THIS KILLS THE GAME: The Armada/Hungrybox Rivalry (part 1)
Hello, and welcome to Singstall, a site whose primary function is serving as a compact, chronological, searchable history log of competitive Melee. I’m still working on that. You can find the prototype here.
When you ask people their favorite Melee rivalries, you’ll probably hear about Mango and Armada, the two players that clashed at Genesis and have since defined Melee. You might get Armada and PPMD, who played three set classics at three of the most important tournaments of all time and gradually forced each other off their mains. There’s Mango/Leffen, Mango/Mew2King, even Ken/Azen and Ken/PC Chris if you want to take it back...but I contend that the best rivalry in Melee history is a matchup that has become a punchline: Armada/Hungrybox.
Long before seemingly every grand finals ended in a Fox/Puff showdown between the two best players in the world, Armada was arguably the best in the world and Hungrybox was just...a god, yes, but until relatively recently he was a lesser god, truthfully not much of a threat to take huge tournaments. But though he wasn’t exactly a demon, Hungrybox made himself the ultimate thorn in Armada’s side.
While Mango and Armada play a matchup they’ve both refined to perfection, this is mostly an extension of them being wonderful players against anyone. Armada and Hungrybox have always needed to dedicate a certain amount of headspace specifically to each other, which at some points led to them playing a game that barely resembled the Melee we thought we knew.
It’s all the more remarkable that the players involved in the game’s most infamous matchup are now the two best players in the world. We’ll explore their rivalry in six chapters, with the series hopefully concluding around Evo 2018.
Today, we begin with by far the shortest chapter, spanning only two sets. But it’s a great prelude to chapter two, which is something like the main event in this series.
I imagine that as the character matchup that we’ve become more familiar with emerges in chapter three, I’ll have less to say about moment to moment minutiae. But for now, I’ll likely squeeze out every fascinating bit of Peach/Puff, Young Link/Puff, Peach/Fox, and the rest.
Hopefully, instead of just telling you what happened, I can spin a good yarn.
Chapter 1: No One Wanna Hear Her Sing
It was a tale of Peach and Puff.
In July 2009, Armada, having toppled Amsah in two large tournaments earlier that year to establish himself as the best player in Europe, traveled to Genesis, a tournament name that would prove prophetic. Some didn’t expect him to even finish top 32.
But he kept winning and heads kept turning. He beat Lucky.
Then he beat DaShizWiz.
Then he beat Mew2King.
And then, he beat Mango.
Just like that, Armada had established himself as one of the greatest players on the planet. At times, commentators Phil and Waffles sounded resigned to his victory.
But a wrinkle quickly appeared: Mango dropped the Falco he’d played for most of winners finals and switched back to Jigglypuff, still his best character at the time. Just when it looked like Armada, up 2-1, would win the tournament in the first set of grand finals on Battlefield, Mango read Armada’s roll to the center and ended the game with an iconic rest.
Armada got rested so hard that we saw visions of the distant future. First, of Armada losing a lead on tournament point to a rest on Battlefield at the biggest Melee tournament to that point. And then, with Mango making Peach/Puff look as tragic as it feels today, of Armada trying out Fox against Puff, an idea he wouldn’t revisit against Puff until over five years later.
Armada had shocked the world, but immortality had just eluded him thanks to Jigglypuff. Like Bombsoldier before him, he destroyed expectations and instantly reinvented the character, but he would need to return to the United States again to cement himself as something more.
Armada’s second tournament in the United States, January 2010′s Pound 4, was an aberration, the very last time he would lose to anyone outside of an exceptional group of six players.
SilentSpectre upset him in winners, and to this day the only Falcon to defeat Mango remains the only Falcon to defeat Armada. Amsah upset him in losers, leaving Armada in fourth place, outplaced by another European. He would not get his rematch with Mango.
Had Armada defeated either SilentSpectre or Amsah, though, he’d have run into another headache: Hungrybox.
Half a year later, he’d finally run into that headache.
Though Armada’s and Mango’s Genesis sent shockwaves through the Melee community that we’re still feeling today, a much quieter success story would prove just as important: Hungrybox finished third, losing in each bracket to the eventual champion (after all, Mango would be his demon for the next roughly six years).
Hungrybox had been climbing already, finishing seventh at Revival of Melee, but Genesis was so much on another level that Hungrybox broke down crying when he upset DaShizWiz to make top 8.
Little did he know, he wasn’t even close to done. He tore through Darkrain, Scar, and Zhu before finally falling to Mango a second time to finish third.
The top three finishers at Genesis were all future Evo winners. To date, the only future Evo winners.
Hungrybox would continue ascending, double eliminating Mew2King at Tipped Off 5 and then winning Revival of Melee 2, his first major tournament.
Hungrybox was in the middle of a very successful year when Apex 2010 rolled around, and with his demon Mango sandbagging and exiting the tournament early, it would have looked like an obvious win for Hungrybox.
But Armada was there for his third American tournament. And, my goodness, Armada hated Jigglypuff.
No one wanna hear her sing.
Apex 2010 (August 8, 2010)
Still on a meteoric rise to godhood, Hungrybox began his bracket tearing through Tec0, Kage, and Vanz.
Armada returned after his disappointing Pound 4 performance, and was ready to make up for it and maybe, especially with Mango playing Mario during his “Scorp” phase, win his first American tournament. He made his way through Lucky, Axe, and Zhu to make it into top 8 on the winners side. The puffiest Puff and the ultimate Puff hater finally were to meet.
Winners Semis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4PDR98Y_FE&list=PLWE8jJxz4TmhZLIdUzY7BOphfbiWCTsRz
This was the only set between the two to not be accompanied by commentary.
The pair struck to Dream Land, and the tone of helplessness was set early on. On the very first stock, Armada shielded a strange rest from Hungrybox, but it was suddenly clear that the risk/reward in this matchup would be rather kind to errant rests, with Armada only putting on 28%. On Armada’s second stock, Hungrybox found a quick up-tilt into rest, and though Armada lived easily and punished the rest by taking Hungrybox’s first stock with down-smash, the 36% seemed almost worth the stock loss given the pace of the match.
Just think, using rest just to get some extra credit, giving up a stock. That’s the matchup’s struggle, right there.
Despite a solid game plan from Armada, namely walling out Puff’s back-air by frequently pulling turnips, he needed some luck to keep it competitive. Armada was fortunate enough to pull a Bob-omb, and fortunate that after a Puff up-air the bomb dropped directly onto Jigglypuff, taking a stock at 70% on an enormous stage and giving Armada a brief stock lead.
But it quickly evaporated, and though he was able to bring it to a last stock situation, a string of back-airs sent Armada into a pretty solid deficit. He managed to pull a beam sword, but didn’t do anything with it. Eventually Armada found himself offstage, floating back and getting hit off again and again until Hungrybox took the game.
Armada counterpicked to Final Destination and harshly accelerated his turnip pulls, going out of his way to find space to pull them safely before letting them rip. But this game was a lot less eventful than the last. On his last stock, Armada jumped out of an up-tilt rest setup, and though Armada found a much more optimal punish (turnip to charged down-smash) without platforms, Hungrybox connected a successful up-tilt to rest almost immediately after to finish the set 2-0.
Armada ran through Axe, PPMD (still Dr. Peepee, until April 2014), and Mew2King (a thrilling set in its own right) to make it back to Hungrybox in grand finals.
Grand Finals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoaIEuRlOYs&list=PLWE8jJxz4TmixkNzfDupiYbi2oDEWhS3C
“I really love up-air, it looks like Jiggs waving to the crowd, yo.” “It’s the ‘olé.’“ “Heh. ¡Olé!”
After striking to Final Destination, Armada began building a lead after Hungrybox missed another rest (strangely not noticing that Armada DI’d his up-tilt well) and eventually led by about a full stock, curbing Hungrybox’s aerial punishes and up-tilts with turnips. Over two minutes passed before Armada lost his first stock.
Thanks mostly to his improved use of turnips, which even covered a likely rest setup at one point, Hungrybox was still nearly at kill percent as Armada began his final stock. Armada’s constant projectile attack was a success (even if he again had no use for a beam sword), and it had shades of what their sets would look like for the next four years.
But Hungrybox finally found an up-tilt rest, immediately erasing the lead Armada had amassed and ending the game in devastating fashion.
Armada ran it back to Final Destination, and things immediately began terribly when Hungrybox, still only at 14%, hit a jumpless, recovering Armada offstage with a well-placed down-smash, taking a full stock lead crushingly quickly.
Peach doesn’t have any easy answers for that kind of lead in the matchup, but a missed rest (”that doesn’t matter”) and a turnip to charged up-smash punish quickly killed Hungrybox off the top (”It mattered!”), leveling the playing field when things could have been dire.
Armada kept it close for the rest of the game, lagging slightly behind and keeping up his turnip game as Hungrybox tried to constantly pressure Armada, frequently weaving in with neutral-air. We got another pretty tense game. But Hungrybox’s finisher fit the commentators’ narrative: up-air.
The third game would be both the last of theirs without commentary and the last of theirs on Kongo Jungle 64.
Hungrybox responded to Armada’s campy turnip game by taunting four times, perhaps as a nod to Peach’s infamous history on Kongo Jungle. But again, Hungrybox found an early kill, this time with up-tilt to rest. But again Armada answered without taking much damage.
Particularly during this match, both players showcased Melee at some of its very most evasive and defensive, something that would characterize their matchups to do this day. But the gap kept widening. Puff pulling ahead, as always, felt like an inevitability.
After bringing Hungrybox to his last stock, Armada was on his last legs with 119%, but managed to pull a stitch. Alas, he’d never get to use it. Hungrybox back-aired Armada off the stage, and Armada would never make it back.
With just over a minute left on the clock, Hungrybox won the third game, winning Apex 2010, winning all five matches against Armada’s Peach. It was so decisive, that in his post-tournament interview (which featured a surprise guest), the fact that he missed Mango seemed to loom larger than Armada.
Interviews: Hungrybox Armada & Aniolas (part 1) (part 2) Melee Singles Champion Hungrybox
But he couldn’t have known that it would be over four years before he’d win another major tournament – in fact, that was the next time we’d see Armada’s Peach against Hungrybox’s Puff.
He couldn’t have known that the era of Peach/Puff was over before it began.
Armada couldn’t finish Apex 2010 without creating a now-infamous clip.
Chapter Recap: Apex 2010 Winners Semis (Hungrybox, 2-0), Apex 2010 Grand Finals Set 1 (Hungrybox, 3-0)
Chapter Set Count: Hungrybox, 2-0 Running Set Count: Hungrybox, 2-0
Next time, The Kokiri Sword.