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Throughout its twelve years of competitive history, Super Smash Brothers Melee has drastically transformed. The list of viable characters, initially containing the full 26 included in the game, has now shrunk to roughly a third of that amount (the exact number depends on who you ask). The stage list, previously expansive and varied, has shrunk down to six stages. The stakes have increased, from tournaments in basements and teenagers sponsored by allowances, to convention-sized events and professional players.

Perhaps most interestingly, the game has gone from a slow, blow-by-blow contest to a (mostly) high-octane, high-APM flurry of exchanges. While such a development is owed in part to all of the above factors, it can mostly be attributed to the steady rise of the technical depth of the game. As movement and lag-reduction techniques were discovered and familiarized, the speed and executional difficulty of high-level competition simultaneously rose. The ceiling of these developments is so high, the effort to master them so precipitous, that a popular term to describe mechanical development and perfection has recently risen within the community: “20XX”, the dystopian future that the Megaman X series was set in.

Continue reading “The 20XX Conspiracy” »