plup, as well as Hungrybox kicking a chair after he beat Armada. Back then, I said that “if the worst case scenario of being too strict is that we don’t see Leffen throwing his controller in the middle of top eight, I don’t care and neither should you.”
Today, @edwin_budding talks about raging and why the Smash scene should take it far more seriously.https://t.co/eyRZczLWvR
— Melee Stats (@MeleeStatsPod) August 2, 2021
Read my words carefully though: I referred to this as the worst case scenario of being too strict: not what I believe would actually happen. I would add to this today but stating that I believe there’s a clear difference between conduct on the main stage – a inherently theatrical setting in front of a large audience – and in the vast majority of the venue, where the space between attendees is much more limited. Let’s now bring this back to Hungrybox, because it is pertinent to last weekend. To recap what Hungrybox did after he defeated SDJ, he leaped from his chair on stage, picked it up after the chair fell behind him, slammed it, roared like a gladiator, picked up what appears to be a prop from the recorded footage, throws that, and then prepares himself for another chair slam before halting himself, casually tossing the chair aside, screaming, shaking his opponent’s hand, and then tossing another prop (or perhaps the one he previously threw; I can’t tell) into the crowd.
I was not there, so I can’t speak to the specific hardness or softness of the prop he threw. However, if he threw the chair into the crowd, we would have an immediate and present danger to attendees. I would like to believe that tournament organizers would step in and do something if the prop he used was actually dangerous, but Hungrybox also has gotten away relatively scot-free for actually being irresponsible about his behavior at events. For example, he once threw a shoe upon winning a set, and on a less openly ridiculous yet still frustrating fashion, he repeatedly didn’t comply with mask rules during the pandemic. I think we have to be honest and say that when Hungrybox receives flak for doing things that other players may not receive the same criticism for that it’s not necessarily undeserved. Still; from what I can gather from this particular case, I don’t think the chair was anywhere near attendees or an active threat in the same way that it might have been had he performed this action off-stream and with a crowd in closer proximity.
Ultimately, it’s up to tournament organizers what they’re willing to tolerate and what they want to discourage. However, as a general guideline, I think anything that veers into the space of reasonably causing significant emotional distress to attendees and tourney staff or creating an active, significant threat to them should be stopped. I also think that if you break something at an event, the tourney staff have a right to – and should – ask for compensation and more from you. That’s just my two cents though.
“Does the culture of quitting out on mid and low tiers on Slippi lead to more upsets by mid and low tiers at tournaments?” – Algebra
It’s funny that I received this question. Not too long ago, I was actually talking to Nintendude about something similar with the Ice Climbers. He said the Ice Climbers, for basically the entire history of competitive Melee, have always been in a cycle: where they obtain really good results, then their competition get good (or change the rules) against the character, the Ice Climbers then go dormant for a long time, and then, right when you think they’re dead, they suddenly come back and force everyone to re-learn the matchup. Granted, he was just talking about the prominence of the character, not the culture about quitting on them or not.
This is entirely speculative on my part, but I have to imagine that for the longest time, and without specific resources like Uncle Punch or 20XX to effectively solo practice situations and combo game, any culture of avoiding an obscure character would have at least gone in both directions, or at least contributed to a similar cycle that Nintendude talked about. How is a Zelda player supposed to improve if people aren’t willing to play with them? I feel like something similar happened with many mid and low tiers, where this happened for a long time during the pandemic. Keeping this in mind, the existence of modern training tools does probably give the wacky characters an edge over the competition when the competition refuses to practice with them, especially when their peers aren’t using those training tools to learn key situations in those matchups – not in the way the mid-tiers are.
I’d have to empirically look at this to be more confident whether or not the specific “quit out culture” leads to more upsets by mid or low tiers. However, my vibes-based answer is, “sure, why not?”
“How are 2024 viewership numbers and why don’t majors simulcast on YouTube as well as Twitch?” – cyfer003
I actually talked about viewership not too long ago; the long story short is that our Twitch viewership is currently in the shitter. As of the end of April, we are in the worst period of watch time hours on Twitch since this decade started. The nice thing is that our attendance rates are currently great, so the community isn’t totally doomed, but due to a variety factors, such as the shutdown of Beyond the Summit, our Twitch viewership has been quite bad.
As for the question of why events don’t multi-cast on Twitch or YouTube, it depends on the tournament. My understanding is that some of the largest events in the world – or at least their production channels – have specific deals with Twitch that incentivize them to continue choosing Twitch as a medium (also in part due to areas where Twitch is better than YouTube, like categorization of content). But for the ones that don’t, convenience – and not disrupting existing logistical processes that have to do with streaming – is a bigger influence. Based on people I talked to behind the scenes, some events already multi-cast, but they so quietly, keeping viewership on Twitch, but experimenting with YouTube privately to see how different production tasks hold up.
“Is the Hungrybox popoff vs SDJ his all-time greatest?” – AliceLens
No, I don’t think so at all. Remember: this is Hungrybox we’re talking about. Off the top of my head, I would place all of the following above the SDJ popoff:
- Passing out vs. Ginger.
- “Remember the fucking name” vs. SFAT, or the standing up one at Press Start.
- The original chair-slam vs. Jmook at Wavedash 2022.
- “FUCKING FUCK!”
- Kicking the chair after defeating Armada at Smash ‘N Splash 3.
- The scream he had when defeated Plup at Smash Summit 13, before he ran out of the room, hitting something too, before coming back to fist bump Plup and turn off the Red Bull lights behind the setup. He’s had a good number of them vs. Plup, including the one with the prop cup of noodles that he tossed at Noods Noods Noods.
- The “are you not entertained” pose he did vs. Leffen after he beat him at Genesis 5.
- Several of his Ultimate-related popoffs, of which my favorite one is “That’s how you beat Banjo!”
“Do we need to reevaluate DK’s spot on the tier list?” – Rodin
First off, if we care about tier lists, the last one we made was a few years ago. Now, I think tier lists don’t really have much utility to the average person in the scene, but they are fun. If something is more fun than it is stressful or negative as content, then it’s worth pursuing. Our current tier list probably needs a bit of an update, even if most of it would remain the same.
To bring this back to your original question though, how could we not re-evaulate DK’s spot on the tier list? In addition to the character now achieving unprecedented levels of success last year, we just came from a weekend where we learned that the best player in the world could lose to an unranked DK. I took a look at where he is right now, and he’s currently No. 16, below each of Mario, Ganondorf, Dr. Mario, and Luigi, characters whom I’d consider less represented in top-level Melee than DK. Obviously, that is not the only factor that goes into determining a character’s placement on the tier list – personally, I would put a hard stop to the idea of DK being on the same level as Samus, Yoshi or Pikachu – but it could be worth taking another look.
“Will someone win a major over Cody and Zain this year? If yes, who?” – DarkGenex
I think the answer is “yes,” but I honestly struggle to confidently pick someone to do it. Let’s go one by one here at who seems the most likely. Jmook’s been the closest, but the problem is that he’s currently struggled with both players, and in order to win a major, you probably need to beat both of them. If that’s not the case, you need to show the ability to defeat one of them while being able to beat sufficient players who could potentially defeat the other one you struggle with. If Jmook were shown to consistently defeat Zain and Mango, or potentially Cody and aMSa, I would have more faith, but that’s not the case right now. He basically needs what happened during GOML weekend – a bunch of crazy things occurring – to happen again, and he has to close it out that time. That, or he needs to turn these losing matchups around.
After Jmook, we have each of Hungrybox and Mango for recent “Cody-slayers” whose long-term trends against him seem nebulous, but whose respective long-term trends against Zain currently look hopeless. In lieu of that particular matchup going the other way, they would benefit most from being able to consistently defeat people who can make Zain bleed – for the current landscape, this is aMSa or Jmook. Currently, Mango seems like the better bet here, as well as my intuitive pick for who can beat Cody more reliably, but Hungrybox is the more consistent player. moky is not too far off from Mango and Hungrybox there, but on a similar note to Jmook, he had a really great shot at winning GOML, and it just didn’t pan out for him. For him to be my pick, he needs to show signs of progress vs. Zain or start beat Cody a lot.
But then we get into someone who I think actually has a pretty good shot, pound for pound, at dethroning the Zain/Cody duo: Wizzrobe. Without Plup consistently in the picture, he even gets to dodge one of his two toughest matchups. Unfortunately, he does seem to struggle vs. the top spacies, and historically, him vs. Mango is still be one of the most brutal top-echelon head-to-heads in recent memory, but this is someone who can clearly take Zain to the limit even while rusty. The fact that he also has shown brilliance against Hungrybox, aMSa, Jmook, and even moky on a more long-term basis also speaks to his potential.
Is Plup actually the correct pick here? If Cody Schwab did not exist, it’s very possible that Plup would have won The Big House 11. I would not go as far as to say that Plup would be favored vs. the top echelon as of right now, since it’s been months since we’ve seen him, but he’s basically shown success against all of them that he’s played over a long-term basis, sans for Cody. If Wizzrobe on his first try in several months could take Zain to game five, is it so crazy to imagine Plup doing the same thing and actually closing it out? That alone would certainly give him a unique boost to his likelihood of winning a major.
Frankly, these are all long shots by the numbers. But if I had to predict someone to do it, I’ll go with Mango. Thankfully, he’s seemed to have dropped Falco against Zain, or at least come up with a new enough strategy against him to where we could be heading into “not hopeless” territory for their next major set. Combined with Mango potentially continuing to do well vs. Cody, defeat Hungrybox, and be competitive with Jmook, I think he’s in the best position to turn it around and break the streak.
“At this point in time, I think it’s obvious that Zain has a good way to go to catch up with Hbox/Mango/Armada on the all time list. Exactly how far though?” – Grab
As you might have noticed during the weekend, Vish noted that Zain, heading into GOML, had 13 all-time majors, tied with Leffen for fifth most in Melee history. After winning GOML, he is now two majors beneath Ken (16), eight below Armada (22), 17 below Mango (31), and 23 below Hungrybox (37). For what it’s worth: this is for pure “offline” majors.
NOTE: If we included each of the SCL weeks that he won, Four Loko Fight Night, Smash Summit 10 Online, LACS 4, and LACS 2, he actually has 23 “majors.” Keep in mind though, I do not think counting individual weeks of single-elimination formatted online events (or even online double-elimination tournaments) is quite one to one with winning real offline majors; I’m just noting it here for context.
Just using RetroSSBMRank and SSBMRank/MPGR together as a rough criteria for when each of these five were, respectively, the best players in the world, here’s what we have: three times for Ken (2004-2006), four times for Hungrybox (2010 and the 2017-2019 period), four times for Armada (2011-2012 and 2015-2016), and four times for Mango (2009, 2013-2014, and 2021). Obviously, this does not tell the full story – you can certainly argue the weight of how much these individual ‘spots’ actually matter, or even their legitimacy; for-fun rankings made by two knowledgeable people are very different than official, community-recognized “number one” spots – but it does give us a rough picture of what Zain has to catch up to.
In comparison, Zain currently has been officially number one once. However, if RetroSSBMRank existed for the online era, it would be safe to say that he “would” be graded, most likely, as the “best player” during the 2020 period or the “online” period, even if it was with a big asterisk. I also think that while he didn’t officially finish No. 1, his No. 2 year in 2023 is probably more accomplished and meaningful for his overall legacy than any of the ‘weak’ No. 1 years from Armada, Hungrybox, or Mango, in which the scene had fewer tournaments.
With that in mind, I think I would personally be okay with Zain passing Ken as of right now – I just don’t think it’s fair to treat his pandemic accomplishments as equal to nothing, or basically worth fewer majors than two with Zain. However, in order to catch up with the Hungrybox, Armada, and Mango trio, he needs a few differentiating factors. I want to now examine how he fares with each of them on a resume by resume basis.
Versus Armada, Zain is just never going to catch up with him in terms of at-the-time dominance; I really just don’t think we’ll ever see someone so indestructible vs. the field and frankly still the most dominant vs. the top echelon ever again. But I could see him having enough hardware to where it would become really difficult to deny him the advantage regardless of him never being able to touch Armada’s head-to-heads. At the same time, it is pretty crazy that he shares one particularly unique head-to-head quality with Armada: being basically the only person to have ever held the lifetime edge against two of the three greatest players of all-time.
In a comparison with Hungrybox, Zain needs to convincingly dominate the current opposition enough times to where he consistently win the big ones more: something which Hungrybox actually has struggled with, relatively speaking, quite a bit in comparison to the other GOAT candidates. I actually asked Hungrybox himself not too long ago if he thought he was the GOAT, and he mentioned this specific shortcoming in his own resume. He certainly has some particularly big supermajor victories – like Evo 2016, which, in all fairness, is the biggest stage in the history of Melee – but the vast majority of his actual victories came at significantly less prestigious events. Funnily enough, part of why Hungrybox has struggled to win those this decade is largely because Zain keeps beating him (and occasionally winning these events himself).
Mango’s a stranger case because in all honesty, I believe his legacy is fundamentally different than Armada’s or Hungrybox’s. You could basically split Mango’s career into a series of multiple sub-careers that are Melee Hall of Fame worthy on their own, as he’s basically always been in contention for winning – or has outright won – the biggest events for longer than anyone else. Some people don’t agree with me because Hungrybox’s reign at the top was more modern and for a period of three years, while Armada was the better player for the majority of his and Mango’s time together, but I think longevity – specifically when it comes to winning the most prestigious events – is extremely important. That said, he’s not untouchable and, unfortunately for Mango, Zain has whooped him so many times on the way to winning majors. Even if Zain doesn’t catch up to Mango’s total supermajor win count or years around the top of the game, he could surpass him with a more dominant dominant ‘reign’ similar to Armada (along with the overall head-to-heads) while also catching up to Hungrybox in terms of longevity at the top of the game. And on a similar note to Hungrybox, it would certainly add to him catching up to Mango if his winning of those events denies Mango the opportunity to protect his current all-time lead.
To summarize: I think it’s fine to have him above Ken, but to turn the top three into a Mount Rushmore, he needs some combination of more time, continued dominance against his peers, sustained outclassing of Mango and Hungrybox, and supermajor victories.