The field at I’m Not Yelling was comprised of the usual Californian studs, but also boasted a strong international presence with Armada, Leffen, and Kirbykaze making the trip. It also featured a test run of the smashgg app, which allowed the organizers to track set counts, stock differentials, characters, and stages.
INY continued the Norcal tradition of day one exhibitions by streaming The Melee Games Finals and a teams round robin. In a massive upset– which an expert described as on the order of “some Mighty Ducks ****”– UC Berkeley defeated UC Irvine to take the Western section of The Melee Games. Look for them in the finals at Super Nebulous 3 in a couple of weeks. The round robin featured voter selected teams of Mango and Silentspectre, SFAT and MacD, Shroomed and Leffen, and Armada and PewpewU, which showcased high level teams play and offered glimpses of #rare team combinations.
Unsurprisingly, many of the aforementioned participants progressed deep into the doubles bracket. PewFat (PewPewU/SFAT) blazed a trail to Winners Finals, taking down 4LeafMango (Mango/Lucky) 3-0 in the process. Leffen and MacD blazed to Grand Finals, defeating Shroomed and Armada and PewFat en route. Undeterred, Armada and Shroomed clawed their way back to Grand Finals, with a convincing win over PewFat along the way. Teams Grand Finals produced a number of intense moments, but probably none moreso than MacD besting Armada and Shroomed in a 2v1 on the way to securing the teams title for Leffen and himself.
The 96 man Singles bracket provided the hype moments and upsets that often occur at tournaments of this scale. However, Kira stole the show for a time. After defeating FRQ|Hugs and Shroomed in losers bracket to advance to top 8, he continued his impressive run by defeating Kirbykaze before ultimately falling to Leffen. The Winners Semifinal offered viewers a highly anticipated rematch between Mango and Leffen, with Mango winning convincingly. Mango carried this momentum into Winners Finals where he stifled Armada’s fox, quelling sentiments that his Falco was not up to the task of handling modern foxes. Losers Finals produced one of the most exciting sets of the tournament, with PewPewU generating a 2-0 lead over Leffen, before ultimately falling in five games, afterwhich Leffen would go on to lose a fox ditto to Armada in Losers Finals. As Grand Finals began one could hear the crowd murmur and whisper, asking one another if Armada would go to his peach, which he ultimately did. The switch proved to be an excellent decision as he defeated Mango 3-1 in each set of Grand Finals winning the tournament in his first return to NorCal since Genesis 2.

“One of, if not the largest singles tournament held in New England, with over 200 entrants into melee singles, saw Canada come out and destroy the competition with Kage and VWins taking doubles as well as the number 2 and 1 spots respectively in singles.

This also featured TMG crew battles, and it was one for the ages. UMass Amherst and UMass Boston hyped it up with banners, UConn upset MIT, and in the finale, UMass Boston pulled out a miracle when Crow’s Ganondorf took down UConn’s last 12 stocks, losing only 3 in the hardest uphill battle a crew could face”

SK92 and Trahh went at it again in grand finals, this time with SK92 coming out on top. These two have been going back and forth recently, and are in a constant struggle to become the best in Vegas.

Spring Fighter is an annual fighting game tournament at the NYU Game Center. This year featured a guest panel with John Choi, and the winner of USF4 got a paid ticket to Evo. Although the event was not melee-centric, and some of NYC’s players were at BUST2, there was still a decent 56 person turnout. Unfortunately there was no doubles :(Watch set 2 of grand finals when its up on youtube. That’s all I gotta say about that

Still riding the high from Pensacola’s first two day regional back in February, April turned out to be a very solid bi-monthly event with 70+ entrants across the board. We called it Table for 1 Please because I did not run any team events at all. Instead we did Melee, PM and Wii U Singles as well as PM all star mode and a random character event for melee. Back in February we decided to run a large scale tournament old-school style out of a 6 bedroom home called “The McMansion.” The turn out was at 120+ for 64, melee, pm, and smash 4 wii u. We had representation from North Florida, to Georgia to Louisiana and everywhere in between. We made a highlight video that can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbJkmCbfelU&feature=youtu.be. The epic weekend ended with Joot facing GK | Eikalmann in losers. Eikalmann won to face Rice in Grands. After a bracket reset, Rice took the victory. Since then, Mobile, AL and Pensacola have decided to rotate monthlies to encourage travel between our two towns. A recent top local player has gone on hiatus and a new challenger has approached. Pensacola has a large navy base that sometimes brings in talent from around the country. And by talent i mean destruction in the form of Tope, a veteran Sheik main. Since his arrival he has taken first in every tournament in our region. Unfortunately, our local champion Rice was unable to attend our last tournament. He certainly could have given Tope a run for his money. But we still scratched and fought hard. Our players have the drive, will power and endurance to improve. Two players that are shining right now are Saaab and Oppa. Both are in the Crestview area (about 30 minutes from Pensacola). Even though Pensacola has more smashers, these two have been grinding so hard that they have been sweeping through the region. Saaab the patient and optimal fox and Oppa the technical and precise peach. I look forward to seeing more from these two players. The event turned out great with a lot of new faces as well as old friends. We will continue to grind and one day show that North Florida is not a region to be slept on.

Georgetown University’s first smash tournament open to the public was a great success! Thanks to everyone for coming out, and congrats to Nintendude on the win. Our next King of the Hilltop tournament will be two weeks from now, on Sunday, April 26th. We hope to see you there!