No EVO For Me

07/11/14

EVO is a fighting game competition. This year the competition is featuring such games as:

• Ultra Street Fighter IV
• Blaz Blue Chronophantasma
• Killer Instinct
• Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3
• King of Fighters XIII
• Injustice: Gods Among Us
• Super Smash Bros. Melee
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2

See that game in bold up there?

That game was released in 2001. Every other game on that list is much more recent. Super Smash Bros. Melee is among them in its unaltered 2001 form.

It's an amazing game. You should play it. Even its sequel, Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii is pretty amazing. The original Super Smash Bros. game? Amazing. If you haven't played a game in the Smash Bros. series, you should, they're great.

I have been playing Melee since it came out. I'm not great at the game, but I'm competent and enjoy pursuing a competitve capability in the game.

I signed up for EVO 2014. I was pumped for EVO. I was going to play Young Link. I was going to play under the alias "Me", and my first match was going to be against some person by the alias "Eggz" who ended up being the winner of the bracket I was placed in.

I was maybe going to get a few wins in due to other people's unfamiliarity with the match-up. When I finally lost, I was going to watch the top players play each other on a level I am far from achieving. I was going to play friendly matches with a great variety of Smash Bros. players from all over the world.

EVO started this morning.

I am not at EVO. Real life sometimes gets in the way of fun plans. You see, next week is QuakeCon. QuakeCon is basically super-special-awesome PC LAN party in convention form. I was planning to go to both, but after some basic vaction-hours math, I realized I could only go to one.

I picked QuakeCon. I picked QuakeCon because it's a longer event, I'll have my huge desktop computer with me the whole time, and I'll probably learn a lot more cool stuff there than at EVO.

It's still pretty disappointing, but this sort of thing happens. As a consolation, however, I have resolved to finally set up a Gamecube emulator on my desktop and join in on the Super Smash Bros. Melee netplay community.

Silver lining: this is totally my longest blog post yet. Isn't it, Stephan?