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Video Game : Super Smash Bro 's Melee

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Packed into the basement of University Hall, every Thursday night students at New York University gather to play what was once a children 's party game. Rows of old CRT’s are taken out of closets and hauled downstairs and players unwind their trusty controllers. Soon the soothing click clack of Gamecube controllers fills the air as everyone begins to warm up for the bracket that night. These players are fans of Super Smash Bro’s Melee, a tight knit community of dedicated gamers.
Colloquially referred to as Melee, Super Smash Bro’s is a fighting video game that has seen a resurgence in popularity among college aged kids for it’s mix of nostalgia and genuine fun. The game itself is simple, there are 27 characters to choose from and each …show more content…

In 2013, there was a shift in the Melee world. A new meme arose, the year 20XX, originally the year Megaman was set in, it evolved on it’s own within the melee community. As Hax puts it “The year is 20XX. Everyone plays Fox at TAS levels of perfection. Because of this, the winner of a match depends solely on port priority. The RPS metagame has evolved to ridiculous levels due to it being the only remaining factor to decide matches.” (Al-Yami) TAS or, Tool Assisted Superplay, is when players use computer assisted tools to input actions in 1/60th of a second windows, allowing them to surpass the level of play achievable by normal humans. Even though this level of speed may seem unrealistic, players push closer to perfection every year. Caught up in this wave Hax completely dropped Captain Falcon as his main and switched to only playing Fox. Conversely there are those that believe in the other characters. These self-proclaimed defenders of 20XX work to optimize the kits of other characters in hopes of keeping character diversity, and the Melee scene alive. According to the Melee power rankings, a list that keeps track of the rank of current players, three of the top five players currently don’t use fox as a main. One of them is Joseph “Mang0” Marquez a Falco player who currently sits at number two (SmashBoards). Despite Fox’s domination at the TAS level of play, humans aren’t nearly as infallible. Mang0 pushes the limits of Falco despite his slower

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