Month: September 2016

This one is bound to be controversial. In his series which attempts to balance the entire cast of Super Smash. Bros Melee to the same level of viability as Captain Falcon, MagicScrumpy has taken the nerf bat to the bringer of 20XX, Fox McCloud. The video outlines how in his current state in Melee, Fox has so many powerful tools which make him far and away the best character. He has the best move in the game with Shine, one of the best recoveries, moves like up air and up smash that kill super early, incredibly mobility and a projectile which allows him to reset his list of stale moves – to name but a few of his strengths.

Fox can do what he wants, when he wants and for Scrumpy who wishes to radically balance the game so that every character is roughly at the same level, Fox cannot stay as he is. Some of the major changes made by Scrumpy are that Fox can only short hop single laser, up air is now a combo move instead of a kill move and Shine is no longer invincible and it comes out on frame 3, rather than frame 1. The resulting character is one radically different from standard Melee Fox and one which requires a fair amount of relearning in order to be used effectively.

Source: MagicScrumpy

In a scene familiar to anyone who watches European Smash 4, Mr. R has claimed yet another victory on the continent at Syndicate 2016. The Dutch Sheik main saw off competition from France, the US, Germany and from his homeland of the Netherlands to gain first place, finally taking the whole tournament with a convincing 3-0 win over SoCal’s Rich Brown. Rich Brown had quite the Losers’ run after being put into the lower bracket by the Netherlands’ top Greninja iStudying, fighting through US ex-pat Jbandrew in a super tense 3-2 set, the UK’s IxisNaugus with a 3-1 win before finally triumphing in the runback versus iStudying with a 3-0 victory.

The entire top 8 was a mass of momentum shifts and knife-edge final stocks, with players coming back from the brink of defeat many times over. Ixis’ incredible final stock versus Purple~H at the very start of top 8 set the tone, with several matches causing clips to rebound Twitter over the course of the final bracket. iStudying was the king of the clutch play as usual, riding on the momentum of the crowd to often times come back and win a match. Unfortunately, he was unable to beat his demon Mr. R and Rich Brown’s Mewtwo had got the download by the time they rematched in Losers’ Finals, sending iStudying out at third place.

The speed of some matches continued to make the case for three stock to become the standard Smash 4 format, as that extra stock gives players that drive to play aggressively. There were no painfully long matches like at BEAST 6 earlier in the year; quick, ferocious play was king during the Syndicate top 8. Diversity is thriving in Europe, with every top 8 player using a unique character, comprised of familiar faces like Sheik and Sonic, as well as some rarely seen picks like Wario. While the rest of Europe is starting to catch up to him, Mr. R is still the king of European Smash 4. He did not lose a single game over the course of the whole tournament, so major work needs to be done if Europe hopes to fell his fearsome Sheik.

RESULTS:

1. Mr. R (Sheik)
2. Rich Brown (Mewtwo)
3. iStudying (Greninja)
4. IxisNaugus (Sonic)
5. Mutiny|Jbandrew (Meta Knight)
5. Glutonny (Wario, Captain Falcon)
7. unK|Griffith (Bayonetta, Lucario, Mario, Zero Suit Samus)
7. SFTO|Purple~H (Cloud Lucina)

VODs are now available over on the Geeky Goon Squad YouTube channel and you can find links to Winners’, Losers’ and Grand Finals below.

Sources: Geeky Goon Squad; smash.gg; Twitch Clips