Jake and I played Smash all the time. It was on a much lower evolutionary scale when compared to the Community, of course, so another four years or so obviously didn't give rise to great improvement. But we had great grounding in the fundamentals and knew the ins and outs of everything (or so we thought). But the day Soup graduated high school, it didn't even occur to me that my Smash days might be numbered. In eighth grade, sheltered within the walls of an extremely small private school (I'm talking twenty-five kids from third to eighth grade here), I was only just scratching the surface when it came to understanding what high school would be like. No, graduation only seemed like another birthday or Christmas at this point: loads of shouting, food, and people wearing funny hats. But as soon as Soup would get on his flight and leave for Boston, I'd be short my only Smash comrade.
Soup's brother, John, played with me now and then, but it was nothing like the floaty, Sheik-playing dude I was used to. I soon picked up the pace in the Fox matchup, though, and was wiping the floor with "Jamn" every step of the way. He soon got discouraged and also quit for less mind-exercising video games. Now he and my brother were in the same boat in the respect that neither would play 1v1's. And FFA's/Teams were out of the question unless Soup was playing. I take full responsibility for Jamn backing away from the game. I had a lot of growing to do and all I was focused on was winning all the time. I thought, "If I'm winning, I'm obviously doing something right." But what I failed see was Jamn's need for help. He was a great player, especially for his age. It's a shame he quit when he did.
All of this simply lead me to the conclusion that more Soup meant more Smash, so obviously I was overjoyed when I heard he was coming to visit during the upcoming summer.
I called Soup right as the end of my Freshman year came to a close, worried to see if he wouldn't be "into" Smash anymore. But to my bewildered gratitude, Soup seemed more excited than I was! The next day, he popped in through the door without even letting us know that he was coming, bounced in the easy chair, and challenged me to a game. I agreed, and I soon found out that this Soup was not the Soup I once knew. This Soup, even with Sheik, was producing crazy movements and he just seemed so much faster! I was appalled when, after the first game, he had four stars beneath his name... next to my zero. Nothing seemed to compute. How was this even possible? Every game, he seemed to know exactly what I was going to do! I was so mesmerized by the movement of his character that on top of my mediocrity, I lost focus. After a few matches, I asked him how he got so freakin' good! He told me that he met this guy up in Boston, Julien, who showed him all this stuff. (Julien's gamer handle was MoFo. Yes, you read that correctly. I'm referring to PC-Chris's-good-friend-MoFo. First-person-to-implement-the-drillshine-infinite-consistently-MoFo.) I begged him to show me what he knew and he was happy to teach me what he referred to as "tech skill."
I didn't understand any of it. L-Cancelling? Wavedashing? Short Hopping? What was all of this nonsense? Soup tried showing me button imputs, but I just didn't get it. Then he wrote it down and told me to practice some more before his next visit... And practice I did. I played for so long that I had a big, fat blister on my thumb from trying to wavedash. This was the most adequate experience of "practicing in my room, with the lights off" that I've ever had. When Soup returned some time later, I was only slightly better at wavedashing then I was to start off with. But not too far down the road, I actually learned to L-Cancel consistently before he did. This had me plummeting down the plateau of tech skill, seeing as it was the only thing I was better at than he was (Fox was my character of choice around this time). And before I knew what happened, Soup dropped out of college, for numerous reasons, giving me the most Smash-centered year I've ever had.
-----------------------
After I discovered others' abilities over Youtube, I was hooked more than ever. I soon located Smashboards, surfing up and down threads, trying to understand the umpteen amounts of information it had to offer. Eventually I ended up teaching Soup! A few months of this went by before MoFo came down to Sarasota to stay at Soup's house. They were close friends up north, so him and Soup pulled some money together to make an well-overdue visit happen. Once MoFo made his way here, they both agreed upon a visit before he left. They were heading to my house! I was rediculously excited. An actual pro smasher coming to our house? For once, the untouched world that lay beyond those Youtube videos would soon be in my bedroom, playing my gamecube. Yes, I know. I made far too big of a deal out of this than most would. But then again, I never really played Smash on the competitive level with anyone besides Soup.
MoFo's Ness was rediculous. I lost every time to it and Soup was only just grazing by with Sheik. So far as I've witnessed, he has the most advanced Ness to this day. He told me he was just recently trying to get decent with Falcon too, who he three-stocked me in dittos with... And I had been playing Falcon for many months. I was never more proud to get owned. I asked MoFo exactly how he could beat me all the time. His response was more or less, "I've seen it all before."
Since then, MoFo's long gone, I'm very educated in the game now, and Soup has actually ended up moving up north and is staying with MoFo as I type this. They've both visited PC's place several times and I couldn't be more jealous. But that's exactly why I plan to travel and get my own memories of probably the deepest game I'll ever play (before I get too old to where it becomes socially inappropriate...).
Hopefully the Smash Community will hear from me soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment