Sunday:

3pm – Arrive + Friendlies
5pm – Low Tier tournament up to top 8
7pm – Dinner (Pizza baby!)
8pm – Doubles
10pm – Mafia
Midnight – Sleepy byes

Monday:

9am – Bad’s Beautiful Breakfast Buffet
11am – Low Tier tournament Top 8 + Ama
1pm – Lunch
3pm – Draft crew battle 8v8
4pm – Single elim bo1 randoms
5pm – Singles to top 8
7pm – Dinner (Mexican)
8pm – Singles Top 8 + Ama
10pm – Mystery game (if there is time)

Tuesday:

10am – Checkout (hoping to get later checkout)
10-12 – Lunch in surfers
12pm – Migrate to GGs Southport for friendlies + special casual bracket
7pm – Singles starts at Downsmash

What is:

Low Tier Iron Man

You get 3 low tier characters of your choosing (From Ganondorf down). Works similar to a crew battle

If you win with 1 stock remaining you keep playing with that character but start the next game with just 1 stock.

Loser of the game gets to counterpick stage

BO1 Randoms

1 game, random character, random stage

You only get to random pick once, you can’t change it. Whoever the game decides you have to play as. No stage bans and tournament legal stages only.

So you want to get involved in playing Super Smash Bros Melee competitively?

In this getting started guide I’ll talk through everything you need to get set up and start playing competitively. While this guide applies to anyone looking to get started I will talk specifically about local Queensland tournaments at the end.

Step #1: Buy A Controller

Whenever you attend a local tournament you need to have your own gamecube controller. This is something everyone has to bring, so this is your #1 priority.

Do not, I repeat DO NOT, buy a cheap no name brand controller. Only buy controllers made by Nintendo, they are the best, and if you’re going to play melee competitive you need a good controller.

Don’t buy a cheap one and don’t buy a Wavebird. Chorded Nintendo controllers only.

You can buy them off Ebay or Amazon if you’re in a country that has Amazon.

If you’re not sure here’s a list of every gamecube controller ever made.

My personal favourites are the JP Whites. White controllers with “Nintendo Gamecube” on the front and the 3m chord.

Other people prefer the original ones that come in multiple colours with the Nintendo Gamecube logo on the front. Fewer competitive players opt for the newer ones with the Smash4 logo on the front.

You should expect to spend about $50+ on a genuine controller.

Step #2: Get A Home Setup

Having a setup that you can play at home is key to improving as a player. There are 2 ways to do this, on your computer or on a Nintendo Wii (not Gamecube, will explain later).

So lets look at each of them

On Your Computer

I would advise people get setup to play on their PC first and then get a Wii second.

While a Wii + CRT is better, getting setup on a PC is easier and it also means you can start netplaying (more on that later) straight away which can be way more engaging for new players.

To get setup on your computer you need

HARDWARE – Gamecube > USB Adapter

While the WiiU ones are the best they are now near impossible to find for a good price.

The next best thing is a Mayflash adapter. Just search “Mayflash Gamecube Adapter” on Ebay or Amazon and buy the one with 4 ports. This will set you back around $30

SOFTWARE – Dolphin

Dolphin is the name of the gamecube emulator we use. The most recent version is constantly changing.

The current version works on Windows and Mac, not sure about Linux.

To get the most current version for melee players click the Anther’s Ladder link below and then click Super Smash Bros Melee to get instructions.

Click Here For Anther’s Ladder Guide

GAMES – NTSC v1.02 + 20XX v4.07

Next step is to download Super Smash bros Melee to play on your Dolphin emulator.

I can’t link directly to these files but you’ll want to search out “Super Smash Bros Melee NTSC 1.02 ISO” to get the original version.

You’ll also want to search out “20xx 4.07 iso” to get the training pack for solo practice.

Alternatively ask a local smasher and they’ll be able to point you in the right direction.

On a Wii

COMING SOON

Local Tournaments

If you’re keen to play Melee competitively then you should attend a local tournament as soon as possible. Don’t wait until you get better to attend as you’ll still be terrible compared to your local competition.

In the early stages (and even in the later stages) competing at tournaments and meeting and conversing with other players will speed up your improvement drastically!

To find your local tournaments you’ll want to search Facebook or try to find a local Discord.

For Australia and Queensland here are the two discord links:

Queensland Smash Discord Link: http://downsmash.wpengine.com/discord/

Australian Smash Discord Link: https://discord.gg/7CpWnfN

For Australia here are the Facebook group links:

Queensland – https://www.facebook.com/groups/QueenslandSmash/

NSW – https://www.facebook.com/groups/145359035665748/

Victoria – https://www.facebook.com/groups/253413668003243/

South Australia – https://www.facebook.com/groups/SaSmash/

Western Australia – https://www.facebook.com/groups/perthsmash/

Tasmania – https://www.facebook.com/groups/smashbrostas/

Canberra/ACT – https://www.facebook.com/groups/CanberraSmashPlayers/

Northern Territory – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1667540953556439/

Doubles can be great fun and having players team together makes friendships and the community stronger. However, smaller local tournaments often have trouble running a decent doubles bracket.

People can be reluctant to enter doubles, which leads to not enough teams to form a bracket, leading to doubles never actually happening.

In my experience doubles makes a tournament more fun for players as there are more events for them to be involved with and gives them an extra reason to keep coming back to your tournaments.

If you’re a local TO and what to start getting people interested in doubles here’s some tips that I found really effective in my local scene.

I recently took over Queensland’s weekly tournaments, which were struggling to get even 3 teams involved in doubles, and have been able to get a significant portion of players to enter doubles.

Most recently I ran a weekly with 24 singles entrants. We then had 11 teams enter the doubles bracket. That’s 22/24 players also entering doubles!

1. Take Doubles Seriously and Charge For It

If you don’t take doubles seriously as the TO then no one will. It takes time for people to form teams and have a vested interested in doubles, this only happens if you take it seriously.

If you’ve never tried to run doubles before then running a free doubles bracket can be a great primer for future events. But if doubles is always free people generally won’t take it seriously and eventually will stop entering all together and will instead just prefer to play friendlies.

$5 per person is a good price for doubles. Not too expensive that people won’t enter, but sizeable enough to create a respectable pot for the winners.

2. Run Doubles After Singles

At larger events, when a doubles bracket is guaranteed to get enough entrants, running doubles first makes sense. It creates more hype around singles as the final event.

But if you don’t have people actively engaged in doubles you need to piggyback off the success of singles to get doubles happening.

Running doubles first could lead to people just skipping it and arriving later for doubles. Or they will arrive on time and will prefer to warm up for singles rather than play doubles.

Running singles first means everyone will already be at the venue and thus are way more likely to enter doubles. It also means that singles will be finished so people won’t be worrying about it anymore and thus are more likely to get involved in doubles.

3. Force People To Register For Doubles BEFORE Singles Starts

This is really important. If you wait until singles in finished a lot of people will choose not to enter doubles in favour of playing friendlies.

It also means they will wait to see how many teams have entered before they enter themselves…you don’t want this. It leads to a downward spiral of participants as no one wants to commit.

When collecting registration for singles get people to pay for doubles at the same time.

If they say “I’ll just pay you for doubles after singles” tell them they either sign up now or not at all. This creates FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and tends to cause people on the fence to sign up.

It means that some people that might have entered don’t, butI have found it leads to more entrants overall.

4. Offer To Find People Team Mates

This is also really important. Actively offer to find people their team mate if they don’t have one.

Newer players and people without established partners will hesitate entering because of the effort required to find a team mate.

Encourage them to enter doubles saying “I’ll find you a team mate”

Team people of similar skill level together. People don’t like being teamed with people below their skill level. Teaming people of a similar skill also makes it more likely that they will form a consistent team in the future, which improves their experience of doubles as well as creates overall storylines.

If you end up with an extra entrant and no team mate for them I recommend getting someone who doesn’t want to enter doubles and giving them free entry to team with the odd man out.

5. Create Hype

Creating hype around doubles is hard compared to singles.

Currently the only steps we take to create hype are having people play doubles on stream as well as creating and sharing clips of funny or cool stuff that happened in a doubles game.

You can however create hype with individual players who are on the fence about doubles. Encourage them by explaining how fun and different doubles can be.

Show them it’s not just a clusterfuck but that they can work with their team mate to get better as a team. Even just getting 1 extra team involved in doubles through this can make the difference between always having enough entrants and never having enough entrants.

6. Reward Regular Teams by Creating Storylines

This is something I know I should do but haven’t.

Storylines in doubles only exist if you highlight them. People don’t pay enough attention to doubles to pull out any storylines. By doing it for them you give them extra reasons to compete.

Highlighting the #1 and #2 team can create rivalry if they are close in skill level. Also highlighting lower level players who made an upset will make those players more committed to developing as a team.

Storylines are less for the overall scene and more to make individual teams more interested in their own bracket.

In Summary

Doubles adds value to the experience of your event which benefits your event as a whole. It strengthens personal relationships and therefore strengthens your community.

As a TO you should take it seriously and work hard to get people involved in doubles. It’ll be worth the extra effort.

If you’ve got any comments on other ways to make doubles more engaging for smaller events let us know in the comments down below.