Smasher:Omega Tyrant

Omega Tyrant is an upstate New York smasher from the city of, who has been competing in Smash tournaments since late 2011, has contributed extensively to Smash knowledge, and is known for having a fairly popular Smash-based YouTube channel that features notably entertaining AI exploitation videos, among other Smash-related videos. His current main Smash game is Ultimate, where he has solo-mained for nearly the entire game's lifespan. Prior to Ultimate he played Smash 4, where he mostly used in tournaments during high-stake matches, alongside occasionally using, and used to competitively play Brawl pre-Smash 4, where he co-mained the unusual combination of  and , with an occasional  secondary. He never played Melee nor Project M seriously, but he used to occasionally enter local Melee and PM tournaments, where he only used, with his Melee performances being unremarkable, but he did pick up a couple local PR wins in the few times he entered a PM tournament. He is additionally known as one of SmashWiki's longest active admins, and one of its most prolific contributors in its history.

Omega Tyrant was formerly ranked 4th on the New York capital region Spring 2019 Ultimate PR, the only Ultimate season he was active enough to be ranked. He was additionally ranked 2nd on the New York capital region Fall 2017 Ultimate PR under, his last active PR season before retiring from Smash 4, and was ranked 5th on the final upstate New York PR for Brawl.

Play style
Omega Tyrant plays a patient and highly neutral-based game, that centers around controlling the stage and limiting the opponent's options, particularly through usage of trying to keep 's Gyro in play as much as he can. He is additionally known for being highly adaptive, being able to adjust his tempo to the pace of the match on the fly and often picking up on subtle habits that he utilizes to poke holes through his opponents. His punish game is above-average, though rarely can he do the extensive Gyro combos that other R.O.B. players can due to his mediocre technical skill, with him instead usually relying on more reliable and easier-to-execute punishes, and focusing on making up for any deficiencies with his punishes by grinding opponents down through repeatedly winning and controlling neutral instead.

Back in the Brawl era when he was younger and overall significantly less skilled, Omega Tyrant used to focus a lot more on reads and landing big punishes to overcome deficiencies in his neutral, while depending on strong spacing tools to keep opponents out. As time went on across the Brawl and Smash 4 eras, he would slowly transition away from depending on reads to the neutral-heavy style he employs today. During much of Smash 4 he also became a notoriously defensive player who was hard-pressed to initiate approaches, but around the later half of the game he would recognize this and make a more conscious effort to be more aggressive at times, leading to him being more balanced on the aggressive/defensive spectrum nowadays.

When Omega Tyrant emerged in the competitive scene during Brawl, he initially had a tri-main squad of, , and , that he used in near-equal measure. While he would keep the former two as co-mains throughout Brawl, he would soon drop Snake after some underperformances with the character, though the Snake would be brought back as a strong secondary near the end of his Brawl career. In Smash 4 on the other hand, his character usage had a less static history; he initially mained, as the only one of three former preferred characters to return, and used him with success for his first few Smash 4 tourneys. However, with the significant nerfs Dedede suffered and Omega Tyrant feeling that Dedede was a bottom tier character that would hold him back, while finding newfound enjoyment with, he would completely drop Dedede shortly into Smash 4's life. He additionally during the first year of Smash 4 tried to main and use Charizard as a full co-main instead of a secondary, but with the legality of customs falling out of favor, while feeling that he was significantly better with R.O.B., he ended up completely dropping Ganondorf, and nearly dropped Charizard at the start of 2016 until the 1.1.5 patch gave him some vital buffs. While he would never commit to Charizard as a serious co-main nor even use him as a real secondary most of the time, he would play Zard heavily throughout Smash 4 and would even use him a few times as a serious counterpick with success, though he would remain a solo R.O.B. main for the most part.

In Ultimate, Omega Tyrant initially had interest in playing some combination of returning main, the newly buffed , his returning Brawl main , and his most wanted newcomer,. This interest was very brief though, as a couple months into Ultimate he would go back to focusing entirely on R.O.B., as he finds R.O.B. more fun and viable than ever, thanks to the direct buffs R.O.B. received and how well R.O.B. adapted to Ultimate's universal changes. Omega Tyrant currently remains a solo R.O.B. main, with no other characters he has tried to seriously invest into.

History
Omega Tyrant entered the Brawl competitive scene rather late, only entering his first tournament in November 2011. Around this time, he was making plans to attend, where he found the All is Brawl tournament page for , and saw that it was being held in a neighboring city. After he posted on the tournament page expressing his interest in attending, he was contacted by the tournament director, who would then introduce him to the nearby competitive scene in upstate New York. Shortly afterward, he was able to join the Albany/Troy carpool to ASX3 to enter his first tournament. He was able to do rather decent in his first tournament, defeating Canadian smasher and  player, before losing to  and later being eliminated by  in losers, obtaining an overall 9th placing out of 32 participants. After ASX3, he attended 5th BEST, where in only his second tournament, he was able to place in the money, claiming 4th out of 21 players, defeating Calm and player, while losing to  in winners and being eliminated by  player  in losers' semi-finals. Omega Tyrant then attended Apex 2012 with San, Sharky,, and. He failed to accomplish much at Apex, being eliminated in first round pools having placed fourth, losing to, , and Z0MFG, but avoided a last placing by defeating Colorado PR'd smasher.

Since Apex 2012, Omega Tyrant began his strong presence in upstate New York, placing in the money or just outside it in every Brawl tournament in the region he entered since Apex, and having defeated every active and notable upstate player in a tournament set outside San and. Within just six months of his tournament debut, he managed to get ranked on his region's Power Rankings.

He attended a few tournaments in NY/NJ and occasionally in New England with fellow Schenectady smasher. While he usually did not perform poorly in them, he was not able to place beyond a mid placing in the much stronger competition. He later attended with No Skillz, and in his bracket pool, he lost to, then defeated  and another player, before being eliminating by , finishing 5th in his pool and failing to make bracket again. Apex 2013 was the last out-of-state tournament Omega Tyrant entered in Brawl, and his activity dropped off due to a significantly declined interest in the game, only entering a few nearby Brawl tourneys afterward.

Omega Tyrant fully reentered the scene upon the release of Smash 4, and immediately emerged as one of upstate New York's strongest Smash 4 players, winning money at each event he entered, and obtaining 1st on the first New York capital region PR. While he did not attend tourneys that frequently throughout the winter and spring of 2015, and rarely attended the local weeklies, he remained one of the strongest players when he did, leading to him getting 2nd in the second Capital Region PR, being only outranked by the recently emerged.

During the summer and fall of 2015, Omega Tyrant went into an unexplained hiatus, showing up to absolutely no tournaments between May and November, while barely playing the game on his own; this led to him completely missing the Capital Region's Summer/Fall 2015 PR. He started showing up to tournaments again in November, though with his skills diminished and the competition being significantly stronger, his tournament performance for the first few months were weaker than they were pre-hiatus. In February 2016, he started regularly attending tournaments again and training more frequently on his own, leading to remarkable improvement and a return to form. Omega Tyrant would go on to keep winning nearly every weekly in his region the rest of the season, and his placings at bigger tournaments kept improving, leading to him getting back on the capital region PR for the Winter/Spring 2016 season, now being ranked third under Dark Wizzy and.

Over the Summer and Fall of 2016, his dominance over non-Wizzy CR players continued to grow, with it being rare for him to drop sets against them and even rarer to be outplaced by any of them at tournaments, despite his frequent attendance giving them many opportunities to. He additionally started attending tournaments outside his region again in the New England and NY/NJ areas, where he has done consistently well, including making it into the top 48 bracket at and the even more stacked, as well as placing top 64 at , while obtaining wins such as , , , , and. This performance would lead to Omega Tyrant reclaiming his position as the Capital Region's undisputed #2 player under Wizzy, which he would maintain up to his retirement from Smash 4 in early 2018.

In Ultimate, Omega Tyrant initially stumbled out of the gate, with him underperforming in his first two local tournaments by his standards, including losing to and, two CR players he never lost a single set to throughout all of Smash 4. This was short-lived however, as about a month later he would show rapid improvement and win the second RPI monthly, as well as win a 50+ entrant IFN, that had most of the other region's best players in attendance, including taking three sets off of in those two tourneys, the player considered the undisputed #2 in the region under Dark Wizzy post OT's Smash 4 retirement. This would lead to Omega Tyrant being ranked 4th on the Capital Region's first Ultimate PR, with the PR panelists remarking that he could have reclaimed the #2 spot back from Grunk if he attended more often. Despite enjoying Ultimate more than any other Smash game and having improved beyond where he was in Smash 4, Omega Tyrant would again go into an activity lapse, only attending a few more sporadic locals after that and winning them all, before disappearing entirely from the offline scene post-August 2019. Also, while Omega Tyrant is a known online player, he has only entered a handful of online tournaments in the post-Covid era.

YouTube channel
Around March 2013, Omega Tyrant started up a YouTube channel, originally with the intention of being a place to upload his and other upstate New York players' tournament matches. However he started utilising his extensive knowledge of the Smash AI to create AI exploitation videos, the most famous of which was a Melee video of beating every level nine CPU with Luigi by doing absolutely nothing, with the video going viral and garnering over 800,000 views. Eventually he replicated the feat in Smash 4 despite the game's more advanced AI, and this video ended up becoming even more popular than the original Melee video, with over four million views. The series has branched out to Project M, Smash 4 DLC fighters, and Ultimate and its DLC fighters.

In addition to the AI exploitation videos, Omega Tyrant uploads montages, videos of single-player feats (such as beating Boss Battles on Intense difficulty without taking damage), interesting matches and highlights, and other miscellaneous Smash videos.

To date, his channel has garnered over 14,000 subscribers and 15 million total views. His Smash AI exploitation series is additionally currently up to over 100 videos and counting. However just like with his tournament activity, his YouTube activity has gone inactive since around Summer 2019, with no videos uploaded at all since February 2020.

Trivia

 * Omega Tyrant enjoys playing Brawl Minus, vastly preferring it to the other mods of Brawl. The primary reason for this is it being the only Brawl mod that feels like a different Smash game in his view, rather than being a patch or "Meleefied" Brawl.
 * Omega Tyrant is also undefeated in his region for Brawl Minus tournaments, including once winning a Brawl Minus tournament without dropping a single game. He mostly used Wolf, but also used King Dedede and Ganondorf.
 * Omega Tyrant's most wanted newcomers for Ultimate were, a Belmont, , a character from Dragon Quest, and Doom Guy, alongside the return of and . Needless to say, he has been extremely pleased with Ultimate's roster, a big part of why Ultimate is his favorite Smash game.
 * Omega Tyrant is notorious in his region for despising Smashville, to the point that he will almost always strike it during stage striking (and never agree to gentleman to it), while often banning it during counterpicking purely to spite opponents who like playing on it.
 * He is conversely known to be a big Lylat Cruise defender that has adamantly argued in favor of its legality throughout all of Smash 4 and Ultimate, while being known to counterpick it often whenever opponents don't choose to ban it.
 * Omega Tyrant will often make use of Battlefield and Omega form stages, with Battlefield Dracula's Castle being his preferred stage, due to Castlevania having his favorite soundtrack in Smash among all the series.