Melee in 2023

I’d known melee existed as a competitive game for years but until slippi there wasn’t really a way for people to play casually. There had been netplay attempts with melee before but waiting around in lobbys or dolphin’s community servers wasn’t a great experience.

Sometime last month I started playing online while I couldn’t play desktop competitive games. I was playing a lot of lichess and offline gamecube games. I installed slippi on whim and gave unranked a whirl and lost about 60 games in a row. I enjoyed having a challenge and didn’t feel pressured to win because I was a complete beginner. After a month of playing I’ve gotten to a healthy point in unranked where I’m winning about 50% of the time.

The Netplay experience

The slippi netplay experience is a unique one. There is no way to talk to your opponent other than using the predefined D-pad chats which has its ups and downs. It kind of reminds me of playing rocket leauge and spamming “Nice shot!” when you’re teammate own goals.

Netplay is at its best when you find someone who is pretty even with you and will play a lot of matches. Its worst is when you keep getting “one and done’d” by people who are way better than you and don’t even give you a second chance to figure out how they play.

My favorite thing so far about playing this game online is the rage quitters. People will really miss one recovery and disconnect. Or better yet you hit every recovery and refuse to die. It keeps me playing.