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Jesus was spotted in the basement of the ByWard Market’s Courtyard Marriott hotel on Saturday morning, holding a game controller and accompanied by his older brother, Envy Dragon.
Surrounding them, and also carrying a game controllers, were their brethren in combat, also known as “smashers”: Jungspace Jam, for example, and Milkshake, Mr. Nasty, Kage, SoupMan, Supergirl Kels and her little brother, Crazy Little Jay, and Traplord Amza.
The occasion was ECHO2016, a twice-annual, day-long Ottawa tournament at which some 200 competitors — almost twice the number who attended last August’s event — including some of the country’s top-ranked players, gathered to play four different Super Smash Bros. video combat games: Smash 64, Melee, Project M and Smash 4.
The walls of the low-ceilinged, dimly lit conference room were lined with tables holding about 40 old TVs, most of the kind you’d throw out. But tourney boss Thomas Dykes says these cathode ray tube jobs are actually provide the fastest response time from controller to screen.
“Plus you can get them for about $5 apiece,” he adds, not an insignificant factor when you consider that the competitive world of these Nintendo games is really a player-driven, DIY affair.
From left, Shannon ‘Qerbstomp’ Belanger, Kieran ‘GIRL’ Cantwell-Bowditch, Liam ‘Mr. Nasty’ Liam Cade-McCulloch and Zach ‘SoupMan’ Safioles play Super Smash Bros. Melee at the ECHO2016 tournament at the Courtyard Marriott Saturday.
How DIY? Competitors at ECHO2016 paid a $10 venue fee, which goes towards renting the facility, and a $10 entry fee for each game they want to compete in, with the top three winners at each game splitting the pot on a 60/30/10 basis. So the top prize for the winner of the Melee tournament, with about 80 entrants, would be about $480. The third-place finisher would net perhaps $60, minus whatever snacks he bought at the vending machine.
The popularity of the Super Smash Bros. games is a curious phenomenon because, notwithstanding the recent release of Smash 4, the games are relatively ancient. Smash 64, the original, came out in 1999. Nintendo not only didn’t intend it to be a competitive game, the company has, in fact, distanced itself from tournaments like ECHO2016. For many players, the fact that Smash’s competitive world was built by them, as opposed to Nintendo, adds to the appeal. For many, there’s also the nostalgia of Smash Bros.’s game characters — Mario, Luigi, Pikachu and Donkey Kong, for example — all originated from other games of players’ childhoods.
“The Smash games are also really great,” says Kelsy Madeiros, aka Supergirl Kels, who, with brother Jonah (Crazy Little Jay), came from Montreal to play Saturday. “Unlike Street Fighter, where you’re so limited in what you can do, Smash is really creative. You can always learn, you can always get better.”
From left, Jason ‘Crazy Little Jay’ Medeiros, his sister Kelsy ‘Supergirl Kels’ Medeiros, Marc-André ‘Erra’ Lepine and Frederick ‘Fwed’ Levreault compete at the ECHO2016 Super Smash Bros. tournament Saturday at the Courtyard Marriott.
Supergirl Kels, 20, was one of only a handful of women participating in ECHO2016, which probably isn’t far off the industry average. She suspects that when she first started playing, many guys let her win. That’s no longer the case: She’s the No. 2-ranked Smash 4 player in Montreal, and fifth or sixth in Canada.
“In the past, I’ve come to these tournament with the idea of just having some fun and hoping to finish in the top eight. But today I’m hoping to win.”
For team play, she brought her 13-year-old brother, Jason, who at a tournament in New Jersey last year, became the youngest player to make the top 20 at a national competition when, at 12, he finished 18th.
Others among Canada’s Smash Bros. elite were on hand Saturday. Montreal’s Roustane “Kage” Benzeguir, ranked 44th in the world at Melee, one of very few Canadians to crack the top 100, knew he had a good chance of winning Saturday, but expected he’d have to face Toronto bad boy Ryan Ford, 25, aka Unknown522. A game-tester by trade, Kage, 30, learned about the competitive scene nine years ago.
“I’ve been hooked ever since.”
But many of Saturday’s smashers were there simply for the fun of it. Liam “Mr. Nasty” Cade-McCulloch and Zach “SoupMan” Safioles, both 18, drove in from Smiths Falls, where competition is a bit thinner.
“I’d played Smash as a party game when I was, like, five,” recalled SoupMan, “but then we watched the Smash documentary on YouTube, and it showed us what the game can do, and we were like ‘Wow, we really want to do that.’”
“It’s great to play new people,” added Mr. Nasty. “We don’t expect to win, but playing better people makes you better.”
Jungspace Jam and Traplord Amza, aka Will Goldney and Hamzah Jamal Abdullah, battle it out at Super Smash Bros. Melee on Saturday at ECHO2016, a daylong tournament held at the Courtyard Marriott in the ByWard Market.
Trash-talking Traplord Amza, meanwhile, had higher hopes. Kage and Unknown522 might have been the pregame Melee favourites, said the 21-year-old Ottawa student and contractor, but they were going to have to go through him first. And although he’s only been playing competitively for a year, he practices six hours a day, seven days a week.
“I’m a real No. 1,” he said. “I’m about the thick of it. I’m in the mud. They come to me for the fights and I give them the fights. I get to put my emotions into the game. I get to tell my enemy ‘I’m better than you, in so many ways.’ I’m too strong when I face my enemy, and I like to put that forth. I’m the best on Walkley, all the way to Heron.”
“If this was Fight Club, Tyler Durden would be here and he’d be proud.”
He conceded, though, that some smashers might have to lie to themselves to boost their confidence, and that they would have to do it really well to believe their own lie. But he wasn’t one of those.
“No. There’s no way I’m not going to win.”
bdeachman@postmedia.com
查看原文...
Surrounding them, and also carrying a game controllers, were their brethren in combat, also known as “smashers”: Jungspace Jam, for example, and Milkshake, Mr. Nasty, Kage, SoupMan, Supergirl Kels and her little brother, Crazy Little Jay, and Traplord Amza.
The occasion was ECHO2016, a twice-annual, day-long Ottawa tournament at which some 200 competitors — almost twice the number who attended last August’s event — including some of the country’s top-ranked players, gathered to play four different Super Smash Bros. video combat games: Smash 64, Melee, Project M and Smash 4.
The walls of the low-ceilinged, dimly lit conference room were lined with tables holding about 40 old TVs, most of the kind you’d throw out. But tourney boss Thomas Dykes says these cathode ray tube jobs are actually provide the fastest response time from controller to screen.
“Plus you can get them for about $5 apiece,” he adds, not an insignificant factor when you consider that the competitive world of these Nintendo games is really a player-driven, DIY affair.
From left, Shannon ‘Qerbstomp’ Belanger, Kieran ‘GIRL’ Cantwell-Bowditch, Liam ‘Mr. Nasty’ Liam Cade-McCulloch and Zach ‘SoupMan’ Safioles play Super Smash Bros. Melee at the ECHO2016 tournament at the Courtyard Marriott Saturday.
How DIY? Competitors at ECHO2016 paid a $10 venue fee, which goes towards renting the facility, and a $10 entry fee for each game they want to compete in, with the top three winners at each game splitting the pot on a 60/30/10 basis. So the top prize for the winner of the Melee tournament, with about 80 entrants, would be about $480. The third-place finisher would net perhaps $60, minus whatever snacks he bought at the vending machine.
The popularity of the Super Smash Bros. games is a curious phenomenon because, notwithstanding the recent release of Smash 4, the games are relatively ancient. Smash 64, the original, came out in 1999. Nintendo not only didn’t intend it to be a competitive game, the company has, in fact, distanced itself from tournaments like ECHO2016. For many players, the fact that Smash’s competitive world was built by them, as opposed to Nintendo, adds to the appeal. For many, there’s also the nostalgia of Smash Bros.’s game characters — Mario, Luigi, Pikachu and Donkey Kong, for example — all originated from other games of players’ childhoods.
“The Smash games are also really great,” says Kelsy Madeiros, aka Supergirl Kels, who, with brother Jonah (Crazy Little Jay), came from Montreal to play Saturday. “Unlike Street Fighter, where you’re so limited in what you can do, Smash is really creative. You can always learn, you can always get better.”
From left, Jason ‘Crazy Little Jay’ Medeiros, his sister Kelsy ‘Supergirl Kels’ Medeiros, Marc-André ‘Erra’ Lepine and Frederick ‘Fwed’ Levreault compete at the ECHO2016 Super Smash Bros. tournament Saturday at the Courtyard Marriott.
Supergirl Kels, 20, was one of only a handful of women participating in ECHO2016, which probably isn’t far off the industry average. She suspects that when she first started playing, many guys let her win. That’s no longer the case: She’s the No. 2-ranked Smash 4 player in Montreal, and fifth or sixth in Canada.
“In the past, I’ve come to these tournament with the idea of just having some fun and hoping to finish in the top eight. But today I’m hoping to win.”
For team play, she brought her 13-year-old brother, Jason, who at a tournament in New Jersey last year, became the youngest player to make the top 20 at a national competition when, at 12, he finished 18th.
Others among Canada’s Smash Bros. elite were on hand Saturday. Montreal’s Roustane “Kage” Benzeguir, ranked 44th in the world at Melee, one of very few Canadians to crack the top 100, knew he had a good chance of winning Saturday, but expected he’d have to face Toronto bad boy Ryan Ford, 25, aka Unknown522. A game-tester by trade, Kage, 30, learned about the competitive scene nine years ago.
“I’ve been hooked ever since.”
But many of Saturday’s smashers were there simply for the fun of it. Liam “Mr. Nasty” Cade-McCulloch and Zach “SoupMan” Safioles, both 18, drove in from Smiths Falls, where competition is a bit thinner.
“I’d played Smash as a party game when I was, like, five,” recalled SoupMan, “but then we watched the Smash documentary on YouTube, and it showed us what the game can do, and we were like ‘Wow, we really want to do that.’”
“It’s great to play new people,” added Mr. Nasty. “We don’t expect to win, but playing better people makes you better.”
Jungspace Jam and Traplord Amza, aka Will Goldney and Hamzah Jamal Abdullah, battle it out at Super Smash Bros. Melee on Saturday at ECHO2016, a daylong tournament held at the Courtyard Marriott in the ByWard Market.
Trash-talking Traplord Amza, meanwhile, had higher hopes. Kage and Unknown522 might have been the pregame Melee favourites, said the 21-year-old Ottawa student and contractor, but they were going to have to go through him first. And although he’s only been playing competitively for a year, he practices six hours a day, seven days a week.
“I’m a real No. 1,” he said. “I’m about the thick of it. I’m in the mud. They come to me for the fights and I give them the fights. I get to put my emotions into the game. I get to tell my enemy ‘I’m better than you, in so many ways.’ I’m too strong when I face my enemy, and I like to put that forth. I’m the best on Walkley, all the way to Heron.”
“If this was Fight Club, Tyler Durden would be here and he’d be proud.”
He conceded, though, that some smashers might have to lie to themselves to boost their confidence, and that they would have to do it really well to believe their own lie. But he wasn’t one of those.
“No. There’s no way I’m not going to win.”
bdeachman@postmedia.com
查看原文...
