Smash

Japan wins Splatoon 2 and Smash Ultimate Nintendo World Championships

06/08/2019

Teams from Japan won both Splatoon 2 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at the 2019 Nintendo World Championship tournaments. These tournaments, along with a Super Mario Maker 2 invitational, took place on June 8. It was Nintendo’s first event of E3 2019.

Japanese Splatoon 2 team GGBoyz consisted of Taiji, etona, Dynamon, and yamamicchi. They defended their title as the reigning champions of the 2018 Splatoon 2 World Championship.

GGBoyz advanced out of pools as the first seed, defeating Lime Soda from Australia/New Zealand and FTWin from North America. Both of these victories came in Splatoon 2’s Turf War mode. In the main bracket, GGBoyz beat Lime Soda once again with a 3-0.

FTWin met GGBoyz in Finals by beating European team Alliance Rogue. FTWin carried momentum from their Semifinals victory, taking the first two games of Finals off of GGBoyz. In addition, FTWin players Keven “2-D” Catalan and Ryan “[K]yo” Lofton are members of For the Whatt. For the Whatt notably won Splatoon 2 at Smash’N’Splash 5 on June 2.

Despite FTWin’s strong start, GGBoyz responded with a reverse sweep to win the final set 4-2. Splatoon 2 producer Hisashi Nogami honored GGBoyz after their victory. In addition, he announced the final Splatfest, Chaos vs. Order, and gave details about Splatoon 2’s upcoming update. Version 5.0 will allow players to play on all 24 of the Shifty Stations from previous Splatfests.

Smash Ultimate Nintendo World Championships

A Japanese team also won the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 3v3 championship. Team Japan was led by prodigy player Sota “zackray” Okada. Japan’s other players were Kuro, Konbu, and akasa.

Japan actually lost in the first seeding round. Konbu lost a singles match to Europe’s SirJon. Kuro and zackray then tied in a doubles set against Viktor “Light” Strohmeier and Robin “RobinGG” Gronau. They beat the team from Australia/New Zealand in their second seeding match. As a result, they entered the main bracket as the third seed and had to play North American in round one.

Japan overcame a tight battle against North America in the main bracket. In their first Squad Strike match, zackray notably played against the second most prominent participant at the tournament, Carrington “Wrath” Osborne. The finals match against Europe was more convincing. In the first two matches, zackray and akasa three-stocked their opponents with their opening characters. Kuro opened his game against RobinGG with a zero-to-death. However, RobinGG did make a comeback against Kuro in order to force a game four. Even so, Konbu won his Squad Strike match against SirJon, giving Japan the 3-1 victory.

Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser came out to present the Japanese players with their medals. Afterwards, the players received a congratulatory video message from Smash Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai. In it, Sakurai confirmed that the next DLC character would be revealed during Nintendo’s E3 Direct on June 11 at 9:00 AM PST.