The Book of Melee

by Edwin Budding

Since its 2001 release, Nintendo's crown jewel, "Super Smash Bros. Melee," has inspired multiple generations of players to sustain a grassroots community. The Book of Melee is a deep dive into the universe of competitive Melee, gaming's greatest and most unlikely underdog story.

In The Book of Melee, longtime Melee enthusiast and gaming journalist Anokh "Edwin Budding" Palakurthi covers the history of competitive Melee through the lens of its greatest legends, including "The Five Gods of Melee" and many more.

Simultaneously absurd, heartwarming, and tear-jerking, The Book of Melee tackles the evolution of the most passionate cult following of the 21st century, from crowded restaurant basements to packed arenas.

243 pages, paperback

First published August 1, 2019

Reviews

[Zach Archer · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a huge fan of competitive Melee, I unfortunately found this book to be severely lacking in a couple of major ways. It simultaneously doesn't add enough new insight to make it worth the time to read for veteran Melee fans while also not explaining things thoroughly enough for anyone new to Melee to understand. I found it odd that at certain times the author would go out of his way to explain specific phrases or elements of the game, seemingly posturing for this to be a newcomer-friendly book, while at other times just haphazardly throwing in inside baseball-level terminology with no context for those same newcomers.

Even for me as someone who knows most of Melee's competitive history as well as the terms that come with it, I found the book to be pretty lacking in direction, often sporadically introducing new players with not enough depth being given to who they are, or rattling off tournament results without really fleshing out the significance of each win. The book feels underdeveloped in that regard, so while I might get a little enjoyment here from reliving some of Melee's historic moments, that doesn't really come from the substance of the book but rather the pre-existing knowledge I have of these different players and points in time. I can't imagine anyone new to the scene getting too much from this at all, considering that narratively it doesn't add much of value.

I think it also needs to be said that the story of Melee's competitive history is much more effectively told through a visual medium, with YouTube deep-dives and the prolific "The Smash Brothers" documentary already having done a better job at telling these stories. You lose so much by not having that visual element to show off the different gameplay techniques as well as showcase the passion and stakes within some of these iconic moments. The Book of Melee fails to bring anything new to the table to justify its own existence. But what can I say, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to own a book that has a GameCube on the cover.

Lastly I need to mention that the book itself had so many errors that I was actually shocked to see in the credits that there were even editors at all! Not just one or two errors, but a consistent amount throughout the whole book- whether it be wrong punctuations, misspellings, weird formatting issues, or points where there clearly was a complete change in the structure of a sentence and the author just forgot to delete some words he left behind. I'm just surprised that these errors weren't clocked in even one read-through because I found it hard to not notice them myself.

All in all, I'm glad to have taken a walk down Melee memory lane, but The Book of Melee simply has too many flaws and not nearly enough new information for it to be worthwhile or for me to recommend it with confidence to neither long-time Melee fans nor people wanting to get into Melee for the first time.

[Nathan Luftman · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a long-time fan of professional Super Smash Bros. Melee, Edwin Budding's "The Book of Melee" serves as a well-written and objective journey through the struggles, triumphs, and overall growth of the scene. The book is laid out chronologically, tracking competitive Melee from its beginnings in basements to the hundreds of thousands of spectators it regularly gets today. Like its film counterpart, Samox's "The Smash Brothers," TBOM tends to follow the history of the scene through the accomplishments of specific players; while I don't disagree with this approach, I did sometimes feel like other top players were being given their due. I don't want to critique TBOM for its medium, but it needs mentioning. This is a book about a video game community, and without visuals to back the words up, no one but die-hard fans would likely find much enjoyment from this book. That being said, to those familiar with the Melee community will probably find it an excellent addition to the canon of Smash games and a work on par with "The Smash Brothers" in its depth.

[Eric Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few things to say:
• If you've watched the doc recently, you could skip straight to chapter 17 as it the content in the previous chapters is the same (with not more nor less amount of information).
• If you don't follow the smash scene, I personally wouldn't recommend this book because it's really easy to get lost as there are too many competitors without much insight about them. It might be better to watch the doc.
• There were too many bracket results being stated in this book, without really explaining its level of impact in the scene, spectators, and the competitors.
• There could have been more discussion about the melee scene itself, and its community (chapter 25 did a great job at this)

[Ryan Dash · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 star. Unfinished – I read chapters 1-9 (50 pages, 29%), the last two chapters, and the notes. The prose was fine, though the organization could have been better. Unfortunately, everything in this book was expressed better in the Smash documentary, which everyone who might read this book has already seen. Text is simply an inferior format for the competitive history of a video game.

[The Gadfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

a nice look into something i've been interested in for a long time.

chudat is ancestral.

[Henry Liebentritt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most I can say is that this came out a bit too late to be dealing mostly with the old guard of Melee.