Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in competitive play
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's competitive scene is still rather young.
2018: Rapid Growth
Similar to Super Smash Bros. 4, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's competitive scene started before the game was released with the Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018, an invitational tournament hosted by Nintendo at E3 2018 on June 12th, 2018. Similar to the last invitational, professional Smashers were invited to compete against each other, however this time only eight players were invited, four who were top Smash 4 players and four who were top Melee players. The only invitee who participated in the previous tournament was ZeRo, who managed to defend his previous title and defeated MkLeo, winning his first Ultimate tournament.
When Ultimate was released on December 7th, 2018, many tournaments started hosting the game, with a good amount of them having over 100 attendees. By the end of the year, Ultimate's largest tournament, Umebura SP, had hosted 746 players, over 7 times more entrants than Smash 4's largest tournament in the same period of time.
2019: A Growing Meta
2019 started off with a bang, with over 2,000 Smashers participating in GENESIS 6. This tournament saw the first international appearance of Zackray, a 15-year old from Japan who was a top player in Smash 4. Despite being his first time in a tournament outside of Japan, Zackray made an impressive run by placing 5th and defeating top players such as K9sbruce and Light. MkLeo, a young Smash 4 prodigy, was also able to prove that he was still a top player by winning the whole tournament and double eliminating VoiD.
Affects on other competitive scenes
Similar to Brawl's competitive community when Smash 4 was released, most Smash 4 players transitioned to Ultimate when the game was released, causing the Smash 4 scene to significantly decrease. Due to neither Brawl nor Super Smash Bros. having major competetive scenes by the time Ultimate was released, they were not majorly affected.
Unlike Smash 4, Melee players have mostly praised Ultimate's engine, liking how some Melee techniques such as directional airdodges have made a return, as well as an increase in speed compared to the previous game. Although Melee tournaments were still thriving, many top Melee players such as Leffen and Mango have stated their interests in participating in Ultimate tournaments. Notably, Ultimate is the first game to weaken Melee’s competitive scene. The future of Melee’s competitive scene is currently unknown. However, Ultimate’s inclusion and Melee’s exclusion from EVO 2019 does not bode well for the future of competitive Melee.
