Villager Retrospective Part 1: The Early Days
Colgate - April 12, 2018Hi everyone, Colgate here. If you know me it's probably because of my youtube channel or subpar twitter account where I post such uncontroversial opinions as 'Cloud vs Villager is even'. But today I decided to expand. I went and got the inspiration to write a little Villager retrospective, in the wake of Smash 5 and the spiritual death of Villager's metagame. This is just my take on it, at 6:30 am, and as someone that was just entering the scene at the time. Without further ado, let's take a look at one of the more interesting stories, in my opinion, of Smash 4 history.
Villager is a fascinating character, speaking as someone that is both a player and an avid spectator of the game. He probably will forever be known as the character that could. With a mix of strange moves overall, and an unfortunate grab, he was considered low tier before the game even came out, through speculation and trailers that we saw at the time.
On Smashboards, most would say he would turn out bottom 20, most likely. And that may seem a bit odd to think of now, considering Ranai's dominance with the Character in Japan and incredible showings in the US with his performances at Genesis 3 and EVO 2016.
However, there was a time before Ranai started getting attention, where his main representatives were MJG in doubles, often with FOW, and even before him, Zee, considered by most as one of the first 'big' Villagers. Now a Pokken player, Zee showed us a bit of what could be done with the character in 1v1, and with that came slightly less noticed but with good performances in their own right, the aforementioned MJG, and Nebraska's Skillager. Heck, remember when Salem used the character with some degree of success? Yeah that was a while ago.
But despite, all of his decent placings at regionals and majors and of course, great doubles performances, there wasn't anything too impressive about the character. Especially considering at the time, most of the game's top tiers were leagues above every other character.
Through the onset of patches and nerfs and buffs, Villager remained relatively unchanged, just getting a slightly more normalized recovery and better grab game. This led to him slowly catching up to his contemporaries, at least in thoretical potential.
And then we started to hear about a certain 'Ganbaranai' who was dominating Japan with the character...and that's when Villager's second era begins
But that's a story for another day. Thanks for stickin around if you have, and see y'all soon. Have a good one!
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