A year being in the smash community - Young cAKE

A year being in the smash community

Hi! I'm cAKE, (not Cake, cAkE, certainly not CAKE) and I thought I would write my first blog article for qldsmash.com. This will all be about my smash journey so far and being a youngster in the scene. So if you're actually bothered to read this, I hope you enjoy!

Beginnings

Flashback to Christmas 2011. I lay my hands on the sweet game Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii. It was perfect. All of the Nintendo mascots beating the shit out of each other and absolutely sending each other flying until they explode at the edge of the screen. It was unlimited fun. So many characters, stages and items; it was a dream come true.
I play the game casually for about a year and I leave the game to collect dust while I play more important games like Legend of Zelda.

It's 2014. I had watched a lot of competitive Melee and I decided to pick up brawl again to get good. I progressively beat a lvl 3 CPU, then a lvl 4 and so on. I beat a lvl 9 CPU and that was it. I'm the best. I continue playing Falco in brawl and start using the tag 'cake' derived from Falcos Up taunt (piece of cake). This eventually formed into 'cAKE' for god knows why and I start playing against my sister (Delza) as this tag. Flash forward to October 2014. Super smash bros. for 3DS had just came out a week earlier. I purchase it in the city with my friend and play it when I get home. I quickly decide I'm maining Little Mac after I sadly discovered Falco was horrible compared to his Brawl counterpart. A month later I'm in JB Hi-Fi Indooroopilly with another friend and I come across a sign advertising a super smash bros for Wii u tournament. Hype. I tell my friends and a few of them come along. These rules were, well, not the best. 3 stock, 5 minutes, Best of 1, Only Omega stages, Single Elimination. But hey, very early in the meta game. I somehow get to Semi-Finals with my signature Little Mac and get two stocked by a Mario main I would later get to know as Mr. L. He came first place and there was some Zelda player that came second (dog). Whatever. I was so happy to tie third in a 30(?) person bracket. My friend (now known as Wooy, a ROB main) only got to the second round bc he was playing Falcon bc they DIDNT HAVE ROB UNLOCKED YET LOLOLOLOL. Five months go by without another tournament. I don't know what struck it, nothing in particular happened but I decided to look up on smashboards if there was any tournaments for sm4sh in the Brisbane region. I was doubting at first. I thought tournaments were only in America and only REALLY good people went to them. How wrong I was. I had a look and there was one called 'UQ Smash 7'. Cool, UQ isn't too far where I live. From there I go to my first tournament.

UQ Smash 7

To be honest, I went into this tournament really confident. My little Mac was legit. I KNEW it. My first pool match commences. Hey, I was even on stream. This Asian looking dude called 'NQuad1Zero' plays me. What a stupid name. I'm gonna destroy this guy.
3, 2, 1, GO! The match commences. It's going exactly as planned. I just took the first stock! I've only got 30%! This guy sucks! Why is he using Shulk? He sucks lol! And then it hits me. Little Macs shitty recovery. He just bthrows me off the stage and fairs me. I can't get back up. I lose the first match. Second match is a blur, I lost. I keep smiling. I wasn't even mad. My pool consisted of Fool, Jett, NQuad and Rockalot. 2-0'd by every single one of them. Especially Fool. It's all on stream if you wanna see past me getting bodied. I watched the stream after and I watched me vs jett. I switch to Ganon for game 2 and Jezmo goes "So I'm expecting Jett to lose." Everyone laughs. The rest of the tourney was really fun. I liked the smash community. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. Everyone was so nice and no one thought low of one another or hated anyone else. Sure, there
was salt but that cleared quickly. I play Friendlies for the rest of the tournament.

Meeting the top players

Jett had told me about this guy called Jezmo. He points over to where he was playing and he's just thrashing some poor soul with dr Mario. I only really saw the back of him so he finished his match and a muscly, ginger haired looking guy with some serious chest hair smiles and waves at me. Jezmo was the first top player I had really seen. He looked warm hearted but looked as if he could beat you to a pulp, IRL and in smash. He wins the tourney and fool comes 2nd.

Smashbox I

I look on this magical website called qldsmash and it looks like the next tournament coming up is called Smashbox, in May. It was at some Japanese restaurant which I thought was weird at first, but awesome once I saw it. I arrive around 20 mins early and there's Shitashi, which I had knew bc I saw him on stream, Jaice (who I didn't know) and a few other people. Jaice, shitashi and later Jezmo are talking about how siq Mewtwo was bc he just came out. I decided to talk to the other people because I had not played Mewtwo yet. I start talking to who I would later know as Cap, Emyks and Luminescent. I didn't know Luminescent was like, God tier at the time but I still hung out with him. We get into the restaurant and they're playing 3DS matches. Again, I didn't know Lumi was rly good so I was suprised to see him destroying Rockalot.
Smashbox was probably better than UQ 7. I had switched to Mr. G&W and I won 2 sets (yay). At lunch I was walking down to get subway and I was behind Jezmo, Shitashi and other top players. I gradually formed into their squad but I didn't feel worthy hanging with the top dogs. Jezmo started talking to me about how he started playing smash when was twelve so even younger than me. He said he was 19 now. He explained how he drove from NSW to Brisbane tournaments. Jezmo offers to shout me a drink in subway but I refuse but am awfully thankful. Jezmo was a really nice guy and I am greatful for knowing him.

Improvement

What even is improvement They keep saying "just practice a lot and you'll get better" I practice for >2 hours every day and would still not do better at the next UQ. I started going into a careless cycle. Not really caring if I won or lost. I still loved tournaments and meeting new friends and I still thoroughly enjoyed smash. This was all up until UQ Smash 13. Aerodrome is in my pool. I verse him first. I'm just gonna get this over with bc he's gonna own me. I win the first game, but that's only because I was using mii brawler and he was using swordspider. Game 2. I go my main, Roy (who I had used since June) and he goes his main Bowser. Whatever I just wanna get this over with. After two actually really close games he wins the set. I was thinking "Wow, Aeros not that good." After that tournament I was thinking the about that set and I realised aero did not suck. I had improved! This actually really bumped up my confidence. I now give it all I have against top players even if I know I have no chance. I started improving at a much faster rate when I actually got the game on Christmas. My Elo skyrocketed (in my perspective) but I don’t care much for Elo as I know most player’s skill anyway. I guess improvement isn’t actually just playing a lot. It’s challenging yourself. Go and play a few friendlies with that top player. Lose and lose, but notice your mistakes and improve on them. The only way you can go is up.

Melee

I always loved Melee and i really hated the big split between Melee and smash 4. Can't we all get along? Both games are good in their own right. Anyway, my first Melee pool just SO HAPPENS TO BE ON STREAM WHY and I lose every game. I never cared too much about Melee, I picked up Marth because, well, he's not hard. I chose Marth despite being fairly consistent with Fox. I could waveshine, multi shine, infinite Firefox and pull off some nifty combos. But again, I felt I never had a future in Melee. I still enjoyed it, but I didn't put as nearly as much time in it compared to sm4sh.

Meeting interstate players

The first time I had met an interstate player was at UQ Smash 10, with a Wario main from ACT called Skry. He was in my pool and beat me fairly badly. To be honest I don’t know who the hell he was. He was a very nice guy though. I’d love to meet him again and talk to him some time. The second time I had met interstate players was at the best tournament I’ve been at so far, Smashbox V. There were seventeen interstaters in total and I mainly socialised with the memes themselves, the Victorians. I’m so lucky to have met them and even be in a such a nice scene, being Australia, to talk and be friends with all these people. Shoutouts to dean, Deez, Spacejam, Boozer, Scarpian, Spacejam and the meme himself, Googers. I never wanted to leave the venue as I knew I wouldn’t be able to see the great smashers for a long time. I probably talked to Googers the most, and I regularly chat with him online now. He acts like a meme online but is a pretty cool guy IRL. I was even a role in mafia for this tourney. How about that!

Qldsmash.com

This website is my favourite site on the internet. Without this, I wouldn’t be able to play Mafia, play online, speak with smashers around the nation and talk about smash in general. I would have to go on *shivers* smashboards.
Seriously though I owe it all to this website. I go on it every day and a massive MASSIVE thank you to Shitashi and everyone who helped out on the job.

TOing

To be honest I thought you had to be the best smasher to run a tournament. Then I met LEF. (jk ily Lachlan). I thought one day that “hey, maybe I should hold a tournament.” A lot of counter arguments came back in my head “Where are you gonna find a place to rent?” “You’re too young! People won’t take you seriously.” So I thought whatever I’ll give it a crack. I found this fairly inexpensive place in Fortitude Valley. I planned everything out and the tournament ran pretty well I think. A lot of people thanking me on how I ran the tournament and stuff. This was a great experience as I felt well respected in the scene, something I hadn’t felt since then. I’m holding my next one this month and it looks pretty packed with some NSWers coming too. The only thing I didn’t like about the tournament was the whole entrance/exit routine. But that’s another article. A big thank you to LEF for helping me and giving me advice for organising the first one.

All in all, this is about how I enjoy the community so much and I’m proud to be involved in it. It was definitely one of the best decisions of my life joining the scene. A big thank you to anyone who has ever gave me advice or helped me with smash. I guess this article is about not being the best smasher, but having a great time in the scene. You can expect me staying in the scene from years to come.