The New Mexico Scene Amazes Me

I have never had a blog before, so this will be fun. We intend to use this blog as a way to convey our thoughts and ideas. As well as posting gym leader information, fun stuff about the players and who knows what else. We will be posting in here as regularly as possible haha. But I truly feel that this first blog post should just explain the shock and awe that I feel for our scene.

Let me state something that most of the players here do not understand. The New Mexico Project M scene is the largest smash scene in the greater southwest! It dwarfs every scene that I can think of short of California, the upper East Coast (which combines several states) and potentially Florida and Texas. And those last two only get the benefit of the doubt because I know they are huge states. We may actually have them beat! What is even more amazing, is that we have done this in less than a year! The rest of these scenes have been around for over 10 years! They have had more time to grow and work together. While some of our players have been around for some time, the New Mexico scene has always been small and ignored by the greater scene. Our last LOCAL TOURNAMENT had over 80 different players competing! A regional hosted in Arizona that we competed in had 40. This last Texas tournament had roughly 90 PM entrants (from what I heard... I actually have not pulled up the exact numbers). Let that sink in for a moment. This scene is enormous! And it all started with one simple question.

"Why don't we try hosting another smash tournament?" A simple and obvious question until you check the context. I asked Light (Brad) and Twin A (Kyle) this question. We were part of a dying group. The New Mexico scene had not had a legitimate tournament in well over a year. Possibly longer. You could count the consistent entrants on both hands. No one cared anymore. The three of us were traveling to events out of state whenever we could, but money was tight. After Apex 2013, we had all but accepted defeat. But the three of us were just playing melee one night and I proposed this question. So we went for it.

Our good friend Jon helped us put it together by giving us a great venue that could attract a new crowd. The veteran players came out of retirement to try one more time. And we did our best to get the word out.

We never expected what would happen next. We broke 20 entrants! This seems like a failure by today's standards... but this was record breaking at the time. So we went for it again. Another monthly with similar results. But one thing really made us sad. Melee was dying. Project M was growing.

Melee was our game. It was what drove us to play. Project M was just this "ok" add on. We did not expect PM to really do anything. And now melee is virtually dead in NM while PM is massive. And I could not be happier. I am not picky in the slightest way. Melee... Project M... who cares! Our scene is incredible!

But I will go on record as saying, the single most important thing we ever did for our scene was adding the amateurs/beginners events. I watched a huge tournament in California where they banned ranked players. It was genius! Why did we not think of that!?

That one decision started a snowball effect. Every event was larger than the last. Only a few events have had fewer entrants than its predecessor. And we are aiming to break 100 entrants soon.

So this is officially a thank you. Thank you everyone who has entered. Thank you everyone who has helped promote the events. For everyone who has mentioned it to a friend and convinced them to come try it. Thank you to the veterans who have taken new players under their wings and helped them improve. Thank you out of town players who make the drive each and every month without question. Thank you all.

And here are the things I wanted to touch on more but I need to finish packing for my bachelor party!!!

Gym Battle System!
Gekko's and Buck's amazing Elite 4 runs!
WhiteLightning, Das Mario and C0w all improving so much that they have been banned from amateurs!
Rahul changing names at every event even though Outsourced is by far the best!
Golden Gun Gaming (Ryan Golden) being absolutely amazing and helping us out when we needed a new venue.
Salty Juans!
Gamestop advertising and even a radio spot (hey it counts).

Thank you guys for an amazing year with many more to come. I will see you all on September 13th for our next tournament. Keep practicing and keep improving.

-Twin 1