Was there a time thought you were alone, having a scene comprised of just you and your friends? Almost everyone has had that time where we were just tapping away at our controllers, blissfully unaware of what was out there. Most of us didn’t care either. Destimo or Alex van Schoonhoven on the other hand, wanted much more.

Ever since high school, Destimo had been playing Smash dedicatedly alongside people like AlphaL and Miguel. Riding on the hype of Melee, their closely-knit crew moved on to Brawl as they weren’t competitively-oriented yet and because logically, it was the next best step due to it being the sequel to the game they all loved. They continued playing it casually and thought it was an even greater version of what they’d played years before.

It was the summer of sophomore year when everything changed. With nothing else to do, they started getting competitive. Day by day, their little collective would train and watch replays all day until they got to a decently high level. Soon enough, even more people from their High School (whose name the players have opted to redact) joined in like HypeBeast, Mandla and Alpha L’s brother DJR.

Come senior year, their school had required them to create a business-type project as one of their requirements and he decided that it was time to turn his hobby into something productive and hosted a Smashfest. Feeling the satisfaction that came with TO’ing an event, Destimo wanted more.

He then knew that he had to make this into something bigger or at the least, find something bigger. It wasn’t a case of being the big fish in a small pond. On the contrary, he was just a small fish in an aquarium looking for an actual pond to belong in. Not so long after that, he saw a post on Smashboards about someone saying that there was an existing scene and that they even host tournaments. In his many years of playing Smash alongside his friends, why didn’t he know about this?

Coincidentally, Smash 4 was almost out and it was time for the Philippine scene to have a fresh start. Steef and the other veterans were already planning a launch party and tournament to bring in more people. With the arrival of Destimo and his crew, the stage was set for Smash Bros Philippines’ resurgence.

The History Of Philippine Smash By Justin Banusing

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Contributors To This Chapter: Destimo, Ultimagnus and SpicyD

Table Of Contents

Origins: Garage Casuals, OctoBrawl and Imperium Year End Party

Finding A Home: Tournament M and Summer Smash

New Blood: For Fun, For Glory And The Foreigner

The Other Side: Birth Of The South Sm4sh Scene & Philippine Gaming Festival

The First National: ESGS And National Expansion

X-Smash: The Christmas Party

The Kerfuffle: The Melee Of South’s Past, Versus Smash 4 Circuit & Imperium Monthlies

Revival Of PM/Melee: Melee Mayhem

Glossary

For Fun

Of course, not everyone was eager to join the scene as Destimo and his friends were. Several splinter groups made by people who didn’t want to join the “tryhards” sprouted up just before Smash 4’s release. Not liking the situation, Steef and SpicyD hosted “For Fun”, a Smash 4 launch party with the intent of bringing the scene together and showing that they even though they were competitively-minded, they were still playing “For Fun”.

A considerably large amount of people came to “For Fun” and this effectively unified the scene.  Several of the future Philippine Smash 4 top-dogs showed themselves here such as the Mario main DJR and his multi-maining brother AlphaL.

Smashers of different games and backgrounds all bonded over the course of the event. For once, there was no divide between the young and the old or the Brawl and Melee fans. It was purely a happy affair and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

For Glory

After the event, everyone started preparing for the next week’s “For Glory” event, which would be the first Philippine tournament Smash 4 would be at alongside Project M. Going into the tournament, it had seemed that Champo and RZ were poised to take PM and Smash 4 respectively. The arrival of a surprise guest shook everything up.

David Cao a.k.a Caotic, was to visit the Philippines. For the uninformed, Caotic was part of Ken’s crew in the early days and was and still is a phenomenal Peach and Bowser main from Australia. The entire scene was shocked and unprepared for someone from the outside to arrive. Caotic’s presence served to boost the tension and stakes even higher. For the duration of Project M’s lifespan in the Philippines, it’d been solely dominated by Champo. For the first time, he would finally face someone of a much higher calibre.

When the event actually came, they got a much higher turnout than expected and the TO team was understaffed. The brackets didn’t run on time and the event was to end later than planned. Luckily, Destimo took the call of action and decided to take on officiating duties. As a result, the event went back to the scheduled time. While this seemed to be a one time thing to Alex, little did he know that this set up his future as the North’s head TO.

Going into the event, Caotic was just as skilled as they’d thought. Stomping through the Project M tournament, he eventually defeated Champo in a close set. Champo had to run through losers and take out Ultimagnus, Philippines’ best Link in Loser’s Finals in order to reach Grand Finals. Although Champo lost in the end, the mere fact that he put up a great fight against Caotic inspired everyone else to level up their game. Caotic took the Project M title home and humbled Champo, an experience he wouldn’t ever forget.

The Smash 4 tournament on the other hand, was full of upsets. The two Levy brothers (DJR and AlphaL) swept through the tournament with ease, taking out the frontrunners early on. RZ, the favorite going in, was  defeated by AlphaL in Loser’s Finals  AlphaL was bested by his younger brother’s Mario in Grand Finals. This was the start of DJR’s period of dominance that would last for quite some time.

The scene was at an all-time high. Thanks to Caotic, the scene had an awakening to how good everyone was out there and in turn, the general skill level increased.

Around the same time, SpicyD used his connections as part of Team X-Over to secure Smash slots in both the Pinoy Gaming Festival and the Electronic Sports And Gaming Summit.  The future seemed to be bright for Smash Bros. Philippines and from there, things were only going to get better.

Glossary

Communi-tee – The official Smash Bros Philippines T-Shirt.

Litol Mac – A term referring to the early Little Mac mains on 3DS For Glory.

Boozer – Bowser, basically. Coined by Caotic.

Bison Bucks – The Rumpus Room’s currency.

Team X-Over – The now semi-defunct coverage/TO team for various fighting games in the Philippines such as Marvel.

ManongDorf – Manong means older brother in Filipino. RZ, a Ganon main, coined this term to refer to his white beard Ganon skin.

Whoosh – A term used when someone doesn’t get a joke.