Event
This is my writeup for Supernova 2025. This is going to be shorter than most of my major writeups (although longer than most other peoples’), because I was only there for one day. I had such an extremely bad time, performed less than ideally, and had so many external stressors going into the event that when I found out I could move my flight for less than 15 dollars, I didn’t hesitate.
Firstly, a small bit of background on me and the series itself. I attended Smashcon 2019 as my first out of region major as a “good” player. I got 33rd, beating someone who would be top 100 that year, and many people considered it my first “breakout” type performance, even though I think I only actually made one upset. Despite this, I considered it a very weak tournament. Getting friendlies setups was very challenging during Friday and most of Saturday, and they took away all the setups before Sunday morning to force everyone to watch top 8. I understand the demographic for Supernova is much more casual than some Melee-focused majors, but for me, it was one of the worst major experiences I’d ever had, and I said that I wouldn’t go back. However, I figured that, after 6 years and a global pandemic, maybe things had gotten better. And after all, it was going to be the biggest bracket ever. Didn’t I want to be a part of that? And so I went.
I was a fool. I will not go back, and this is the first tournament writeup I’ve done where my primary message to readers is to please prioritize other events over Supernova in the future. While the issues are fixable, at some point it becomes a matter of “fool me once, shame on you”, but fool me twice…
Firstly, the scheduling. The scheduling for Supernova was unacceptable, bordering on unforgivable. Much ado has been made about the way doubles was handled, and rightly so. If you’ve been living under a rock, know that Supernova held doubles on THURSDAY, something completely unprecedented for a Melee major. While this I think was generally a bad thing, it would have been understandable had Supernova released schedules before MONDAY the week of the event. I don’t think I need to elaborate on why this is awful, and in place of doing so I encourage any readers to look at the number of DQs and level 9 CPUs there were in the doubles bracket. It goes deeper, however; there was a wave of pools on Friday that began at 7pm and then had their wave 2 at 9pm. I finished my wave two pool at almost exactly 11pm, something that should never be the case in a tournament schedule, and I was hardly the only one sore about it. Maybe I’m spoiled, but I think we can do better than playing r2 pools matches at nearly midnight.
Secondly, the actual running of the event left much to be desired. There were inadequate volunteers, and so many of the pool captains were either very new or incompetent, and either way undersupervised. My good friend 12YOWeaboo (yes, that’s his real tag) had an unbelievable incident with his pool that culminated in the most egregious, pointless, and unfair DQ I have ever seen. I arrived with him at his pool 10 minutes early, and we both stood close enough to physically touch the table on which the pool was being run. As matches were being called, we noticed that he had not been called yet, but this hardly seemed out of the ordinary; he was a 2 seed in the pool, and so had a bye round one. Eventually, the match that he played the winner of was called, and he told the pool captain “Hey I’m 12YOWeaboo and I play the winner of that match” only to be told “hey no you don’t you’re actually DQ’d.” We were both gobsmacked. Not only was he where he was supposed to be better than on time, his name was never called, and then they single DQ’d him from bracket, a misstep in and of itself. Even more, the match he was waiting on HADN’T EVEN STARTED YET, so there was no actual reason to DQ him. It turned out that the pool captain had written something else on the pool sheet that was not his tag, but in truth it barely mattered; the pool captain was so quiet that even if he had been shouting the right name, we never would have heard him. Regardless, my friend was then railroaded into playing his loser’s round one match, after which it was too late to fix anything. He took time off work, paid for a hotel, and drove over 7 hours alone only to be the victim of the worst officiating I have ever seen. Not only this, but I heard at least one similar story on the Melee side. One instance of this would have been more than enough on its own to lambaste the event, but knowing that there were multiple, it becomes simply awful.
Lastly, I want to include a bit of preempting any excuse-making for Supernova in this. I have heard many people use the argument “But it was the biggest tournament ever! There are bound to be some issues”. To which I say: I. Don’t. Care. If Supernova wants to be the World Cup, the Superbowl, whatever, it should be held to the highest standards possible. If Melee brackets can’t have good organizing when they’re artificially inflated in size to break records, then we should be content with ~1500ish being the biggest they get these days. It is absolutely unacceptable to me (and should be to you) that the experience be soured for the diehard faithful for the sake of arbitrary number chasing.
Personal Section
I was incredibly stressed and upset going into Supernova, coming off an illness and wondering until the Tuesday before the event if I’d even be well enough to attend. I have begun wearing a fitness tracking device in the last handful of months, and it reported that I had more severe stress than any other time since I started wearing it for several days in a row. Even still, I swept my r1 pool as basically every strong player did, and going into round 2 I felt okay. I warmed up with Cliche to play a Falco gauntlet and even remarked to him that although I wasn’t playing great, I felt optimistic.
My first set in R2 was against SadSack, a TX Falco player. I played very well in terms of punish game this set, and while my movement left some to be desired, I ultimately left feeling very positive about the rest of my run. It was a very dominant 3-0 in which I felt that I outplayed my opponent, had a bit of a skill gap, and most of the coin flips went my way.
My next set was against JohnLawless, who was in this position partially as a result of Snap DQing. Truthfully, that didn’t really matter to me, as I felt good about playing against either Snap or John, but knew him to be a strong player regardless. Unfortunately, I began having an issue with my headphone setup before this set, and eventually ended up not being able to use it for the rest of the event. For anyone that knows me, you know that is a HUGE deal for me. My audio setup is essential to getting into what people jokingly call a “mind palace”, and I feel raw and exposed without it. This was even more frustrating because it was the third time in as many years that this has happened to me at a major, and I have now resolved to bring 2 setups in the future. Regardless, while I certainly played quite a bit worse in this set than the previous one, I was able to stay locked in enough to take it 3-0. This was also helped by the fact that this set didn’t have much of an audience and I didn’t have to deal with a lot of external noise. In terms of gameplay, I won the first game very comfortably, but games two and three were fairly close, with John using the expanded space of Dreamland to curtail my punishes very well. Had I been playing as well as I had the previous set, I think this would have been less meaningful as I could have adapted by going for more techchases (and hitting them), but I got it done regardless.
Next, I played Ginger, who would over the next two days come to be known as the man of the weekend. This set ended up as a nailbiter game 5 last stock with Ginger at 200 and me at 150, and ultimately he came out the victor. My key takeaway from this set was that Ginger’s general gameplans are so rock solid that it allows him to almost simulate playing well even when he isn’t. I don’t think either of us played particularly well or poorly in this set (until the end), but the way he had a rehearsed, quality answer to seemingly every situation was fantastic. He wasn’t perfect; he had pretty noticeable patterns vs my invincibility, and was not very clean off the ledge. However, I failed to punish these things, so I cannot with any real confidence or authority call them “mistakes”. He also struck to FD which was…weird. I think this may have been a player to player read on me being too nervous in tournament to hit the chaingrab, and he was right, but ultimately I think the stage still offers so much for Marth that it isn’t a great strike. I lost game one and then went back and won game two, and had I not been too nervous to punish well I think I would have won both very comfortably. I then got off to a big lead on the back of a couple of reads game three on DL, and managed to hang onto it long enough to take that game as well. Ginger did similar on YS game four, although with a significantly wider margin of victory than I managed. Game five started out very well for me, but then Ginger took control until it was two stocks to one, near 0 damage each. I hit a huge powershield laser->tipper fsmash to kill him near 0, evening the game…and then completely fell apart. I won’t pretend like he played super clean in the last stock game five situation either, but the number of times I had an opportunity to close and choked or dropped my punish was unforgivable. I watched him shorten to ledge probably five times that stock, and never once challenged in a meaningful way. I ended up whiffing a big move and getting down tilted, and that was the set. There was certainly more to take from the set; I got down smash edgeguarded probably a dozen times without a single good tech, for instance. However, at the end of the day, when it mattered, he was the better man. I do think I could have played cleaner had my audio equipment not gone kaput, but it is ultimately on me to show up with working hardware. It also mattered less here than it might have, because the onlookers were very respectful, which I greatly appreciate.
After that Ginger set, I was about as sad as I’ve ever been following a loss. I don’t know if it was just how close the set was, the amount of stress I had going into the event, angst about my audio equipment, or what, but I haven’t been that dejected over Melee in a solid three years. I was so crestfallen that when I sat down to play Daniel, I began warming up on the wrong setup for a solid minute without even realizing what I was doing, until Daniel had to ask me and put me on the right one. In short, I’m absolutely making excuses for my performance in this set, but gun to my head I’d say I lost to Daniel before the first game even began. Add in the general annoyance factor of box Yoshi, and his friends shouting “YUMMY!” every time he did neutral B, and I was far too tilted to function. I honestly do not remember much about the set itself. I wasn’t “there” so to speak, and I hate saying that because there’s no way to do so without taking away from Daniel. He had a great run and I wish him only the best. Ultimately, I am ashamed of this. Someone who mentally quits is not the kind of person that I want to be, but it was the kind of person I was Friday, and I have to live with that.