A military veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder revealed how Super Smash Bros Melee helped him in his time of need.
Smash Melee has been around since 2001 and remains one of the strongest competitive fighting games going. It has even outlived multiple Smash titles to come after it, such as Brawl and the Wii U version.
However, due to technical drawbacks and the lack of a remaster from Nintendo, players were stuck with the limitations of the Gamecube or simple emulators – that is, until Slippi entered the fray and introduced rollback netcode, proper matchmaking and more.
As it turns out, the community project ended up helping more than just Smash pros wanting a new way to play their favorite game.
Smashing PTSD
On Reddit, user ‘theleatherdonut’ wrote about how a few years back, he’d made a post about being a veteran in Richmond suffering from PTSD. He explained that playing Smash had helped his recovery, but he didn’t go to tournaments at the time due to large crowds.
“Fast forward a few years… I was going to locals, hanging out with people, and actually starting to feel like I was socially getting back to myself,” the veteran wrote in a new update.
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Once the global health crisis hit, he was worried that being alone would once again send him back to a “dark place.”
“Not being able to see some of the same people and just generally scared to go to sleep because of nightmares and sh*t like that,” he added.
Slippi changed the game
Luckily, all that changed with the introduction of Slippi. “I can pop on Melee for a bit with some friends and just get lost for a while. This community, for all the sh*t that it gets, has helped me so much through just simply playing and loving this game,” he remarked.
To end, he had some advice for those in a similar boat. “Whether you’re sad about situations in your life, or maybe you’ve seen some things deployed, maybe your home life is rough, whatever it is, reach out to the people in this community.”
As the next generation begins with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, it’s good to know that even a launch title on the GameCube nearly twenty years ago is still finding new ways to bring people so much joy.
