The Legacy

There was an interesting moment in (or, perhaps more accurately, just outside of) Melee the other day; interesting enough, in my opinion, to stand out from the daily deluge of top player interviews/clips/social media statements that the Platinum Age and its money engenders. Cloud 9’s own Mango, who as you’re all tired of hearing was the champion of Evolution 2013 and 2014 in Super Smash Brothers Melee, was on a mic alongside the brilliant and charismatic and possibly (in this writer’s admittedly biased opinion) sociopathic recent-winner-of-all-the-things Leffen. The clip can be found here:

At one point, as two unfortunate (or possibly fortunate, since their uncommentated match has at the time of this writing been viewed 25,686 times) scrubs duke it out, Mango tells Leffen and the stream why he is going to three-peat. The moment occurs at around 11:00; Mango is half-joking, and the statement is colored by his ever-present and inextricable narcissism and patriotism, but there’s a little sincerity in it. PPMD “can’t” win, because a PPMD victory would mean that the metagame could proceed piecemeal, by means of one superhuman display of scholarship every six months. Leffen and Hungrybox “can’t” win because Mango, in some half-sincere sense, dislikes them personally. And Adam Lindgren–Armada–the earnest young viking whom you all know from third-place finishes at WTFox and the most recent MELEE-FC and a second at CEO–can’t win because if he did, his legacy would (even in Mango’s own epically biased estimation) rival the legacy of the GOAT himself.

And it would. I won’t assault you with statistics, but everyone who follows melee knows it in his heart: if Armada wins this, it means something, insofar as pixels from a Cathode Ray Tube can ever mean something.

The Fire

Mango, these days, talks like a father. He says he has “gas left in the tank” almost wistfully; in more candid moments, he’ll admit that he’ll never again have the fire of  “little kid Mango,” the Neo who saved Melee from Mew2king and Armada’s Agents Smith. That selfsame flame–the divine fire that dwells in at least six breasts–once died in Armada; after he established himself as the champion of the world, circa 2012, he retired; he, too, said that he no longer felt “the fire” that he used to. He returned, and lost, and won, and began to lose again. From here, we know what happens: the old guard, still in it for the paychecks, are gradually muscled into irrelevance by young, thirsty wunderkinds (the Leffens and the Westballzes, the scions of a still purer 20XX school). Armada gets third and fourth and occasionally second for a few years, and then one morning we all wake up in a world where he can get fifth–seventh–ninth. He goes back to substitute teaching; he raises a family. It’s all faintly sad.

But sometimes–once in a very great while–the fire doesn’t die. Some ember from the mighty blaze persists, and glows, until one day, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with money and everything to do with the desire to strive and conquer that every young man feels, it bursts into flame again.

If you follow @ArmadaUGS on twitter, as I do, you might have noticed a diamond in the rough: between spells of homesickness and grumpy anti-airline rants came a tweet which I’ll reproduce in its entirety.

“I’m ready to fight to the very end.

I WANT TO WIN EVO!

I will create a way to actually win in the end”

In The End

In the end. Not at WTFox, not at CEO, not at any of the other wonderful and important tournaments that no one will remember; at Evo, Armada will create a way. The burnt-out veteran–the guy with one foot in the retirement grave–used to make tweets about why he hadn’t won, used to accept what fate gave him or grumble about it with a forgivably bad temper. But now–now, on the eve of the largest and most important Melee tournament of all time–He insists that he is unstoppable, that if the world or his opponents try to hold him back he will burn them down.

Some have already insisted that in the face of Leffen’s up-and-coming brilliance there is “no way” for Armada to triumph.

It’s very possible that there is no way. But that doesn’t mean that, with the title of Best of All Time on the line, Adam Lindgren can’t make one.