By Matthew “MattDotZeb” Zaborowski

August 24th, 2013

Everyone was abuzz at Mass Madness: Championship Edition, the final event of the New England Smash Summer Circuit. (NESS Circuit) With 70 entrants this was the largest event New England had seen in a long time. With Pro and Amateur brackets following the round-robin pools, everyone had an opportunity to show their stuff. Players from NYC, Long Island, even up-state New York came out to show their stuff to the best players in New England. After a long summer of events leading up to it, MMCE didn’t disappoint.

Thursday September 12th, 2013

Eric “Nuro” Lima posts about Game Over in the New England Melee group. This was a weekly gaming night in Harvard Square, previously unheard of except to maybe a select few. Utilizing facebook and r/smashbros to advertise, players came out the following Tuesday with three or four setups into the bottom floor of Tommy Doyles Irish Pub & Restaurant’s defunct Harvard Square location and had a fun smashfest with some drinks. Boston had never had an event in a bar, so this was quite the treat.

Following this, I messaged the organizer (who turned out to be an old acquaintance), and got permission to run brackets. The following week we ran our first tournament there. 17 players joined in. Up until mid-October that was around the numbers we got, and then things start to pick up. Week after week it kept growing! 23 entrants, 27 entrants, 41, 31, 38, 40…! Things took a dip when Tommy Doyle’s closed that location down, and we were forced to stop hosting beginning in December.

What was the fuel behind these increasing numbers? For about 4 weeks there were less than 20 people coming out and then the jump? Why?
Collegiate players! Word must have gotten around to some of the schools and to people in our growing facebook group, New England Melee, that these were going on. It was easy to get to and cheap, and you got to play with some of the best players around. Realizing this, we added an emphasis on the college players by simply adding “SchoolName |” prior to someone’s tag. Simple, but it tells everyone that a player attends whichever school and maybe someone else at the event attends too!

While this was happening Alex “Poof” Johnson was starting to cultivate a scene around Northeastern University by opening his apartment up weekly for smash players. In October, he and Theo “Roymaster” Tran, in partnership with Northeastern Entertainment System (The Northeastern University gaming club), announced NSA – Northeastern Smash Attack. This was a Friday night tournament in late November. Initial expectations were around 20 to 30 players. Through promotion at Game Over and through social media the “Going” list of the facebook event kept growing. The week of the event it seemed to jump higher and higher every day, until over 80 people said they were attending. The day of, over 100 people showed up.

Remember: The largest event in years was MMCE in August, just 3 months prior, with 70 people. This Friday night event blew that out of the water.
Starting in 2012, if I recall correctly, we began running amateur brackets at our regional series Mass Madness. This was to give the newer and lower level players an opportunity to fight more people around their skill level after round-robin pools. The focus on the amateur players combined with the insane college presence at Game Over and NSA helped spawn what came next: The Melee Games.

With all the college players already attending Game Over, and with Game Over relocating to a different Tommy Doyle’s location in January, it made sense to see which school has the best players in Boston and have the matches at Game Over. A big shoutout to two people who helped with formulating TMG: Jake “SolidJake” Kulinski for offering advice on how we can tap into these colleges further, and to Chas “Combat Cold Cuts” Quimby for arriving on the title of the series.

The idea came about pretty easily. We would run crew battles, schools need 5 players to qualify, they would advance in a single elimination bracket over the span of a few weeks to give people the chance to practice and improve as they go (but also not to overload any events).

Signups went live in January, and with only 6 schools expected to participate we were once again surprised by the sheer numbers of college players. When sign-ups ended we had 10 schools w/ 137 players combined. We randomly generated a bracket by order of qualification (first school to get 5 players signed up, thus qualify = 1st seed, etc) and played out games one to two times a week a week leading up to Northeaster Smash Attack 2 at the end of March. Although, we did have to run 3 one week due to being snowed out the week prior! Kicking off the first rounds on February 11th, Game Over reached its largest turnout to date with 73 players in the singles bracket. As the matches progressed even Boston-local “The Smash Doc Guy” aka Travis “Samox” Beauchamp came by to get a piece of the action and even helped create a promotional video.

March 29th 2014, NSA2:

UMass Boston vs MIT have fought their way through a bracket, and they meet at last. MIT clinches it last game, last stock, to cheers from the crowd. The Melee Games is over. MIT is the champion of New England colleges. And, recall that NSA had just over 100 participants. NSA2 broke the 200 mark, a complete first for Boston tournaments.

What followed the 2014 Spring Semester has been a new venue for Game Over, located in Somerville at East End Grille, where each week about 60 players come out to play. New players and experienced alike, this consistently provides some of the hardest brackets in New England. As for Mass Madness, the monthly events are now pulling between 80 and 90 players with ease. New England is growing rapidly; even our facebook group which had ~350 members in August 2014 now has 1,375 members.

What’s next?

The Melee Games is expanding. With nearly 4x as many schools in our sights for The Melee Games: Second Semester we are as excited as could be. My good friend Jesse “HectoHertz” Hertz (Brooklyn, NY) is running a Tri-state (NY, NJ, PA) bracket alongside our New England bracket. We expect to run the brackets in 10-12 weeks. The first games will be September 16th at Game Over in Boston for the New England bracket, and September 20th at various locals spread across Tri-state for that bracket. And, of course, the winner of each bracket will face off to find out what school is the best in the Northeast.

Sign up now. Registration will go from August 15th until September 9th. Don’t worry — if your school qualifies you can still add players after September 9th. That is just the deadline for schools to qualify to participate.

Sign ups Here

Read an overview of The Melee Games on r/smashbros and read the guide on how to play here. It is highly recommended that all participating players read that guide.

About the Author

MattDotZeb is a long-time grassroots organizer and player based out of Boston. He loves the new community members and welcomes them with a forward smash. Follow him on Twitter @DotZeb.