Tournament:DC Super Smash

The DC Super Smash, better known as DCSS, is a tournament series created by well-known tournament director M3D and his (now-defunct) crew Famous Last Words. The series was started in the summer of 2003 and were all held in Clinton, MD. M3D successfully ran the first two events and then moved to Indiana. His brother's and crewmate's continued the series, hosting DCSS #3 and planning DCSS #4 before being forced to cancel it. Another tournament, called No Purchase Necessary was created in a similar spirit to DCSS by the same crew, but was operatead differently.

Creation & DCSS #1

M3D was the oldest of three brothers and the leader of the Famous Last Words crew that all played SSBM on a regular basis. After discovering Smashboards and realizing there was no an active tournament scene in the area, the crew decided to team up to host a tournament. Working with a local church to get a free venue and televisions, M3D and hosted the event in Clinton, Maryland on July 12th, 2003. Instead of cash prizes, like many other events, M3D agreed to use physical prizes instead at the request of the church, who wanted to avoid the appearance of gambling on their property. 1st place won a PS2 and 2nd place a GameBoy Advance SP. Despite the fact that there were not cash prizes, many players still planned to attend, since there were no other local tournaments at the time.

Keeping with the Japanese tradition, DCSS did not allow players to change characters during the tournament. Instead, players were required to register with a single character and use that character throughout the tournament. The matches were set to 5 stock and the levels were set to random from a limited list. Items were turned off, in keeping with the East Coast tradition. The brackets were randomly seeded after pools were used to eliminate some of the players. In total, 40 players attended the event, which was a very nice sized tournament at the time.

In the end, H2YL took the top 4 spots, with Azen (1st place, Shiek), ChuDat (2nd place, Ice Climbers), Chillin (3rd place, Fox) and Mild (4th place, Sheik) taking home the top honors. This marked the beginning of a major rise in prestige for H2YL in the Smash community.

DCSS #2

DCSS #2 was held on September 20th, 2003, immediately after a major microburst stom that left a large portion of the eastern seaboard flooded or without power. Despite these problems, the tournament venue had power and 42 players attended the event, including members of Deadly Alliance that came down from New York for the event. DCSS #2 added a doubles competition, which continued in east coast tradition by being 5 stock and having team attack turned off. Like the previous DCSS event, players were only allowed one character for the tournaments, although they could have a different character for teams and singles.

H2YL and DA split the top four singles spots at this event, with Azen taking first place with Captain Falcon and winning an XBox. Wes took second place with Samus, winning a 13inch color television while his teammate Kamaal took third place using Luigi and won a new wavebird. ChuDat took fourth place using the Ice Climbers under some controversy over the use of Sudden Death to resolve a tie in a semi-final match against Wes. In teams, Azen and Anden took first place, with ChuDat and Jtanic taking second.

This second installment was well recieved by the Smash community, with much more space than the previous DCSS event and more stations to play on. There was also a provided lunch, sponsored by the church and a local band that came to play for the competitors before the finals. There were also a series of B-prizes given away, such as an award for the lowest-finishing Pokemon character user and a prize for the first person to stand up on a chair. The announcement of these b-prizes kept the crowd laughing and added to the laid back atmosphere of the event.

DCSS #3: Remember Your Roots

After M3D moved to Indiana, his brother's and crewmate's continued the DCSS series with the third installment. This event had an old-school Nintendo theme and featured prizes following the theme. First place was a GB Advance SP package with the NES controller design on the handheld. Second place was an original NES package with several classic NES titles. Third place were hot topic NES-styled t-shirts. For doubles, First place was Legend of Zelda collectors edition games for the GameCube and second place was more of the hot topic t-shirts.

This third DCSS event came just over a year after the last one, on September 25th, 2004 and used the newly established MLG ruleset for competition. Unfortunately only roughly 30 competitors attended the event. Azen took first place for the 3rd event in a row, with Chillin taking second and Neo third. Azen also took first place in teams as well, this time with H2YL teammate Mild as his partner. Chillin and Neo took second with Black Hayato and Special K taking third.

DCSS #4

DCSS #4 appeared in announcements on the Smashboards twice, with different titles each time, but was eventually cancelled all together due to problems with the venue and funding for the prizes.

No Purchase Necessary

Attempting to break away from the increasingly serious nature of Smash tournaments, the remaining members of FLW put on their final tournament on September 10th, 2005 under the title No Purchase Necessary. While not technically named a DCSS event, this tournament was held by the same crew, in the same location and under the same spirit of fun the DCSS series was founded on. The event had no entry fees and no prizes, with the only expense to the gamers being a charge if they wanted to share in the pizza and soda during lunch the day of the event.

This tournament hosted a singles event, but for the first time also offered a Free-For-All tournament. Despite the lack of prizes and the FFA event, more than 25 competitors still attended and the response from the communoty was relatively positive. Team Ben's Wife took first place in the singles tournament, with G-Regulate and Aho coming in second and third behind him. Meanwhile Meep took first place in the FFA event, followed by G-Regulate in second, Wife in third and Aho in fourth.

FLW Disbands

After that final event, with M3D gone running MLG events and the other members of the crew focused on school and work, Famous Last Words unofficially disbanded and stopped hosting local tournaments. It is possible that new events could be scheduled after the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii, as several of the former members have expressed interest in reforming the group for the new title.