I’m a little late on this one! I’m still recovering from the weekend festivities, but here are my thoughts:

1. The Curse is broken

It took Armada two full years to get his first big national win at Genesis 2 after losing at Genesis 1.  And after his brief retirement, it took Armada 2 years to finally win his first Evo. After many frustrating losses, Armada finally got what he came for. Well done, Adam.

2. The Blue Shell

Last year, we were robbed of a potential Mango vs. Armada matchup at Evo 2014 because Hungrybox double eliminated Armada. This year, we saw Hungrybox go on another amazing run, taking down Leffen, Mango, and PPMD along the way. Evobox is no joke (3rd at Evo 2013, 2nd at Evo 2014, 2nd at Evo 2015 – the best average out of any player)

3. Sleep on the Kid

With a rough 2015 topped off with a 5th at Evo, I think it’s safe to say that you can sleep on the kid (for now).

4. Old School Magic

Chu – 7th, HugS – 9th, Ken – 13th, Azen -33rd. What year is it? Kudos to the old school documentary legends for showing up and pulling countless upsets that we deemed to be impossible.

5. The CLG Curse

Table 1: CLG|PewPewU’s Placing at Nationals

Poor PewPewU. It seems like 9th places follow him everywhere, but at least he managed to win his first doubles nationals with SFAT.

5. The Doctor is in

He didn’t get first and he was outclassed by Hungrybox and Armada, but man it’s good to see Kevin back.

6. 200K? We’ll take it!

And for a short while, we held the record for most simultaneous viewers for a fighting game on Twitch. It was broken later by Street Fighter’s top 8, but it’s nice to see Melee growing year by year.

7. Bizarre Scenarios

The Sheik in me wanted to see Plup’s Sheik defeat PPMD. Random events led to his controller breaking the night before. How unfortunate. However, we may have not seen Plup’s Samus had this not happened. On second thought, maybe it was nice that his controller broke.

8. Plup > DruggedFox + 1

The running joke is that Druggedfox is one tournament behind Plup. Plup narrowly lost to Mango and Leffen at CEO. Druggedfox narrowly lost to Mango and Leffen at Evo. Maybe, we’ll see some excitement from Druggedfox at Big House. Or maybe we’ll see that it was Jason Zimmerman all along.

9. What’s 20xx?

We saw 8 characters used in the top 8 (No Peach! Booooo Armada) and 12 unique characters in top 32. The metagame is still healthy even after 14 years.

10. The Post National Blues

Now that everything is said and done, when’s the next major? I’m fiending.