Tournament:Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash

Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash is the name given to a Central Canada Smash Circuit tournament series of bi-weekly double elimination SSBM contests for smashers living in or around Calgary, Alberta, Canada. These tournaments, which helped to fuel interest in competitive smash in central Canada, were organized and hosted by RJM and the Pro Impact Players and ran from October 2006 with the final tournament hosted on February 14th, 2008.

History

The Pro Impact Players had been keen players of both of the earliest incarnations of Super Smash Bros. for many years prior to spearheading the local tournament scene. Having never attended a tournament before, the crew met with other dedicated smashers for the first time in Red Deer, AB for CAST, hosted by Teh Fair.

RJM, having come away from CAST with a more comprehensive understanding of competitive gaming (as well as several relationships with other Calgarian smashers) proposed the notion of a bi-weekly tournament in the city. As the Pro Impact Players conveniently lived in the same 3-bedroom house, the venue was settled naturally, MICH agreed that it would be helpful in improving their own gameplay as a whole and on October 22nd, 2006, the first bi-weekly tournament occurred.

Since then, Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash has drawn some interest from other Calgary residents with some SSBM experience, some relatively new to the game and some competitive veterans who have been pulled out of retirement to join the budding community.

After the considerably larger At Melee's End tournament (dubbed a Pro Impact CCSC Championship) in December of 2007, the bi-weeklies began to suffer cancellations and the practicality of RJM's continued hosting came into question. A final tournament was hosted on February 14th, 2008 and no further competitive smash events have been announced under the Pro Impact label since.

Highlight Reels

Since the beginning, the Pro Impact Players have had their venue outfitted to record digital video footage of the matches occurring at the bi-weekly tournaments. The conceptual idea behind taking advantage of this hardware was to produce a "highlight of the night" for each event that would be posted along with the results, thus allowing participants access to their own performance on paper, as well as a few extra seconds of video footage for posterity.

However, at the very first bi-weekly tournament, the local Peach player, BackItch, managed to pull such an extraordinary number of bob-ombs, Mr. Saturns, beam swords and stitch-faced turnips during his climb through the brackets that RJM simply couldn't decide on a "highlight of the night." Instead, he released a 90-second montage of BackItch's improbable projectiles, dubbed it a "highlight reel" and they have not been the same since.

Eventually, the highlight reels grew to be larger projects with a music backing and various enhancements to the video editing process. For the first ten tournaments, RJM was essentially producing a combo video from ~80 full matches of footage every two weeks. However, due to time constraints brought on by other contributions to the CCSC, the highlight reels were eventually released on a monthly basis, combining the best footage from all the tournaments within that time period.

2007 Improvements

For bi-weekly tournaments occurring in 2007, several organizational enhancements to the operation as a whole were implemented. The purpose of doing so was to make the tournaments both more appealing for newcomers who came across the information via SWF, as well as enhancing the experience for current participants by allowing them to track their own progress and have a reference for general tournament information.

The enhancements included:

• Standings - A relatively comprehensive table of win-loss data, numerical rankings based on that data and two separate "divisions" for participants from the north and south ends of Calgary.
• Rules - After hosting six tournaments, there seemed to be a general consensus for what an acceptable standardization of rules for Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash should be and they were officially implemented for the seventh event.
• Roster - An attempt was made to establish a complete list of all the smashers in Calgary, however the project was not fleshed out fully before being ultimately replaced by later enhancements through ProImpact.ca.

CCSC & ProImpact.ca

As Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash grew to be more popular with the attendees, various regular Calgary smashers expressed interest in donating to support the events on a more tangible level. In the interest of enhancing the presentation of the tournaments, RJM proposed a website at the proimpact.ca domain name that could potentially house an even more comprehensive standing/statistics list, as well as smasher profiles, downloadable media and more. Support for the idea was unanimous and development began behind the scenes in late February 2007.

Recognizing that the robust functionality of the webpage that had been laid out was more than enough to support the concept, RJM approached various other smash community figureheads around the province such as FalseFalco, Janitor and FastFox regarding the potential for a Central Canada Smash Circuit. Since ProImpact.ca was already in development and no similar projects were likely on-the-go in other cities, it was chosen to house CCSC information for all new and budding communities across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The ProImpact.ca website still exists as a

April 2007 Cancellation

Progress with the ProImpact.ca domain, CCSC expansion and the bi-weekly tournaments themselves were brought to a sudden halt on April 24th, 2007 as tournament director RJM announced a temporary cancellation of Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash.

Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash returned on June 3rd, 2007 in recognition of the community's growth and enthusiasm during the summer season.

Rules

These are the official rules for Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash; they were written informally by the tournament host to clarify the casual nature of these events:

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1v1 Players will be seeded randomly into a double-elimination tournament bracket. If we have an uneven number of participants, certain players will be automatically advanced in the bracket without penalty by way of a bye. Matches will be decided based on a best-of-3 games set, wherein the first player to win two games will advance into the winner's bracket. Players entering the losing bracket are able to lose once more before being eliminated. The final set of the tournament will be a best-of-5, wherein the first player to win three games will be declared the victor. Game Format 4 Stock 8:00 Time Limit Items OFF Friendly Fire ON Random Stages: Battlefield Final Destination Dream Land (N64) Fountain of Dreams Yoshi's Story Pokémon Stadium Banned Stages: Brinstar Depths Green Greens Flatzone Fourside Great Bay Big Blue Jungle Japes Yoshi's Island (N64) The stage for the opening game of any set will be selected randomly. The loser of the previous game reserves the option to choose what stage the next game will be played on. The loser of the previous game may not pick a Banned Stage, unless both players agree. Regarding character selection... Officially, the character selection for the opening match should be done simultaneously (as per double-blind picks) so neither knows each other's character beforehand. However, this rule is largely ignored in practicum. Nevertheless, all players reserve the right to force a double-blind pick if you're really worried about it. Speaking of rules that we like to ignore in the spirit of communal gameplay, officially, the loser of the previous game should select the stage for the upcoming match before the winner chooses his character. This arrangement is referred to as slob picks and a full 3-game set would go something like this: Game 1 - Double-blind character selection; random stage. Game 2 Loser of Game 1 chooses stage for Game 2. Winner selects character. Loser selects character. Game 3 Loser of Game 2 chooses stage for Game 3. Winner selects character. Loser selects character. Logistically, this doesn't work out since the stage select screen follows the character select screen in the actual game, forcing the loser of the previous game to announce the stage verbally. But again, these are the formal rules that need only come up if the player chooses to enforce them and feels that doing otherwise would detrimentally affect the outcome of the tournament.

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As of yet, no official rules for 2v2 matches have been released.

Results

This list consists of the top three finalists for each bi-weekly tournament, as well as any special notes pertaining to that event:

#1 - Oct. 22, 2006

1. MICH
2. BackItch
3. RJM

#2 - Nov. 5, 2006

1. BackItch
2. =]
3. RJM

#3 - Nov. 19, 2006

1. xpiritflare
2. BackItch
3. RJM

#4 - Dec. 3, 2006

1. MICH
2. xpiritflare
3. BackItch

#5 - Dec. 19, 2006

This edition of Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash was compounded by having certain Christmas-themed items turned ON.

1. MICH
2. =]
3. Nitrocidal

#6 - Dec. 30, 2006

Both LemonLau and Fox Machine came from out-of-town to participate in the sixth bi-weekly tournament in Calgary. LemonLau is an Edmonton resident and Fox Machine, although a resident of Calgary, was living in Vancouver for school at the time.

1. LemonLau
2. BackItch
3. Fox Machine

#7 - Jan. 14, 2007

1. xpiritflare
2. BackItch
3. =]

#8 - Jan. 28, 2007

1. xpiritflare
2. BackItch
3. =]

#9 - Feb. 11, 2007

1. BackItch
2. MICH
3. =]

#10 - Feb. 25, 2007

1. BackItch
2. MICH
3. RJM

#11 - Mar. 11, 2007

The eleventh tournament in Calgary was hosted the day after CAST, which instilled confidence in Kithkin after a solid performance against other Albertan smashers. He would subsequently go undefeated until the final round of the local tournament one day later.

1. xpiritflare
2. Kithkin
3. BackItch

#12 - Mar. 25, 2007

1. BackItch
2. Kithkin
3. Nitrocidal

#13 - Apr. 7, 2007

1. xpiritflare
2. =]
3. M

#14 - Apr. 22, 2007

1. xpiritflare
2. M
3. BackItch

#15 - June 3, 2007

1. MICH
2. =]
3. pibbers

#16 - June 30, 2007

1. LemonLau
2. =]
3. M

#17 - July 15, 2007

1. BackItch
2. MICH
3. DJT

Trivia

• Every seven tournaments, the colour of the text in which tournament announcements are made at Smash World Forums changes.
• For the Christmas edition of Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash (#5), thematic items including Freezies, |Starmen, and Red and Green shells were set to 'Very Low'.

External Links

• ProImpact.ca - A hub of CCSC and Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash information.
• ProImpactPlayers YouTube Channel - features highlight reels, full matches from tournaments and more.
• ProImpact FileFront Page - downloadable copies of highlight reels/videos.

SWF

• Pro Impact BI-WEEKLIES - Calgary, AB - the official thread for Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash at SmashBoards. Includes sign-up information, the latest news from the local community and official upcoming tournament announcements.
• Pro Impact BI-WEEKLIES - Video Thread - the official thread for videos produced and released from the footage gathered at tournaments; contains links to view streaming video and downloadable content.
• L+R+A+St - post announcing temporary cancellation of Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash.