ShoppingTown Mall is a deserted place on Sunday mornings. Nearly all the storefronts are closed, its parking lot a desolate sea of unoccupied asphalt.

But this past Sunday was an exception. In the northeast corner of the complex, one shop was buzzing. With nine TVs each hooked up to gaming consoles and approximately 30 sets of eyes locked to each screen, not much could be heard except for fingers fidgeting on plastic controllers and the humming glow of a TV.

The store was Cloud City Comics and Toys, host of this past weekend’s Syracuse Smash, a biweekly tournament where gamers gather to play Nintendo’s hit fighting game “Super Smash Bros.” They’re all organized by Erik Garb, and have been running for about three years now — Sunday’s was the 30th. Locals find out about Garb’s events on his Facebook page, Syracuse Smash.

Jacob Greenfield | Assistant Photo Editor

“My heart and passion is in this game and community,” Garb said. “And I can say that the scene here in Syracuse did not exist until I made that page and started doing these events.”

The page has nearly 800 members, and Garb said he personally knows about half of them. He started it all after moving to Syracuse upon earning his master’s from the State University of New York at Oswego and realizing the area was void of a tangible community playing his favorite game.

Skill level varies from player to player, but many within the group have significant talent. Some, including Garb, have wins over players ranked in the world’s top 100.

This Saturday, the members of Syracuse Smash will put their reputation on the line as Garb hosts a larger-scale tournament, Cusetown Beatdown. It will take place at RetroGameCon 2016 at the Oncenter in downtown Syracuse.

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Garb said he expects anywhere between 100 and 200 people to show for the competition, an inflated number from his usual turnout for the biweekly events — mainly because this one is held within a larger convention. There will be console giveaways and a $500 cash prize to the champ.

But that’s not to say the biweeklies don’t carry any importance. Really, they’re lifeblood of the group. They usually draw somewhere along the lines of 40 to 70 people, Garb said. They’re so popular in fact, that they’re one of the reasons Garb’s roommate moved to Syracuse from Rome, New York.

The first 22 biweeklies were held at Cloud City. Garb had been there for a different gaming event years ago, and so he reached out asking to host there when he started Syracuse Smash. With a lot of open floor space and plenty of tables and chairs — along with what he called plenty of “nerd-type” stuff — it made perfect sense. After a short stint of hosting the events at The Vault downtown, Garb moved camp back to Cloud City this past weekend.

The entire operation is a group effort. Garb brings tons of equipment — he has 12 CRT TVs and oodles of extension cords and power strips. Most participants bring their own controllers and some even chip in with their consoles. Oh, and don’t forget the games themselves.

Jacob Greenfield | Assistant Photo Editor

The first edition of “Super Smash Bros.” debuted on the Nintendo 64 console in 1999. Fights take place between beloved Nintendo characters like Mario, Donkey Kong and Pikachu. The goal is to knock your opponents off the screen, which becomes increasingly easier as they take more damage.

Since that first game, three other versions have been released. “Super Smash Bros. Melee” came two years later for the GameCube, and “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” was released on the Wii in 2008. The Wii U console’s version, which can also be played on the portable 3DS system, is the most recent release. It came out in 2014 and is commonly referred to as “Smash 4.”

That’s a difference in 15 years, and it means multiple generations have fallen in love with the same basic game. For some, it was the game they grew up with. For others, watching streams of the game got them hooked just recently.

Solomon Bloch, a Syracuse University freshman mathematics major and Syracuse Smash newcomer, falls into the latter camp. He watched a famous “Melee” tournament online in 2013 immediately was drawn in by the game’s pace of play. “Melee,” which is much faster and generally accepted within the gaming community as the best of the four versions, is what drew Bloch in for good. He said it’s all about how dynamic game is.

“In conventional fighting games there’s a whole combo system where you can learn, and it’s muscle memory,” Bloch said.  “But in ‘Melee,’ every hit you get converts differently at every percent. Every hit is different, every combo is different.”

His doubles partner Jessie Santillan Jr., a junior political science major, explained his reasoning in layman’s terms.

“It’s a 15 year old game, but every game feels new,” he said.

Just after those comments were made, Bloch and Santillan lost their next match to a pair of two other SU students, freshmen Alec Petraske and Jimmy Cinski. It was a matchup that will likely occur again in the future, as the four of them are active in a group of players on campus.

Bloch said groups like these will pop up anywhere there’s a big enough population. He’s a member of similar groups downstate and near New York City.

“The bottom line is, if you’re in a populated area and you want to play ‘Smash Bros.,’ you can play ‘Smash Bros.,’” he said.

At a dorm floor event earlier this semester, Bloch had a peer approach him because he was wearing a Smash Bros. shirt. Now the two are pals and play together. Cinski said whenever he is playing in his dorm, fellow residents ask if they can join, stunned he’s playing a game that was such a big part of their childhood.

“Super Smash Bros.” unites, no matter the version of the game. Garb sees it at his tournaments, when middle school kids introduced to the game on “Smash 4″ will face off against 30-year-olds accustomed to the older versions.

“People will play Wii U at these tournaments and are like, ‘oh, maybe I should try ‘Melee,’” Garb said. “And it happens vice versa so it creates camaraderie between different generations.”

A trip to Sunday’s biweekly confirmed that. Players would bump fists before locking in on a match. Once it concluded, winners and losers alike were all smiles. And for Jacob Markusz, a Liverpool High School senior, that kind of environment has helped him build a lot of confidence. For him, the positive reinforcement within the group is key. It’s less about winning and more about getting better.

Jacob Greenfield | Assistant Photo Editor

“I was the best in my small group of friends,” he said. “But coming here and hearing I was OK was very important to me.”

Markusz called “Smash Bros.” a “couch game,” and he wasn’t wrong in doing so. But what Garb has done with this game goes far beyond any couch. He’s taken what started as some four-player fun and made it into a community of hundreds. And he has no intentions of letting up now.

“It’s something that I’ll never stop doing,” Garb said.

In-text graphics by Kiran Ramsey | Digital Design Editor

Published on November 2, 2016 at 8:22 pm

Contact: jtbloss@syr.edu | @jtbloss