In the 24 years that Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube has been out in the hands of the public, and 21 years since the first major tournament of the game, the meta is still changing. Sheik was considered the best character in the game in 2005 until Fox and Falco rose to the top in the next year. Since then, she has been falling down the tier list, having been passed up by Marth, and is in contention with Jigglypuff for 4th. She’s going down because all of the other characters have won majors, even characters below her such as Captain Falcon, Peach, Ice Climbers, Yoshi, & Pikachu.
Jmook actually won GENESIS 9 & Collision 2023 back-to-back, and Plup won Riptide 2023, both of them as solo Sheik in only the last year. However, solo Sheik had still never won an invitational, but in the greatest invitational since the end of The Summit, Nounsvitational invited the best players of current melee. The pools worked in a round-robin fashion, housing all 16 players, which then funneled into the top 16 brackets where half of them started on the losers’ side of the double-elimination formatted bracket.
Jmook’s pool consisted of Zain, Aklo, aMSa, MOF, BING, Agent, and himself. Jmook ended up losing to Zain 0-3, and MOF in a game 5, however he ended up winning the rest of his five sets. He came into bracket as seed 8 but headed into top 16 as seed 3 after placing 2nd in his pool. Before this set, Cody Schwab was up 13-8 in the head-to-head set count against Jmook, which is his first set of top 16. Then after a swift 3-0 upset, Jmook had made it to the top eight in the winners’ side.
His next match was Aklo, who had beaten Pools in a close game five which made it 6-6 in the head-to-head. However, Jmook would still make quick work of Aklo’s Fox and take yet another 3-0. Now in winners’ finals, he will fight either Joshman, who he is up double the sets in the head-to-head, or Zain, the #1 ranked player in the world who he is down a set to, due to losing that one in pools. Zain wins 3-0 so he gets to face Jmook in winners’ finals for the runback. Jmook would end Zain’s winners run there in a close game 5 and sent him to the losers’ finals to fight moky. That set ended with a 3-1 victory from Zain to get yet another runback with Jmook in the grand finals.
Jmook and Zain would start off game 1 on Fountain of Dreams where Jmook would win. Zain counterpicks Yoshi’s Story for game 2, where he still lost, but decided to go there again. Jmook was up in game 3 but Zain ended up coming back and taking the game, saving himself from a 3-0. For game 4, Jmook counterpicked Dream Land, where he would show off a dominant performance against Zain, with a 2 stock.
Nounsvitational 2024 was won by none other than Jmook, the first melee major taken by solo Sheik. After 21 years of competition, Sheik had never won an invitational until now. Plup had also gone solo Sheik but only placed 5th, losing to Zain and Aklo. In the end, Jmook was the one able to make the trek to bring Sheik to her first invitational win. It’s more impressive than winning a major due to the fact that the only players in attendance are the best of the best, Jmook really earned his spot as the #5 ranked player in the world.
