Last day donation drive for ST with speed runners Funkdoc and Withhelde. Currently running Castlevania III. Link.

@FLStyle said:

Recent ST donations are under review.If you want to donate to ST because you think it has a chance to win, pls hold off for now. RT me!

— Tom Cannon (@ProtomCannon) January 31, 2013

Tonight at 7 PM PST we begin the final #Skullgirls#Evo2k fundraiser! Guests, prizes and more await so don't miss it! twitch.tv/eightysixed

— Skullgirls (@Skullgirls) January 31, 2013

Any idea what could of happened to ST?

@ImmortalSaiyan: Who knows, could be routine checking since such a large amount came out of nowhere all at once, could be suspicions of shady business. I'm not sure how that method of donating could be exploited outside of developers and publishers donating huge amounts, but that was supposed to be banned from the start.

spooky has a house stream going on in support of ST

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

That ST comeback yesterday was fun to watch. From 10K all the way to the lead within a couple of hours. Looks like SSBM leads again by 4K, it should be interesting to see what comes out on top! I was rooting for MBAAC at the start too (though I didn't have much hope for it), as well as FiM, Skullgirls, Melee, and All-Stars. At the moment, I think I'd like to see Skullgirls or Melee the most. Even though Turbo is a major classic (and had one heck of a comeback), I feel like the other competitors offer more diversity to the lineup.

@FLStyle said:

@ImmortalSaiyan: Who knows, could be routine checking since such a large amount came out of nowhere all at once, could be suspicions of shady business. I'm not sure how that method of donating could be exploited outside of developers and publishers donating huge amounts, but that was supposed to be banned from the start.

In my head I still have the picture of someone that is rich enough and would probably donate huge amounts anyway. Out of the kindness of his heart and the nostalgia of playing SF, he roots for one last hurrah at evo. Little did he know, he made a big difference (meh, he probably knew).

@inknail said:

Even though Turbo is a major classic (and had one heck of a comeback), I feel like the other competitors offer more diversity to the lineup.

Exactly. While I can see why people would want to have possibly the classic of the entire genre there. One other Street Fighter game is already on the line up and a cross over game that features street fighter.

Current Standings-

47,795.78 ssbm

38,970.00 st

31,102.50 sg

Melee is kinda running away with it at this point. But it ain't over till its over. The old ST fans will try and keep it interesting to the bitter end. All the moneys going to breast cancer research so whoever wins its all good.

As with an ebay auction it may come down to the final seconds. The donation ends at 3am EST.

Standings with links to donation pages.

@FLStyle said:

Recent ST donations are under review.If you want to donate to ST because you think it has a chance to win, pls hold off for now. RT me!

— Tom Cannon (@ProtomCannon) January 31, 2013

Tonight at 7 PM PST we begin the final #Skullgirls#Evo2k fundraiser! Guests, prizes and more await so don't miss it! twitch.tv/eightysixed

— Skullgirls (@Skullgirls) January 31, 2013

Just for anyone who is curious some of the voice actors of skullgirls are doing voice requests from the chat right now.

There was talk of Christina Vee doing a pirate-valley-girl Nu and Erin Fitzgerald was doing her Chie voice and talkin' bout steaks and Fsteaks were mentioned.

No games are being played on stream right now :p

@VicRattlehead said:

spooky has a house stream going on in support of ST

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

Yeah.

Also Melee is at $52K now.

@JJOR64 said:

@VicRattlehead said:

spooky has a house stream going on in support of ST

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

Yeah.

Also Melee is at $52K now.

56k now.

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

@JJOR64 said:

@VicRattlehead said:

spooky has a house stream going on in support of ST

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

Yeah.

Also Melee is at $52K now.

56k now.

I'm only seeing $52K on my end for some reason.

EDIT: Now I see $57K. GGs ST. :(

One of the Cannons telling people not to donate for ST on twitter kinda killed it. People are saying ST is locked now.

Two hours left to go and SSBM is still far in the lead, with SG trying to close the gap. Might be a close one yet

@thegoldencat7 said:

One of the Cannons telling people not to donate for ST on twitter kinda killed it. People are saying ST is locked now.

Been hearing that there might be some sort of ST thing planned for EVO already. Only time will tell.

@JJOR64:

Yeah theres always at least a side tournament. Still would have liked to see it on the main stage. But they had special prizes and voice actresses recording messages and such and we had a drunken Arturo in a Haunts mask playing Sfxt.

Wow! If the (edit:skullgirls) stream chat is to be believed then Melee jumped 20k in a few minutes. It's at, like 84k now I think?

Three minutes remaining. Its going to be insane.

Melee looks like it could break 100K on it's own in the last couple of minutes lol. Skullgirls donations are climbing pretty high too, but I'm thinking it looks like Melee for the main stage at the moment.

And it looks like Melee is our winner.

I got wrapped up in the feel goodness that was the Skullgirls stream so I'm a little bummed it didn't make it but together those two games made ~160k. That's intense.

I also had no idea Melee had such a following.

Those last ten minutes were insane. Where did all that money come from?

Final Standings: -

Super Smash Bros. Melee

$94605

Skullgirls

$78760

Street Fighter II Super Turbo

$39567

Around £223K raised. Unbelievable. I'm off to sleep.

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

Those last ten minutes were insane. Where did all that money come from?

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

Those last ten minutes were insane. Where did all that money come from?

Seriously. The last ten minutes of the Skullgirls and Melee stream chats turned into utter chaos while Spooky's ST stream was calm for the most part. Poor Art.

I can't wait for the Smash hate and the subsequent defense force.

No-one stops the Smash Bros. army! Congrats to Melee, hopefully it'll be a fun tournament.

@FLStyle: How was the thread title from this 3-week-old thread updated to include the fact that SSBM won the 8th spot? I thought thread titles were unchangeable, even for mods.

@BisonHero: Blog titles can be changed from the blog page, also functions as a thread name changer.

Awwww yeah, Melee. Heh, what happened to Street Fighter? Barreling into first place out of nowhere only to get destroyed at the last moments of the auction? It all goes to charity anyways, and they've raised a crazy amount of money.

So who is hype for Melee? Do you think the game will be well received by the FGC or hated on? I bet Smash is going to put of a quality showing,

I'm not a big Smash Bros guy, but congratulations to the Melee players. That amount of dedication has to be respected.

If Apex's Top 8 was any indication, Melee's gonna be extremely hype at Evo. I just hope for the Melee community's sake that the FGC will give them the support/respect they believe it deserves. Melee grand finals if anyone's curious.

Boo smash.

I was hoping Skullgirls would get top billing, that game deserves it.

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

@Demoskinos said:

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

Well, Jeff and the grand majority of the FGC?

A friend of mine plays Melee Competitively. Its crazy to watch. He always uses the bird man guy.

Glad to see Melee win since that is more entertaining to watch. Also Melee is not a real fighting game.

I was hoping WWE 13 would somehow get the vote, would of been cool to see some high level wrastlin', Wish they would scrap SF x Tekken and just focus on Tekken Tag 2, no need for that terrible hybrid SF game,

@Mesoian said:

@Demoskinos said:

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

Well, Jeff and the grand majority of the FGC?

Which is just silly. Because it is.

@Demoskinos said:

@Mesoian said:

@Demoskinos said:

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

Well, Jeff and the grand majority of the FGC?

Which is just silly. Because it is.

It is if you cut off access to half the game. Pro rules for Melee are ludicrous, though not as bad as Brawl's rules.

Maximilian with an overview of the donation drive and what Melee at EVO means for the Smash Bros community.

A lot of money was raised for charity with this event, and it also brought a lot of excitement for people to get the games they'd like to see into EVO; I'd call the drive a big success! Hopefully, there'll be a lot of skilled SSB players at EVO to show how technical the game can get. As far as Skullgirls go, there'll probably be a side tournament featuring it, and hopefully those running the side tournament will be able to set up a separate stream channel for it as well.

@inknail: I hope they get a side tournament. The community deserves it. With 8 main games and the MLP side tournament not sure if there would be space or time to run this.

@Demoskinos said:

@Mesoian said:

@Demoskinos said:

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

Well, Jeff and the grand majority of the FGC?

Which is just silly. Because it is.

It is if you cut off access to half the game. Pro rules for Melee are ludicrous, though not as bad as Brawl's rules.

@Hailinel said:

@Mesoian

@Demoskinos said:

@Mesoian said:

@Demoskinos said:

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

Well, Jeff and the grand majority of the FGC?

Which is just silly. Because it is.

It is if you cut off access to half the game. Pro rules for Melee are ludicrous, though not as bad as Brawl's rules.

All of this. Considering that the competitive Smash community is insanely restrictive in what's allowed, it is just a bit absurd to put it on the same level as Street Fighter.

I don't see what is wrong with tweaking the rules of the game? Items and some of the stages create a random element that is counter productive to competitive play. So they are banned. Would you really want to play a match on Pokefloats when money is on the line? With items they spawn randomly. So they may spawn closer to one player giving them the advantage.

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

@Hailinel said:

@Mesoian

@Demoskinos said:

@Mesoian said:

@Demoskinos said:

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

Well, Jeff and the grand majority of the FGC?

Which is just silly. Because it is.

It is if you cut off access to half the game. Pro rules for Melee are ludicrous, though not as bad as Brawl's rules.

All of this. Considering that the competitive Smash community is insanely restrictive in what's allowed, it is just a bit absurd to put it on the same level as Street Fighter.

I don't see what is wrong with tweaking the rules of the game? Items and some of the stages create a random element that is counter productive to competitive play. So they are banned. Would you really want to play a match on Pokefloats when money is on the line? With items they spawn randomly. So they may spawn closer to one player giving them the advantage.

This. The random elements need to be stricken out of the game in a competitive setting. Also, its not like there aren't banned characters and such in other games.

@Demoskinos said:

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

@Hailinel said:

@Mesoian

@Demoskinos said:

@Mesoian said:

@Demoskinos said:

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

Well, Jeff and the grand majority of the FGC?

Which is just silly. Because it is.

It is if you cut off access to half the game. Pro rules for Melee are ludicrous, though not as bad as Brawl's rules.

All of this. Considering that the competitive Smash community is insanely restrictive in what's allowed, it is just a bit absurd to put it on the same level as Street Fighter.

I don't see what is wrong with tweaking the rules of the game? Items and some of the stages create a random element that is counter productive to competitive play. So they are banned. Would you really want to play a match on Pokefloats when money is on the line? With items they spawn randomly. So they may spawn closer to one player giving them the advantage.

This. The random elements need to be stricken out of the game in a competitive setting. Also, its not like there aren't banned characters and such in other games.

The thing is, when you strike the random elements and every stage aside from Final Destination from the game, the version of Smash Bros. your playing is not an entertaining one. Certainly not to me, nor to a lot of others that enjoy the game at its defaults. And playing with the sorts of No Items/Final Destination players in casual settings, as I've done on occasion, is nothing but aggravating.

@Demoskinos said:

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

@Hailinel said:

@Mesoian

@Demoskinos said:

@Mesoian said:

@Demoskinos said:

This is me laughing at Jeff for not considering Smash Brothers a "real" fighting game. HAHA.

Well, Jeff and the grand majority of the FGC?

Which is just silly. Because it is.

It is if you cut off access to half the game. Pro rules for Melee are ludicrous, though not as bad as Brawl's rules.

All of this. Considering that the competitive Smash community is insanely restrictive in what's allowed, it is just a bit absurd to put it on the same level as Street Fighter.

I don't see what is wrong with tweaking the rules of the game? Items and some of the stages create a random element that is counter productive to competitive play. So they are banned. Would you really want to play a match on Pokefloats when money is on the line? With items they spawn randomly. So they may spawn closer to one player giving them the advantage.

This. The random elements need to be stricken out of the game in a competitive setting. Also, its not like there aren't banned characters and such in other games.

It's a design issue. There are ways to take a seemingly random element and provide it on the battlefield in a way that never gives a player a distinct advantage over the other. I point squarely to the Naruto: Ultimate Hero series (well...after 3 anyway), which did this in such a way that no one could ever complain if someone got an item, only on the randomness of that item which could be adjusted in settings. Smash has always placed emphasis on unpredictability, a notion that flies in the face of fighting games. Brawl isn't on the table, but it's certainly the evolution of that idea with game play adjusted for things as big as world hazards being bigger and more outlandish than they've ever been, down to simple tripping. Moving back a generation doesn't fix that. Items are a part of the gameplay of Smash, they always have been. If you remove items, 75% of the stages, then factor in the neutral tier list, you have a game where everyone is using 3 characters who are clones of one another on 2 stages which are clones of one another. It's ridiculous.

Smash is, and always has been, one of the best party games of all time because of the air of unpredictability always keeps things interesting, no matter how good or bad the players involved may be. But it is a TERRIBLE fighting game. And until Iwata and Sakurai decide they no longer want to appeal to 100% of their market in order to focus down the FGC primarily, it never will be anything different.