Tournament rulesets (SSBM)
Tournament legal describes the settings that can be used in competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments. Because some stages, settings, and rulesets can lead to degenerate gameplay, tournament organizers have generally agreed on enforcing the following conditions in tournament play:
1-on-1
- Usually, sets between players are played best 2 out of 3 matches (using 3 out of 5 or 4 out of 7 for final rounds)
- Each match is played with timed stock, usually 3 to 5 lives and 6 to 10 minutes
- In the case that time runs out and both characters have an equal amount of lives, the character with less damage wins the match. If both characters have equal lives and damage, Sudden Death will determine the winner.
- Items are turned off
- The first match is played with a random stage
- The random select is comprised of neutral stages:
- In some tournaments, players are given the option to "strike" stages from the random select
- For the first match, characters are chosen double-blind - at the same time, so that neither player knows his opponent's character beforehand. In practice, this rule is often ignored, but players always reserve the option to force a double-blind pick
- The loser of the first match (and of successive matches) chooses the next stage, and then the winner chooses his character, and then the loser chooses his character. This series of choices is called slob picks.
- The loser cannot pick any banned stages:
- The loser can also not choose any stage that has already been played earlier that round. This rule is known as "Dave's Stupid Rule."
- As with the first match, in some tournaments players can strike stages from the opponent's selection
2-on-2
- Rules that apply to 1-on-1 apply to team tournaments as well
- Neutral stages are different:
- Yoshi's Story
- Pokémon Stadium
- Battlefield
- Dream Land (N64)
- Final Destination
- Banned stages are different:
- Brinstar Depths
- Flat Zone
- Fountain of Dreams
- Great Bay
- Icicle Mountain
- Mute City
- Temple
- Yoshi's Island (N64)
- Team attack (also known as friendly fire) is on
- Usually, players are allowed to steal lives from their teammates by pressing start after they die
Controversy
Many novices to Melee notice that the ruleset demands highly specific conditions, conditions under which they rarely play, and that these rules squeeze the "fun" out of competitive play, and don't reflect a player's more cerebral skills. This argument, however, is not taken seriously by most tournament Smashers, who believe that the rigorous ruleset prevents degenerate gameplay, thus making competitive play more enriching (and fun).
More legitimately, however, many players do argue about specific tournament rules. In Smashboards' nascent years, items were a major point of contention amongst Smashers - generally, East Coast Smashers wanted them turned off in tournaments and West Coast Smashers wanted them turned on. Item proponents stated that the use of items itself required skills and did not reduce the depth of the game; item opponents emphasized the often unfair randomness to item appearances, especially explosives like Bob-ombs and capsules. Eventually, the community reached a consensus that items should be turned off in tournaments.
Another point of controversy involves which stages should be deemed neutral, pickable, or banned. While Smashers generally agreed that the immense Hyrule Temple gave an unfair advantage to fast-moving characters like Fox, other stages were still up to question. Some people wanted to ban all moving and irregular stages, to reduce the game to battles on relatively simple stages, whereas others wanted to allow any stages that did not foster an unfair advantage to one strategy or character. Today, the neutral and banned stages are generally constant, but they still fluctuate from tournament to tournament.
