Genesis (tournament)
Genesis, stylized as GENESIS, is a series of annual "Super Smash Bros." tournaments occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area of the US state of California. The first Genesis tournament took place in 2009 in Antioch at the Contra Costa County Fairgrounds. Alongside EVO and The Big House, the GENESIS series is considered to be one of the largest and most prestigious "Super Smash Bros." tournament series. History. The first tournament, GENESIS, started in Antioch, California, and began on July 10, 2009. The tournament was organized by Boback Vakili and the Concord-based DBR crew, which had Smash  players such as SilentSpectre and G$. At the time, it was the largest Melee tournament in history and the fifth largest Brawl tournament. The tournament featured players from around the world, including the US, Sweden, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. This tournament was significant in that it was Armada's first tournament in the US and started the Mango - Armada rivalry, not only at the GENESIS series, but also Melee. GENESIS 2 took place two years later on July 15, 2011. The tournament was hosted by Boback and DBR and was again held in Antioch, California. The tournament decided to  add the original Super Smash Bros. and Project M, in addition to Melee and Brawl. The tournament was also sponsored by Red Bull and SABERGAMING. The tournament was notorious in that Robert "Zelgadis" Scherer stole prize money that was accidentally left behind and reportedly lied. After police investigation, Zelgadis confessed and gave back the money. This incident damaged the reputations of Zelgadis, DBR, GENESIS, and the Smash community as a whole. GENESIS was planning to make a comeback in 2013 and 2014. However, Boback could not commit to planning since many other tournaments were taking place. Thus, the revival was  stalled. Nearly five years after the incident, Boback and the DBR group announced GENESIS 3, which took place on January 15, 2016. Brawl and Project M were dropped from the tournament and Super Smash Bros for Wii U was brought up. Another change is that the tournament moved from Antioch and moved to San Jose, California, with the top 8 of each game taking place at the San Jose Convention Center. The tournament stands as the third largest tournament in Smash tournament, behind EVO 2015 and EVO 2016. In addition, GENESIS announced its partnership with Nintendo. Additional sponsors included HTC , ASUS, and Skillz. With over $20,000 in prize pool money for Melee and over $10,000 in prize pool money for Wii U, this was the biggest community-funded tournament in Smash history. This tournament features Mango and Armada in the grand finals for the third GENESIS tournament in a row. GENESIS 4 was announced to be on January 20, 2017. This tournament was organized by Boback, Dr. Z, and Germ from DBR. The tournament kept the same lineup of games as it did in GENESIS 3 and was hosted at the same venues. GENESIS. The first GENESIS tournament  was held on July 10–12, 2009, in Antioch. "Melee" singles was won by Joseph "Mango" Marquez. This would mark Adam "Armada" Lindgren's first time playing in the United States and would spark a historic rivalry between Mango and Armada. Melee doubles was won by the duo of Mew2King and Jman, Brawl singles was won by Ally, and Brawl doubles was won by Mew2King and Fiction. In Melee Crew Battles of East Coast and West Coast, East Coast won. GENESIS 2. GENESIS 2 was held two years later on July 15–17, 2011 again in Antioch and at the county fairgrounds . "Melee" was won by Adam "Armada" Lindgren in a rematch of Joseph "Mango" Marquez in grand finals; doubles was won by Lucky and Mango. "Brawl" was won by Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman over Elliot "Ally" Bastien Carroza Oyarce; doubles was won by the two Grand Finals participants. Smash 64 was won by SuPeRbOoMfAn of Canada and Project M was won by Kage. In Melee and Brawl crew battles, both were won by the West coast. GENESIS 3. A third tournament was not announced until 2013, but that effort was eventually cancelled because of scheduling conflicts with other tournaments, particularly Apex in  New Jersey. In August 2015 GENESIS 3 was again announced and eventually occurred from January 15–18, 2016 in San Jose at the San Jose Convention Center and City National Civic Amphitheater. The tournament was sponsored by Nintendo. Tournament organizers initially planned to allow top ranked players to automatically advance to the top bracket, but backed off after backlash from social media and community figures. Eventually, tournament organizers went along with floating the Melee players to the second round, but made the Smash 4 players play in the first round. This event is the second largest Smash event ever (behind EVO  2015) and the largest community run event. It was again won by Adam "Armada" Lindgren over Joseph "Mango" Marquez, with the grand finals being a repeat of the previous two tournaments. "Wii U" was won by Gonzalo "ZeRo" Barrios over Samuel "Dabuz" Buzby. Smash 64 was won by Japanese player wario, who was able to attend the tournament from a crowd fund. Also through a fundraiser, a $500 "Bobby Scar Award" was awarded to fifth place; it was named after the Smasher and commentator Scar, who made a run at the first GENESIS, placing 6th. It was given to  SFAT after PPMD said he didn't have motivation playing more. In crew battles, team Hungrybox won the Smash Draft crew battles and Japan beat SoCal to take the regional crew battles. In the 4th installment of the Melee Games, UC Irvine took the title, beating Georgia Tech. A documentary about the "Smash 64" scene called "The 64 Story: Genesis 3" was shot at G3. GENESIS 4. GENESIS 4 took place on January 20 to January 22, 2017, in San Jose, California and used the same venues as GENESIS 3. Nintendo was once again a sponsor of the tournament, along  with HTC, Nvidia, Controller Chaos, Twitch, Red Bull, and many other sponsors. Like last year, tournament organizers announced the top 64 Melee players at the event would automatically be in the second round of the tournament, sparking backlash from top players such as Leffen and Armada. In crews, team Silent Wolf defeated Team Hungrybox in Melee Draft Crews and Team USA defeated Team Japan in Wii U World Crews. Melee doubles was won by brothers Armada and Android over Leffen and Ice. Wii U doubles was won by Ally and MKLeo over the Japanese duo Ranai and Komorikiri. Lastly, Smash  64 doubles won by defending champions JaimeHR and SuPeRbOoMfAn over last year's runners-up tacos and The Z. In Wii U singles, Mexican Smash player MKLeo defeated Ally to win GENESIS 4 and Peruvian Alvin defeated favorite SuPeRbOoMfAn in Smash 64 singles. For the fourth time in four GENESIS series, the Grand Finals pitted Armada and Mango. Armada defeated Mango in Winner's Semifinals and Mew2King in Winner's Finals to get to Grand Finals. Mango defeated Leffen in what some consider to be one of the greatest sets played, and subsequently defeated Hungrybox, and Mew2King after being sent  to the loser's bracket by Armada. Prior to top 8, Armada nearly lost to Johnny" S2J" Kim in a close five-game series; had S2J won, S2J would have been the first player outside of the "Five Gods" and Leffen to defeat Armada in a tournament set since Pound 4 in 2010, where Amsah "Amsah" Augustuszoon, a Sheik player from the Netherlands, beat Armada 3–1, knocking him out with a 4th-place finish. The grand finals set was a convincing 3–0 victory for Armada over Mango, winning his third GENESIS title in a row. Genesis 4 was subject to  a controversial anomaly which was discovered during the Super Smash Bros. 4 match between Komorikiri and Captain Zack. As per the recommended ruleset for Smash, the "launch rate", which determines how much, if at all, the knockback dealt by moves will be modified, was supposed to be set to the default of 1.0, however at the end of the match it was discovered to have been set to 0.9 for the entire set, and testing from dataminers proved that this was also the case for the previous set between ZeRo and Dabuz. Despite this, the tournament organizers decided that instead  of replaying the whole set, a single game would be played to decide the winner of that set, which triggered criticism from viewers and members of the community alike. GENESIS 5. GENESIS 5 was announced on July 16, 2017. It was held from January 19, 2018, to January 21, 2018. After two events in San Jose, the tournament organizers moved to Oakland and the event was held at the Oakland Convention Center, which is attached to the Oakland City Center Marriott hotel. Sunday matches were held in the Paramount Theater. SuPeRbOoMfAn placed himself at the top once again in Smash  64 after defeating the defending champion Alvin in a close grand finals after Alvin dominated the Canadian in the first set of grand finals. MKLeo defeated the dark horse Mistake from Canada to defend his GENESIS title. The Melee singles for GENESIS was a historical one for the Smash scene. HugS became the first ever Samus main to reach top eight at a super major. In addition, Plup won GENESIS 5 after defeating Hungrybox in the grand finals, making him just the second non-God to defeat all five Gods and win a super major. This meant that the GENESIS  saga between Armada and Mango in the grand finals came to an end, after Armada placed 4th and Mango placed 5th. GENESIS 6. Genesis 6 (stylized as GENESI6 or GENESIX) was revealed shortly after Genesis 5 on their Twitter page's bio but didn't receive a proper reveal until June 12, releasing a trailer on Twitter and YouTube and the smash.gg page. The tournament took place on February 1–3, 2019 in Oakland, California. Pools took place at the Oakland Convention Center and top eight took place at the Paramount Theatre. This tournament also featured Splatoon 2, Slap City, Dance  Dance Revolution, Magical Drop 3, Windjammers, and Rivals of Aether tournaments. Ever since Smash 64's Genesis debut at Genesis 2, no American had won the singles event and that trend continued as k y s k defeated Josh Brody in a close series that went all five games. k y s k would also go on to win the doubles event with his partner Prince. For the first time in Genesis history, Melee was not the featured event due to the newly released Super Smash Bros. Ultimate exploding in popularity. With three time Genesis champion Adam "Armada" Lindgren retiring  from playing singles in 2018, this meant that his and Mango's historic rivalry came to an end; in addition, William "Leffen" Hjelte dropped out from Melee singles to focus on his Ultimate tournament. This paved the way for many potential players to be in the grand finals against the favorite Hungrybox. Many placed Plup and Mango to be the favorites to go to the grand finals, with S2J and aMSa as dark horse candidates. However, Mango was upset heavily in pools against the 97th ranked Sasha "Magi" Sullivan, but managed to fight his way through the loser's bracket  before he fell to aMSa at 5th. S2J had a strong run, but he unluckily ran into two Gods in Hungrybox and Mango. aMSa and Plup had very strong runs as well as they both managed to face off against each other in the winner's quarterfinals, but aMSa fell to Plup and then Plup fell to Hungrybox in winner's finals. In a turn of events many did not expect to see, Axe had made his way to the grand finals, as he had struggled prior against players ranked much lower than him, but he managed to make his  first ever super major grand finals. In the grand finals, Axe and Hungrybox were virtually neck and neck, even though Axe had only defeated Hungrybox once in his career back in 2014 and had been dominated by Hungrybox. In the end, the top ranked player in the world edged out Axe for his first Genesis title. Genesis 6 was the first super major for Ultimate and the top two seeded players, Gavin "Tweek" Dempsey and Nairoby "Nairo" Quezada were upset in the top 64 bracket and failed to qualify for the top eight. The grand final featured the eighth seeded  VoiD against the third seeded MkLeo, who both defeated the seventh seeded Samsora, VoiD from the winner's side and MKLeo from the loser's. MKLeo had a couple of comebacks to take a set and reset the bracket. In the second set, VoiD had some comebacks of his own, but MKLeo was able to take home another Genesis title for the three-peat. GENESIS 7. Genesis 7 took place in Oakland, California on January 24–26, 2020. Marth player Zain, who was sponsored by Twitch streamer Ludwig Ahgren to wear his "Mogul Moves" line of clothing while competing at the  event, won Melee singles without dropping a single set. Zain defeated top-seeded Hungrybox in grand finals. In a similar fashion as Zain, Zero Suit Samus player Marss won Ultimate without dropping a set, defeating top-seeded MkLeo in grand finals. GENESIS 8. Genesis 8 took place in San Jose, California from April 15th to April 17th, 2022.