2021 has been a year marked by change for Kieran "Allorim" Logue. After starting in the top lane for Immortals throughout the majority of the 2020 League of Legends Championship Series Summer Split, Allorim has found a new home in LCS on the analyst desk while continuing to compete in amateur competitions. One thing hasn't changed, though — Allorim is the self-proclaimed best Super Smash Bros player in the LCS community, and no one has knocked him off that throne.

Allorim spoke to Inven Global about his passion for the Smash franchise, playing against other members of the LCS in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and his perspective on Nintendo's strained relationship with the competitive Melee community. 

You're the self-proclaimed best Super Smash Bros Melee player in the LCS. Are there any other Melee killers out there in the LCS community in addition to yourself?

A lot of the people in the LCS who play Smash Bros don't play competitively much. I come from the Project M community, and I was all about playing it from right when it came out. I moved to Melee later on, and while I started playing Super Smash Bros Ultimate since its release, I still play Melee, too.

One of the players who played a lot a couple of years ago was Deftly. Deftly would talk so much trash to me because I play Mr. Game & Watch in Melee, so a lot of people think I'm a joke. He talked so much trash, and then we net-played and I beat his Falco.

After that, he challenged me offline, and during the first split of the NA Academy League, there was a Super Smash Bros. Melee setup at the Riot Games office. We went over there and I proceeded to four stock Deftly's Falco with my Game & Watch...[laughs] That was the first guy in the LCS I put down. 

Another player I played was rjs, who was known as Deus during his time as Counter Logic Gaming Academy's top laner. It's been a long time since I played against him, but when I did, I beat him every time.

It wasn't four-stocks, but a lot of three-stock and two-stock wins. I remember he got offline and said, "Your character is just cheese. I can't be bothered to learn how to DI and all of that against your cheese-ass character." [laughs] 

It's funny because I get that exact same reaction every time I play Mr. Game & Watch in Melee. Very few people know how to DI against Game & Watch. Obviously, he's not a good character, but he's my character and I cannot abandon him.

Sounds like a bunch of "Johns" to me.

I invite any and all LCS or Academy players to netplay me in Melee. Someone take me off my ego because at the moment, I don't think there's any competition between me and other players in the LCS scene. This goes for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Project M.

Do you main Mr. Game & Watch in Ultimate, too?

No, I main Ridley, and I also play Robin. I didn't like the feel of Game & Watch in Ultimate because he lost his parachute and that's the game-changer move for me. I don't like the way Game & Watch plays in the more recent installments of the Smash franchise, I feel like he is way campier than before. In Project M, and especially in Melee because his shield is so bad, you have no choice but to play aggressively. 

How did you get into Smash and how does that timeline intersect with your League of Legends career?

When I was a kid I owned a Nintendo 64, so I was big into Super Smash Bros and I have an older brother. As brothers who own Nintendo consoles do, we competed against each other in Smash. We went from N64, to the Nintendo Gamecube — we only owned Nintendo consoles growing up, really — to Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Nintendo Wii. I skipped out on Smash 4 entirely because that's when I was getting into Melee and Project M. 

I have a bunch of friends back in Georgia where we put on a Smash tournament between the boys. Smash is a game that I just think I'm good at because of how much I've played it. It's one of the few games in which I'm confident in my abilities. If I wasn't playing professional League of Legends, I would consider professional Smash. If I put in a lot of time, I think I could do really well. 

Melee is played as a 1v1 game, and top laners are often left isolated from other roles in the early game. Based on their playstyles as top laners, which player would hypothetically have the most potential as a Melee player?

That's a hard question… I have to think about who's good at league AND who can potentially be a good Smash Bros. player. 

If there was such a thing as TheShy in Melee, I feel like he'd be a Fox player shining me all the way across Battlefield into an upsmash. TheShy is FOR SURE a Fox player. 

I think Zoom would main Marth, and Khan is also a Fox player. [laughs] Most aggressive players are Fox mains. I'm trying to think of who would be a Falco player, because whenever I play against Falco, the lamest and best way to play him is short-hop laser whenever you can… Maybe GimGoon would main Falco. 

As a veteran of Smash, what are your thoughts on Nintendo trying to quash the competitive Melee scene? Have you changed your perspective on potentially competing in any Smash games since our last conversation?

What I can say about what Nintendo is doing is pretty much in agreement with everyone else: it really sucks.

Nintendo has always been poor when it comes to interacting with its competitive communities, and I can understand why because they seem to be really kid-friendly and they're more about the whimsical nature of Nintendo games than the competitive nature. It would really be great if they at least gave us the 'OK' to play their games, especially Melee, a game that was released on the Gamecube that they're still trying to take down. 

It really sucks because Melee has such a great community. It's so competitive and there's a lot of soul to it that you can't find in a lot of other esports communities. It's tightly-knit, and you have a lot of fans who are really passionate about who they cheer for. It really does suck. 

I think Melee is too unsupported by Nintendo for me to ever consider it as a real job. Realistically, the only way to be successful fiscally in Melee is to be a streamer, and to be a streamer is not always easy. You can say you're going to be a streamer, but actually making money from it is completely different.

You need to have a big fanbase and there are only so many streamers in Smash that are successful: You've got Mang0, Mew2King, Armada, Zain — you have to be a BIG name to be successful in Smash. I can't see any spot out of the top 10 best players being viable financially. 

Do you think Nintendo's targeting of Melee is just because it is a previous iteration of the Smash franchise? 

I genuinely don't know, it doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't think it makes sense to anyone else. The only thing I can think of is because many of the games are played on ROMs, and the legality of those is pretty controversial. I don't think you're legally allowed to own one unless you had a copy previously — I have two copies of Melee, by the way, so I've paid my dues. 

I think that's the biggest reason why, but it's such an old game that you can't even buy copies if you wanted to most of the time. You'd have to buy it off eBay or something; you're not going to get a copy of Melee at a retail store. I don't know, it's a little weird, I don't really get it, but whatever. We can't really do anything about it, it's not our decision.

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