Videogames being a young medium, in order to develop real nostalgia you've got to start early. Nintendo has this figured out: Stick a controller in a newborn's hand and you have a gamer for life. Relationships are forged not just with other gamers, but with the characters too.
So during the holiday shopping craze of 2001, every Nintendo-loving child and teen frothed at the chance to unwrap Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube. Its nostalgic appeal goes straight to the gamer's heart, pitting fan favorites like Super Mario, Donkey Kong, and Link (of The Legend of Zelda) against one another in a digital brawl.
Smash Bros. was initially marketed to young fans as a silly, casual party game. Flash-forward 13 years: The kids have grown up, and so has the way they play.
At the Folsom Street Foundry in SoMa, Smash Bros. competitors play for keeps.
Since February, Showdown eSports gathered the best Northern California Smashers for tournaments with cash prizes at the Foundry, though casual players are also welcome. Andrew Wu, 26, hosts the Smash Bros. night for Showdown. He says the game's transformation from party game to ultracompetitive death match was mostly accidental.
"Once people started discovering game exploits, optimizing character movements and combinations, it became difficult to master and competitive," Wu says. Fans broke the game, and in doing so created a way of fighting that requires perfect joystick movement measured in milliseconds.
The silly game of defending against Princess Peach's flailing fists became like chess, at 50 mph.
Smash Bros. is now recognized as an "eSport," high-stakes, big screens, large prizes. If the notion of Electronic Sports sounds like an absurdity, thousands of enthusiasts worldwide would disagree. In South Korea, videogame athletes play League of Legends in massive stadiums under the same hot lights Americans reserve for pigskin pounders and people named Bumgarner.
The local Nintendo pugilists are humbler, but no less competitive. Their battles are streamed on Twitch, a live videogame internet streaming service Amazon recently acquired for $1.1 billion.
But that's not to say the smashers are high strung: The Foundry game night is filled with welcoming folk, sloshing beer, and laughing under club-like purple lights. Amateurs can easily challenge noted Smash Bros. star-competitors, like SFAT, PewPewU, and Shroomed.
To gamers, that's like swinging a bat with Pablo Sandoval.
In that way, Showdown's Smash Bros. nights at the Foundry are reminiscent of the arcade days of yore, when all one had to do to challenge the best Street Fighter players was to put a quarter next to the screen.
"If this were anywhere else besides San Francisco, it wouldn't work," Wu says. "People are in tune with our gaming culture."
The arcades have long since died out, but in San Francisco, the sticks still twirl, and the players game on, bigger than ever.
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