Another year, another missed Combo competition. Unfortunately I’ve decided to head to Monterey Car Week this summer, which means I won’t be able to attend the new extended week. Supernova (aka Smash Con) and watch my all-time favorite show: The Combo Contest.
Supernova is the biggest Smash event in the world, which includes the Melee, Ultimate, Brawl, 64, and Project M tournaments (at least in the past). It also features a Smash awards show, a cosplay contest, camaraderie, and all the awesome stuff you’d expect from a community-focused event. That means the pros who make the money match and the fans bet on the Top 8 and all the other chaos.
And one of my favorite contests starts over the long weekend: the Combo Contest.
Magic Combo Contest (with Huntsman’s feet)
The Combo Contest takes place within Smash 64, buried in the training mode. The goal: get as many hits on the NPC before you can. You should never throw away the string and you should be as creative as possible. After that, the judges will award you up to 10 points based on innovation, talent, and craziness.
In the past few years, there have been some crazy highlights. Blake “Huntsman” Davis got everyone moving when he pulled out two controllers to control two different characters in one of his combos. And he controlled one of the characters with his own the feet. I’ve seen this myself, and I can say that it was horrible and unbelievable to watch someone barefoot on the Smash stage.
He raised it in 2025 and had three characters, which means three controllers. One in his hand, and one in each foot.
Then there is the Japanese player, Prince, who is one of the most flawless Combo Contest entrants out there. He can pull off incredibly complex combos with a higher success rate than other players, even if there are a lot of objects and crazy trajectory angles to track. He’s been away for the past few years, but I was able to get him to sign my Smash Con shirt a while back.
The boos from the judges – especially Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma standing up in disbelief – and the cheers from the excited crowd made this one of the most electric moments of the weekend. But what makes Combo Contest the best Smash tournament is that it is completely it embodies the spirit of the place.
It cannot be recreated, it cannot be manipulated
Combo Contest will get you no fame and little money. You will be less familiar than the top players in Melee and Ultimate. There are people within the Smash scene who will never know. This is truly for the love of the game.
The Combo Contest is about passion, skill, dedication, and innovation. You take the game from the 1990s and continue to discover new things, new combos, new tricks, and new ways to show off your skill beyond anyone who has been grinding for decades. This is like Melee on steroids. It’s the same few characters, the same things, the same categories, but you have to find a way to be more creative and more creative to stand out. Years later on. That’s why you’ll see bare feet coming out (for free) and more controls.
After you come up with a crazy combo, never seen in a game that’s over 30 years old, you’ll have to grind that combo out for the rest of the year. You have to dedicate a ton of time to perfecting the combo in hopes of making it as close to Supernova perfection as possible. That means learning exactly how far an NPC bounces back at a certain percentage, how fast an NPC flies when hit by a certain object for a certain percentage of damage… Insanity.
And he practices that all year long thanks to a small group of crazy Smash fans. No one else in the world cares. And that doesn’t bother you. He just wants to prove himself. He just wants to release something crazy to the few who get it.
Combo Contest is Smash at its rawest. It’s the kind of magic that can’t be replicated anywhere else. In fact, if you throw too much money into a Combo Contest, it could risk killing it completely. It’s not about mass production. It’s not about the views on the broadcast. No forced hype here. There is no special time that can be clipped. 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 real. Its greenness. Willingness to win after grinding a combo all year, even if it means no money, is not recognized. Remove that element, and it disappears. This is the epitome of Smash culture and its obsession with passion and sweat. Players who grind all year, who put their whole life and spirit into an old game, fall to their knees and cry when they win a game… This is a culture that cannot be bought and built.
That being said, who can’t wait to watch Huntsman kick his ass at Supernova 2026? I can safely say that I would rather see that than any hypercar in the world. So I will be there next year. I should be like that. It’s worth flying across the country. It’s something you won’t hear or hear anywhere else.
I’m talking about the Combo Contest, BTW. Not just seeing his grippers on the N64 controller.
