Tourney (disambiguation)

A preview of the bracket in Brawl

This article is about the game mode. For information on competitive tournaments, see here.

Tournament Mode is a feature in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Brawl which features three modes:

• Tournament
• Loser out
• Winner out

Tournament

An example of a bracket in Melee's Tournament Mode. Here, the tournament is set up to have 64 different participants, the most that Melee supports.

In the tournament mode, players battle against each other in turns. Several options can be chosen for tournaments, including:

• The number of competitors in a tournament (ranging from 4-64 , 32 in Brawl, in two or four player tournaments and 6-27 in three player tournaments)
• The number of computers and humans in a tournament
• How many players fight in each tournament match (In Melee, the number of players only go up when you insert the certain number of controllers. When there are four controllers inserted, two to four players fight in each match, when there are three controllers inserted, two to three players fight in each match, and when there are one or two controllers inserted, two players fight in each match.)
• How stages are selected
• The CPU level of computer players (Levels 1-9 as well as a random option)
• Individual custom rules for matches

In Brawl, there is some more options such as:

• Handicap for individual players and computers
• Set a player to "Drop out" computers that will automatically drop out when their match comes so that people can play with uneven amounts of players.
• One can switch between Samus-Zero Suit Samus, Zelda-Sheik and Pokémon Trainer and his Pokémon by pressing - on a Wii Remote, the Right Control Sitck on a Classic Controller, the C button on a Wii Remote + Nunchuk, and the C stick on a Gamecube Controller.

Loser out

This mode is also played in turns, but unlike Tournament, where the game ends when a final winner is proclaimed, this lasts forever (or at least until the player decides to stop playing). The loser of each match "drops out" and has to wait until it is his or her turn again.

Winner in

This mode is an extension of Loser Out. It is used for Free for All matches containing 3 or 4 players. When a match is complete, all players except the winner swap out. If four players are in each match, the three losers will swap out. Similarly, in 4-player Free for All matches, players may choose to keep the best two players in, while the other two swap out.

Winner out

This mode is exactly the same as the aforementioned loser out mode, except that the winner of each match drops out instead of the loser.

Competitive play

Despite the name, Tournament Mode is never used in actual competitive play, for many reasons:

• Tournament matches consist of a set of 3 or 5 games, while Tournament Mode only allows single game sets.
• Tournament Mode forces players to remain a single character for the entire tournament, while actual tournaments allow players to use any character they want for any game in tournament.
• Actual tournaments almost never use a single elimination bracket, which is the only bracket type available in Tournament Mode.
• Tournament Mode does not allow players to have any control over player position in bracket. This forces players to play with a randomized bracket, instead of a properly seeded bracket, which is an essential for a tournament to produce accurate results.
• Tournament Mode has a maximum bracket size of 64 in Melee and 32 in Brawl, when actual tournaments rarely enforce an entry cap and are capable of attendance exceeding these caps.
• A tournament in Tournament Mode can only exist on one setup, when actual tournaments require many setups to be run efficiently.
• For the prospect of using Tournament Mode to keep track of a tournament, rather than actually playing a tournament with it, there exists tournament organizing programs such as tio, which are much more efficient in aiding tournament organisation than Tournament Mode could ever be. Additionally, using Tournament Mode in such a way uses up setups that could be used to progress the tournament.

In short, Tournament Mode is too limited to be useful for serious tournaments.