The history of competitive Super Smash Bros. is long and littered with names, faces, and events. The original, Brawl, and now Ultimate all have rich competitive scenes that are still active tothis day.
Super Smash Bros. Melee (大乱闘 スマッシュ ブラザーズ DX, Great Fray Smash Brothers Deluxe), often shortened to SSBM or Melee, is a 2.5D fighting game for. The total quality of Super Smash Bros: Melee is easily the best out of the series. Adding the most to an already perfect game made this game a roaring successor to the original Nintendo 64-bit Game Console.
There are hundreds of recognizable players and dozens of insane events that pushed the boundaries of the franchise.
Still, one tournament has stood above the rest. Evolution, or EVO, is often analogized to “the Super Bowl of fighting games,” and that title is pretty accurate.
The yearly event hosts every major fighting game with a handful elevated to take place on the main stage. If only one fighting game tournament could make it to the sportsbooks, it would be EVO.EVO played host to Melee starting in 2013 and Smash 4 in 2015 through 2018.
Smash 4 was expected to fall off the roster this year to make room for the newly-released Smash Ultimate, so it was no surprise that it was absent from the lineup announcement.
Ultimate was announced as expected, but as the list went on and on, there was no mention of Melee.
The game had been present for the past five years.
As the ninth and final game was revealed to be Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st], the entire Melee scene spat out their drinks. Melee, the fourth-watched game of last year’s lineup, would not bereturning to EVO.
This change sparked both debate and panic in the Melee scene that has yet to resolve itself.
If you were planning to wager on EVO Melee singles, there’s a good chance the game won’t show up on the esports betting sites.The major question is just “Why?”
There are a lot of reasons for Melee being delegated to a side event, but let’s look at the major ones.