Smasher:KoRoBeNiKi

KoRoBeNiKi, much more commonly called and known as Koro due to ease of pronunciation, is a retired smasher originally from Fair Lawn, New Jersey who now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is primarily known for helping to form the most recent tier list in the original Super Smash Bros and for being one of the more active early Kailera Smash 64 players. He was also one of the original Back Room members on SmashBoards which created the current community ruleset published by. He was originally one of the top keyboard players in 64 before switching over to Hori, and is known for his contributions to 64 on Reddit where he is still active and SmashWiki, and in the 64 community, is known distinctly for his puns (where Koropuns was a used term for said bad jokes in the community.)

Early Period, 2005-2007
He started off as a Melee player, finding competitive play and joining SmashBoards under a former account known as wavedasher in 2005 along with a friend of his, MattNF. His first major event was The Smash Affiliates's Smashtality back in 2006, with his first loss being to. He started off as a Luigi main with Roy as a secondary, and he didn't have notable placings outside of taking games occasionally with lucky misfires, but never full sets. At Smashtality 2 in October 2006, after a surprising one-game win in pools vs. 's Mr. Game & Watch with a misfire, he met and  and got 5-stocked by both of them, learning of the competitive 64 scene. He kept on going with the Melee scene, but due to TSA's venue being moved to New York after Smashtality III in 2007, he was no longer attending events.

Early Online Play
He discovered online Smash 64 in 2007 after hearing about it from MattNF. Due in part to being a good friend of the latter, who was a member of PPS, he was allowed quickly in the crew by. Prior to this, he was a member of iXi, maining a lackluster Donkey Kong with a generic Captain Falcon secondary originally under the tag METAL DK. He eventually switched to Yoshi after entering and winning a Yoshi ditto tournament hosted by Stoned from the old iXi crew, and still remains friends with several old school online players. KoRo used to be one of the top keyboard players and overall top online players, though he contributes this entirely to the very low level of play back then compared to today (with people missing L-cancels and not camping, among other things). He currently is inactive online, as he is usually stuck on Wi-fi and he can't get used to delay while playing with a controller; not wanting to switch back to keyboard.

Smash 64
In Smash 64, he uses virtually exclusively in tournament sets as his main. He used to use a as his pocket character for certain specialty matchups. Otherwise, he used to use, , and in certain locals. He switched to Yoshi only offline in early 2019 in bracket to help with his inconsistencies and to force himself to learn certain matchups, and his placings have become more consistent. He was potentially going to be on the low end of 2019 64 League Rankings, but they were never published due to community laziness, and he personally did not attend enough events. He is well-known for his particularly good egg usage and n-air placements for both his main and old main and specializes in the Jigglypuff matchup after years of experience teaming with MattNF along with Mario/Luigi. Subsequently, his best win was at Shine 2018 using Captain Falcon, and he also has a very positive record vs. with his first loss in tournament vs. any Mario in the entirety of his Smash 64 career being at one of the Quarterly Rapports (with his only Luigi loss being  at a local in New Jersey.) He primarily uses Yoshi,, and  for doubles, and his worst character by far is. Due to years of experience playing online, he uses the vast majority of the cast on a high level, and this can be seen particularly in low tiers, where he got 25th at the current largest low tier event at Let's Go! and similar placings at Keystoned II, with losses entirely to low tier mains (such as the_maafia) and top level players (such as and . KoRo plays "claw" using the normal 64 controller, being used to holding it that way for puzzle games such as Pokémon Puzzle League, and had one notable tournament entry at Apex 2012, where he learned to play this way during the tournament after being sent to loser's bracket. He's otherwise entered rarely with a regular controller only when he doesn't have his primary controller or when his hands started to bother him at the now closed locals.

He used to use a keyboard adapter developed by for a while offline, and for a long time, he used a golden Hori with a lodgenet stick installed by, but this was recently replaced in mid-2020 due to the stick malfunctioning. On Hori, he doesn't use A for almost all his aerials, but rather uses the shoulder buttons, but this results in occasional bad grabs. He has had very close sets vs. top players, but is known for his inconsistency (which is ironically similar to JimmyJoe, who designed his old main controller.) He is currently ranked 4th on the inactive New York City Power Rankings in both the current and prior power rankings having played weekly prior on Monday nights in Union Square at the now closed Offside Tavern along with occasional events on Wednesday run by Wiseacre/Neil in North Haledon, New Jersey, and the rare regionals/majors he enters. Outside of entering locals, he had helped TO including running pools at the sparse majors he attends, and has helped run events such as helping with seeding rarely or occasionally running DarkHorse's stream at events such as SSC and otherwise. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, his local scene closed and he has been very inactive only appearing in sparse tournaments with his last event being Super Smash Con 2022 after not practicing where he both did poorly in singles and happened to be in a pool where several players upset their seeding as well such as Miniohh. In doubles, he teamed for the first time with Floridian player Griffith with the teams being Yoshi and Luigi or Yoshi and Pikachu and was seeded 33rd outside of top 32 being seeded the 5th seed in pools. In pools, they won an upset vs. MasterHandJob and making it out of pools also being the only team to take a game vs  and  starting in Loser's Top 32 after finishing 3rd with a 4-3 record. They won a minor upset over 32nd seed and his brother Dad in Loser's Round 1 before losing to 16th seed and 9th place finishers Lord Narwhal and  getting 17th place overall. Since then due to work, apathy, and lack of car, he's been essentially retired outside of very rare smash events at a friend's house.

On SmashBoards, he was a long time contributor until the large majority of the community moved over to the SSB64 Community Facebook page due to a variety of issues with both moderators and active trolls in the scene. KoRo was a member of the 64 backroom, which closed due to spam and overall uselessness outside of the new stage list. After Apex 2015, he kick-started a new tier discussion thread, which resulted in a voting topic ran by him,, and several moderators. This eventually resulted in the current tier list seen today though players in more recent years have clamored to see an update. This is in particular to switch Fox and Yoshi's placements and it's common to see this correction done on Twitch streams when people ask about the best characters. He also wrote articles for the Smash 64 scene, but he has been retired from writing since early 2019.

In Smash Remix, he used Ganondorf primarily and his old 64 main Yoshi with multiple secondaries and finds the game very fun but is mostly inactive as per every other game in the series.

Melee
KoRo got back into Melee around Apex 2012, but was in a state of rust. He started to attend more events, but until 's weeklies in 2014 at Nebulous, he was semi-inactive. At NeoNebulous 23, he traded for 's controller. He mains in Melee still and welcomes the 20XX movement. He is mainly known for his unusually high rate of misfires and has taken games off of, , and several other more well-known/better players thanks to them. He prefers doubles and has had some strong placements, particular with B3N, a local Falcon main, as well as several Jigglypuffs/Foxes he has teamed with such as the now-ranked. At his peak in early/mid-2016, he was on the cusp of the unranked players getting top 5 consistently in amateur brackets, but placed too poorly in arcadians due to his inconsistency and struggle in the Marth/Falco matchup. His last Melee event for a long time was at the last Nebulous, as his controller was lost and/or stolen, though he had a very good time otherwise. His last stock taken was aptly with a misfire vs. a local Ganondorf named Big Daddy Ganon. After several years of inactivity, he attended one of the earlier Hax's Nightclub/HNCs run by due to convenience and to support the scene, winning one set but losing the remaining two using an old partially broken controller. He has since attended a few events mostly to see old friends in the community usually going 1-2 or 0 and 2 borrowing one of the TO's controller but is essentially retired.

Other Smash Games
When he played Brawl, he mained and. At his highest peak, he was in the top 150 on the AllisBrawl Wi-Fi. However, he never had a good placement offline, though this was partially due to the New Jersey/New York scene being the top scene in the country in the early years of the game. He disliked the dominance of as well as the King Dedede matchup, and also also disliked the speed of the game, and gradually gave up playing Smash altogether until Melee and Smash 64 brought him back. While he argues for the game's existence and for how in-depth the game is (mostly as a Devil's Advocate), he dislikes the game immensely and blames it for the partial death of the scene during that period. His one notable result was 9th in AllBrawl, a 4-player FFA event designed by DMBrandon and Keitaro with random stages and items, with top two advancing at Apex 2012, where he won over players such as Ally and Nairo before being eliminated the next round by Ally (again) and TheReflexWonder. His best matchups were and.

In Project M, he mained Luigi and Samus with various secondaries such as Yoshi and Ganondorf (primarily for Warioware shenanigans), and he also used to play online occasionally on Anther's Ladder though on keyboard. He specializes in the Ivysaur and Snake matchups. As with Brawl, he didn't have super strong placements in singles, though his losses were usually to top-level threats outside of consistent losses to people maining sword-wielding characters such as Marth (as in Melee) and Ike. He has also shown strength as with the other games in doubles, where he used to team primarily with KeyChain, an NYC ranked King Dedede/Wario main. They have taken sets from much more well-known doubles teams, most notably one of the most well-known Midwest teams and  the day before Supernova, as well as teams featuring players such as  and. He is currently inactive from Project M due to Nebulous closing, but occasionally entered events at Super Smash Con until 2019 and has been inactive since Project Plus.

KoRo barely played Smash 4 as he has not bought a Wii U. However, he had tried it before and enjoyed some of the changes, but he disliked some of the floaty nature. He did not enter a tournament in the history of that game, but tried it and played Bowser during friendlies while waiting for a 64 tournament at Nebulous to start.

Similarly with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, KoRo does not own a Switch. However, he has entered a small local which was at the same time as a 64 event. He quickly found Ganondorf to be his best character and won all three sets he played before having to leave, relying on reads and the new parry mechanic. He personally hates Luigi in the game because of his new grab mechanic, as he generally doesn't like characters with tethers, but he likes a game a lot. As with the other newer games, his least favorite aspect by far is the buffer system, and if it was customizable, he would potentially play the game more, but isn't particularly interested.

Gameplay videos

 * Korobeniki vs, the top Kirby from Japan back when on Keyboard
 * vs.
 * PM doubles example