| 09 June 2011
When the 2007-08 NFL season began, the Madden community was ready to get into action, and that meant going to all of the Madden Challenges, preparing for the next Players Bowl or studying up for the upcoming Mid-Atlantic major events. This was my first full season covering it on Get Your Tournament, and I don't even think I was ready for the surprise.
Actually, it probably wasn't a surprise to see everyone use one of two teams. The game at the time was built to where imbalances were noticeable. It's not like what it was in Madden 11 or what it's going to be in Madden 12.
I tried to block out all of the negativity surrounding the lopsidedness. So what if everyone was using only two of 32 teams? It was about the players and how THEY played. And then I started doing research of tournaments back in the day just before I got into the scene. It was all Atlanta Falcons. Sure, you'd get the occasional Jacksonville Jaguars user, but he'd get blown out by the second quarter.
One team dominating every Madden tournament season is nothing to shrug shoulders about. But in the 2007-08 season, it was two teams. You had to use either the New England Patriots or San Diego Chargers to even give yourself a chance to win. And the strangest part was, neither was a counter to the other.
So when Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out a year later, I didn't understand why people were so up in arms about Meta Knight being the best. OK, so what if he was the best and so what if everyone used him? I was used to this in another tournament scene. Apparently, I was in the minority, and for the next couple of years, there were talks of banning him from tournaments (he's still not, if you're wondering).
Now we're getting it again. The twins in Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition are good. They're not just good, they're really good. Like they-took-their-talents-to-Arcade-Edition-and-only-self-stupidity-can-stop-them-from-dominating good. This is the fear of most tournament players, that all we will see is Yun or Yang win every major championship. That could be true.
Maybe this is just a tendency we have as competitors. It can happen in any competitive realm where we see something initially and say "Holy shit, we have no chance" (examples are the 2010 Philadelphia Phillies, Alexander Karelin and Chong Li).
Then we realize that we can either join the army and be the best user of the over-used character, or play some "A tier that seems F tier" character and try to beat the army of top-tier users. This is where a motivational speaker would come in and challenge you to find your inner beast and pick that below-average character. That person would give you a glass of two raw eggs, yell in your ear, make you punch a slab of tri-tip, and give you that extra drive to rise above all.
Let's just say, if that message was sent in Madden or Brawl, barely anyone listened. So I don't expect it to be either with Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition. The twins will dominate and will win every major tournament because nobody wants to motivate themselves to break through the army, and then we will all bitch that there's no variety. Oh well.
Funny thing is, I have met a couple Madden players over the years that have intentionally not picked the best team. At Mega Bowl 5 in 2007, JRhodes went with the Dallas Cowboys, which were good but not great like they would eventually be in the next 2 years. He said his gameplan was to not pick the Atlanta Falcons and instead, find a team that can hold them down.
At the initial tournament in the 2008 Madden Challenge, Young Nephew won using the Minnesota Vikings. Not only that, he dominated. That was a weird pick, but I understood it seeing as though they had Adrian Peterson, so you basically could just run up the middle and control the clock (a harbinger of things to come that season).
When we talked about why he used the Vikings, he assured me that they weren't the best team in the game, but that he used it because he knew how to beat the best team in the game, the Cowboys. So why not pick the best?
"I want to challenge myself."
