Team:SLAPAHO

History

SLAPAHO is an Iowa City based crew, research team, tournament host, and smash film-making organization. It was founded in the fall of 2007 by Aaron Kirschner and Alex "Ax" Schumacher. It was originally formed simply as a crew that focused primarily on doubles play, but quickly evolved into many other roles.

On February 3, 2008, the SLAPAHO team discovered the SLAPASTICK glitch, propelling them into Smash Bros. immortality.

Tournaments

SLAPAHO is dedicated to increasing the amount of tournaments in Iowa. They are starting with small tournaments at the University of Iowa, but have begun to spread into larger tournaments. Their most recent tournament was the Last Hurrah Doubles Tournament on the 23 of February. Aaron Kirschner usually is the head organizer of the tournaments and officiates, while other members are known to compete.

Play Philosophy

While their focuses have greatly expanded, SLAPAHO is still a crew dedicated to the enjoyment of Super Smash Bros. Melee. As such, they tend to develop their own metagame, which is often quite different from the rest of the smash community. They also aim to develop the metagame of bottom tier characters. Almost all tactics used by the crew were developed through trial and error in intra-crew play. This has led to them being rather unpredictable in tournament play, as their maverick style often goes against what players expect. The crew utilizes many advanced edgeguarding techniques, including the SLAPASTICK.

The crew also stresses the importance of knowing how to play multiple characters. Entrance into the crew requires a display of proficiency with at least five non-clone characters (i.e. Fox and Falco count as one character in this test). At least one of these characters must be a bottom tier character and another must not be a top or high tier character. At the present, all members of SLAPAHO are proficient with at least 10 distinct characters.

While they know they are fighting a losing battle, the crew advocates the use of items (on very low frequency) in competitive play. They maintain that the degree of randomness provided by including items forces quick thinking and the change of strategy. Intra-crew play almost always involves items, except while training for tournaments.

SLAPAHO Epics

The SLAPAHO crew is currently filming a series of short smash movies. These films are comedy bouts of smash with commentary provided by Foghorn and Ax. All of these can be found on Youtube as they are aired, and links will be placed on the Smash Wiki.

While SLAPAHO has not yet posted one of the true epics, they have released a test video. The video was recorded with a 1.5 second delay in the picture, explaining some of the strange play decisions. SLAPAHO has found a way to remedy this and will begin filming there true Epics. The test video can be viewed here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWNF985aWhE

Research

SLAPAHO has done extensive research on glitches in Super Smash Bros. Melee, including the discovery of the SLAPASTICK. They were among the different groups seeing what the strongest non-glitch attack was, and they were able to determine the fastest possible pitch in Melee is 1474. They are responsible for the writing on deterrence edgeguarding, and are preparing a new theory on character comparisons.

They are also preparing commentary and explanations of high-level tournament videos to help newer players understand what makes a good smasher.

Members

Aaron "Foghorn" Kirschner--Marth

Alex "Ax" Schumacher--Ice Climbers

C.J. "Palm Tree" Palmer--Ness

Common Quotes

• You Dead!
• Here's a box!
• Baby, why you make me hit you?
• It's bomb time!
• I'm the Gingerbread Man!
• The Goombas can't see me!
• Camel!
• And now it's time for the cavemen...

Trivia

• The name was taken from an opponents' flag football team.
• While Palmer is the most technically sound player, Kirschner and Schumacher usually make the best team of the three.
• They are currently recruiting members in the Iowa City area.