The tourney featured a showdown between fourth-ranked Kurtis “Moky” Pratt and Cody Schwab, the second-ranked player in the Melee community.
The two players both selected the Melee speed demon Fox McCloud and duked it out at Pokémon Stadium. When the stage transformed into its forest phase, both players were separated by a tree obstacle and began baiting each other to see who would make the first move.
Naturally, biding time in Smash Bros. Melee looks like the combatants rapidly dashing in place, a term known in the fighting game community as wavedashing. What is usually seen as mundane baiting quickly evolved into something far more interesting: a rare glitch.
Moky’s Fox was positioned in the splintered tree and idly wavedashed a little too much, triggering a glitch found on the Pokémon Stadium’s forest variant that, when the technique is done perfectly, will allow the player to phase through the stage. Unfortunately, the exploit led Moky to an untimely demise, giving the match to Cody and missing out on a $2,000 payday.
Funny enough, guest commentator and Melee player, Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma, mentioned the glitch possibly happening moments before the incident came to pass. The anticlimactic results stunned everyone in attendance, with Hungrybox screaming at the result and Moky and Cody looking at each other in disbelief. Moky would later head to X (formerly known as Twitter) to vent about the hilarious mishap, posting, “there’s just no way LMAOOOOO.”
Polygon reached out to both Moky and Cody for a comment on the 24-year-old glitch, but hasn’t received a response from the pro players.
Super Smash Bros. Melee is still kicking after all these years, and regardless of how many more Smash games Nintendo gives us, some players feel that Melee perfected the formula. In the two decades that the game has existed, players have shared numerous reports of glitches; some exploits could cause a Black hole, while others could apparently cause you to potentially lose out on winning $2,000.
