Se-jun went from Pokémon world championships to Super Smash Bros.

Sejun - Upcomer

robots

https://legacy.upcomer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Sejun-2.jpg

https://d1fytg1nnnd8c0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Sejun-2.jpg

twitter:card

twitter:site

Smash

Archives - Upcomer

Pokémon VGC

Pokemon World Championship

Se-jun

Smash World Tour

Super Smash Bros.

The first VGC champion to sign with a top-tier esports organization

Se-jun went from winning the Pokémon World Championships in 2014 to qualifying for Smash World Tour's East Asia division in 2021.

Se-jun was the first VGC champion to sign to a top-tier esports organization. But when T1 approached Se-jun, it was about Super Smash Bros.

How Se-jun went from Pokémon World Champion to the Smash World Tour

https://d1fytg1nnnd8c0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/1080.jpg

Upcomer

Upcomer Home

Comment

Alexander Lee is an editor and freelance writer based in New York City. He has covered esports and the FGC for national and regional publications such as the Washington Post, the Nation, and ESPN. Top-level Super Smash Bros. Melee players have described his Jigglypuff as "pretty good."

https://www.upcomer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/alexheadshotbw-96x96.jpeg

Alex Lee

How Se-jun went from Pok&eacute;mon World Champion to the Smash World Tour

description

noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1

https://legacy.upcomer.com/how-se-jun-went-from-pokemon-world-champion-to-the-smash-world-tour/

twitter:creator

Provided by Julia Grey, Jyade, OtEs abd Oetra

FwYvIx1 - Upcomer

https://legacy.upcomer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/FwYvIx1.png

https://d1fytg1nnnd8c0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/FwYvIx1.png

Free Palestine

Netplay for Palestine

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Zain

The Melee community and its recent outspoken support of Palestine

The Smash player Free Palestine with the Palestine flag hanging in the background

The Netplay for Palestine Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament brought a voice to Palestinian, Arab and Middle Eastern smashers.

Netplay for Palestine garners Smash community support

https://legacy.upcomer.com/netplay-for-palestine-garners-smash-community-support/

Michigan congressman Justin Amash announces he is running for president with a meme from Super Smash Bros.

Photo provided by Justin Amash via Twitter.

Amash Announcement - Upcomer

https://legacy.upcomer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AmashAnnouncement.jpeg

https://d1fytg1nnnd8c0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AmashAnnouncement.jpeg

Feature

While most esports culture is niche and esoteric, Super Smash Bros. has broken through to become a genuine pop-culture fixture.

Michigan congressman Justin Amash announced that he was running for president using a "challenger approaching” meme from the Smash series.

While most esports culture is niche and esoteric, Super Smash Bros. has escaped those confines to become a genuine pop-culture fixture.

How the Smash franchise has worked its way into our cultural fabric

https://legacy.upcomer.com/how-the-smash-franchise-has-worked-its-way-into-our-cultural-fabric/

FGCoC 2 - Upcomer

https://legacy.upcomer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FGCoC-2.jpg

https://d1fytg1nnnd8c0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FGCoC-2.jpg

Fighting Game Community

In the wake of so many problems, one group stepped up to set things right

After a wave of sexual misconduct swept the Fighting Game Community, a number of tournament organizers came together to create a standardized code of conduct.

When a wave of sexual misconduct allegations upended the fighting game community, a group of TOs authored the Fighting Game Code of Conduct.

Uniting the fighting game community under one code of conduct

https://legacy.upcomer.com/fighting-game-community-code-of-conduct/

13thofficialtierlist - Upcomer

https://legacy.upcomer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/13thofficialtierlist.jpg

https://d1fytg1nnnd8c0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/13thofficialtierlist.jpg

How a single tweet spawned the first official melee tier list in years

For the first time in years, the Super Smash Bros. Melee community has a tier list that reflects the current metagame.

After months of careful shepherding, Ryobeat and PracticalTAS said they are satisfied that their tier list accurately reflects the Melee metagame in 2021. They also hope to resolve long-standing community debates by querying top players about a range of hot-button topics, including the legality of the Ice Climbers’ infinite combinations and the use of low-latency monitors (rather than CRT televisions) at offline tournaments.
Meanwhile, the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate scene has never put together an official tier list despite being the most recent entry in the series of games. Will these positive changes inspire members of the Smash Ultimate scene to create a standardized tier list of their own?
Probably not.
For reasons both practical and philosophical, Smash Ultimate may very well become the first Smash title to never have an official community tier list.
“Ultimate, specifically, is one of the least important games to have a tier list in because 30 to 40 characters are legitimately tournament viable,” said top player Eric “ESAM” Lew.
With such a wide range of viable characters, a Smash Ultimate tier list would risk having more variance than any algorithm or normalizing process could handle, making the process of collecting and averaging top players’ opinions a potentially fruitless endeavor. Furthermore, the presence of downloadable content and rolling balance patches in Smash Ultimate has prevented the metagame from stabilizing to the point that a tier list would remain relevant for more than a few months.
Since the shutdown of all in-person tournaments in March 2020, Nintendo has released five DLC characters, including the ARMS-inspired Min Min, whose unique mechanics make it difficult to gauge how she would perform in offline tournaments. And though the developer releases balance notes for every version of the game, they <a href="https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/54794/~/super-smash-bros.-ultimate-update-ver.-11.0.0---fighter-adjustments">can be cryptic</a> and often list a few significant adjustments alongside a deluge of relatively minor tweaks.
“We have at least 10 to 15 characters that get fundamentally changed in how they play from patch to patch,” ESAM said.
Most top Smash Ultimate players also don’t feel the need to create an official tier list because they feel their gameplay and tournament results provide a sufficient guide for newer players looking to get into the game competitively. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many top players to work double-time as entertainers, constantly streaming and producing videos to share their opinions with legions of fans.

“You can kind of build an average tier list in your head—like, these top players think this character is generally good or bad,” said Panda Global Rankings Ultimate No. 9 Samuel “Dabuz” Buzby. “But also, outside of the absolute garbage characters like Little Mac, Ganondorf, or Jigglypuff, you can kind of play whoever you want.”
This flexibility stands in stark contrast to the top-heavy Super Smash Bros. Melee metagame, which can punish new players for picking non-viable or mid-tier characters.
Both ESAM and Dabuz were quick to point out that any Smash Ultimate tier list based on the last year of online competition would have to be thrown out when offline tournaments return, as the online metagame has diverged significantly from its offline counterpart.
“Online, a lot of winning matchups are extra winning, but a lot of losing matchups feel unwinnable,” Dabuz said.
On the other hand, the new Melee tier list is supported by years of offline meta development and the low-lag online play enabled by the rollback netcode of <a href="https://slippi.gg/">Project Slippi</a>. Until the in-person scene bounces back, any discussion of creating an official Ultimate tier list must inevitably be postponed.
Projects such as Ryobeat and PracticalTAS’s used thorough research and meticulous calculations to weld together the opinions of many top players, allowing the resulting tier list to approach objectivity. While the relative decentralization of the Ultimate community makes it unlikely that an equivalent project will ever come together for the Switch title, the same fusion of top player opinions happens naturally in the Ultimate scene.
At the end of the day, tier lists represent a coalescing of community opinions into an easy-to-understand ranking. This consensus can still exist in the Ultimate scene, but finding it might require digging a bit deeper.
As for PracticalTAS, he said he’s excited to share his new tier list with the world, and he’s confident that his project reflects dynamics of top player power that predate the era of the Back Rooms.
“It’s less of a re-centralization to me,” PracticalTAS said, “and more of an exercising of influence that has been present for a long time.”

Ryobeat lit a spark in the Melee community when he noted there hadn’t been an official Melee tier list in years. On March 29, he changed it.

Super Smash Bros. Melee's first tier list in years recaptures modern meta

Super Smash Bros. Melee&#8217;s first tier list in years recaptures modern meta

Ryobeat lit a spark in the Melee community when he noted there hadn&rsquo;t been an official Melee tier list in years. On March 29, he changed it.

Super Smash Bros. Melee&#039;s first tier list in years recaptures modern meta

https://legacy.upcomer.com/melee-tier-list/