The competitive Super Smash Bros.community has seen a meteoric rise in popularity following the last year’s release of the critically acclaimed The Smash Brothers documentary series.
Since then, Super Smash Bros: Melee has been brought back to the Major League Gaming circuit for the first time since 2007 and the esports community has seen major organizations like Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses and Smash players to their professional rosters.
This resurgence hasn’t gone unnoticed by the folks at Nintendo. either. Just last summer Nintendo of America, much to the disappoint of fans of Melee, stopped EVO—the biggest fighting game tournament in the world—from streaming the Melee tournament. But this year at at E3, Nintendo took an about face and threw their own tournament, featuring the game’s premier players, to promote their new release Super Smash Brothers for WII U.
Azubu put together a short video highlighting what it was like for the the players getting their hands on the new title.
Nintendo stance on esports, which used to be described as few steps behind most other developers and publishers, seems to have changed as of late. Melee will be at EVO this year—with Nintendo’s blessing.
Screengrab via Azubu/YouTube
