We attended the National Students E-sports inaugural British University playoffs at Metronome, which kicked off with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate…
For those who don’t know, Super Smash Bros. is a 2D fighting video game series created by Nintendo. Unlike classic fighting games, in Smash, the objective is to launch your opponent off the screen and instead of a health bar, the players have a percentage metre which increases based on the amount of damage a character takes. These rules are customisable, but throughout the tournament remained the same with a 9-minute time limit and each player having three lives.
Smash’s biggest appeal however is its character roster which originally started with Nintendo’s all-stars including Super Mario, Link from The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Kirby and Pokemon’s Pikachu. It has expanded further to include obscure characters from Nintendo’s past such as the Ice Climbers and Mr Game & Watch, and even characters from franchises not owned by Nintendo such as Sonic the Hedgehog, PAC-MAN and Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII.
The two types of tournaments were a team based tournament and an individual’s championship. The team championship worked by having a team of four players who each play against an opposing team member. After that match, the losing player is eliminated and the winner stays on. The winner is decided once a team runs out of 9 lives (like cats). Due to this team members must be careful with their lives even if they might have the advantage as lost lives are still carried over which makes these games pretty intense. The individual games initially worked on a best-of-three games basis until the top three players were found, but in the later rounds advanced to a best of five games with a much shorter time of seven minutes.
Some of the most impressive gamers I saw during the tournament were Arthrithix from the University of Bath (who uses Ganondorf) who impressively knocked out University of York’s Nin (who uses Yoshi), Mesco, also from Bath, who uses the Villager, Nades from Edinburgh, and Napier, who was runner up in the individual championship using Toon Link. The winners however were from the University of Durham with the Durham Defenders: Spreng, V Quiche, Neon and Naxi (who use Palutena, Bowser, Fox/Falco and Metal Gear Solid’s Snake, respectively) winning the team tournament and Naxi winning the individual tournament with Snake despite them being online players.
These games are a lot more skill-based and test the gamer’s skills, no items or moveable stages are included. This meant that we don’t see a vast majority of stages often rotating around such as Battlefield, Final Destination, Animal Crossing’s Smashville and Pokemon Stadium. There were also a lot of talks of strategies using these different characters because although most of the players choose particular characters to play – for example, player NS from Queen Mary’s University uses Bowser who is a heavy fighter, while Neon as seen earlier uses both Fox and Falco despite their fighting styles being very similar.
Another interesting player was Reece from the University of Bath who uses the Pokemon Trainer and more particularly Ivysaur (Pokemon Trainer is a 3-in-1 fighter with Squirtle and Charizard between the other two Pokemon) There were even games where the players skills were pushed to the max, for example the first Top 8 match of the individual championship between Nin from the University of York and Yoshisax from the University of Liverpool who both faced each other using Yoshi where Nin emerged triumphant.
Some other things to bear in mind for the next tournament is that we don’t get as familiar with the player’s personalities, instead focusing on their skills in the game, and it would be nice to see their faces during games rather than only seeing them between games, as well as interviews with them being live-streamed. However like any sport, there is a sense of respect between these players and the presenters and audience are very passionate about this game, counting down before each game starts.
So despite some room for improvement (after all, e-sports is still in its infancy), this was an enjoyable first experience of covering e-sports and something to keep an eye on in the future. Hopefully we see you at the spring term tournaments!
By Stuart McComb