“The Dutch scene managed to lay the ground works for the growth that would be experienced in 2015, which was the year with the largest growth in Melee for the Dutch scene, without a doubt. Stay tuned to learn how that panned out.”
After staying tuned for more than 3 years, it’s time to blow the dust off the old tomes of Dutch Melee History and dive into the fabled year of 2015.
The game didn’t just change in The Netherlands, but a shift was happening across the world. In January 2015, B.E.A.S.T. V just happened, where Leffen took his first major win over Armada and Mango. Armada showcased his Fox to the world for the first time at Paragon Orlando, beating Hungrybox and almost beating Leffen. The month of January was capped off with APEX 2015, widely regarded as one of the most spectacular tournaments of all time, with the return of PPMD. Honestly, I think like 3 of the top 10 best sets of all time happened in this month. SmashEurope even launched the Smash Circuit, with 7 European major tournaments on the roadmap. January 2015 was truly magical for Melee.
The Dutch Melee scene was primed: new blood was pouring in, there was a central hub, marketing on Facebook was alive and well and tournaments all over the country. We couldn’t be further from the dark days of 2011… Or could we? We were all eager to compete, but in the end there was nothing to strive for. How could you measure your improvement?
In January 2015, Mind Trick launched smashranking.eu, the main source of discussion, seeding, controversy and shittalk for the coming 2 years. This website used Computer Algorithms®™ to determine a totally accurate score which captured all of your results and gameplay statistics and ranked you in comparison to your peers. Where it first was only limited to results from Dutch tournaments, it soon grew to be a European-wide endeavor. The site has since gone down, but some old extracts can be found here and here.
In February 2015, Marc posted ‘De toekomst van Avalon’, outlining what will happen to the Avalon tournament series. Nowadays, that might read ominous, but it was nothing but good news. The Avalon series consistently capped out well before the deadline at 130 participants, prompting to TOs to split up Melee and Brawl/Smash4 in the future. Avalon Melee tournaments consistently pulled over 64 entrants, making this the right decision to allow the most prominent Dutch tournament series to grow much more.
During this time, one post on the SmashNL forums that barely attracted any attention would change the course of Dutch Melee for the coming years. At the start of the year, a user named ‘Sayori’, better known as Rob, would post about having an ‘anti-kraakpand’ available, an abandoned school in Rotterdam, where he would love to host some Melee. A few people replied, including yours truly. This created the first hub of Smash in Rotterdam where players would come together on a weekly basis, finally resulting in the Smash 101010 tournament and group. There are some amazing memories to this tournament series. We played in an attic with open windows where we would sometimes find dead pigeons. All set-ups were plugged into a single outlet coming from a 10-foot cable and you’d unplug the whole venue if you tripped over it (it happened). It was in this venue where I met my future Smash-husband KasparV, who I’d train for the years to come and team with to this day. Finally, this was also the series where I won my very first serious tournament, taking out some good players.
At the same time, one of the unsung Dutch Melee legends named Jurian, also known as Jur, had a connection to Virgil, who most of my readers know as the brain behind the one-man shop of AFK Esports Rotterdam. AFK Esports was a budding start-up which just started hosting their first gaming tournaments at Gamers Of The West in Rotterdam. Soon, the Smash 101010 crowd merged with them and found their way there, and in July 2015 the first AFK weeklies were organized. These were the first weeklies of any significant quality in The Netherlands and defined a generation of smashers, including me as a TO. People would flock to these weeklies from across the country, where each week half of the top 20 would be in attendance and duke it out. These were some of the most fun tournaments in The Netherlands and one of my favorite times in Dutch Melee.
One of the most fun memories I have of the early AFK days in the GOTW basement venue was when Eikelmann showed up. Somehow, he was in The Netherlands and entered our small weekly, with me, Marc, Avalancer, Stijn and Ser in attendance. Remember, this was the year of APEX 2015 and he had his salty suite claim to fame. In winner’s semis, I had to face Eikelmann as a severe underdog. With everyone watching, we had an incredibly intense set. Eikelmann was physically frustrated and began moving in his chair and mumbling under his breath. It was 2-1 to me and he read a roll I did from the ledge and yelled ‘YEAH ROLL AGAIN BITCH’, after telling us I was ‘the lamest fox he has ever played. Only spams bair’ (which is funny in hindsight). I was nervous as hell he would hurt me, someone else or break something, but at the same time it was simply hilarious. After Bairing him again off-stage, I asked him how he could be so bad to lose to such a dumb spamming Fox.
The rest of The Netherlands absolutely did not stay behind. Smaller tournament series started popping up. In February, Joris and MBR organized RxM2 in Roosendaal, with a tournament in the Melkweg in Amsterdam from the same team not long after. In May we saw the first Melee tournament in AwesomeSpace (a name that should bring a tear to your eye), again hosted by MBR. Posts started popping up about smashfests in Overijssel, training partners near Alkmaar, Amersfoort, you name it. Project Melee took off as a staple side event at every tournament, with a huge scene in Groningen. People found the smash-bros.nl website and it showed in the numbers.
The Brabant scene kept growing at an incredible pace, with the Whatsapp group slowly becoming almost as large as the ‘official’ SmashNL one. In fact, that whole scene seemed consist of random goons who had never been outside of their region but were incredibly active within their small bubble. The newly established gang included Bawr, (old) Niels, Alex, Paydough, many more. Besides the new guard, the older players also decided to put Brabant on the map. When Adam hosted NEXT LEVEL, I was absolutely flabbergasted to see a Dutch top player besides Marc and Remen organizing a tournament.
The Brabant scene had their moment suprême with Jeffz0r Smash Tournament 7 in Rosmalen. This 2-day tournament was hosted by Jeffz0r and is likely to hold a special place for a lot of players as their first major tournament experience. Ice and Professor Pro came out especially for this tournament, and it was a major Project M tournament. This tournament also came as a breakout tournament for $tijn, who before then had always hung around just a tier below me, Ser and the other guys. At that tournament, my prodigy finally beat me in a best of 5 and I flung my controller 3 meters across the room. After sitting outside for 5 minutes and malding, I decided I’d much rather be happy for him as his success also reflected in part on me, and ever since then I’ve gotten the most enjoyment from mentoring other players to get better. By now, it was time for this bird to spread their wings. I had never been to a tournament abroad, and have been telling everyone I would never go until I could hang with the great players in The Netherlands. Now, I was solidly in the tier below the 5 Dutch gods and decided it was time to go.
Enter HF-LAN Melee, in 2015. The Dutch delegation of Amsah, Avalancer, Ace, Jim Morrison, $tijn, Epikfaal, KasparV, Flippy, Cortex and Jeffz0r was no joke. The first 6 of those players all made it out of pools, with Amsah taking an amazing second place, beating Zhu and Professor Pro along the way. This tournament featured international crews where me, Avalancer and Amsah duked it out. Besides the whole Smash aspect, this was the first time that me, Stijn and Kaspar traveled together, something we would do many times more. The experience of an international tournament is something that is so different, I wish I’d have done it sooner (just kidding, I was 15 and had no money). One of my favorite memories from HF-LAN was Stijn going on the free stream set-up and starting to multi-shine and we told him “the stream can’t see you”, to which he responded very confidently: “but they can hear me!”
There were plenty of other noteworthy international appearances: At Heir 2, the Pure Bros. made their debut, as ewell as PureEvil and Luxus making bracket. At Helix, one of the most amazing German majors ever with 212 entrants, the Dutch delegation showed up in full force again. This time, me and Avalancer would team up and ALMOST take out Westballz and Overtriforce in doubles, in a game 3 last stock situation. The car ride home of 8 hours straight Sunday night was one of the most degenerate things I’ve undertaken as a smasher and hope to never do that again.
The next event in the European Smash Circuit would take place on our home turf, in Zoetermeer. The Avalon split had finally taken place and the first Melee-only Avalon tournament would be a stacked major. Avalon M quickly capped at 128 entrants and the small, sweaty venue filled with greasy gamers ready to prove that they were worth less than their weight in salt. With just a simple Double Elimination 128-man bracket, the tournament ran within a day and many 0-2’ers couldn’t even find their respite in an amateur bracket. What makes this tournament special is how many players started out here, who would later become great players and community members . No really, check out the results list for yourselves. Notable names that showed up there: CTN, Supergoomba, Divinius, Halzyn, Matthijs, FoutNL, Pixel, Protato, MrCuttingHorse, SilentWater, you name ‘em.
2015 was an amazing year of growth, where so many players started playing. Go to the PR and pick your favorite player, fairly good odds that they started in 2015. Atlas, KasparV, Aaron, Renzo, FoutNL, Pixel, Pure Bros., all of them started blossoming in 2015. Not much changed in the landscape at the top in absolute terms: Amsah, Zgetto, Adam and Jeapie dominated and on smashranking.eu the rest looked much the same as it did in 2014. However, some players were slowly on their way out. Remen started entering less after winning Avalon VII. Mind Trick shot up on the rankings (which he himself created, hmmm….), but started participating less near the end of the year. Faab, Marc, and Enig were still there, but were notably less active.
At this point in time, these blog posts are becoming harder and harder to write as the scene explodes in size. More and more people joining also means more and more personalized stories. It’s becoming less of a history of the whole Dutch scene, but rather me taking you through my own journey. I can’t explain how it must have been for the Pure Bros. to have Heir 2 be their first major tournament experience, or how the Brabant Whatsapp group was a magical place. Avalancer’s relationship with daddy Marc deserves its own chapter and the stories of how FoutNL started playing Ness are not for this blog. When more people join, the scene gets fragmented into their own smaller subgroups of friends. I’m grateful the Dutch community has a sweetspot of being large enough to have many sub-pockets of communities, while being small enough so that there always is an overarching Dutch community. For now, this was it for 2015, and I hope you’ll join me in the future for the golden years of 2016.
Jim Morrison's Melee Tidbits 