Event
Genesis is a series that needs no introduction, being traditionally Melee’s largest tournament of the year, and now, with the fall of The Big House, our one true all-but-guaranteed super major. I do not want to spend a great deal of time eulogizing a series that is still around, but I do want to begin by taking a moment to highlight that this year’s Genesis X2 was substantially smaller than Genesis X. There are a number of likely culprit’s for this: Valentine’s day weekend, Ultimate entrant numbers/general enthusiasm being down, no recent big happenings in the scene to galvanize us etc., but the fact remains that huge events like this generally do not project shedding almost a third of their attendees year to year, and typically will not make money with such numbers. While I was highly critical of Big House 11, the loss of such a historic and significant series is a blow that can be scarcely overstated. Much has been (fairly) said about the scene’s resilience and DPOTG’s explosion into a super major to fill the void for the end of year supermajor, but losing big events is always painful. There is an entire population of Norcal Melee players that more or less only go to Genesis. Try going to Genesis yourself and you’ll hear about them. What many outside the MW do not realize, however, is that in turn there were a significant number of players that essentially only went to Big House. When pillars of the scene fall, they may not bring down the sky, but they always bring down some of us. I am not privy in any way to Genesis’s financial situation, and do not want to sound in any way doomer or alarmist; I do not believe that Melee is in any danger of going anywhere. However, to lose an event of the caliber of Genesis would be a massive setback to our community, and I urge anyone who reads this who has never come out for Genesis to attend next year. They deserve and need our support, possibly now more than ever.
In terms of how the event was run, Genesis X2 was my third Genesis, and it was easily the best I have attended. I personally disliked that some pools were scheduled so late (I find 7:30pm round one pools conceptually questionable), but ultimately that is a small complaint and possibly even a question of personal taste. As such, I’m not sure it is fair to fault the event on it, especially considering that they still ran without a hitch. On everything else, it was, in a word, stellar. Genesis pools/bracket have never been run poorly while I was there, but in previous iterations, there has always been at least one major out of bracket factor that soured the event for attendees. Previously, inability to attend Sunday top 8 without waiting in line for hours, hostile security, comical line lengths for entry to the venue, and no setups on Sunday morning all negatively impacted the experience. This year, nothing radical changed, Genesis staff just eliminated essentially every issue. Venue top 8 seating was doubtlessly “helped” by relatively weak attendance, but other than that I have very little to say and give a tip of my metaphorical hat to those running the event. They doubtlessly both noticed issues on their own and listened to feedback, and subsequently put in the work to ensure the best possible experience for everyone. I saw tweets about “cursed Genesis” because of the number of dropouts due to flight issues etc., but make no mistake: Everything that Genesis could control they did with aplomb, and Genesis X2 was the best supermajor level event I have ever attended (despite the dumb name).
Another thing I want to address briefly was the usage of 1:5 hour pools instead of the usual 2 hours. This was touted as a major breakthrough by organizers and was received with glowing praise by the senior volunteers I spoke with. For my own part, and for the part of essentially all the competitors I talked to about it, we did not care at all. In truth, I think this is a funny example of the occasional disconnect between what organizers and attendees each desire, but in this case it was harmless. If it helps events, by all means run 1.5 hour pools, but I would never make it a selling point for players; I just don’t think we care.
As for San Jose/the area, I have to confess that I am less in love with it than a lot of people. The venue is a very generic convention center, and while the weather is nice, the food that I hear everyone raving about I find good but not great, and since it is California everything is quite expensive. Still, it could be a lot worse: Everything is very walkable, and the presence of the partnered bar/venue Guildhouse remains a consistent bright spot on the Genesis experience. I have talked about San Jose in previous write ups and nothing has really changed in regards to that in the last couple of years, and so I keep this brief in the interest of not repeating myself too much.
As for the bracket itself…where do I even begin? Zain didn’t come! I know he wanted to and don’t fault him at all, but it felt exceedingly weird to have the biggest event of the year without the #1 player. Zain is someone I have an enormous degree of faith in, so I don’t think this indicates anything negative for his coming year, but it does feel weird that our kickoff to the year, and likely our biggest tournament of the year, will now have the shadow of “mickey mouse” cast over it. As for things that happened once the bracket went underway, Aura popped off so hard he became a full time Melee player, beating Cody Schwab and nearly defeating Wizzrobe. Trif finally ascended to the place Europe has been telling us he could occupy since 2019. Jmook underperformed, which means we are now owed a crazy Jmook dub somewhere down the line. Salt had a phenomenal run to 5th place, beating Axe x2, Joshman, myself, Maher, and nearly beating the eventual winner in Hungrybox. Krudo lost in r1 pools to a 14 year old box ICs (no part of that description is a joke) before going on an absolute rampage to his seeded 13th place. Hbox won his first major in 3 years, and his first major of this caliber in almost five. So many notable placings and upsets occurred in pools or shortly after that I could dedicate an entire piece to it. For any casual readers (does anyone not tapped in ever read one of these?), let me give you an idea of just how crazy brackets at something like Genesis are in 2025: All time great players like Ka-Master get 95th and nobody bats an eye. I didn’t even hear about that until reviewing pools in preparation to write this. Genesis is just that stacked and Melee is just that tough in the modern day.
Personal experience
For my part, I had a decent Genesis, and I was pleased to see the fruits of my labor finally start to pay dividends in a few long standing trouble spots in my gameplay. Namely, I finally started to get a handle on dealing with my opponents’ respawn invincibility, and became less exploitable off the side platform. I also had a decent run, for once flying out to the west coast without being upset in bracket, and even scoring a small upset of my own. I also felt like my bracket sets, as well as the games I played outside of bracket, were very informative for me, and I learned more about my strengths and weaknesses immersing myself in the game in San Jose than I generally do in months at home.
For my round one pools, my four seed (1 seeds play 4 seeds to make it out) did not end up making it to the pool, which means I had a comparatively easy time of it. I was very impressed with my round one, a newer Marth player with the tag LilyMaplePup. I do not want to oversell her as the next Zain or some kind of world beater, but for a major round 1 with barely over a year of playing, I was pretty floored at the skill level on display. “Everyone is so good now” is something that gets repeated a lot in our community, and I think there is an understandable tendency to ascribe that to Melee being a “legacy” game that everyone has been playing forever. However, there are many relatively new Slippi “kids” that are right there keeping up with the rest of us. My other two opponents were a Falcon called Pikazoo (Pikachu jumpscare in pools as a Marth) and a Sheik called Cruncho. They were all fun to fight, but ultimately I swept all three sets very handily, as is frankly expected at this point.
My first set in round two pools, and my only set on the main stream, was vs Rocky. This was a set I was a little nervous going into as I didn’t really know what to expect. Rocky is a name that evokes terror in doubles, but I didn’t know how in practice he would be for singles or really much at all about his playstyle. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I ever really learned much about his playstyle, nor him about mine, because we both played terribly. Unforced errors were what decided this set, and I was able to convert harder off his unforced errors than he was off of mine (Marth), and so I was able to take the set 3-0. This is one set I will not be watching back, despite considering it a good win. I just genuinely think that very little Melee of value happened here other than one good edgeguard I hit in game one, and I advise anyone looking to learn about either Rocky or myself to look elsewhere.
My next set was against Salt, which I lost, but I think was played immensely better. It was a 3-1 in Salt’s favor, and while I think a lot of readers may look at this set on paper and think it was hopeless for me from the beginning, that was not at all the case, and there were a handful of pivotal moments that decided the set that I think I can learn from and come back stronger. Namely, in game one there was a sequence when I was teching on the right and then left platform and then back several times in a punish sequence from Salt. I lost my composure and began autopiloting both my DI and tech pattern, and Salt was able to convert what should have been a 30-40% punish into an entire stock. In the second game, which I also lost, I SD’d twice. There really isn’t much to say about that other than that winning against someone of Salt’s caliber is incredibly difficult in that circumstance, and while I am upset about it, those things do happen on occasion. I won game three by a wide margin, and then at the beginning of game 4 Salt 0 to deathed me off of round start in about 6 seconds. It was, in all honesty, probably the single best round start I’ve ever been on the receiving end of in Melee, and I felt thoroughly both out prepared and out played. The deficit that sequence put me in was just a little too much, and I lost the set in a close game four. That first stock opened my eyes to how negligent I’ve been about round start as a concept in Melee, and I’m now going to begin planning it out in various matchups. I have a few round start tricks vs Fox, but I’ve realized I’m basically spitballing in every other matchup. I need to put time into this, and I’m realizing even as I type this that Marth’s desire to get off the side plat ASAP in a lot of MUs means I’ll need to map out separate scenarios based on port for a lot of MUs (yuck). Still, despite the loss I’m glad to learn about the weakness in my DI from the first game and the hole in my broader gameplay in game four. I will also say that while game four was very winnable and probably even would have gone my way if she didn’t blow me up off the rip, she counterpicked Stadium first instead of Dreamland for whatever reason, and I don’t know that I could have beaten her on Dreamland. I think it’s a very strong counterpick, Salt is very good with space, and in all honesty I just don’t know that I’m good enough to beat her there. I think game two was, in an ideal reality, a do or die situation, and the SDs probably just sealed the set for me. I’ve put in serious work on getting better specifically vs Falcon on Dreamland, but I’m still not sure I have a consistent answer to a player of her caliber on that stage besides “get significantly better at the game”.
My next set was supposed to be vs the Marth Typhoon, but he was upset in pools by a Peach called Mustache Massacre and I ended up playing the Sheik Subtails for top 64 instead. I will not lie: I had absolutely no idea what to expect going into this set, and Subtails was not on my radar going into the bracket like Typhoon was. This set reminded me of my set with Holiday a couple of months ago in that I played a strong Sheik player and essentially won the set by winning game one so hard. I played fantastically most of game one, got both lucky bounces and big dividends from dipping into my bag of tricks, and finished with a confident three stock. The rest of the set was considerably sloppier on my part, but it didn’t really matter because I think at that point Subtails was either titled or gassed. He seemed very insistent on beginning almost all interactions with needles, usually from the side platform, and I was able to maneuver around them well enough to prevent big openings on my way to an uneventful 3-0, securing my first Genesis main bracket spot. I don’t know if I will play Subtails again to discover they are an absolute demon that I got a little lucky against, as I have learned from playing Holiday lately, but it wouldn’t shock me.
My first set in top 64 was vs Nanami, an absolutely terrifying multi-main opponent who was seeded to beat me. I don’t exaggerate when I say that Nanami has a legitimate case for most undersung top 100 player relative to her skill level, and so I was sweating this set pretty profusely. The set began with Marth vs Fox on battlefield, and I managed to open up with a big sequence at the start of game one to establish a lead, and was then able to ride that to a reasonable margin of victory, which would be the only game that didn’t play out ot be a nail biter. In game two, she counterpicked Fox on Yoshi’s Story, and I was struck by both how well she played the stage and how un-box her Fox is capable of being. Typically, I have slightly different stage opinions for box vs GCC Fox in this MU. Operatively in this case, YS is less of a problem vs box Fox since the typical box strengths (perfect easy execution dash dance, uncanny drift) are a little less relevant there and don’t exploit Fox’s strengths with verticality on that stage, and box Foxes almost always play to those natural controller-aided strengths. Nanami however surprised me by playing the stage quite well, and I ended up losing the game despite playing, in my opinion, reasonably well myself. This was perhaps the hardest my confidence was shaken all weekend. because there was nothing really obvious to point to for why I lost; I just got outplayed on a tough stage. The next two games were on final destination vs Jigglypuff, with me losing the first and winning the second. Unlike the Fox games in this set, I am pretty unhappy with both my mental game and my play vs Puff here. For the mental game, my intrusive thoughts were winning for a while, especially in game three. My internal monologue when I play in tournament is usually just the occasional note about an opponent habit or some positive self talk after a big moment good or bad, but I do get occasionally get an unwelcome internal voice worrying about how upset I’m going to be after I lose a set (even ones I eventually win), and I do my best to quell that. Not only did that voice start talking during the FD games, it also spiraled into a hateful internal monologue something along the lines of “Stupid fucking box Jigglypuff I hate puff I hate her I hate her I hate her”. Obviously, this is not conducive to optimal play, and I think it had an impact that came out in the form of elevated nerves and sloppy gameplay. Game four I was definitely tightening up near the end and got the job done, but there still left multiple things to be desired. My execution was never very tight, and in terms of decision making I did a very consistently poor job of getting off the ledge. I also found myself fishing for side b 1 into up tilt way too much. While side b up tilt did eventually secure me the final kill of game four, I was punished for it numerous times before then and should have mixed in side b 2 (my usual go to) or abandoned it much earlier. Game five was once again Fox vs Marth, this time on Dreamland. I must admit that I’m a little surprised she did not stick to Puff on Dreamland, but I do think Fox is actually her best character, so it was by no means a bad pick. I started off a little off balance from the radical pace shift of fighting a Fox vs a Puff, but I eventually managed to find my footing and take a very clutch final stock victory with a big combo into edgeguard sequence at the end. I was particularly proud of my final edgeguard, as even just 3-6 months ago I would have gone for a ledge drop back air that would have missed and potentially lost me the set. Instead, I properly recognized the angle she would take to avoid my bair, and held ledge into a getup attack to secure the game. I also think I must have been either so stressed it hurt my memory or “locked in” as the kids say, because truthfully I remember almost nothing about this game besides the beginning and end. Still, this is a win that I think will age very well, and so long as she continues to grind and travel Nanami is someone I think that will become a bigger and bigger name as time goes by. She is already among the very best of the “young netplay warrior” squad at majors (you know exactly what I mean if you go to enough tournaments) and also has one of the fastest improving trajectories among them.
My final set of the tournament was vs Panda, where I lost 3-0. I had a consistent issue with doing telegraphed high recoveries when I was scrambling/off my game, but other than that I am not going to lie and say I felt thoroughly outplayed in this set. Panda is an incredibly strong player who I could absolutely lose to while firing on all cylinders, but that is not the story of what happened here. The story of this set was a Marth screwing up so badly that he would get a grab on final destination and think “oh no” because he knows he will find a way to drop it and get reversaled. I do not know why I played so poorly in this set. Maybe I was gassed from my set with Nanami, but I didn’t feel tired, and I also didn’t play on tilt or get overly frustrated with any of the goings on. I can liken the experience to fighting someone in a dream, where a foe that should be at least fightable is instead invincible because the dreamer’s punches are somehow thrown as if they are underwater. Whatever the case, I don’t really know how to move forward from this set other than hoping I don’t play like this again, and trying to grind out my FD punish game until it’s undroppable even by my feeble dream warrior self. I’m not sure that that’s feasible given how many times I’ve seen Zain drop it, but what can I do other than my best?
And that’s Genesis in the books. I will continue to work on composing myself when choosing ledge options, thinking about round start more deeply, not always recovering high when under pressure, not brainlessly fishing for floaty killer, and just generally improving at the game. Genesis reaffirmed my love for the game once again, and I am eager to wash the taste of last year’s forced hiatus out of my mouth by attending all I can in 2025.