One of Smash Melee's Greatest Upsets Didn't Count?
310One of Melee’s important upsets might not have actually counted.
At Pound 4, Armada lost to SilentSpectre, marking his first and only in-tournament loss to a Captain Falcon player ever. For years, this victory was a point of pride for the North American Melee community.
But it likely didn’t actually count.
On May 17, 2019, gamerjim on Twitter reposted VODs of the set, commenting that some of the interactions seemed… off. Hits didn’t seem to send as far as they should have, and throws weren’t behaving as expected. After Smashers went in and recreated some interactions from the match in their own games, it became apparent that the knockback ratio was likely set to 0.9 or possibly even lower.
So how did it happen?
Well, back before emulation and 20XX, everytime you booted up Melee on console you’d have to go in and adjust the settings manually. When doing it quickly, it’s likely that whoever turned on the GameCube accidentally pressed the stick a bit to the left when scrolling down, changing the knockback ratio.
So, this loss - which was the last time Armada would lose to anyone outside the top 6 for the next 8 years - has a big old asterisk next to it, and who knows what might have happened if the settings had been
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