The Early Days: 2000-2003
By: Yours Truly (and as a testament to how few people from back then are still around, I tried to pawn off writing duties to some other people but could not find a single person).
*Note* I am writing off memory, and well this was a long time ago. So apologizes if anything is not completely correct or other things overlooked. It also deals primarily with the US and the smash side of smashboards, which I of course understand, there has always been more to our community than.
The community was tiny. Any state, region, or group was lucky to have more than 10-15 competitive smashers in it. Most did not have a handful or any at all yet. It was an odd time. Smashboards was a group of people that really liked smash, played with their friends or family, and were looking for a way to compete or learn about advanced strategies. Most people did not find out about the boards from a search engine, from a friend, local tournament, or anything like that. You were generally on a different board. Perhaps it was gamefaqs, gamespot, meetup, or something. And you were looking to learn or just talk about things from the game (Melee) and you either made a topic or post about smash. At that point some dedicated smashboards member whom was scouring the net for people to play with, people to add to the community, said "go to smashboards.com" (*Note* This group, after I was initially introduced to the boards by on gfaqs, included me and had me using every possible resource I had to find people and get them into competitive smash).
National tournaments were virtually non-existent. Local tournaments ordinarily consisted of 10 or so people from your state and a few different awesome people (yes many times back then it was just one person, as opposed to a group) that would drive several hours for a 10-15 man tournament just cause they wanted to compete. They were almost always held at someones house as only later did people start to expand onto actual venues.
Advanced techs were just emerging. Even though it had been around since the days of Smash 64 one of the first thing you generally learned to use was edge hogging. Wavedashing was a major breakthrough, that left people both amazed and repeatedly practicing to get it down. The various chain grabs were just starting to be discovered (Marth on space animals, sheik on sheik, gannon on sheik, etc) and even that was slow just because people did not move fast enough out of the animation end to string together all that stuff and had not fully grasped the concept of chain grabbing back then. Things like waveshines, falco's short hop laser, jiggly's up throw rest, etc emerged at various points and the knowledge of them was shared and quickly adopted. The game and community was in a constant state of discovery and learning. Other things like ledge teching (first seen by Captain Jack when he came over from Japan, I believe), ICs infinites, DKs/Mewtwos Chains, would not be discovered for years.
The first of its kind that could have been called a national tournament within our community was "Tournament Go" (TG) in Socal. It was hosted by MattDeezie in his parents house. Free airport rides were provided, everyone got to stay/crash at his house, and it really just set the standard for what the level of hospitality and community contributions would be for smash events. I do think this was a really important event in the history of our community and something that really put us on the right track.
Some top players back then by region were
West Coast- Recipherus, Isai, and Sam (slightly later did Ken emerged with a pretty awesome $100 money match with the current cali greats)
Midwest- BigGman, King Luigi, SBP (Smashbrospro)
East Coast- Chillindude, Mild, and Azen
The south was sort of in its infancy with not a lot of well known players emerging from there and it being the slow growing of the regional communities. Although as you can see by now the South is both strong and vibrant.
Its pretty unbelievable to see what the community has grown into since its inception and I think if you had the opportunity to speak with some of these early members they would admit the growth and size of the current community has surpassed their wildest expectations.
By: Yours Truly (and as a testament to how few people from back then are still around, I tried to pawn off writing duties to some other people but could not find a single person).
*Note* I am writing off memory, and well this was a long time ago. So apologizes if anything is not completely correct or other things overlooked. It also deals primarily with the US and the smash side of smashboards, which I of course understand, there has always been more to our community than.
The community was tiny. Any state, region, or group was lucky to have more than 10-15 competitive smashers in it. Most did not have a handful or any at all yet. It was an odd time. Smashboards was a group of people that really liked smash, played with their friends or family, and were looking for a way to compete or learn about advanced strategies. Most people did not find out about the boards from a search engine, from a friend, local tournament, or anything like that. You were generally on a different board. Perhaps it was gamefaqs, gamespot, meetup, or something. And you were looking to learn or just talk about things from the game (Melee) and you either made a topic or post about smash. At that point some dedicated smashboards member whom was scouring the net for people to play with, people to add to the community, said "go to smashboards.com" (*Note* This group, after I was initially introduced to the boards by on gfaqs, included me and had me using every possible resource I had to find people and get them into competitive smash).
National tournaments were virtually non-existent. Local tournaments ordinarily consisted of 10 or so people from your state and a few different awesome people (yes many times back then it was just one person, as opposed to a group) that would drive several hours for a 10-15 man tournament just cause they wanted to compete. They were almost always held at someones house as only later did people start to expand onto actual venues.
Advanced techs were just emerging. Even though it had been around since the days of Smash 64 one of the first thing you generally learned to use was edge hogging. Wavedashing was a major breakthrough, that left people both amazed and repeatedly practicing to get it down. The various chain grabs were just starting to be discovered (Marth on space animals, sheik on sheik, gannon on sheik, etc) and even that was slow just because people did not move fast enough out of the animation end to string together all that stuff and had not fully grasped the concept of chain grabbing back then. Things like waveshines, falco's short hop laser, jiggly's up throw rest, etc emerged at various points and the knowledge of them was shared and quickly adopted. The game and community was in a constant state of discovery and learning. Other things like ledge teching (first seen by Captain Jack when he came over from Japan, I believe), ICs infinites, DKs/Mewtwos Chains, would not be discovered for years.
The first of its kind that could have been called a national tournament within our community was "Tournament Go" (TG) in Socal. It was hosted by MattDeezie in his parents house. Free airport rides were provided, everyone got to stay/crash at his house, and it really just set the standard for what the level of hospitality and community contributions would be for smash events. I do think this was a really important event in the history of our community and something that really put us on the right track.
Some top players back then by region were
West Coast- Recipherus, Isai, and Sam (slightly later did Ken emerged with a pretty awesome $100 money match with the current cali greats)
Midwest- BigGman, King Luigi, SBP (Smashbrospro)
East Coast- Chillindude, Mild, and Azen
The south was sort of in its infancy with not a lot of well known players emerging from there and it being the slow growing of the regional communities. Although as you can see by now the South is both strong and vibrant.
Its pretty unbelievable to see what the community has grown into since its inception and I think if you had the opportunity to speak with some of these early members they would admit the growth and size of the current community has surpassed their wildest expectations.