Over the past nine months or so I've gotten really interested in Super Smash Bros. Melee, after stumbling upon EmpLemon's "There will Never Ever be another Melee player like Hungyrbox" video on YouTube. I've always loved Melee, and it's always been my favorite Smash game, but that video led me down a rabbit hole. I had only ever played the game casually, so watching sets like Hungrybox vs Armada at Evo 2016 felt like an entirely different game to me. I had no idea that so many advanced techniques existed.

It seems like a picked a good time to get interested in Melee too. There have been insane developments recently from people like Fizzi and UnclePunch. With Slippi, two players from opposite sides of the world can play each other seamlessly online, without any lag. (Yes, a free service developed by a fan allows for an infinitely better online experience for a 20-year-old game than Nintendo's official paid service allows for the franchise's most recent iteration.) It also includes a matchmaking system, so players no longer need to find opponents beforehand. Online doubles was recently added as well.

Just last week, Team Akaneia (which includes UnclePunch, creator of a super useful training mode mod) released the first version of their "Akaneia Build." This build includes new stages, a really cool new volleyball game mode, and, most impressively, and new character. Wolf has been added to Melee, and apparently the potential for hundreds of new characters has been discovered.

Over the past year, the Melee floodgates have been completely demolished. So many exciting things are happening, and try as they might, there's nothing Nintendo can do to stop it.

If anyone does play Melee and wants to get some online matches in, let me know. Would also be pretty cool to find someone to play volleyball or doubles with. Just keep in mind that I'm still not very good

I've only gotten the chance to finally play Melee about 2 years ago so I didn't grow up with it or anything and I feel like I would have better luck learning Smash Ultimate competitive. I've seen that video as well I thought it was extremely well done I think they had other videos like that I watched or maybe I'm thinking of a different youtuber I've also watched who talked about Melee. I would say I would be willing to give it a shot but truth be told there's a zero percent chance my pc can handle emulating Melee.