Smashboards (originally known as Smash World Forums) is an online forum centered on games from the Super Smash Bros. series, founded in 2002. The community hosts discussions of techniques, news, and professional competition of the Super Smash Bros. games and is used to announce Smash tournaments. Users on the website also discuss tournament rules and create tier lists that rank playable characters in all five games of the Super Smash Bros. series.
Smashboards was founded in 2002 as Smash World by Ricky "Gideon" Tilton. [1] It went on to become one of the largest independent competitive gaming communities in the world. [2]
In September 2008, Major League Gaming acquired Smashboards.com, [3] and in November 2012, Chris "AlphaZealot" Brown, one of the site's moderators, purchased the site from Major League Gaming. [4]
In 2011, the site's forums were used to collaborate on a user-made PC version of Super Smash Bros. (1999), titled Super Smash Land . [5] Additionally, players frequently discuss the rankings for playable characters and the administrators release forum posts of official tier lists. These lists are generally accepted among community members. [6]
Luigi is a fictional character featured in video games and related media released by Nintendo. Created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Luigi is portrayed as the younger fraternal twin brother and sidekick of Mario. Defined by his kind-hearted, yet cowardly demeanor, Luigi appears in many games throughout the Mario franchise, oftentimes accompanying his brother.
Super Smash Bros. is a crossover platform fighting game series published by Nintendo. The series was created by Masahiro Sakurai, who has directed every game in the series. The series is known for its unique gameplay objective which differs from that of traditional fighters, in that the aim is to increase damage counters and knock opponents off the stage instead of depleting life bars.
Meta Knight is a fictional character and antihero in Nintendo's Kirby video game series created by Masahiro Sakurai and developed by HAL Laboratory. He first appeared in the 1993 video game Kirby's Adventure as a nameless character, remaining unnamed until the game Kirby's Avalanche. The character also appears in several Kirby comic books, in the 2001 anime series, and as a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series.
Major League Gaming Corp. (MLG) is a professional esports organization. MLG is headquartered in New York City, New York and was founded in 2002 by Sundance DiGiovanni and Mike Sepso. MLG has held official video game tournaments throughout the United States and Canada. The Boost Mobile MLG Pro Circuit was a television broadcast of Halo 2 MLG tournaments in 2006 and 2007, ESPN.com, and other broadband sites. The company has also been involved in television production, and game development. MLG's aim is to elevate computer and console game tournaments to viable competitive and spectator events.
Ken Hoang, also known as Kenny, SephirothKen, or Liquid`Ken, is an American professional Super Smash Bros. Melee player and television personality. Hoang was widely considered the most dominant Melee player in the world during the early years of the game's competitive scene in the early to mid-2000s. Hoang primarily plays Marth in Melee and is credited for pioneering several gameplay techniques integral to the game's competitive play, including the "dash dancing" movement technique and the "Ken Combo", an effective Marth combo for which he is the namesake. Hoang's dominance in the game earned him the nickname "The King of Smash".
Super Smash Bros. Melee is a 2001 crossover fighting video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. It is the second installment in the Super Smash Bros. series. It features characters from Nintendo video game franchises such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Pokémon, and Donkey Kong among others. The stages and gameplay modes reference or take designs from these franchises as well.
Toad, known in Japan as Kinopio, is a fictional character who primarily appears in Nintendo's Mario franchise. A humanoid with a mushroom-like head, Toad was created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and is portrayed as a citizen of the Mushroom Kingdom and is one of Princess Peach's most loyal attendants, constantly working on her behalf. Toad is usually seen as a non-player character who provides assistance to Mario and his friends in most games, but there are times when Toad takes center stage and appears as a protagonist, as seen in Super Mario Bros. 2, Wario's Woods and Super Mario 3D World.
The fighting game community, often abbreviated to FGC, is a collective of video gamers who play fighting games such as Marvel vs. Capcom, Mortal Kombat, Soulcalibur, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, The King of Fighters, Blazblue, Super Smash Bros., Tekken, Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs., Dead or Alive, Samurai Shodown, Shadow Fight 2 and many others. The fighting game community started out small in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s referred to as the grassroots era, but it has grown to a larger scale in the 2010s, with many tournaments being held around the world. This is predominantly due to the rise of esports, online gaming, and digitized viewing habits on live streaming sites such as Twitch.
Joel Isai Alvarado, professionally known as Isai, is an American Super Smash Bros. 64 player widely regarded as the game's greatest player of all time. He is credited with developing the modern Smash 64 metagame and is renowned for his ability to play the game's entire character roster at a top professional level. His major tournament victories include Apex 2014 and Super Smash Con 2023.
Professional Super Smash Bros. competition involves professional gamers competing in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games published by Nintendo. Organized tournament competition began in 2002 with Super Smash Bros. Melee, released for the GameCube in 2001; however, in the series' native Japan, there have been tournaments as early as 1999 with the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64. Later tournaments have featured the other games in the series, with the two largest and most popular Smash Bros. scenes revolving around Melee and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch. Smaller scenes exist for the original game and Project M, a popular fan modification of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii, and to a lesser extent, Brawl itself. Major Smash Bros. tournaments include the GENESIS, Evolution Championship Series (EVO), Super Smash Con and The Big House annual series. Major League Gaming (MLG) has also previously included Smash Bros. games in its Pro Circuit.
Nairoby Quezada, better known as Nairo, is an American streamer and retired professional Super Smash Bros. competitive player. He is widely considered one of the best players in the history of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. After starting his career on Brawl in 2011, he quickly established himself as one of the best players in the United States, and became regarded as one of the best Brawl players in the world the following year; he would remain seen as a top Brawl player for the rest of his career, and would achieve similar success on Wii U and Ultimate following their respective releases.
Community Effort Orlando is an annual fighting game event held in Daytona Beach, Florida. Prior to 2018, CEO was held in Orlando, Florida. Introduced in 2010 and organized by Alex Jebailey, the event is known for its strong ties to the fighting game community. Fighting game players compete in a wrestling ring during the event's tournaments, and CEO has been a mainstay of the Capcom Pro Tour since its establishment in 2014. An annual side-event titled CEOtaku was initiated in 2015.
A tier list is a concept originating in video game culture where playable characters or other in-game elements are subjectively ranked by their respective viability as part of a list. Characters listed high on a tier list of a specific game are considered to be powerful characters compared to lower-scoring characters, and are therefore more likely to be used in high-level competitive settings like tournaments.
William Belaïd, commonly known as Glutonny, is a French professional Super Smash Bros. player. He is the highest ranked Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player from Europe. In Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, he was ranked the 70th best player in the world of all time. In Ultimate, he was ranked 14th and 8th best in the world for the first and second halves of 2019, respectively. In April 2022 he won Pound 2022, becoming the first European player to win a major Ultimate tournament outside Europe.
Steve is a player character from the 2011 sandbox video game Minecraft. Created by Swedish video game developer Markus "Notch" Persson and introduced in the 2009 Java-based version, Steve is one of nine default player character skins available for players of contemporary versions of Minecraft. Steve lacks an official backstory as he is intended to be a customizable player avatar as opposed to being a predefined character. His feminine counterpart, Alex, was introduced in August 2014 for Java PC versions of Minecraft, with the other seven debuting in the Java edition of the game in October 2022. Depending on the version of Minecraft, players have a choice of defaulting to either Steve or any other variant skins when creating a new account. However, the skin is easy to change from the game itself or website.
MultiVersus is an upcoming free-to-play crossover fighting game developed by Player First Games and published by Warner Bros. Games for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The game features characters from Warner Bros. Entertainment franchises.