Doubles have been a staple of Super Smash Bros. tournaments since the original game released on the Nintendo 64. During most competitive events, the setting that allows players to deal damage to their teammate is set to on, but that wasn’t the case at Let’s Make Big Moves yesterday.
During the tournament’s Doubles Pools, one of the first matches of the event had to be reset due to the Team Attack setting accidentally being turned off during the ad break. The series featuring Aaron “BONK!” Markovitz and Aneudy “Enzo” Melendez against Aaron “Blacktwins13” Grandison-Vargas and Michael “Riddles” Kim was already two games in when the discovery was made.
Blacktwins and Riddles were heavy favorites in the matchup against the Pennsylvanian duo and it showed as they jumped out to a strong 1-0 lead with their Joker and Pichu team composition. Both Bonk and Enzo were able to keep things close in the opener but quickly fell behind and ended up losing the set 2-0.
But as the two teams bumped fists and prepared to head out, something was amiss within the Twitch chat and one of the tournament staffers. And no, it wasn’t the group of attendees sitting in the background wearing banana costumes.
Panda Global’s DreX popped onto the stage after some brief conversation between the players to check the setup, with the winning team looking surprised and all four players just shaking their heads. And after a brief inspection of the game settings, it was revealed that Team Attack was indeed turned off for the entirety of the series.
The decision was then made through a talk between the players and DreX that the set would be scrapped and reset back to 0-0, with both sides agreeing to play it again from the start.
Unfortunately for Riddles and Blacktwins, this decision would come back to bite them because their opponents would end up making a comeback and winning the rematch 2-1. This caused a lot of talk in the community about if a runback because of Team Attack being set to off was actually allowed since the set was technically over at that point.
It becomes even more perplexing when you go back and watch the first set of the day between Ralph “Ralphie” Laurea and Justin “Wishes” Magnetti and Kyle “KGP” Glorius-Patrick and Jimmy “Sensei” because the setting is clearly off there too.
There are multiple instances in that series where Ralphie and Wishes should have hit each other with some of Cloud’s wide hitboxes, but instead just pass on through and continue attacking their opponents. The favorites ended up sweeping that series and vacating the stage and did not have to replay their set after it was discovered, which the commentators make a joke about later.
In retrospect, this isn’t a huge deal because it was resolved quickly and it was clear that nothing was done to purposefully sabotage the players. A few other people at the venue also commented later that this issue happened on multiple friendly setups too and was fixed soon after being noticed.
The situation was handled well for what it was, but something like this should not go unchecked at Major tournaments, even if it is technically a side event to the main bracket. If standard checks don’t catch something like this for Doubles, then some messed up settings might accidentally end up in Singles and hurt the outcome of the main event.
Bonk and Enzo ended up making it into top 16 after this win before losing to Tyler “Marss” Martins and Ezra “Samsora” Morris and getting eliminated shortly after. Let’s Make Big Moves will continue with Singles as the top 128 whittles down to top cut at 16 players.
