If you were pining for some high-level Super Smash Bros. Melee after organizers cut it from last weekend’s Evo, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, you can get your fix this weekend.
Super Smash Con’s Melee tournament, going on now in Virginia, is studded with crowd favorites like Justin “Plup” McGrath, Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma, and William “Leffen” Hjelte, who won last year’s Evo championship. After the Evo 2019 snub, the pros are almost certainly primed for a fight.
Super Smash Con is hosting the second-biggest Melee event so far this year with 850 entrants. The biggest, Genesis 6, attracted over 125,000 viewers during the Super Bowl and over 1,100 entrants.
Super Smash Con is also home to an enormous, 2,700-entrant Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament for those who favor Nintendo’s more modern platform fighter. After Leonardo “Mk Leo” Lopez Perez took down underdog Gavin “Tweek” Dempsey—a Pokémon Trainer player who had lit up the winner’s bracket—for Evo’s number one spot, you know he wants a rematch. You can watch Super Smash Con on VGBootCamp’s Twitch channel all weekend.
In the meantime, the Overwatch League’s Stage 4 games roll on, with four games on Friday and five on Saturday. Notable matchups include the high-powered Hangzhou Spark and New York Excelsior, and the San Francisco Shock and Shanghai Dragons. Remember—the Shanghai Dragons took home the Stage 3 championship after a 0-40 season last year. Yet there may also be some shake-ups as teams get accustomed to Overwatch’s new role-lock rule, which forces teams’ compositions to include two tanks, two damage-dealers, and two supports. All of that’s on the Overwatch League Twitch channel.
As for me, I’ll be switching between the two games while plowing through the first half of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Not a bad way to spend a hot August weekend.