Melee and Me
Get it? Like Marley and Me? It’s like the title of the movie but it’s just melee instead of dog.
Ok fun banter aside there’s something that’s been on my mind lately and haven’t really had an outlet to share it (since I didn’t want to learn how to write a twitlonger). I want to talk about my relationship with the video game Super Smash Bros Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube (2001). As I was driving to my new apartment today with some stuff from my parents’ place I was thinking back to my early melee days circa 2016. When I think back to then I see a different benji (benji being my “tag” for those readers unfamiliar with the competitive melee scene) not only because I went by a different tag back then but I was a completely different person and competitor too. I was always a quiet kid growing up and coming out alone to tournaments where I knew no one was no different. Since I was only in Oregon for 4-5 weeks in the winter and 10-12 weeks in the summer I wasn’t attending Oregon tournaments year round and since I often had classes on days when tournaments were happening in California i rarely made it to those too. This meant when I was able to make it to a tournament I often went alone, knew next to no one there, and it really truly was an event I went out of my way to go to. And because of all this I had a drive to good. I had a drive to be recognized. I had a drive to win.
But I didn’t win. At least not that much. “You’ve got classes and homework to focus on so that’s why you’re not improving” I’d tell myself. That wasn’t true. I wasn’t taking classes that assigned real “homework” and especially in my third year I remember playing A LOT of melee. Yet I’d drive 45+ minutes to Santa Cruz and still go 0-2 or 1-2, maybe go 2-2 in the amateur bracket. In Oregon it wasn’t much different. Eventually I would lose interest in improving with the character I played and switch to someone else. Sheik loses to Ice Climbers? Fox doesn’t. Fox struggles vs Marth? Jigglypuff has good options vs Marth. and so on and so forth until I’d touched just about half the cast and fell in love with playing everyone. People joke that if I’d just stick to one character I’d be a force to be reckoned with but I’d sooner quit the game because to me that just isn’t fun.
Quit the game? No. I don’t think I could ever quite quit melee. But over the past year, ever since Major Upset last April, I have found that the drive and motivation to win has dwindled significantly. But in its place, in its ashes I’ve found new motivation and new drive, and a new outlet to focus what I am really interested in towards: Photography. In early 2023 I brought my camera with me to a crowded house tournament and took some photos since I had recently wanted to start taking portrait photography more seriously. Most of those photos were pretty junk but a few (I think) had some redeeming qualities to them. But I wanted to do more. And then came Genesis 9 and I saw some of the photographers there and their work and I became so inspired. Like so so inspired. I was so inspired that I must have shot around two dozen tournaments between Genesis 9-10. And in that time I found my true calling and my true purpose in the melee scene. I was never going to be the best Luigi player or a stellar multi-main player. But what I can be is a photographer who takes photographs of people playing a 20+ year old children’s party game (that is actually rated T for Teen).
So, like I said, I was thinking back to those first Melee at Epics, those Pacific Showdowns, to Genesis 5. Back to a time when I felt like an outsider navigating an unfamiliar community. And I compare that to now, when I feel so ingrained in the community I don’t think that I would be me without it. The bulk of my closest friends I have met because of melee. Perhaps I have Joseph to thank for that. Or perhaps I should thank my competitive drive that first weekend of college in 2015, booting up a game I had a cloudy recollection of playing in my childhood.
But I do know who I should thank. I should thank people like Connor Contra and Logan ShakeZula for remembering my name at Epic even when it had been weeks or months since I’d last visited. I should thank people like Ryan Rymo for letting me do my documentary class project on him, allowing me to create my first creative content around melee. I should thank people like Bill Shatnuh for being welcoming to an intimidated “kid” showing up to PSU campus with a heavy CRT in hand and unsure where to put it or where to go with it. And I want to thank you for taking the time to read this. If you’ve gotten this far it means you’re someone who cares about me and I appreciate you to no ends.
And this isn’t an end. I know all this long write up feels like it reads into a conclusion in this part of my life but I don’t think that that is the case. It’s more like a chapter break. Or one of those larger chapter breaks like where the author decides what came before and after are more substantial than a chapter and skips like an entire page to let you know the story is really ready to change.
And things have changed so so so much in the past 8 (fucking EIGHT!?) years. Like I said, the fox/sheik player walking into the Epic Games store in Milwaukie, OR in November of 2016 seems like such a different person to the photographer dual wielding cameras that is going to walk into the Asscadian tomorrow. And I can’t wait to meet the whatever I am in 2032. The only thing I know is that between now and then melee is likely to take a significantly smaller role in my life. I’ll always have the friends I’ve made playing the game and we’ll always have late night doubles sessions and discord pings for @doubles and draft class doubles and doubles brackets (I’ve been mostly enjoying doubles lately) but I think it’s time I let the controller(s) gather a little bit more dust while I focus on other ventures and other interests in my life. You’ll still see me at events, it’s just behind a camera instead of behind a controller (unless there’s doubles >:).
Wow. When I sat down to write this I was expecting to write a simple Intro-Paragraph-Paragraph-Paragraph-Conclusion essay not all this. But again, I want to thank you for taking the time to read all this, especially considering I’m no top player or traveling photographer or anyone of real consequence within the community at large, Thank You. I promise future posts here will be much shorter but I’ve been meaning to communicate this somehow for sometime and I’m happy to finally share it.
: )