As the sun beat down on the asphalt streets of Seocho-gu, Seoul, on July 15, there were almost no cars or people in sight.

But, beneath a nearby hanbok store was an underground gaming cafe where a small, but vibrant, group of gamers had gathered.

Eighteen gamers were immersed in “Super Smash Bros. Melee,” released by Nintendo in 2001, and this community of gamers is the only one of its kind in Seoul.

“Super Smash Bros.” is a series of crossover fighting games, allowing characters across different Nintendo platforms to fight one another. “Melee,” the second of four “Smash” games released, was published by Nintendo for its GameCube console nearly two decades ago.

Due to its high technical ceiling and unique combat engine, it has remained a popular competitive game in North America, Europe, and Japan. At the 2016 Evolution Champion Series, the largest fighting game tournament in history at the time, “Melee” peaked at 232,900 viewers on streaming platform Twitch, outstripping every other fighting game including its successor “Smash 4.”

But in Korea, “Melee” is practically unknown, vastly overshadowed by other fighting games like “Street Fighter” and “Tekken.”

The reason has to do with the weak presence of Nintendo -- and consoles in general -- in Korea.

“At the end of the day, Nintendo is not famous in Korea and console games are not popular in Korea,” said Josh Glandorf, 29, community leader and tournament organizer of the “Smash” scene in Korea until the end of 2016.

At the turn of the century, when PC games like “Starcraft” were becoming popular, most Koreans already owned PCs, “so if they’re going to have any kind of possible game system, it’s going to be a PC and not a console,” he added.

Online gaming in Korea continues to grow. A report by market research firm Euromonitor International in June valued Korea’s online game market in 2017 at $1.69 billion, the world’s third largest.

Furthermore, Nintendo released “Melee” “in a very minor fashion” in Korea, according to Eric Kim, community co-organizer of the Korean “Smash” scene.

In Korea, the game was distributed by a third party company called Daewon CI, not directly by Nintendo and could only be played on a Japanese GameCube. Kim described the release as “not Korean-ized, not marketed,” since Koreans had to purchase an imported console to even play it.

Other infrastructural barriers unique to “Melee” make it difficult for players to gather and play together. As the original form of “Melee” has no online component, the main way gamers can play one another is to meet in person, which presents its own challenges.

For instance, competitive “Melee” is are not readily compatible with modern TVs or monitors, and games are usually played on old cathode ray tube TVs -- the heavier, bulkier predecessors of flat screens that Glandorf notes are now hard to find and difficult to transport. Another obstacle is finding a venue big enough to support multiple TVs and players. The Korean “Smash” scene has switched locations at least three times since 2014.

Helen Xandria, who currently attends Hanyang University in Seoul, says the absence of a “nostalgia factor” is the reason why “Melee” never became big in Korea.

“One of the reasons why people in the West play ‘Melee’ so much is that as a kid they grew up playing ‘Melee,’ they thought it was a really fun game, and they realized there was this whole other world,” said Xandria, who attended elementary school in the US.

“It’s got this nostalgia factor while being a really skilled game. In South Korea, there really isn’t a nostalgia factor. You couldn’t even play it here because GameCubes were so scarce in South Korea, it’s nearly a collectible at this point.”

As a result, membership of the Korean ‘Melee’ scene is quite low. According to Glenn Kim, the other community co-organizer, “We would have years with only six entrants at best, and that’s if we were lucky,” Kim said.

But the scene is being kept alive by an unexpected group: expatriates. As a result, the composition of the “Smash” community is sporadic and constantly changing. As many as 17 entrants participated in the “Melee” monthly tournament in July. Most of them had come from the US, although there were two from Sweden.

Members post often about weekly meet-ups or monthly tournaments on the Korean Smash Facebook group, and newcomers are welcome, but the scene has yet to see consistent growth.

“People view ‘Melee’ as a place to relax more than a place to complete, so I don’t want to be the guy to force people to do things,” Kim said.

But a hotly anticipated release of a new “Super Smash Bros.” game has recently sparked hopes in the community that the event would bring renewed attention to the Korean fan base. In June, Nintendo announced that “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” would be released worldwide on Dec. 7 for the Nintendo Switch, a console introduced here in December. This time, the Smash Bros. website has a version in Korean promoting the game’s characters, unique maps, and a brief how-to-play section.

Kurt Baek, 25, is optimistic that the release of “Ultimate” may foster a newfound interest in other games in the series.

“Right now, even some of the top players in Korea in the fighting game community want to try out ‘Smash’ competitively,” he said, referring to a tweet by Infiltration, a professional eSports gamer from Seoul. In June, Infiltration, primarily famous for his prowess in the “Street Fighter” series, had tweeted for advice from Smashers on how to prepare for “Smash Ultimate.”

“What I’m looking forward to (with) ‘Smash Ultimate’ is that it will bring more players, and at the same time, it will let those players get interested in the genre as a whole,” Baek said.

As “Melee” approaches its second decade, Glandorf said he doesn’t see it dying out, even in Korea.

“Basically, ‘Melee’ is too deep of a game mechanically and competitively that the only way it’s going to die is if people just can’t find controllers to play it,” he said.

But Glenn Kim is more pessimistic. He believes the game’s popularity will fizzle before it ever becomes popular in Korea. But he’s not too concerned.

“I’ve kind of come to turns that that’s just not what Korea is. And the game’s sick, and as long as I enjoy it, as long as we enjoy it, as long as we can just do this,” he said, gesturing to the rambunctious group of competitors behind him, “I’m not worried about it.” 

By Aaron Shi
Intern reporter
(ashi@heraldcorp.com)