It’s a great week to be a Smash player. Yesterday, Nintendo stunned the community by announcing a potentially new Super Smash Bros. for the Switch during their Direct presentation, and today, the next installment of the competitive community’s favorite event was revealed.
Hosted bi-annually, the Smash Summit is an invitational that brings together the best players, casters, and content creators the Super Smash Bros. Melee community has to offer for a weekend vacation/retreat/tournament. Beyond the Summit, which curates the event, typically invites eight of the top-ranked Melee players, leaving the rest of the tournament spots to be filled through a now-notoriously thrilling and raucous fan vote. It’s an honor to be chosen for the Summit, very much evident by the reactions at the end of the voting period last year.
The first Summit of 2018, though, brings with it a new wrinkle. This time, there’s a theme:
A Marvel theme may seem random for this event, but there are a couple of logical reasons. First, it’s a big year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Black Panther completely taking over society this past month and Avengers: Infinity War dropping just one week before the Summit. Also possible is that the theme is an in-joke from the BTS crew, as “When’s Mahvel?”—relating to Marvel vs. Capcom 2—has become a well-known and oft-used meme in the fighting game community. (It should be noted, however, that the gentleman in the logo is a reference to Superman, a DC property.)
So far, the only confirmed entrants for Smash Summit 6 are Armada and Hungrybox, two of the famous gods of Melee. More should be announced soon, as well as the official start of the fan voting period, so look out for more news between now and the start of the event on May 3.