Super smashing community at University

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons

Giancarlo Navas // Contributing Writer

What started as two students playing a Nintendo Wii on a small CRT TV in the piano room soon became eight people crowded around the aforementioned setup asking, “Who has next?”

Students who just got out of their last class are gathering on Friday nights to play some pickup Super Smash Brothers.

There is a competitive gaming community at FIU that a lot of the student body might not know of. The party multiplayer fighting game series has a pro gaming community that is one of the biggest. It was featured at the Evolution fighting game championships, the Super Bowl of fighting video game tournaments, which had almost $30,000 available in prize money for Smash games and over 3,000 entrees.

FIU is home to some of the world’s best players, including multiple players in the top five in South Florida, a Smash hotbed. Rankings are based off of national and local tournament placings.

“I have made a lot of close friends playing Smash here,” said FIU student Jose Luis Rosario who is the number three ranked Super Smash Brothers: Project M player in South Florida.  “I learned competitive play here. I thought I was so good before, but after playing here I got so much better.”

Students flock to the piano room across from the bookstore in GC at all hours to hop on a set up and play friendlies or set up their own game console and monitor to play with their friends and often times, strangers.

“I met around four new people today,” said Daniel Monterrosa, a senior at FIU. “People are so receptive in our community, it’s great. People wanna learn and get better so we try to give them tips and teach them.”

What a lot of people might not understand is how complex Smash is. On the outside it is a silly party game with wacky items and stages, but when looked at more closely, it is one of the most complex fighting games ever made.

Smash DI, wave-dashing, ledge trumping, dash dancing, perfect pivots, L-canceling, crouch canceling, missile canceling, flame canceling and an assortment of other cancels might sound like a bunch of made up phrases, but they are all advanced techniques and strategies for Smash. The YouTube video the Evolution 2015 Super Smash Brothers: Melee grand final shows how advanced the game is.

“The game is all about baiting your opponent to do something so you can counter. But you always have to keep in mind that your opponent is thinking the same. It’s a game of cat and mouse and it’s all in the mind games,” said FIU alumnus Daryn Andrews, who still visits campus after work occasionally to play some Smash.

“I miss playing on campus a lot, so it’s nice to come back and visit my Alma Matter. Helps me stay connected with the great Smash community and gives me a chance to visit school,” said Andrews. “It is going to be a fond college memory of mine.”

Not only does Smash bring alumni back to the university, but it brings people from all over the community.

“Sometimes around 50 percent of the people who play with us aren’t even FIU students. It’s a lot of alumni, Miami-Dade students or high school students that come play after school,” said Luis Rosario.

“We are all a big community,” said Monterrosa.

As more and more people join and become aware of the Smash community, the students who are regulars are trying to form an official university club.

“We want to do more organized events, host tournaments and get more people involved,” said Luis Rosario. “It’s important to us. We have built this and want to keep growing.”

Preparations for said club are nearly set, but Monterrosa, Rosario and the rest of the Smash community at FIU need one more thing.

“All we need is a professor so we can get the club going,” said Monterrosa. “We had a lead before, but it looks like that didn’t work.”

“The people we have met playing Smash at FIU have been great, they are people I hang out with outside of playing Smash,” said Monterrosa.

“I think about it about it often, how many friends I have made playing Smash here,” said Luis Rosario. “So many great people that mean a lot to me.”