3. S2j

The player S2j is a special one to me, he is my 2nd favorite player ever and my first favorite Captain Falcon player ever. His first name is Johnny, which most of his close friends refer to him as, and his tag "s2j" stand for "smoke 2 joints". I've always wanted to ask him if that is a reference to the song by Sublime, but I guess we might never know for sure. If you haven't heard that song by Sublime I strongly recommend it. So what to say about s2j, well first off he is definitely the fan favorite no matter who he plays it seems. Captain Falcon being considered on the lower end of the high tier players, everyone likes to cheer for the underdog to win. Even without that though, Captain Falcon is by far one of the most explosive and flashy characters in the game and all of his moves look cool. He is also extremely fast, maybe even the fastest in melee, and watching him move all over the stage is mesmerizing. As someone who plays the game and knows how hard it is to do some of the high level movements like wavedashing, dash dancing, and wavelanding its very fun to watch someone do it so cleanly. S2j and Mang0 are also really close friends and there play styles are also very similar. S2j has a very fast and unpredictable play style which can either give him a insane advantage or crushing disadvantage. He holds a special part in my heart because he is actually the reason I decided I wanted to play Captain Falcon as my main character. Watching him actually made me want to play the game the way he did, because what he did looked so much fun. Most people would want to pick one of the very high tier characters and get really good at them, but I think you should never play someone just because they are good. You need to have fun with what you are doing if you ever expect to have any kind of drive to get better. Being bored and winning is probably one of the most pointless things anyone could do.  

2. Armada

Armada is the number 1 player in the entire world for the game Super Smash Bros Melee. He dual mains Fox and Peach and had a very very successful 2015 tournament year. Armada won well over $100k in tournament prize money this year, which if you are familiar to smash tournaments you know you have to win a ton to make anything close to that. Armada is from Sweden and even though the competitive scene over there isn't as great as it is over here he does well for himself. He actually has been one of the biggest advocates for Melee's competitive growth throughout all of the years. I have even heard rumors of a documentary coming out detailing Armadas life with Melee. Armada's play style with either of his characters is simply an insane punish game. He won't do any of the unpredictable crazy things that Mang0 does, but everything he does is ludicrously efficient. In a game like Super Smash Bros it is very difficult to do the perfect thing at the perfect time all the time. Armada is an example of someone who can do that, he has some sort of sense in him to be able to do the exact right thing at the exact right time. There are other players that have shown they have potential to do something like Armada has done, but anyone has yet to rise up and overcome him. Although, there is another player from Sweden named Leffen who was also ranked number top 5 in the world and had a chance at the rank 1 title, but unfortunately something happened with his Visa when coming to The Big House 5 in Michigan and the Us government wouldn't let him in the country. Armada's future unlike Mang0s is looking extremely promising. In almost every tournament he entered and played in he placed in the top 8. As long as players like Leffen and Mang0 don't figure out how to beat the way he plays he will be alright. Although he did come 2nd in the last major tournament of the 2015 year, there should be no reason for anyone to overlook him as not the favorite to win every tournament.

1. The Goat

Joseph "Mang0" Marquez is known as one of the best super smash brothers melee players of all time. On top of that, he is also personally my favorite player to ever play the game as well. Mang0 is the player in Melee that I think everyone really really wants to be. He isn't one of the really smart players that knows all the frame data and percentage timing and what not. He is a player that has so much experience through out the years with the game that he has a sense of what he knows will or wont work. A lot of players rely on knowing exactly what times to do things and having a game plan from the start. Mang0 doesn't do any of that, he goes into games almost completely blind and just finds his way around how the opponent is playing. He is always so unpredictable and fast with his movements, and his punishes are always harsh and long that the other player won't get to do anything for a solid 10 seconds. He has nicknames of The Goat(Greatest Of All Time), The kid, the nonsleeper of thee, and so on. He is also probably one of the most winningest players through out its competitive history as well. Lately Mang0 has been kind of in a slump, but that is to be expected with the progression of the game and the players of it. Mang0 plays on team Cloud 9 and gets to play this game for a living and travel the country going from tournament to tournament. He's also known as being a very large gambling advocate and a very large fan of alcohol. Especially the 40 oz. Although he may seem like a good for nothing video game player, Mang0 actually has a child with his girlfriend and is doing pretty well for himself at this point in life. The future for Mang0 is a very tough thing to distinguish. He is a very "spotty" kind of player, is he shows up to a tournament and is playing well there is almost no one in the world that will be able to stop him. Though, he can get in a weird mindset or for whatever reason not be playing at his 100% normal rate. But, as Mang0 has said before, you gotta be a gambling man to vote on the kid.

Transition

Twitch.tv is a video game streaming website. People stream themselves playing games while a live audience can "chat" with the player. The website has evolved so much over time that the audience can now contribute to these peoples finances. Making it so many people can now make a living just by playing games that they like. Some time ago people started doing other things on there streams such as painting, sculpting, glassblowing, and a bunch of other cool non-gaming things. Twitch, seeing that this category could potentially be a big part of there website, decided to bring more attention to the category. They decided to run a stream for every single episode of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. This decision quickly became a massive success, the stream averaged about 45,000 viewers at all times. It brought a huge wave of people into the creative category and gave a lot of these streamers chances for there channels to grow. The only problem is after the marathon ended the viewers for the creative category significantly dropped and tons of people wanted the Bob Ross stream to continue. So Twitch decided to re run all the episodes, but this time only do it on Mondays. So every Monday there is a 24 hour stream of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. I kind of find it funny that all these people really want to watch him paint. I personally watched a substantial amount of the original marathon and can say that he is a god. The things that man can do with a couple different sized paint brush and a knife is incredible. I also personally love when he cleans off his brush and drys it by hitting it across this pole like thing and says, "and just hit the Devil out of it" with this creepy Bob Ross giggle and smile. I also liked the random clips of him and his weird ass animals that he always had, that guy was just incredible. The only thing different that I would do if I was Twitch was instead of pocketing the money like the greedy business monkeys they are they could donate it to a charity or something like that. But business will be business.

Can't get enough

I know over the past few weeks I have been pretty hyped about this game Super Smash Bros. Melee. And why wouldn't I be? The game is literally built around people being hyped about it, at least the competitive scene is. That is just what I am trying to do as well, I want to be able to get into the competitive scene and try to make a name for myself. I haven't been to any tournaments and I have never played anyone that takes the game as serious as me but I am hoping to change that in the next couple weeks. My birthday is on November 15th and I decided that for a little present to myself I was going to go to a tournament on the 14th. There aren't many big tournaments around this area except for The Big House (which has already happened earlier in October I believe) and The Michigan Arcadian. The Arcadian for this year has over 200 entries and is going to be held at the University of Michigan. Now, the tournament is designed for the non top tier to play, so that means there aren't going to be some of the best players in the world there. But at the same time there will still be competition. With over 200 entries one can only assume that there is going to be some good players right? I myself don't really know how I stack up against any of these players, I think that I can hold my own, but at the same time I know the possibility of just getting 4 stocked every game. This is a big step for anyone though wanting to make a name for themselves in this community. If you are familiar with the game I am a Captain Falcon player. I think he is one of the more versatile characters, obviously he isn't top tier but I think that he is one of the few characters that is capable of winning a tournament. Just starting in the last couple days I have had myself on a training regimen so that I can try to get my movement and combos as fluid as possible. In my opinion, half the game is just being able to put your character in the right spot at the right time. Practicing movement like I have been doing is hopefully going to elevate my game just a little more so I can try to get a somewhat decent placing at this tournament. This tournament isn't for another 11 days but even now I can feel the pressure and anxiety I would get when I was about to step foot onto the court for a basketball game. The excitement is real.

/endrant

One major part that I think has fallen off of the face of video games is the immersion that they once used to give to people. Maybe that's because I have grown so accustom to the amazing graphics and story that most video games have now a days, but to me it feels all developers care about anymore is pushing out big titles. Can you really blame them either? The video game community will bitch and moan about how they want so much more from a game. Yet the second a developer releases a game that didn't have any of the things the community wanted in it everyone still buys it. Even on top of that the community will still complain about how much the game sucks and all that. Well if you know the developer wasn't going to be adding these things you wanted to the game, why did you still buy it? That is literally telling these companies "I don't like what you did here, but I will give you money anyway" and in return they can say to themselves, "hey everyone, lets basically make the same game over and over with different titles and story lines and we will make millions!" The sad part about it is they aren't wrong because that is exactly what is going on with the video game market now-a-days. I've recently been playing a game near and dear to my heart The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You may be thinking, "but wait, that says elder scrolls and that's not Skyrim what gives". Well, I will put this simply, Oblivion is the game Skyrim wishes it could be. This game came out in 2006 and was easily one of my favorite childhood memories. Even to this day the experiences and game play I have with this game is like none other and its 9 years old. My mind is officially boggled by the fact that with this current technology that we possess that we can't even make a better game then one from 9 years ago. Don't get me wrong Skyrim was no push over it was a pretty fun game, but it was basically a "revamp" of Oblivion, and still can't stand toe to toe with it. As much as I was saying that the gaming community in general is shit, I wasn't just referring to the consumers. The producers also play a substantially big role in this problem as well.

Toxicity

The video game community is so shit. Honestly, one of the worst groups of people you could probably ever associate yourself with. The only thing I wonder if its only this way in the US or if its global. I feel that not every person in the gaming community is terrible, but the ratio from good to bad is way off. The community is extremely toxic. People will go out of there way just to make sure you have a terrible time trying to do something you enjoy. How messed up is that. A person will spend hours of there life trying to figure out how to manipulate a certain thing in a game so that when you play it they can use it there advantage to always win against you. An example of this is in a game called DayZ. DayZ has so many cheaters in it because they all use these things called scripts that will allow them to teleport wherever they want, kill someone whenever they want, etc. These scripts aren't just handed out either, well after they are figured out they are basically, but a person had to sit down and figure out the coding process to actually get that to work. Not only that, he has to figure out how to make it work while trying to dodge the anti-cheat software that most games have now a days. On top of that, instead of blaming the person that is doing this thing the players will start criticizing the game/company. What kind of logical sense does that even make? Not to start a huge thing here, but that is just like blaming the gun and not the person firing the gun. Why does the community do this? My theory is that people who have the time to do all this must actually need make people angry. They need to hear that person rage and quit and get super upset over what he is doing. Why he needs this I have no idea, it must some kind of like fetish thing or something. Over the years of this happening to, you can see the toll it has taken on all gaming communities. Now whenever someone is decent at a game and doing better than someone else it obviously makes him a "hacker". Anyone that seems to have any sort of skill in a game and isn't a professional gamer just turns into a hacker. And its incredibly sad to see these great community figures that try to help the video game scene grow and they have to tell these people to try and join the community when its so toxic. No one wants to willingly join a community that is so incredibly annoying and just plain bad.