; the way home

The thumbnail for THE WAY HOME; Ultimate Level 9 CPU Tournament, featuring Erdrick battling The Agent.

### Air date

September 8th, 2019

**; the way home** is the 7th tournament of Season 4 of the CPUCS and the 22nd of the CPUCS overall. The video on YouTube is titled "THE WAY HOME; Ultimate Level 9 CPU Tournament". The tournament is named after a level in Mario Maker 2 played by Alpharad and JoSniffy on Alpharad's channel Alpharad Plus, minecraft; the way home.

King Dede took the tournament, defeating the bitter Hero Erdrick to win the tournament in memory of his fallen cousin King Dedede. Blue Incineroar struck out early, and Falco lost in Round 1 despite an impressive performance against King K. Rool.

In Thug Finals, Blood Falcon returned to attempt to kill King Dede, having been invited to fight by The Commissioner. However, commentator JoSniffy was chosen to step in to save Dede's life, where he made the ultimate sacrifice fighting off Blood Falcon, allowing Dede to escape to safety.

## Notable Moments

* Zelda loses two stocks to King Dede in her Round 1 battle by missing the same tech on Peach's Castle.
* When Marth wins his Round 1 battle, Alpharad leaves the room to ask him about his Counter ability.
* When Falco loses to King K. Rool, Jo can be heard leaving the room and yelling. He doesn't return to the commentator's booth until the start of Round 2.

## Trivia

* ; the way home was intended as the last regular appearance of JoSniffy, who was leaving to pursue a teaching career for an uncertain amount of time. The episode ended with a tribute to Jo, who left to pursue his teaching career in real life.
* This episode had several references withing the background music:
	+ The song that plays over the montage at the end is called My Dearest Friends, representing Alpharad's attachment to Jo. The song is from *Celeste*, Jo's favorite video game.
	+ MEGALOVANIA plays during Ness's Round 1 battle against Blue Incineroar. This references both the release of the Sans Mii Costume in Smash Ultimate as well as the Sans is Ness meme.
	+ The battle themes in the two Thug Finals matches represent the two defending fighters. When King Dede faces Blood Falcon, the background music is Masked Dedede from *Kirby Triple Deluxe*. When JoSniffy steps up, the music switches to Reach For the Summit from *Celeste*, Jo's favorite game.
* Erdrick becomes the third person to make it to finals twice, and lose both times. The other two are Luigi and Lucario.
* This is the first time Snake is in a CPUCS tournament since the Season 1 invitational, THE SUBSCRIBE GRAND PRIX.
* Ironically, King Dede actually had both a stock lead on Blood Falcon and not much percent taken (having only taken 28.9% on his first stock) before JoSniffy intervened, heavily implying that King Dede could have won his Thug Finals against Blood Falcon.
	+ However, it should be noted that Blood Falcon is fairly unpredictable in battle; Jo had a good percent lead over him until the final moments of the battle, and had Jo stayed on the stage at the very end instead of jumping down to attack him Blood Falcon would have lost.
* ; the way home featured no new fighters, thus, the total number of fighters who had participated in the CPUCS up to this point remained at 96.