Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in competitive play

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's competitive scene began with the Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018. Following the game's release, it quickly became the largest Smash scene, and has remained very eventful despite several setbacks, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early metagame (2018-March 2020)

Series creator Masahiro Sakurai congratulating ZeRo on his victory at the Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018.

Similar to Super Smash Bros. 4, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's competitive scene started before the game was released with the Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018, an invitational tournament hosted by Nintendo at E3 2018 on June 12th, 2018. Similar to the last invitational, professional Smashers were invited to compete against each other; however, only eight players were invited this time, four of them being top SSB4 players while the other four were top Melee players. The only invitee who participated in the previous tournament was ZeRo, who managed to defend his previous title and defeated MkLeo, winning his first Ultimate tournament.

When Ultimate was released on December 7th, 2018, many tournaments immediately started hosting the game, and within the game's first full day of release, many tournaments all around the world saw their entrants count surpass 100, the fastest a Smash game had reached the 100-entrants milestone. By the end of the year, the game had already seen two major events: Umebura SP on December 16th, which Shuton won; and Let's Make Moves on December 29th, which Tweek won. Notably, Umebura SP had 745 players in attendance, over 7 times more entrants than Smash 4's largest tournament in the same period of time.

The Panda Global Rankings Ultimate (PGRU) made a return in Ultimate and started the season with GENESIS 6, Ultimate's first supermajor, and the first Smash tournament to reach 2,000 entrants since EVO 2016. The tournament featured many of Smash 4's best players including Nairo, MkLeo, and Tweek. In addition, the tournament featured up-and-coming top-level talent, including Zackray, Japan's premier rising star who had recently won the major Umebura SP 2; and Glutonny, Europe's best player who had been the continent's most prominent hidden boss through most of Smash 4. The tournament was ultimately won by MkLeo, who defeated VoiD twice to win his third-ever GENESIS title.

Unique to Ultimate were the number of majors and major winners in its first year. Unlike all other Smash games, which only saw a single-digit number of majors within a year, Ultimate saw thirteen major tournaments within the first PGR season alone, including Umebura Japan Major 2019, Japan's first tournament to reach 1,000 entrants, and Albion 4, Europe's first-ever supermajor. Out of these thirteen tournaments, eight of them had unique winners, and all three major regions -- Europe, Japan, and the United States -- saw at least one of their players win a major.

The number of major winners also brought up debate as to who would be ranked #1 that season. Unlike Smash 4, where ZeRo was widely considered the best player in the early metagame, Ultimate's first few months saw varying opinions on who was the game's best player. MkLeo was commonly viewed as the best player after his victory at GENESIS 6 until Tweek defeated him twice at Frostbite 2019 and took the tournament. Although there were many other players who were also considered, including Zackray, Marss, and Shuton, competition for the throne ultimately narrowed down to either MkLeo or Tweek, as they were the only players who won more than one major/supermajor in the season. Complicating matters even further was how both players saw an underperformance at a supermajor, with MkLeo placing 33rd at Umebura Japan Major 2019 and Tweek placing 33rd at Smash 'N' Splash 5. Ultimately, MkLeo pulled ahead by picking up and sticking with Joker, the game's second DLC character; despite underperforming with the character at Umebura Japan Major 2019, within a month MkLeo had claimed victory at two separate supermajors while using the character. By July 7th, the end of the Spring 2019 PGRU season, MkLeo had a total of five major/supermajor victories, three of those that were which Joker, solidifying himself as the season's best player. Notably, MkLeo's first supermajor victory with Joker -- MomoCon 2019 -- was the beginning of his streak where he made Grand Finals at every tournament he entered.

MKLeo after his victory at EVO 2019.

The first two months of the second season featured two large supermajors: EVO 2019 and Super Smash Con 2019. Not only did the former become the largest Smash tournament of all time, at 3,534 entrants, but both tournaments had higher entrant counts than EVO 2016, the previous record-holder. These two tournaments cemented Ultimate as one of the largest fighting games in 2019; notably, the Grand Finals match at EVO 2019 between MkLeo and Tweek is currently the most viewed Ultimate tournament match on YouTube, with over three million views. Both tournaments were won by MkLeo, who went on to win three more majors that season, solidifying himself as not only the best player of the second season, but the best player of 2019.

The second season also saw an increase in international talent in the scene, primarily players from Japan. Notably, every single Umebura tournament reached major status, granting Japan a total of four majors in the second season, more majors than the country had saw in a year previously. In total, out of nineteen majors in the season, seven of them were won by a Japanese player, including three majors in the United States. Outside of Japan, Europe's presence also began increasing thanks to Glutonny's strong performances in Europe and oversees, as well as Europe hosting two major events in France and the Netherlands. When the Fall 2019 PGRU released, there was a total of twenty-six international players ranked on the list as well as two players ranked in the list's Area 51, the first time the number of international players outnumbered the number of players from the United States.

The Fall 2019 PGRU received mixed responses from the community, with many wondering how the algorithm ranked the players. With concerns that releasing the algorithm publicly would lead players to "game" the rankings, staff behind the PGRU decided to overhaul the power rankings for the Spring 2020 PGRU season, notably switching the rankings to a panel-based system and increasing the number of players on the rankings to 100. In addition, the lukewarm reception to the rankings helped increase the popularity of the OrionRank, an alternative ranking that featured a different methodology, tournament tier system, and ranking algorithm which ranked the top 100 players of the year instead of the top 50 players of half a year. Although the two rankings never competed with each other, as the metagame progressed both rankings were ultimately accepted in the community.

The start of 2020 featured two supermajors that took place on the same weekend: GENESIS 7 and EVO Japan 2020. The latter caused controversy in the community as the top prize was only a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller while other events had an actual prize pool. Many players questioned Nintendo's support for the competitive scene; however, despite the wishes of many players, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that Nintendo would not fund tournaments. This led many to question whether competitive Smash was financially viable if there was little support from Nintendo.

Fortunately, things looked up for the community in February, when the team behind VGBootCamp and Super Smash Con announced the Smash World Tour, a circuit that would provide over $250,000 in prize money for both Melee and Ultimate. This announcement was received with praise from players, and the circuit was set to start at CEO Dreamland 2020 in March.

Online metagame (March 2020-2021)

Unfortunately, the year marked the start of a global outbreak of COVID-19, which by the time of CEO Dreamland 2020 had been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Due to warnings from officials to avoid contact with others and traveling abroad, many tournaments that were upcoming in the next few months were cancelled or postponed, while the Spring 2020 {GRI and the Smash World Tour were frozen to dissuade players from attending tournaments. A few tournaments continued to run the first week of the pandemic; however, they all suffered from dropouts. Most notably, CEO Dreamland 2020 saw top players such as Light, Dabuz, and Maister drop out, and tournament organizer Alex Jebailey was forced to ask for donations in order to keep the tournament afloat. As the outbreak continued, it became clear that offline competitive play wouldn't return for the rest of the year, leading to the cancellation or postponement of other major events for the rest of the year.

Though offline tournaments were halted worldwide, the online tournament scene drew significant attention as both tournament organizers and players looked for alternative options. While the online scene had existed for years, many of these players and organizers began paying more attention to it and made the transition to online play, and as a result the online scene grew substantially, with many tournaments seeing entrant counts reaching the thousands. Most notably, The Box became the largest Smash tournament of all-time, reaching 8,158 entrants. However, these entrant counts were often overinflated, as anyone with an internet connection could attend the tournament, and most tournaments were free-to-enter, which led to many tournaments having a large number of disqualifications. Nevertheless, these conditions also gave many players the opportunity to play with others that they normally didn't or couldn't play with, exposing more players to hidden bosses and strong players who exclusively played online.

The online metagame further flourished thanks to the number of tournament series, weeklies, and circuits that were launched or were running during this time, most prominently The Quarantine Series, an online circuit ran by YouTube streamers Cr1TiKaL and Alpharad. The series consistently saw thousands of players enter its tournaments, with their first three tournaments attracting over 8,000 unique players, including 26 players ranked on the last PGRU. In addition, major offline tournament series also ran online events, including Pound Online and Collision Online, with some events being run to help the tournament series recoup losses. Finally, with no news from Panda on an online ranking, many players defaulted to the Wi-Fi Warrior Rank, an online power ranking that had been running since Smash 4, as the main ranking for the online metagame. With an increase in tournaments that qualified for the rankings, as well as the online scene's larger playerbase, WWR organizers decided to extend the list from top 50 to top 75 for the fifth season, the first season that took place during the pandemic.

The online metagame's top level featured different players than the offline metagame. While both MkLeo and Tweek did well online, the former saw a small character crisis and therefore struggled in the fifth season, while the latter's tournament activity was rather minimal, especially after August. Instead, several rising stars or Wi-Fi Warriors were in contention for the top spot, including Kola, who ultimately was ranked first on the WWR's fifth season; BestNess, who won The Box; and players who were consistent threats at large online tournament, such as Maister, Sonix, and Epic_Gabriel. However, one player ultimately sat on the throne for the majority of the online metagame: Sparg0, a player who was on the rise pre-pandemic but had his beginnings in the online metagame. Sparg0's plethora of online tournament wins helped him climb to the #1 spot on the sixth season, where he remained for the rest of the online metagame.

However, with more attention came more criticism for Ultimate's online mode. Players complained about the online mode's unstable connections, which led to frequent drops in framerate and increased input lag. The environment also promoted campy play, allowing characters that benefit from it, such as Sonic, to have more matches time out. On the contrary, characters such as Peach and Joker were often considered weaker online, as the input lag made it harder to perform their combos. Numerous complaints over the issue soon caused the hashtag "#FixUltimateOnline" to trend on Twitter in late April. In an effort to combat the terrible connections, Ethernet cables became mandatory for most online tournaments and region locks that limited online tournaments to certain regions started to gain traction. To combat the effects of the region locks on the rankings, the Wi-Fi Warrior rank introduced multipliers that increased the value of international region-locked tournaments but decreased the value of American region-locked tournaments.

Despite the adjustments, by June players were already itching for the return of offline competitive play, and several regions in the United States began hosting small locals while enforcing social distancing and other measures aimed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These locals were criticized for opening before the pandemic had been completely stabilized in the United States. Those that did not attend locals but disliked the online metagame or were burnt out by the number of online tournaments also stopped attending online tournaments, instead choosing to spend more time on other games or using online only for practice. Finally, the online scene lost its largest circuit after The Quarantine Series was quietly and unceremoniously discontinued. With declining interest and continued criticism of the online mode, the latter of which was a major reason for Ultimate's absence from the EVO 2020 Online lineup, the online scene slowly began to decline, leading to less large online events and the decision to revert the WWR back to a top 50 ranking. Nevertheless, online tournament activity remained afloat thanks to the rise of many player-ran tournament series, most notably Team Liquid and Hungrybox's series The Box.

While the United States' online metagame saw a sudden rise followed by a slow decline, the Japanese online metagame continued to grow throughout the online metagame, likely due to better online connections in Japan as well as Smashmate, a website dedicated to online play in Japan and features an ELO ladder and frequent online tournaments thanks to the Tamisuma and Maesuma series. Specifically, more players began playing on the online ladder, and by its eleventh season, it had surpassed 10,000 entrants, with attendance numbers remaining well above this threshold even after the return of offline competitive play. Initially, the latter was often topped by veteran players Ron and YB; however, eventually, a new player, acola, began dominating the ladder and became the first player to ever surpass a 2,500 rating.

Effects of the sexual misconduct allegations

July 2020 saw numerous allegations of sexual misconduct made against many members of the Super Smash Bros. community, including some of Ultimate's most well-known players, commentators, tournament organizers, and streamers. This included Nairo, one of the game's best and most popular players; D1 and Keitaro, prominent Ultimate commentators; and Mr. Wizard, the main organizer for the EVO series. Following the allegations, many of these players were stripped of professional sponsorships, banned from entering tournaments, and isolated from the community. Those who remained feared that Nintendo would further distance itself from the competitive Ultimate scene as a result of the allegations.

The aftermath of the sexual misconduct allegations continued well after that month, with more information and context trickling in about the transpiring events. Many of the accused have broken their silence with official responses containing their sides of the story, with several having accusations of their own towards other members of the community. Most notably, Nairo's sexual misconduct controversy eventually led to the ban or shunning of other notable players in the Ultimate scene, including Samsora, yet another one of Ultimate's best player. Finally, content creators such as Technicals also created videos containing their own points of view regarding these incidents, shifting the community's views on some of the cases.

Offline activity during the online metagame

Aside from the United States, a few other countries began holding offline events with COVID-19 precautions enforced. The first event to surpass 100 entrants during this period was the French regional Super Smash Stadium 1, held on July 25th, 2020, and a few other French events would follow within the upcoming months. Offline activity further picked up in the fall, when Japan began hosting more events. Although there were no majors for the rest of the year, many tournaments featured several top Japanese players, and as such many of these tournaments managed to reach superregional status. One such event was Kagaribi, which despite beginning during the pandemic would go on to be one of Japan's most prestigious tournament series.

The slow return of offline competitive play was halted by a spike in COVID-19 cases in January 2021, which once again halted offline competitive play, especially in Japan where a surge of cases cancelled several notable events. However, by March, offline events once again began crawling back, and by the end of the month Japan had successfully ran Kagaribi 3, the first major tournament since the start of the pandemic.

Post-online metagame (2021-present)

Return to offline play (June - December 2021)

The success of several offline events, as well as the pandemic winding down and the release of vaccines, led many players to believe it was finally time to restart offline competitive play. One of the first notable examples of this was InfinityCON Tally 2021, which was expected to be a small regional but quickly garnered attention from all across the country. By the time the tournament rolled around, over 400 players had registered for the event, making it the first tournament to surpass 200 entrants since CEO Dreamland 2020. Although many players remained cautious about offline events, by the end of June many regions have began hosting offline tournaments, kickstarting the post-pandemic metagame.

Arguably the biggest debate during this period was whether Wi-Fi Warriors would achieve similar success in the new metagame. Several players argued that these players were more used to the delay-based nature of the online metagame, and as a result it would be difficult to translate their skills in the offline metagame, where emphasized precision and quicker reaction times. Other players believed that many skills developed online were still useful offline, and that greater exposure to other players during the online metagame would give Wi-Fi Warriors experience to succeed offline. Due to these arguments, many players kept a close eye on notable Wi-Fi Warriors, most notably Sparg0, the best player during the online metagame. In addition, forking off that debate was the discussion as to whether some of the older players could catch up with the newer players, especially with some of them making questionable character switches. Most notable amongst these players were MkLeo, who had switched to Byleth, a character who at that point was dismissed as unviable; and Tweek, who had switched to Diddy Kong, a character who was considered less viable than Tweek's previous mains.

Many of these questions were answered at Smash Ultimate Summit 3. Although not the first major since the pandemic, it was the first tournament since the pandemic to feature many of the world's best players from before and during the pandemic, including Wi-Fi Warriors like Sparg0, old guard players like MkLeo and Tweek, and international players like Zackray. Due to this status, the tournament ultimately raised over $150,000 in prize money, the largest prize pool for a Smash tournament. Ultimately, all four aforementioned players made strong runs, and the Winner and Grand Final matches were also showdowns between the two rivals. Although Tweek emerged victorious, many celebrated the reigniting of their rivalry as one final indicator that the offline scene had returned, and many anticipated the throne to be a battle between the two.

Subsequent majors, however, marked a new competitor for the throne. Tweek's consistency notably took a dip as he was notably upset at almost every major he attended after Summit. Instead, Sparg0 rose up to the challenge, most notably placing top 3 at every major he attended. Although he failed to win a single event that year, Sparg0's strong consistency allowed him to overtake Tweek as the #2 player in the world; he was ultimately kept out of the #1 spot by MkLeo, who following Summit won every major he attended aside from Glitch 8.5 - Konami Code. Nevertheless, Sparg0's success, alongside the success of players who frequently practiced or broke out during the online metagame, erased any doubts that Wi-Fi Warriors could not find success offline.

Aside from Sparg0's rise, there were many new shakeups all around the world. Japan saw ProtoBanham's meteoric rise after he picked up Min Min as a co-main, and he ultimately used her and his former main Lucina to establish himself as the new best player in Japan. In addition, although Glutonny remained the best player in Europe, he was beginning to seem more mortal, especially following VCA 2021, the first notable European event where he was eliminated by another European -- Peli.

With hopes that the pandemic would be over by the summer, VGBootCamp announced the Smash World Tour 2021, which would feature region-locked online tournaments for the first half of the year before moving offline for the second half. However, unlike the previous year, the reaction was more mixed; several top players such as MkLeo and Tweek noted how players were required to play in online tournaments just to qualify for the brackets with prize pools and questioned whether it would be safe enough to host offline tournaments by summertime. Indeed, a variety of issues came up during the qualifiers, largely due to the game's poor online netcode. In addition, although all the regional final events were held offline, the SWT: South America Ultimate Regional Finals was held online due to the COVID-19's effects in South America, leading many South Americans to accuse VGBootCamp for sidelining a community often overlooked by the global scene.

On the other hand, the circuit finale, held from December 17th-19th, 2021, marked the first time in the post-online metagame with many players from Ultimate's three superregions in attendance. As a result, it became one of the largest events of the year despite having only 40 entrants. Ultimately, MkLeo took the tournament, making him the first champion of the Smash World Tour.

Top level shakeups and the Summer of Steve (2022)

A surge in COVID-19 cases in early 2022 led to the cancellation of many offline events, leading many to briefly return to online competitive play. Although the online community remained a shadow of its former self, it nevertheless remained strong thanks to the Coinbox series, which began running in February and remained a weekly or bi-weekly online tournament series even after oflline began returning once again in March. With many top players regularly playing in either the Coinbox tournaments or Smashmate, online play remained a crucial part of the competitive metagame well after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.

With 2021 paving the way to a new metagame, 2022 marked the new metagame coming into effect as many of the newer players began ascending to the top level. This was first foreshadowed at Let's Make Big Moves 2022, where Tristate hidden boss Quidd unexpectedly won the event, making him the first major winner who was not previously ranked in the early metagame. The next few months also saw Sparg0 win not only his first major, Smash Ultimate Summit 4, but also his first supermajor, Collision 2022. On the other hand, MkLeo's streak of Grand Final victories ended at the former event as he was eliminated at 4th, and he followed it up by finishing 3rd at the latter event. Although MkLeo regained his footing at his following few majors, including winning GENESIS 8, it was clear that, for the first time since 2019, MkLeo's dominance in competitive Ultimate might be coming to an end.

The second change in the new metagame was that the center of the community began shifting from being primarily American-based to being primarily Japanese-based. Thanks to Smashmate and the rise of new major tournament series Kagaribi and Maesuma, Japan's Ultimate community began thriving like never before, with established top players being upset by players who were considered new to the top level or even competitive play as a whole. One of these players who rose meteorically to the top level was acola, who made his first notable offline appearance in late-February at Maesuma Offline, defeating several established Japanese players to place 2nd. By the end of the season, acola was dominating Japan's competitive landscape, having won their two Golden Week supermajors back-to-back, signalling a new era for Japanese Smash. Further expanding on acola's dominance was his first overseas performance at The Gimvitational, which he not only won, but did so defeating some of the United States' best players along the way. This event established acola as one of the best players in the world. Outside of acola, the year also saw the sudden rise of Miya in the summer, where he saw a similar path to acola, going from a notable Smashmate player to becoming one of Japan's best offline players following his surprising victory at Kagaribi 8.

With COVID-19 restrictions becoming more lax by the summer, it also allowed international players to have a greater presence in North America than in the previous year. This allowed Japan to finally showcase its new strength to the rest of the global scene, as North American events became dominant by Japanese players: from Battle of BC 4 in June to Smash Ultimate Summit 5 in September, every North American major with at least one top Japanese player in attendance was won by a Japanese player. One of the most notable examples of Japan's strength during this period took place at Double Down 2022, which saw ProtoBanham double-eliminate MkLeo to win the event. This win was significant not only because it was ProtoBanham's first international victory, but it came during a time where ProtoBanham's consistency in his own country was shaky. Further compounding this example was ProtoBanham's following victory at Smash Ultimate Summit 5, thus giving him two major victories in North America but no Grand Finals appearances at Japanese majors. Japan's increasing presence on a global scale further cemented Japan's position as the best superregion in the new metagame.

Coinciding with acola's meteoric rise was the meteoric rise of his main, Steve. Although a relatively popular character prior to 2022, Steve's representation in the metagame exploded in the first half of 2022, with many Steve players placing at or near top 8 at major events. Outside of acola, the most notable among these Steve players was Onin, a player who began the year with decent results, but by the end of July, was in consideration for one of the best players in North America, dominating the Midwest with Steve and even winning the major tournament Get On My Level 2022. However, the character's sudden rise led to discussion on whether he should be banned, with many citing how Steve's best players were all previously unknown players to the top level just a year prior. Although a ban never came to fruition that year, Steve's position in the metagame only became more polarizing as acola and Onin continued to find great amounts of success in competitive play, culminating in the summer with acola's win at the Gimvitational in June and Onin's victory at Super Smash Con 2022 in August, where he dominantly defeated MkLeo 3-0 along the way. As such, Steve became near-unanimously considered the best character in the game.

Converse to all this success was MkLeo's slow decline: although he was ranked 1st on North America's PGRU v3, only 0.7 points separated him and Sparg0, the first time a player was this close to dethroning him. Further underperformances in the summer, especially his poor performance at Smash Ultimate Summit 5, led many to question whether it was time to crown a new #1. Several candidates were brought up; however, all of them had their flaws: acola and Sparg0 were often considered the frontrunners; however, the former had only become a top player more recently and had a few questionable losses, while the latter went on a 3-month hiatus following The Gimvitational. Another player brought up was Light due to his sheer consistency across all majors he attended; however, despite regularly placing top 3, he had only one major/supermajor title under his belt. All four players were present at Ludwig Smash Invitational, the second-largest tournament of the year in terms of number of talent, leading many to believe the player who won the event would be the frontrunner. Ultimately, MkLeo swept through the entire tournament in what many considered to be one of the most dominant tournament performances of his career, as he only lost a single game against Kurama and notably double-eliminated acola 3-0 twice.

Cancellations of the Smash World Tour and Panda Cup

See also: Cancellation of Smash World Tour 2022

With the success of the Smash World Tour in the previous year, VGBootCamp announced the Smash World Tour 2022 in March the following year, with a similar format to the cancelled Smash World Tour 2020. In addition, after being teased the previous year, the Nintendo-sponsored Panda Cup circuit was announced a few months later. With two different circuits taking place during the year and two major finales in December, 2022 was shaping up to become one of the most exciting years of competitive Ultimate.

However, behind the scenes there was less camaraderie between the two circuits, as the organizers for the Smash World Tour found themselves in conflict with Panda's CEO Alan Bunney. Although the conflict was eventually resolved, negotiations between the Smash World Tour team and Nintendo, where the former seeked a license with the latter, began breaking down, culminating in Nintendo refusing to grant the team a license for both the finale and a potential 2023 circuit. With the Smash World Tour team claiming that Nintendo refused to have the finale run without a license, the circuit's finale was cancelled a week prior to its tournament date. The resulting backlash from the community, especially towards Panda and Nintendo, eventually led to the Panda Cup finale's postponement, and with Panda collapsing due to the controversy, their finale was effectively cancelled.

The effects of the controversy was felt throughout the Ultimate community. The cancellations dampened any excitement going into the end of the year: although it was made up with the replacement event Scuffed World Tour, without the two major offline finales, many players believed MkLeo had already cemented himself as the #1 player due to his run at Ludwig Smash Invitational. In addition, Panda's implosion led to the uncertainty of Panda's properties, especially the PGRU and their database website PGStats.com. The former was later addressed with a collaboration between the creators of OrionRank, EchoRank, and ΩRank to create UltRank, which eventually evolved into the de-facto ranking used in subsequent years. Finally, the loss of Panda and VGBootCamp's decreased activity weakened North America's dominance in the Ultimate community, especially with an environment unfavorable to esports and the disbandment of Beyond the Summit within the next few months, allowing Japan to eventually take its place as the center of competitive Ultimate.

Rise and fall of the Four Horsemen (2023-2024)

2023 marked the first year where MkLeo was not considered the unanimous best player in the world: although he won GENESIS 9, the entire year saw MkLeo's results slip further and further to the point where he was even having trouble placing top 8 at majors. With MkLeo no longer considered a top 5 player, let alone the best player in the world, many new candidates began competing for the throne.

The earliest frontrunner was acola, who won many majors in the season's early months. Most notable among these was Smash Ultimate Summit 6, where after falling to losers early in the final bracket, he ran through the entire losers bracket to eventually win the tournament. With strong performances in both Japan and in North America, many players considered acola to be the new best player in the world within only a few months of the new season. However, later developments in the season cast doubt on these claims. Although he had a relatively weak start of the season, Sparg0 quickly shot up to be a contender after his victories at Kagaribi 10 and Battle of BC 5, which were not only two of the largest events of the first season, but also saw him easily defeat acola four times. This dominant record over acola led many other players, especially in North America, to argue that Sparg0 was the best player in the world. UltRank, now called LumiRank after their partnership with Luminosity Gaming, ultimately ranked acola #1 on the LumiRank Mid-Year 2023 due to Sparg0's weaker consistency at majors, making acola the first new #1 player in Ultimate. acola eventually cemented himself in this position following his continued consistency throughout the year, placing top 8 at every event he attended and winning Super Smash Con 2023, while further underperformances from Sparg0, especially after his devastating run at Super Smash Con, knocked him out of contention.

Aside from acola and Sparg0, two other players also began dominating their respective metagames. Despite having a weak start of the season, Miya ended the year with the most major wins out of anyone, winning a total of 11 majors and supermajors. His performances especially took off in the latter half of the year, where he won most of his majors, including his biggest win Kagaribi 11, and even became a bracket demon for acola. In North America, Sonix emerged as a contender for best player in North America after defeating Sparg0 at Get On My Level 2023, and regularly making it to Grand Finals at majors in second half of the year, later winning Port Priority 8. Collectively, these four players won a combined 30/37 majors (81.08%) throughout the LumiRank 2023 season, including all but one major in the second half of the season with at least one of them in attendance and all but one of the year's "premier-tier" events. This dominance culminated in their performances at the final supermajor of the season, Watch The Throne, where the four of them took the top 4 places. Recognizing their dominance in the metagame, players began calling the four players the Four Horsemen, with the term taking off after Watch The Throne. This is reflected on the LumiRank 2023, where the four players were ranked top 4 and had a score above 95, with the next highest being Glutonny with a score of 84.78.

The Four Horsemen's dominance almost immediately dissipated in the following season. All four combined only made up for a total of 10 major wins for the LumiRank 2024.1 season, which was not even half the number of majors that took place that season. Furthermore, only Miya had more than 2 major wins that season, as acola's decreased activity, Sparg0's inconsistency, and Sonix's "second-place curse" meant that the number of Four Horsemen major wins that season were largely carried by one player. Conversely, this season saw a variety of other major winners, with no repeat major winners outside of Miya between DELTA 7 [FAT] in December 2023 and Sumabato SP 46 in April 2024, and even saw many new majors winners, most notably SHADIC at Cirque Du CFL 3 and Hurt at Battle of BC 6, two players who were not only top 10 that season, but also had multiple wins on the Four Horsemen in the same season. Due to all of this, many players questioned whether the community was too hasty in labeling the four players, especially if their dominance did not even last for a year.

Steve bans

See also: Steve (SSBU)#Ban discussion

Although many players have discussed a Steve ban, no serious bans were placed until February 2023 with the discovery of Steve's Phantom MLG technique. This tech, which allowed Steve to escape out of a move and immediately counter it, proved to be a tipping scale for many tournament organizers, and many organizers around the world began banning the character, or at least banning the tech's usage.

These bans prove controversial, as players opposed to the bans claimed the tech was heavily exaggerated by the community and impractical in an actual tournament match. As such, the bans were not unified, and many regions, especially Japan, opposed implementing such a ban. This eventually led ban efforts to sizzle out by the end of the summer, with many regions unbanning the character or at least allowing tournament organizers to make the decision. Nevertheless, Steve-banned events continued to exist even in the following year, albeit at a much smaller scale than in the early months of 2023.

Criticisms of competitive Ultimate

Despite Ultimate's popularity, certain aspects and mechanics of the gameplay have been criticized by competitors, especially in retrospect during and after the game's DLC cycle. Some criticisms include:

• Removal of microspacing options such as perfect pivoting and shield dropping through platforms such as the ones in Battlefield, with the former having a major effect on characters such as Little Mac and Marth.
• Platforms becoming much harder to drop through in Ultimate, causing costly misinputs.
• Whiff punishing being much more difficult due to the reduced lag on the majority of moves and the severe weakening of grabs, which has led to some players jokingly labeling moves as "unpunishable".
• Buffer systems being overly generous, to the point of unintentional actions that only occur because of the buffer.
• High input lag making the gameplay less precise and reaction-based.
• Poor online experience making both casual and competitive play difficult, particularly during the pandemic.
• Balance patches failing to address highly requested changes, in particular not giving major nerfs to higher-tier characters like Sonic and neglecting to buff key weaknesses of lower-tier characters such as Ganondorf and Little Mac.
• Balance patches ending shortly after the release of Sora, leaving multiple balance issues and glitches unaddressed.
• The large roster size requiring players to learn a large amount of matchups.

See also

• Tournament rulesets (SSBU)
• Super Smash Bros. 64 in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. Melee in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. 4 in competitive play