I remember I saw a dumb tweet when Smash 4 came out. In a video, a guy was holding the new game in his hand, talking about his excitement to get back into the series. But it's a ruse. He suddenly throws his copy of the game in the trash. All that's visible now is what he was holding under it: a copy of Melee. He says "Ten more years", and that's it. It was a joke, funny because of how obnoxious you'd have to be to believe it, but now it's inevitable.

I was finally able to fall down the Melee hole thanks to Slippi. I have some understanding of the competitive scene, but I'm finally getting my hands dirty. It's the only Smash game that I've never really played. I've loved every one of them so far. I found out, much to my disgust, that the purists and evangelists and snobs were right. This is the good one.

Obviously, I'm playing this online with people that may have actual decades of experience with it. I am getting obliterated out there. Maybe not every single moment is fun, but I don't care. This rules.

The depth is so apparent, even from my perspective. From what I can tell, the best character in most Smash games is apparent in a few months. This game is, what? 20 years old, and the metagame at the highest levels is still very alive. There's apparently still some light debate over the best character. One tutorial and you ask yourself "Wait, they're doing HOW many inputs, just to jump?" and you can see just how much they had to patch over in sequels to keep it Nintendo-friendly. And the debate over how much of this depth was even intended will always be fascinating to me.

A lot of that doesn't concern me, obviously, but even at my level you can still get these little mini-moments of competence that make you feel like a fighting game genius. The first time that I: 1) Did the inputs for a wavedash, 2) correctly, 3) in a game against a human, 4) at a time that made sense, all to 5) transition it into something that gave me an advantage. The first time I comboed a throw into rest (I know, I'm sorry). Presumably, I did an L-cancel correctly once. Who can say for sure though. I mostly just drone on here about RPGs, but no RPG can give you a feeling like that. I know it's a cliche to say, but it's not just numbers getting bigger on a screen (as much as I love seeing numbers get bigger). You, the human, are progressing, not a character, and I'm not sure any other game has made me feel that quite like this one.

Whether I slide into the skid and sign up for some beginner netplay tournaments, or I bounce off of all this in a few weeks or months, I've certainly gotten my zero dollars' worth. I don't think there's ever going to be a game like this ever again. A cute mascot game with 20+ years of gameplay depth hiding in there, resented by its creator, kept alive by a community, even after three attempted replacements by that developer. This might be my favorite fighting game of all time.