Smash Bros Melee breaks Evo viewership record

After being nearly blocked from broadcast during the Evo 2013 tournament, Smash Bros Melee broke viewership records with 100,000 concurrent watchers.

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A fighting game stream that Nintendo nearly blocked ended up breaking records at Evo 2013. The event's founder, Tom Cannon, says that the stream of Super Smash Bros Melee hit 100,000 concurrent viewers over the weekend.

According to a tweet from Cannon (via CVG), this makes it the most watched fighting game in the tournament's history. Nintendo briefly blocked the event from broadcasting its Smash Bros tournament last week, but subsequently reversed its position in response to fan outcry.

Here, watch some of the insanity:

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  • reply
    July 15, 2013 10:40 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Smash Bros Melee breaks Evo viewership record.

    After being nearly blocked from broadcast during the Evo 2013 tournament, Smash Bros Melee broke viewership records with 100,000 concurrent watchers.

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      July 15, 2013 10:55 AM

      are all the matches like the clip? seems like they really neuter that game for pro tournament play. 1 on 1 and no items. to me that game is all about hte chaos of 1v1v1v1 and random items appearing.

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        July 15, 2013 11:03 AM

        This was my first time checking out competitive Smash and I was really surprised at how entertaining it was. Yes, I agree that the fun is in all-out 4-player chaos, but there's a surprising amount of skill involved in 1v1 play, particularly with mastering dodges, meteor smashes, and knowing when to play around with the ledges. I loved it and it made me want to jump back into Brawl.

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          July 15, 2013 11:04 AM

          yeah no doubt. i watched that and there was a lot of skill it just didn't seem like smash bros to me.

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          July 15, 2013 11:06 AM

          There was one part during I think the finals with Ice Climbers vs. Fox and they were literally just fighting in mid-air over the pit. That was a thing.

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            July 15, 2013 11:14 AM

            I know they lost, but the Ice Climber play was amazing. I never realized how dominant they could be if you play them right.

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          July 15, 2013 12:32 PM

          I maintain that Melee is the most technical fighter of all time.

          Start learning to wavedash today and let me know in six months when you're still utterly incapable of pulling them off in a live match with any regularity.

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          July 15, 2013 1:08 PM

          they used to play SSBM pretty hardcore at EA, and yeah - there's two (or maybe three) very distinct levels of play in that game. and if you're in one of them, you just can't touch somebody who knows wtf in the next level up :(

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        July 15, 2013 11:04 AM

        Appears to be. I suspect that 1v1 no items and some rules regarding stages makes the game more about skill than just randomness/luck. Almost any pro game puts limits on the game play, particularly if they were not designed from the ground up to be exclusive to a pro crowd. IE: if game balance from a high-level pro crowd and what they're capable of vs your typical random group of players. Generally randoms (me included) even if we know that X is exploitable either don't have the skill required or can't actually complete them in competitive play. FWIW I'm not a huge fan of SBM but it was interesting watching particularly with good commentating to help understand the mechanics and high-level strats.

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        July 15, 2013 11:04 AM

        In pro play, you want to minimize the amount of randomness. One reason why Melee is chosen over Brawl is that you don't have to worry about characters randomly TRIPPING for no reason.

        Perhaps the interesting thing about Smash is that high-level play is very different from casual game. I think it's great that Melee is able to appeal to both hardcore and casual players.

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          July 15, 2013 11:16 AM

          Quick question since I couldn't tell - were they allowed to pick their stages? I liked how Injustice seemed to be set up - the loser of a match was allowed to either pick a new character or pick a new stage. Since Injustice levels have so many interactables, it did matter quite a bit. I would think Smash would have certain stages that favored certain types of play, but I only saw two different stages being used most of the time.

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            July 15, 2013 11:33 AM

            They had it set to Random, but only a select number of stages were enabled. I think the ones they could pick were Final Destination, Battlefield, Green Greens, Fountain of Dreams, and Yoshi's Story.

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              July 15, 2013 11:44 AM

              Pokemon Stadium was picked at least once.

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              July 15, 2013 11:55 AM

              yeah the stages that were shown in the video posted with the story all seemed like they picked the extremely basic ones.

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                July 15, 2013 12:16 PM

                They're the most balanced in terms of symmetry so they're good for equalizing the difference between characters to leave it purely to the skill + character design instead of lopsided levels.

                Though Pokemon stadium bucks that trend slightly.

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        July 15, 2013 11:26 AM

        Most competitive games keep randomness to a minimum.

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          July 15, 2013 11:54 AM

          yeah i figure that's why they do it, to make things even but the random shit was the entire charm of that game. they boiled the whole thing down to its bare bones for competitive play which imo is a bit disappointing but i totally understand why they did it.

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            July 15, 2013 12:33 PM

            Once you play at a really high level you realize how terrible the random elements of Smash are. Great for a drunken party, but if you're actually trying to have a contest of skill (of which 1v1 Melee is just about the ultimate) a random Bob-omb is going to send a controller through a window.

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        July 15, 2013 12:35 PM

        Back when I was more into Melee, 2 v 2 was way more popular than 1 v 1.

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        July 15, 2013 1:02 PM

        Personally, I'm much more interested in watching a 'vanilla' game of 1v1v1v1 played at a high level than I am 'no items final destination'.

        Then again, I think watching TF2 played at less than 12v12 is hopelessly boring too. The chaos of multiplayer shouldn't be stripped away.

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      July 15, 2013 10:57 AM

      Smash Bros was fine, but man, DAT MARVEL.

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        July 15, 2013 11:07 AM

        Marvel and SSFIV were both fricken -crazy- this year seriously. JWong's play was scary, man possessed or something. and Xian's Gen is always fun to watch, particularly when he's beating up on Akuma

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          July 15, 2013 11:11 AM

          I only saw the first few matches of SSF4 because I am a babby that needed sleep, but yeah, that Gen was something I hadn't seen before.

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            July 15, 2013 11:16 AM

            I'm not regretting how I'm feeling today, well not too much at least considering ;-) (East Coast makes watching EVO Painful) but I could have used a bit more sleep. tho I mostly sit on my ass @ work so it's normally live-able not like when I was younger and actually have to move around and shite for a living

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        July 15, 2013 11:20 AM

        yeah Justin... Wow so hype. What was crazy is that despite all the marvel hype Smash still had the most concurrent views. Their crowd is a lot bigger than a lot of people, including me, expected.

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          July 15, 2013 11:32 AM

          It's amazing particularly when you consider how old the game is, I expected fairly big numbers even if just initially due to the media coverage but was nice to see the numbers stay up there all the way through. I'll probably have to go back and watch some vids I didn't give it was much time as I did AE,Marvel and KOF

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      July 15, 2013 11:07 AM

      Definitely awesome seeing Melee in Evo. So many good matches!

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      July 15, 2013 11:09 AM

      Evo in general was fun to watch - I haven't really seen one before, but my son and I both got really into watching Smash, Injustice, and MvC. Having the crowd there adds so much more to it. I found that games like Smash/Injustice were easier to follow and a little more interesting than the others since you didn't have as many infinite combos/1 hit and the match is over type of situations.

      It also made me realize how little I know about fighting games...

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        July 15, 2013 11:23 AM

        That's one of the nice things about fighting games, as long as you're not playing online or whatever against someone with a lot more skill/practice you can kind of just play/mash and have a good time. But if you want to go really deep you can do that as well. I don't have any particular association with ultrachen but if you want to get into fighting games their first attack vids are probably worth a look

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      July 15, 2013 11:24 AM

      More of you guys should have come hung out in the steam shack fighters chat for evo. Good times were had by all.

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        July 15, 2013 11:27 AM

        next year. it's less full of erm.. typical twitch steam idiocy I'm guessing? I frequently (read almost always) turn off chat the second I start watching a stream.

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      July 15, 2013 12:29 PM

      Could an experienced Smash Brother-er explain why EVO focused on Melee over Brawl? I'd think most players would prefer Brawl since it's the new game. Is Melee considered more balanced or deeper?

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        July 15, 2013 12:35 PM

        Melee has some broken mechanics that can be skillfully exploited. Wave running/dashing is basically like strafe jumping: by jumping and immediately canceling the jump, you can slide across the ground quickly. Done repeatedly, you can move around incredibly fast. Melee also doesn't have the dumb tripping mechanic that Brawl added.

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          July 15, 2013 12:36 PM

          Not just fast, but lagless-ly fast. Wavedashing allows you to string together combos that you have no business connecting with.

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        July 15, 2013 12:35 PM

        Melee is absolutely the best Smash game.

        Brawl is amazing for the casual scene - tons of characters, better graphics, lots of music/extra crap, etc.

        Everything else about Brawl is terrible for tournament style play. All the characters are way more floaty, can recover 100x easier, and let's not forget the tripping.

        Honestly the floatiness is probably reason #1. Brawl just plays so completely different from Melee. Most of the hyper-fast flashiness is all but gone from Brawl.

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        July 15, 2013 12:38 PM

        Brawl introduced a lot of stupid shit.

        Case closed.

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        July 15, 2013 10:05 PM

        Brawl is far far far more shallow than mele. You can't even combo properly in brawl, nevermind the more advanced techs in melee like wavedashing. The creator has said as much himself.

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        July 15, 2013 11:10 PM

        Melee is far more complex, faster paced, and overall just way better for competitive play. Brawl is slow and clunky with a lot to be desired, it was more of a family fun game than a competitive fighting game. This combo vid shows perfectly what I am talking about, wave dashing to the max.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44CRrJVhUIo

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      July 15, 2013 12:40 PM

      [deleted]

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      July 15, 2013 1:22 PM

      They don't do any Virtua Fighter at Evo, right? Man I'd love to watch some top class streams of that, still my favourite 3D fighter.

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        July 15, 2013 8:18 PM

        Sega actually hosted a VF5 side tournament at last year's EVO. The top 4 was played on the main stage on finals day. Was pretty damn fun to watch.

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          July 16, 2013 2:26 AM

          It's a sincerely great fighter that I wish got more love. It's not flashy, it's about timing and flow and counters and god I love it, wish I had time to be better at it. I'll have to check out any vids from that last year, thanks for the heads up!

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      July 15, 2013 8:39 PM

      Forget these new games, bring back Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting.

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        July 15, 2013 10:02 PM

        I keep saying the words Samurai, Shodown, and Two, but nothings happening.

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