Every few months, there is a very special event that takes place in the heart of Upstate, New York. In Syracuse, the appropriately nicknamed Salt City, there is the season Smash Bros. tournament known as Cusetown Beatdown. This past weekend hosted the seventh iteration of this large regional tournament for all Smash games. Every Beatdown seems to be bigger and better than the last, and this time was no exception either. Instead of being hosted in its usual venue at Cloud City Comics and Toys in the Shoppingtown Mall, this time around it had the privilege to take place in the Syracuse On Center alongside Retro Game Con, a big convention dedicated to nostalgia, video games, and splurging on nerdy merchandise (I may have caved and bought myself a plush Pokéball as well). It was a very fun experience, and as a Smash 4 competitor myself who mains Ness, I will tell you about my personal experiences in the largest Upstate tournament of the season.

Doubles

Like many tournaments, it begun by hosting a doubles bracket. Now, I don’t really take doubles games as seriously as I do with singles, but I still try to do my best, and I think it’s a good way to warm up in conjunction with playing friendlies with a wide variety of players of notable skill level. I was fortunate enough to have Arch as my doubles partner. Arch is a low-tier hero in terms in that he mains Palutena, and mains her well at that. He is unquestionably the strongest player we have in Binghamton for Smash 4, where I TO. We have partnered together once before a long time ago at a Cusetown Beatdown past, but at that point I still had a lot of growth and skill to gain as a player myself. This time around my goal was to be able to keep up and be a skilled enough partner to match Arch in team synergy when it comes to combos and priority of plays on stage.

And so it came time for our first match to be played, and our first match was to be played on stream as we were going up against a very strong team. Our opponents were Noe3 and Naga, a couple of top players in the Upstate region who play Mega Man and Marth respectively. Personally, I hadn’t beaten either of these players 1-on-1 before in an official match, so I was fearing the worst. As we began our match things were surprisingly going relatively smoothly. Arch and I were attempting some team combos, slowly but surely getting our timing better, and we ended up defeating them in Round 1 with three stocks left on our side. I would consider this a bit of an upset, but it was no time to start getting confident because Round 2 held a different story. Our opponents had made some necessary adaptions like the top players they are and were going very even with us. I had lost all my stocks and took a stock from Arch, who was targeted and then eliminated from the match. It came down to just my Ness and Noe3’s Mega Man left with one stock a piece. By the skin of my teeth I was able to survive Mega Man’s onslaught of projectiles long enough to close out his stock with an up-air, thus winning us Round 2 and by extension our first doubles Match. That match was incredible intense and afterwards I almost felt ready to vomit from the tension, definitely not something I’m used to feeling.

In our second doubles match we had to face off against even stronger players. Dark Wizzy, and extremely skillful Mario player from Albany and his partner Champ, a very talented Toon Link. Needless to say we just couldn’t keep up with them, and lost our second doubles match 0-2. Fear not however, as like most other Smash tournaments, it was doubles elimination, and so Arch and I are sent into Losers’ Bracket for a chance to make a comeback.

Our next to matches were both again teams from the Cornell Smash scene. Players I have fought before here and there. We had one our first Losers’ match fairly handily against Jobus and TFHK, but our second Losers’ match was much harder fought. It was against Xorax and Seke. Now Xorax in particular is currently a Fox player, but we’ve had a little rivalry from before when he had mained Captain Falcon. We had both taken matches off each other in both singles and doubles in the past. I didn’t know much about his partner Seke, who was a Samus player, other than from seeing him play earlier I could tell he knew what he was doing pretty well. The first game was close, but we took it. I felt like I kept on dropping the ball and not playing as optimally as I should have been, which was evident in our second game when I inadvertently killed my partner at 0% as I accidentally hit him with a PK Tackle off stage as we were both trying to recover. Needless to say we lost that game. In our Game 3, Arch was able to take it back in another 1-v-1 situation, winning us the match.

Our fifth game of doubles, in Losers’ Quarterfinals, was against the team of Prettiest Girl in School (PGIS for short) and Suarez. Arch and I had lost to them 2-1 some time ago at a previous Cusetown Beatdown, but I am a stronger player now so I was determined to change the outcome this time. They are brothers and have a lot of practice playing against and with one another as well as practicing against top players from their home region. PGIS is also a Binghamton player, so I know very well what he is capable of as Lucario, and his brother is one of the best Yoshi players in the state. The first two games were very close, and each team had taken one. So it was 1-1 and the next team to lose would be eliminated from the tournament while the winner would advance to top four. They had our number and were playing against us very well. I was trying my best not to get tilted after having lost some pretty early stocks. It came down to just me and my Ness against PGIS’s Lucario with one stock and Suarez’s Yoshi with two. I didn’t expect to win, but I was going to try my damnedest. I was focusing and playing as hard as I could. I was able to take one stock, and then another, and suddenly I find myself in another 1-v-1 situation against Suarez the Yoshi main. I was already at a high percent while he had a fresh stock. Nevertheless, I put up the fight of my life. I was playing very well. Choosing all the right options at all the right times, and got him to a high enough percent were I could kill him. All the while I hear a small crowd gathered in the background. Top upstate players San, K.I.D.Goggles, and others were cheering me on, as well as some friends from Binghamton who came along with me to the tournament. Alas, I was not able to close out the stocks, and as history repeats itself, Arch and I were eliminated from the doubles tournament 1-2, earning 5^th place. Still, I was very proud with how I performed as a doubles partner. I had won matches I would never have expected to win in the past, so I was satisfied and happy with how it turned out. I will always remember the resounding “NOOOO!” K.I.D.Goggles yelled out as I lost our final game.

Singles

After some waiting, it was time for the main event of the night for myself, Wii U singles. In the sake of time conservation and fairness. The tournament is split up into many smaller double elimination bracket pools before the top players in each pool go into a final bracket together. I was in Pool 2, so I didn’t have to wait so long, but was still able to get something to each from the convention before I had to play. I was automatically placed into Round 2 with a bi, so my first match was against a Fox player called Top. I had played Top before in Rome, NY and didn’t really have too hard a time defeating him, but I was taken by surprise by how much better he had gotten. I was only just able to win the first game with my Ness, as it had gone down to last hit. I wasn’t feeling confident in my Ness against his Fox at that point, so I decided to switch to my secondary, the big guy himself, Charizard. I thought this would be a good idea since Charizard has a higher survivability than Ness does, and I could use the counterpicked stage to my advantage. Again, it came down to a really close last hit situation, but I was able to clutch it out and won my first singles game.

Like in doubles, I had to play Dark Wizzy in my second game in bracket. This time it was on stream. I knew I was going to lose, so I just wanted to put up a good performance, see if I could get a stock at least, and try to take the whole thing as a good learning experience. I was quickly 2-0ed as expected, and was sent into Losers’ Bracket. There is still a chance for me to make it out of pools at this point, so long as I win every match from here on out up to Loser’s Finals.

My next game was against a Cornell player called SAUN, who mains Rosalina & Luma, Ness’s worst matchup. I had just watched SAUN defeat Bran, one of the Binghamton players I came with, to get to me. I have plenty of experience fighting as Ness into Rosalina, so I believed if I was playing on point I could take it. Both games had the same outcome, SAUN started of beating me, killing my first stock before I took his, but I was able to make the comeback two times in a row by playing smart and not being too risky. So I defeated the Rosalina player 2-0 and moved onto the final round of Losers’ Bracket.

So there I am in Losers’ Finals. The winner of this match will have made it out of pools and into the next bracket while the loser will be eliminated from the tournament. I’m against fellow Ness player, Lax. I had never heard of Lax before, but he seemed to be pretty good from seeing him play a little before. Now in the past I loathed playing Ness dittos. I would consistently lose even against considerably less skillful players. However, I had grinded out plenty of Ness dittos again many players (shout-outs to Litoh, Tmoon, Navii, Rolo, and others) and familiarized myself with how to play the ditto matchup to a point where I felt decently confident in my own abilities to win it. So we go into Game 1, and I’m starting off very strong, showing a proper dominance. However, Lax managed to hit me with a rage-boosted PK Tackle and kill me at a mere 36%. It was very mentally taxing to lose a stock so early like that, and he was able to take that game off me. In the second game I’m still feeling the after effects of losing the first like that. I was still able to start of strong with a solid lead like before, but then Lax had made the necessary adaptions, and was able to start taking it back. From the tilting of losing my first game in such a way, to having to play dittos, I didn’t have the stamina any longer to keep up with Lax, and he was able to 2-0 me and move out of pools. I wasn’t too upset however, I really did want to make it out of pools, but he was a pretty strong player, and he completely earned it by outplaying me. So that was that, and I was eliminated from Cusetown Beatdown 8.

Afterthoughts

I had a wonderful experience overall with this tournament. I was able to see a lot of familiar faces and play with my friends and rivals from across New York State. From my homies from back in my hometown of Syracuse, and my local region in Binghamton where I TO, to the players in Rome where I’ve played in many good tournaments, and the very strong and familiar players from Rochester and Albany and the city itself, it’s always refreshing how we can all come together and share in this experience. We stopped and got some food before driving back down to Binghamton. After the fact one of the Binghamton players told me how some of them had observed me from afar while we were at the big tournament, and said how happy and in my place I seemed. In retrospect I can clearly see why. I am able to spend time with so many friends I have made along the way and to be a part of this community and take part in something bigger than myself. It is certainly something special. As I continue to grow older and find other special things in my life, including the one person more special than any, I know I can always look back to my Smash 4 days and be able to say, much like a middle school intramural bowling participation trophy, “I had fun.”