-Armada refusing to participate in some tournament because they wouldn't use a specific controller and TV set up. Say what you want about Two Best Friends Play, but them ripping this to shreds was hilarious.
I want to clarify how stupid this in particular is.
It was more specifically Armada dropped out of a tournament, when he was one of the big names they used to push viewship and participation, because his controller
was working properly. More specifically, some Gamecube controllers have a hardware issue where the control stick snaps back on releasing it, giving a brief input in the opposite direction which is nearly impossible to humanly do otherwise. The rate of controllers with this defect is around one in thirty, but could be as low as one in a hundred. Apparently this issue can also self-correct, probably due to wear on the controller or even the environmental temperature. This is partially the reason why you see some Smash players carry around five controllers and do minutes-long button checks.
So Armada refused to play with any of his controllers because he couldn't access an exceedingly rare manufacturing error. As one would assume, the technique this enables must be very important. As it turns out, all it lets you do is turn around without doing a 5-frame animation. And no, there's not many instances where this would make a difference. And yes, you need to heavily adjust your playstyle in
other regards to compensate for the fact your controller has snap-back. To top this all off, a "tournament-approved" hack of Melee changes the game's code to make it so this technique is possible
without malfunctioning controllers, and for no reason there's a controversy as to whether or not the use of these malfunctioning controllers should be banned for tournaments which do not use this hack.
As Two Best Friends Play pointed out, a controller that lets you do techniques which are otherwise impossible would be banned in any tournament. The example they used was an actual instance where a controller allowed both left and right inputs, which broke the game's mechanics in the user's favor, hence causing this controller to be universally banned as cheating. A good analogy in layman's terms would be a controller for Smash which, when pushed, would input the most optimal commands for breaking out of a grab. While the instances where this is useful is limited, it is still an unfair advantage which would enforce all players to use this controller just to compete on equal footing.
I don't feel too strongly about people complaining "you need to break Melee to make it competitive to begin with." There's been instances of that in countless video games, like bunnyhopping in an FPS. But I am bothered when Melee players insist their game is not being broken in half to be competitively viable, because that's an outright lie. Just own up to it. You can like your ancient, rushed game held together by duct tape and gluesticks. But don't act ashamed to the point you need to deny reality.
