Tournament rulesets (SSBM)
Tournament legal describes the settings that can be used in competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments. Because some stages, settings, and rulesets can lead to degenerative gameplay, tournament organizers have generally agreed on enforcing the following conditions in tournament play:
1-on-1
- Usually, sets between players are played best 2 out of 3 matches (using 3 out of 5 or 4 out of 7 for final rounds)
- Double Elimination
- Each match is played with timed stock, usually 3 to 5 lives and 6 to 10 minutes
- In the case that time runs out and both characters have an equal amount of lives, the character with less damage wins the match. If both characters have equal lives and damage, Sudden Death will determine the winner.
- Items are turned off
- Fox only
- The first match is played with a Random Stage
- The random select is comprised of neutral stages:
- In some tournaments, players are given the option to "strike" stages from the random select
- For the first match, characters are chosen double-blind - at the same time, so that neither player knows his opponent's character beforehand. In practice, this rule is often ignored, but players always reserve the option to force a double-blind pick.
- The loser of the first match (and of successive matches) chooses the next stage, and then the winner chooses his character, and then the loser chooses his character. This series of choices is called slob picks.
- The loser cannot pick any banned stages:
- The loser can also not choose any stage that has already been played earlier that round. This rule is known as "Dave's Stupid Rule," named after Scamp.
- As with the first match, in some tournaments players can strike stages from the opponent's selection.
2-on-2
- Rules that apply to 1-on-1 apply to team tournaments as well
- Neutral stages (different from 1-on-1):
- Yoshi's Story
- Pokémon Stadium
- Battlefield
- Dream Land (N64)
- Final Destination
- And sometimes:
- Rainbow Cruise
- Kongo Jungle 64
- Banned stages (different from 1-on-1):
- Friendly Fire (also called "team attack") is on
- Usually, players are allowed to steal lives from their teammates by pressing start after they die
Techniques/Glitches
In order to prevent degenerate gameplay techniques, many tournaments ban certain exploitations of the game that give one character and unintended and unfair advantage over others.
- Banned glitches
- Soul Breaker
- Freeze Glitch
- Yo-yo glitch (sometimes)
- Banned Stalling Techniques
- Repeated rising pound
- Repeated Peach Bomber on a wall
- Luigi Ladder
- N.B. The rising pound and peach bomber on the wall are only banned if they are being use to stall. Using them to recover is acceptable.
Controversy
Many non-tournament Smashers notice that the ruleset demands highly specific conditions - conditions under which they would rarely play - and that these rules squeeze the "fun" out of competitive play, and don't reflect a player's more cerebral skills. This argument, however, is disregarded by most tournament Smashers, who hold the opinion that the rigorous ruleset prevents "degenerate" gameplay, thus making competitive play more enriching (and fun).
More legitimately however, many players do argue about specific tournament rules. In Smashboards' nascent years, items were a major point of contention amongst Smashers - generally, East Coast Smashers wanted them turned off in tournaments and West Coast Smashers wanted them turned on. Item proponents stated that the use of items itself required skills and did not reduce the depth of the game; item opponents emphasized the often unfair randomness to item appearances, especially explosives like Bob-ombs and capsules. Eventually, the community reached a consensus that items should be turned off in tournaments due to the element of randomness.
Another point of controversy involves which stages should be deemed neutral, pickable, or banned. While Smashers generally agreed that the immense Hyrule Temple gave an unfair advantage to fast-moving characters like Fox, other stages were still up to question. Some people wanted to ban all moving and irregular stages, to reduce the game to battles on relatively simple stages, whereas others wanted to allow any stages that did not foster an unfair advantage to one strategy or character. Today, the neutral and banned stages are generally constant, but they still fluctuate from tournament to tournament.
