That Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament tour Nintendo and Best Buy have been putting on is cool and all, but the tournament series GameStop just announced for this weekend’s launch of the must-have Wii fighter is going to be where the competition is really at. And that’s not just hype talking, it literally is going to be the largest in-store tournament ever. EVER!
On Saturday, March 8th, 2,500 GameStop and EB Games locations across the country will be hosting the first round of a tiered, single-elimination tournament program. At each of these locations, the Brawl champion that comes out on top will then move on to the District tournament series on March 15th, then the District winners will progress to the Regionals set for March 29th. From there, the top eight Regional champs will enter the final championship event taking place on April 12th in San Jose, CA, with the Grand Prize brawler due to receive a Vizio 37″ LCD-TV, the entire Wii software library, a Wii console with selected accessories and $5,000 in cold, hard cash. Tournament rules, locations and other details are available at www.gamestop.com/smash.
But wait, GameStop has even more planned for this weekend. In addition to the tournament, over 2,500 stores (I gander most of the same locations as the tournament) will be hosting Midnight Brawl Events celebrating the game’s launch on Sunday, March 9th. Most stores will be starting their launch parties at 10:00 PM local time on Saturday night. So if you’re a Smash Bros. fan, chances are you’ll have a nearby GameStop/EB to attend for a little one-on-one tournament competition or at a little launch party action.
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So I just got back from this “tournament” and must say that it was more of a joke than anything else.
First, per the rules that are online, all 32 people played 1 vs 1 one-minute matches, and the person with the best score advances to the next round. What they didn’t tell everyone was that players didn’t get to pick their character, it was totally random. So not only were you forced to learn a new control mechanic during your first match, but more than likely you were forced to play as a character you’d never had experience with.
It was very lame, and (contrary to GameStop’s hopes) the winner won’t be seen as skilled in the eyes of the Smash Brothers community, just lucky.
Damn, that sucks, good thing I didn’t bother going to one of the tournaments around here. That is pretty silly that they made the character selection random, although to level the playing field for veteran players and those who hadn’t played any of the previous games I can kinda understand why they did it that way. I think the tournament Nintendo and Best Buy put together was more of a hardcore thing.
I would like to think of the GameStop tournament as more of a glorified lottery than anything else.
Well, what makes it worse is that by using random characters, they are automatically making an imbalanced tournament. There are character that work horribly against others. For instance, you don’t wanna use someone like Bowser or DK when going against Mario or Princess.
That’s just pathetic…but then again, it IS GameStop!