The Combo Contest is unironically my favorite Super Smash Bros. tournament of all time

Another year, another missed Combo Contest. I have unfortunately decided to head to Monterey Car Week this summer, which means I won’t be able to attend the newly expanded Supernova (aka Smash Con) and watch my favorite tourney of all time: the Combo Contest.

Supernova is the largest Smash event in the world, featuring tournaments for Melee, Ultimate, Brawl, 64, and even Project M (at least in the past). It also has a Smash awards show, cosplay contest, friendlies, and all of the amazing things you’d expect from a community-focused event. That means pros doing money matches and fans taking bets on the Top 8 and all the other chaos.

And one of my favorite tournaments starts off the long weekend: the Combo Contest.

The Combo Contest takes place within Smash 64, buried in the training mode. The goal: get as many hits on an NPC before KO’ing them. You must never drop the string and you must be as creative as possible. Then, judges will give you a score up to 10 based on innovation, talent, and insanity.

In the past few years, there have been some insane stand-out moments. Blake “Huntsman” Davis had everyone shook when he whipped out two controllers to control two different characters for one of his combos. And he controlled one of the characters with his feet. I witnessed this in person, and I can say it was both gross and incredible to watch someone be barefoot on a Smash stage.

He stepped it up in 2025 and had three characters, which means three controllers. One in his hand, and one for each foot.

Then there’s the Japanese player, Prince, who is one of the most flawless Combo Contest contestants out there. He can pull off incredibly complex combos with a higher success rate than other players, even if there are multiple items and crazy trajectory angles to keep track of. He wasn’t there the past few years, but I managed to get him to sign my Smash Con shirt a while back.

The hype from the judges – especially Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma standing up in disbelief – and the cheers from the entertained crowd make this one of the most electric moments of the weekend. But what makes the Combo Contest the best Smash tournament is that it perfectly embodies the spirit of the scene.

The Combo Contest won’t get you any fame and barely any money. You will be even less of a familiar name than the top players in Melee and Ultimate. There are people within the Smash scene itself who won’t know you. This is truly for the love of the game.

Nothing else.

The Combo Contest is about passion, skill, dedication, and innovation. You’re taking a game from the 1990s and continuing to find new exploits, new combos, new tricks, and new ways to show your skill that is beyond everyone else who has been grinding for decades. This is like Melee on steroids. It’s the same handful of characters, the same items, the same stages, but you must find a way to be extra creative and extra talented to stand out. Years later. That’s why you’ll see the bare feet come out (for free) and the extra controllers.

After you come up with an insane, never-before-seen combo in a game over 30 years old, you have to grind that combo for an entire year. You have to dedicate a ton of time to perfecting the combo in hopes that it will be executed as close to perfect as possible come Supernova. That means studying exactly how far an NPC falls back at a certain percentage, how fast an NPC flies when hit with a certain item at a certain damage percentage… It’s madness.

And you’re practicing that all year just for a small group of weird Smash fans. Nobody else in the world even cares. And that doesn’t bother you. You just want to prove yourself. You just want to pull off something crazy for the few that get it.

The Combo Contest is Smash in its rawest form. It’s the kind of magic that can’t be replicated anywhere else. In fact, if you threw more money at the Combo Contest, it would even risk killing it completely. It’s not about a huge production. It’s not about viewership on a stream. There is no forced hype here. There’s no special moment that can be clip farmed. It’s one of those things that can only happen in the Smash community, in its current bubble.

Because the magic of the Combo Contest is in its realness. Its rawness. The determination to win after grinding a combo all year, even if it means no money, no recognition. Take that aspect away, and it’s destroyed. This is the epitome of Smash culture and its obsession with passion and sweatiness. Players that grind all year, put their entire life and soul into an old game, collapse to their knees and cry when they win a match… This is a culture that can’t be purchased and formulated.

That being said, who can’t wait to watch Huntsman whip out his feet at Supernova 2026? I can safely say that I’d rather see that than all of the hypercars in the world. So I’ll be there next year. I have to be. It’s worth flying across the country. It’s something that you can’t experience or feel anywhere else.

I’m talking about the Combo Contest, BTW. Not just seeing his grippers on a N64 controller.