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Monday, February 7, 2022

(Don't join the) NintendoVS Challenge Cup February 2022!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Guaranteed to be a bad experience... based off previous experience.

This Saturday (February 12 2022), from 18:00 to 21:00 Eastern time, Nintendo of America is holding an in-game competition for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: The NintendoVS Challenge Cup February 2022. In terms of ruleset and process, it's exactly the same as the NintendoVS US Challenge Cup Fall 2021, with the exception of Canada and Mexico being allowed to participate. Unlike then, this Challenge Cup will only be one event instead of two events on different weekends. The top eight contestants with the highest Tourney Score—a terrible system with no transparency or way to know how well you're doing until the event is over—will win a prize.

NintendoVS Challenge Cup February 2022
Stay away!


The prizes are the same as last time, except there are no Super Smash Bros. Ultimate pin sets, NintendoVS lanyards, or NintendoVS badges. The number one grand prize winner will still get paid out in 10,000 MyNintendo Gold Points and get a backpack, trophy, jacket, and Nintendo Switch carrying case, while places 2–4 will only get 7,500 Gold Points and the carrying case. Places 5–8 will only get 5,000 Gold Points and a carrying case.

I played the Challenge Cup Fall 2021 on both of its weekends and regret doing so. The combination of overpowered items plus Final Smash Meter plus having just two stocks to work with makes matches often have unfair and extremely frustrating endings. Perhaps worst of all, all matches played in the Challenge Cup have the option to save the match as a Replay disabled, so I can't share my frustrating moments to the world. (So please take my word for it that things like exploding Party Balls that spawn on top of me made it so I lost a match just as my opponent was about to lose their last stock off the size blast zone actually do happen.)

The randomness and variability isn't enough to make, say, a relative newbie or casual player end up as a winner. It just might make it so the top 500 players in North America all have a shot at getting a prize, but not, say, the top 500,000 players. Top Professional Nairo literally got second place in the last Challenge Cup. The ending standings are dominated by professional players who'd do very well in a competitive tournament anyway, but the journey to get there is way less fun.

Since you're already on this website, you for sure have better ways to spend your Saturday. You can read KoopaTV articles! Or, you can play other videogames. You can even play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but in more fun conditions. Last Saturday night I played in a small GameFAQs (Board 8, or the GameFAQs Contest Discussion board) tournament and actually won it. That was very fun! Way more fun than playing the slog of the Challenge Cup, which has been frustrating and awful every single time I've ever done it. And that isn't going to change.

I'm still eagerly waiting for what Nintendo plans to do in 2022 with competitive Super Smash Bros., however! Hopefully Canada and Mexico will be able to play there as well since they're re-allowed into these events.



Ludwig has a long list of games he'd rather play than participate in Saturday's NintendoVS Challenge Cup, and unlike previous instances where Ludwig warned people not to play it but he plays it himself, he actually will follow his own advice this time. Will you?


Real officially sponsored competitive Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for North America continues with the NintendoVS North American Open April 2022!
Nintendo brings back the Challenge Cups for May 2022, where it has the exact same ruleset as February's.

6 comments :

  1. No worries on this score for me. I went cold turkey on playing Smash with other people years ago.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Would you watch me playing Smash with other people in the present day? :x

      Delete
    2. Oh, I have no issue with WATCHING people play Smash with other people. I follow Hungrybox on Twitter--he's no PGR-er at Ultimate but he's excellent at content creation. One does not need to know how to paint to appreciate art, after all.

      Delete
    3. There's plenty of things I both wouldn't want to do myself or watch other people do. Like anything involving League of Legends.

      Delete
    4. Well sure. I mean, I don't want anything to do with League of Legends or Call of Duty (or other shooters) or horror games myself. But this is not that.

      Delete
    5. Well maybe I'll slip in some replays of me playing competitive Smash.

      Delete

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