Sixty Frames — Melee’s Competitive Story Through Single Images
Is Melee just a game?
Well … duh.
Obviously Melee is just a game. The track that defined your early twenties, that sends shivers down your spine, is “Just a song.” Your career, your passion, the center of your life is “Just a job.” Everything can be narrowed down and compartmentalized and over-simplified into three dismissive words.
So yeah, Melee is “just a game.”
But there’s a moment — in all things of which people are passionate — there’s a moment when you and maybe someone around you or people you’re talking to all simultaneously ingest this external thing and take it into your identity and suddenly, to you, it’s not just a game. It’s part of you. It’s not necessarily “all” of you — that’s generally considered unhealthy — but it’s still part of you. Stories and moments and narratives and lives that you have no bearing on, that exist completely outside of you become part of your world in a very real, very present way.
Melee is just a game — but it’s something else too. It is upsets, and it is long-delayed victory. It is disappointment and rivalry and anger. It is some of the funniest goddamn jokes I’ve ever heard in my life.
This game, for people like me, is a story. And, at the same time, it really is just a game.
So…what is this game?
In a word — it is motion. It is speed and fluidity and speed and speed.
When I was 11, I had been playing Super Smash Bros. on the N64 for a few years. It was the best game I had ever touched. So when my friend invited some people over to play the new one, I was excited.
That night, fueled by Mountain Dew and grease-caked Hungry Howie’s, that small group of 9-year olds — all 64 veterans — fired up Super Smash Bros Melee, ogled over the opening cinematic, started a 4-player game and all cried at pretty much the same moment:
“What is going on?! I can’t tell what’s happening!!”
The game was blisteringly fast. After years of playing Smash64, Melee was just chaos. Four-person matches on small stages with items on were fucking glorious in their sheer insanity.
Many years passed, and when I rediscovered Melee as a competitive game, I saw that familiar speed put to totally different use. Here the frenzied energy is channeled, and becomes the foundation of the game’s competitive DNA. Players had soon realized that the game’s engine would keep up as they pushed it faster, and faster, and faster. Melee’s ceiling is literally inhuman; just understanding and reacting to everything in a match is a developed skill which top players have spent years perfecting.
Movement tech became essential to survival. The best players will space themselves just outside of all your attacks, ruthlessly punishing you for swinging where it feels like half a millisecond ago they were standing. They will dance around the stage — and you — overwhelming your senses and causing a fumble or mistake. They will always be located in just that precise spot to deliver the absolute best follow-up to every move in every scenario. They will protect themselves, resetting dangerous situations or even turning them around to create advantage out of being in a corner.
In short: Melee in motion is an art. From the first moment I saw it played competitively, I was addicted.
But here’s the question: what is Melee out of motion? What is left when you freeze the game and take it one portrait at a time?
Can we get any of that exciting, powerful stuff out of just a shot? Can we find something deeper than just the game?
In this series, that’s what I want to do. The idea is to use portraits — in-game and -out, in no particular order, to frame and illustrate and narrate the competitive scene over the years.
This is Sixty Frames. Here is Frame One:
Goddamn that is so cool.
Let’s break this down.
We have Marth versus Fox. This is maybe the most storied matchup in Melee. They’re the two kings of the metagame: for a decade we’ve argued who’s a better character in the head-to-head, and a decade from now we’ll probably still be arguing.
They feel built to counter each other. Fox overwhelms with speed, but Marth’s incredible range dominates space. Fox’s combos are hard and aggressive — his shine knocks you to the ground, and his follow-ups deal massive damage and huge knockback (he’s one of the only characters with more than one reliable killing move in neutral). Marth’s combos are graceful and elegant — he tosses you into the air and strings together fluid hits to keep you from coming anywhere near the ground. When he throws Fox offstage, despite that character’s incredible amount of mixups, Marth can slice him into an early death with such grace that frustrated Fox players will complain that it’s too easy (they may be right).
In a word: Fox attacks. Marth controls.
Back to our screenshot: the timer reads “5:31.” It started at “7:00”, so we’re 1 1/2 minutes into the game — Marth is offstage with 2 stocks, and Fox is jumping to meet him with all 4. He has yet to lose even one stock.
There are so many ways for Fox to handle this situation. If he up-airs, his opponent dies. If he shines, his opponent dies. Hell, he could nair or even reverse bair and his opponent will probably die. But the Fox doesn’t take any of these options.
He just shoots one laser.
A laser which does nothing whatsoever to kill Marth, which adds a measly 3% damage.
The message is clear: you’re trying your hardest to win, but I’m just toying with you. I don’t respect you. I don’t need to take this stock — I’m going to take it later. I am beating you so thoroughly that — for all intents and purposes — I’ve spent this whole game playing with my food. You have no chance of winning.
Forfeit.
This moment is — of course — from Game 2 of Loser’s Finals of Genesis 2. Mango (Fox) is playing Taj (Marth). Mango got here through Loser’s — Armada awaits the winner in Grand Finals. One year before, Mango fought two incredibly difficult sets to take the win from a then-unknown Armada. And just a few minutes earlier, Taj beat Mango in Winner’s Semis, knocking his Falco into Loser’s.
Mango switched to Fox and Melee was never the same.
This picture is right in the middle of a tournament that would set the blueprint for the next 6 years of the competitive game. Moments before this shot, Mango has — seemingly spontaneously — found in himself a level of Melee that no one has seen before. He’s not just playing well: move-to-move, he’s changing the game. He’s demonstrating (arguably) the first modern Fox — a devastating blend of speed and aggression to which Taj has no answer but unplugging his controller.
But a few minutes later, Armada will have an answer to this Fox. It will be close, but Mango’s game-breaking flash will barely miss the bar of perfection set by the swede. That head-to-head will become familiar over the next few years: style versus consistency; mindgame versus punish-game; reads versus optimization; Mango versus Armada. A story for another time.
And on the precipice of the future, Mango — playing an iconic red fox tagged “NEO!” — reveals just a bit of the soul of competitive Melee: disrespect. Fucking beautiful.
Next time: A Swedish up-and-comer who thrives on aggression can’t quite break a North-Carolinian master of serenity.
