SMashing

Learning from Hardcore Video Game Playing

So after 5 years of tournament Smash, here’s what I’ve learned

1.) Beating your two friends =/= being the best in the world

Sometimes I get people who walk to me around campus who can beat their small group of friends and then tell me that they could probably beat Ken , Isai (pro smashers) easily. Ironically, this is the mentality I had with smash until I went to a tournament, played real people, and got freakishly owned. Lesson of the day, beating your sister in video game does not qualify you as being a pro at the game.

2.) Everyone has a different play style

My good friend, Brandon, plays Marth, while I play mainly as Sheik. For the longest time, he was my only form of competition for Smash, so I was used to his patterns and tendencies. However, when I tried playing other people’s Marths, I would lose really bad because I was so used to playing my friend that I would expect other people’s Marths to do certain things at certain times, only to see something different, which would lead me to my next point

3.) Learn to adapt

Winning sets against really solid players requires constant adaptation to what your opponent is doing. Is he throwing a lot, when I do an aerial? Maybe, I should try to do an empty and space far away enough so he can’t throw me, and then I should punish the lag from his throw.

(1 minute later)

Hmmm, he’s caught on to what I’m doing, he’s starting to do a smash attack instead of throw in this situations. I should switch to a quick jab to counter his smash.

This is a rather basic example of what goes on in people’s heads while they play a video game competitively. They have to constantly think about their actions and anticipate their opponent based on patterns, tendencies, and previous match history. It’s a lot more than meets the eye.

4.) Be more concerned about your opponent’s actions than your own

This is more of a poker analogy than anything. Often times when I see amateurs play poker, they often complain to me, “Man, I didn’t get any good cards all day, but my friend did. He gets lucky all the time”.

This is a huge logical flaw in approaching poker, games, or anything that involved competitiveness and teams. In poker, the question shouldn’t be I should only bet when I have good cards, rather it should be what my opponent is doing? Do you think he has good cards? “I think he looks weak based on his body movement and physique, maybe a bet will get him off his hand” “I have pocket jacks, although it’s a very strong hand, I think my opponent has an even stronger hand, so I’m going to fold instead of bet here”

In smash, my roommate used to have a huge problem with focusing only on his own character to the point that he wouldn’t pay attention to anything else. This became really noticeable when we played in a teams tournament at UCLA and a Jigglypuff player would do the same “rollout” move, in which Jigglypuff rolls quickly rolls across the stage and hits a person. This move killed him 5 times in one match. I realized that he wasn’t paying attention to his opponents or me on the screen at all, and it ended up costing us the match. After telling him to pay attention to his opponent and surrounding environment more, his game playing got noticeably better.

5.) PRACTICE!!

This is the best advice I can give if you want to be good at a videogame. Your technical skill not up to par? Then, play in training mode and practice the same technical movements over and over until you can do it 99.9% of the time on command. You can’t win a certain matchup as your character? Get friends to help you out with that matchup.

Practicing with friends is also the time when you can practice little nuances and techniques you cannot risk doing in a tournament.

“Can my down-A attack beat out his fireball?”

“Can my recovery counter his smash attack?”

These are the types of things that you can practice at home, but this knowledge is vital if one wishes to excel in a tournament.

Also, talk to friends; discuss weaknesses and strengths you notice about each other. Even record yourself and take note of mistakes and patterns of yourself.

6.) Tournaments last long, wear deodorant and shower!

Many video game tournaments in general last full days, sometimes even weekends. The general demographics for these tournaments are males, so you can imagine how bad it can be when 100 people are in a stuffed hot room. It’s gross. Whenever my friend, Alan, runs a smash tournament, I tell him to remind everyone to shower because it really does smell that bad.

Anyway here are some pictures from my smash career.

UCLA Team for Crew Battles (Fall 2006)

Winning all-hill tournament (UCLA 2008)


PC Cheering Squad (Yay!)

Have some more pictures somewhere

Notable Results
#2 MV Smash Teams tourney w/ Brotter 2005
#4 UCLA Smash All Hill w/ Brotter 2007
#1 UCLA Smash All Hill w/ Aesis 2008