CREATING SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

It is difficult to explain how much effort has truly been put into making our scene what it is today.
To have it go from maybe 8 people who would play once in a blue moon to over 100 people who are now very active and compete on a weekly basis. For our scene to go from this small community to a very powerful state in a very brief time is inspiring.

We are about to hit our one year mark. October of 2013 was the first monthly we hosted at Gamers Anonymous. We skipped November due to having a hard time planning around Thanksgiving and then we were back for December. We have not slowed down since.

It began with three of us. Light, Twin A and myself. From there we brought in several known players who were willing to help. Now the scene is so powerful, we have to put in minimal effort to keep it going. But how much effort is still considered minimal? Running a tournament of this scale is stressful. It is impossible to keep everyone happy. But we manage. And we do it happily. We love what this scene has become. This is the best competitive scene in the world, in my opinion.

But it is about to take a drastic change. Smash 4 on the Wii U is being released November 21st. We are not going to be crazy and host a tournament the next day. There are too many issues there. Complete set ups being the biggest. And November 29th is too close to Thanksgiving for our tastes.

So starting December 6th, we will begin hosting Wii U tournaments. The first one will be solely Smash 4. We are expecting a huge turn out and we do not want to risk being too overwhelmed at this event. So there will not be PM at this one.

Starting January though, we will be running both PM and Smash 4. Teams may alternate games, but I highly doubt we will do both on any given day.

Here is where we now must say goodbye to one of our favorite parts of our locals. Beginners/Amateurs will be discontinued once Smash 4 is released.
It is impossible to know everyone's skill levels with a new game. We will all be beginners with this game.
Project M on the other hand, we have a good judge on where everyone is at skill wise. But we are ending that one as well. It is just not possible for us to run Smash 4 singles, a teams event, PM beginners and PM all skills in one day. Even if we started the tournaments at 11. We already have a lot on our plate with the 3 events we currently run.
Our fear is that this scene may be relying on beginners too much. Beginners makes up a huge portion of our monthlies. But we have to do what is necessary.

So with that said, I am very excited for Smash 4 events to start. It will be a relatively clean slate for everyone to start from.

The Art of Fighting

The Art Of Fighting

Full Schedule

*All times Mountain

Friday, September 26th:
7:00 PM – Art Gallery Opening

Saturday, September 27th:
10:00 AM – Tournament Registration Begins
11:00 AM – Preliminary Matches Begin;
Ultra Street Fighter IV, Injustice, Killer Instinct
12:00 PM – Prelims; Super Smash Bros. (Project M)
01:00 PM – Prelims; Tekken Tag Tournament 2
02:30 PM – Prelims; Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
BlazBlue, Skullgirls Encore
07:30 PM – Saturday Night Hype
(Exhibition Series; Southwest Team Battle,
ABQ Grudge Match – East vs. West, The VF Classic, More To Be Announced)

Sunday, September 28th:
All Day – Casuals and Side Tournaments in Gallery Space “B”
12:00 PM – Tournament Finals Begin
(Starts with Project M and “The Music of Smash” Live Performance;
Concludes with UMvC3 and USFIV Top 8)

Tournament Entry

Play Any 1 Game: $10
Play Any 2 Games: $20
Play Any 3 or 4 Games: $30 (Play 3, Get 1 Free)
Play Any 5 Games: $40 ($10 Discount)
Play Any 6 Games: $50 ($10 Discount)
Play Any 7 Games: $55 ($15 Discount)
Play All 8 Games: $60 ($20 Discount – Play 2 Free!)

Location

Metropolis Comic Art Gallery
1102 Mountain Road NW, Suite 202
Albuquerque, NM 87102

September Local (2014)

As is tradition! Our next monthly will be on September 13th.

We will be starting the events an hour earlier than normal! We will start registration at 11 a.m. and begin beginners singles at 1 p.m.! These events are becoming huge and we need to allow more time for the tournaments.

We will be running the usual 3 events.

Beginners singles

All skills teams

All skills singles

The costs will be $2 venue fee and $3 per event.

We will also be hosting a 16 person melee event! The event will cost either $1 or $3. Not sure yet haha. We will be capping it at 16 since adding a whole additional event will be difficult to run smoothly. This will be a first come first serve type of event. Once we cap it at 16 we will no longer be accepting registrations for it.

When: Saturday, September 13th at 1:00pm (Registrations starts at 11:00am)

Location: Super Gamer's Anonymous

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