For proof that the Super Smash Bros. Melee scene has greater skill depth than ever before, all one needs to do is take a look at the most recent edition of SSBMRank. Every player on these rankings has the ability to dominate a region. Even off the list, powerful competitors lurk within their home states, ready and able to take names whenever the opportunity arises.
It took a long time for this deep pool of skill to fill up to the brim. The players on last year’s Melee It On Me rankings are building upon a legacy that is more than a decade in the making; the competitive Melee scene has existed since 2002, when Matt “MattDeezie” Dahlgren started Tournament Go, the scene’s first significant tournament series. In the sixteen years since, many high-level competitors have risen and fallen, and players that once dominated the national scene have long faded into retirement. Some of these legends have passed into the annals of history, in large part due to the narratives preserved in Travis “Samox” Beauchamp’s documentary, The Smash Brothers. Other names have become casualties of time, falling into relative obscurity.
That is, until now. For the last week, the guys at Smash History have been releasing their all-time top 100, reaching back all the way to the beginning to assemble a list of players who have forever left their mark upon the metagame. This is a brave undertaking, to say the least, and while it’s almost impossible to claim objectivity in such an exercise, perhaps no team is better than Smash History’s Edwin Budding and Pikachu942, who have spent years researching and writing about the history of the game. Already, the all-time top 100 list has dusted off the names of semi-forgotten heroes such as Mikael and Jiano, and the list promises to get even more interesting—and controversial—as it approaches No. 1. The writing duo has released rankings 71 through 100 so far. If you’ve got a hankering to read about the top players of yesteryear, stay tuned because Smash History is on a roll.
