Professional wrestling game tournaments are a joy to watch, often even when you are unfamiliar with the game being played. The only one is hit and everyone screams, and then some shit happens. It is great. While the nuances of a particular game can be lost in a newcomer, it’s not bad. Fighting games seem sick as shit regardless. Or they usually do. The recent Portal Smash tournament hosted by YouTuber Alpharad, however, is a different story. It’s still a joy to watch, but for a totally different reason.
For those of you who have only played or watched, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate coincidentally, you may be surprised to learn that only about six of the more than 120 map games are played competitively. They also always play with dangers to keep the balance of the game. Hand to hand play with dangers, Smash Ultimate it doesn’t. Which is what makes Portal Smash such a silly and fun idea.
The premise behind the tournament is simple: place eight of the world’s best players on the game’s usual competitive maps, which have been casually recreated by hand with the game’s level designer, but with added tricks. These tricks include titular portals, lava blocks, and switches that activate stage movement. All of this produces one of the strangest hybrids between professional and casual gaming I’ve ever seen, which is nothing new to Alpharad.
The tournament starred great Smash characters Marsss, MKLeo, Aaron, Void, Cosmos, Kola, Charliedaking, and Riddles. Or I would have starred in them if the ridiculous scenes hadn’t starred … stage. Hm. The first favorite map of the tournament was Pokémon Stadium, chosen because it was the most normal of the five. With only four portals and no additional dangers, Pokémon Stadium was a familiar starting point for the tournament. In fact, he was so familiar that the players struggled to pick him over and over again, much to Alpharad’s chagrin.
G / O Media may receive a commission
The real star of the tournament, however, was Portalfield. The normal version of Hand to hand‘s Battlefield is simple. It is a flat floor with three platforms and no cornices. Portalfield, on the other hand, is a nightmare factory. The stage retains its basic shape, but includes a central portal that teleports anyone who touches it under the stage where there is a lavablock waiting to make them jump off the ceiling over and over until the portal reopens. and spit them out on stage. At least that’s how it worked in theory. In fact, most of the characters were teleported to the lava and shot into the void under the stage, killing them instantly.
Portalfield was home to the incredible semifinal match between MKleo and Cosmos, which ended with a overthrow of Meta Knight at the request of the commentators, sending both men to the pit of hell under the stage and leaving it in their hands. of God. decides the winner. He chose Cosmos and set the stage for one of the worst (or best) grand finals in the history of the fighting game.
Void and Cosmos, having defeated (or at least let defeat the stages) all who came before them, finally reunited in Portalville, a moving scene that caused diseases of the movement covered in portals, lava blocks and other shit. The party arc does not matter, the important thing here is its shocking conclusion. After being thrown offstage, Cosmos, like Mythra, uses his special, which hits Void and launches Cosmos into the air, directly to a portal, which in turn teleports him below the stage where he dies without ceremony. It’s an extremely silly ending to an amazing tournament.
It’s easy to take any competitive event too seriously. Whether it’s meat sports, sports or, I don’t know, chess, people get very serious by defeating each other in a deadly fight. This tournament is a stellar reminder of the silly joy of competition, where a handful of changed rules can turn any serious sport into a clown show ridden with tricks starring some of the most talented people who have ever played the game. I want some more stupid shit like this in tournaments, please, because it’s really a joy to see how the hells fall apart.