Editing Super Pichu cheating scandal

This incident is notable for being the first and currently only recorded case of cheating in offline ''Smash'' tournaments through gameplay modification.

This list compiles tournaments Chaos attended before he was caught and thus possibly cheated at, though it remains uncertain when he started cheating.

 

Following Chaos' suddenly high placements over ranked players using a character largely seen as unviable, and players noticing things about Pichu in his matches that seemed unusual, players grew suspicious and began considering the likelihood that Chaos had been cheating. The suspicion was further stoked by Chaos refusing to play friendlies and to play on any other setup but his own. In a forum post from an unnamed tournament attendee, they claimed that Chaos had KO'ed Joeycrzl's {{SSBM|Ice Climbers}} with Pichu's uncharged forward smash at 18% during a transformation on [[Pokémon Stadium]].<ref name="Lil Homie"/> While Pichu's forward smash is notable for having the highest base knockback of any forward smash in vanilla ''Melee'', it provably does not normally KO at said percentage range, even if [[DI]]'d the worst way possible on the absolute edge of the stage. Despite these suspicions, players were hesitant to voice them publicly, as they felt it would be seen as them making [[excuse]]s for losing, especially with the seeming absurdity of accusing someone of utilizing gameplay mods to cheat at an offline tournament.

Some time later, a local event was organized for players in the Ohio ''Melee'' scene to gather together, with Chaos showing up as one of the attendees.<ref name="Lil Homie"/> While the attendees were playing ''Melee'', several players devised a plan to investigate Chaos' alleged cheating. In the plan, one group of players invited Chaos to a Circle K convenience store (as documented by {{Sm|Sp1nda}}) nearby, while another group stayed behind and copied the data on Chaos' SD card to a separate SD card. After Chaos returned and everyone went home, the people who copied Chaos' SD card showed video footage of Chaos' Pichu down tilt, which turned out to have increased range compared to vanilla ''Melee''.

On July 2nd, 2016, the_beanwolf would make a [https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/4qyq9x/on_melee_modifications_and_cheating_a_warning post] in the r/smashbros subreddit that confirmed Chaos had cheated the whole time by playing with a modified Pichu.

The changes compiled for the "Super Pichu" are as follows:

*{{buff|{{mvsub|Pichu|SSBM|Forward smash}} dealt much more damage and had much stronger knockback. It's also implied to have been given an [[SDI]] multiplier of 0.}}

*{{change|The changes could only be used by plugging a [[GameCube controller]] into the fourth controller [[port]], then starting a game as Pichu's blue costume.}}

This incident is widely regarded as the first known notable instance of cheating through [[gameplay modification]] in competitive ''Smash'' history. However, it is far from the first case of cheating in general, with incidents such as [[tournament collusion]] happening for many years prior. The impact of Chaos' cheating raised numerous questions about hidden modifications being put into ''Smash'' [[setup]]s. At the time, with mods like [[UCF]] gaining in popularity, it could even raise the question of whether any mods should be allowed at all, though little has changed in this regard. That being said, [[tournament organizer]]s now tend to be much more scrutinous about what hardware and software gets used in a tournament to make sure a similar incident never happens again.