Following a short hiatus for top players, Genesis 4 will kick off on Jan. 20, 2017 in San Jose, California, marking the first major Melee event to start the year. Friday will feature the first round of pools and draft crew battles. Saturday, the second round of pools will trim the entrants to the final eight players. And on Sunday, the final eight will play in the San Jose Convention Center, where the winner of the first 2017 major tournament will be crowned.
The Genesis series has one of the most storied histories in Melee, but plenty has changed since its first iteration back in 2009 (it skipped a year in 2010). Back then, Joseph "Mango" Marquez and Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman held their spots at the top of the hill, Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma was just a rising star and Adam "Armada" Lindgren needed to prove he belonged in the conversation. At the time, William "Leffen" Hjelte wasn't even a competitive player.
2017 shuffled many of the roles among those players. Armada is coming off his second consecutive year at the top of the annual Super Smash Bros. Melee rankings. His second half of the year ended strong with wins at DreamHack Winter, UGC Smash Open and Smash Summit 3. His consistency was so astounding that you would have to go back all the way to May 2016 to find an event where he didn't make it to grand finals.
Nowadays, Mango is no longer as dominant as he was at Genesis 1. He ended the 2016 season on a low note with two fourth-place finishes and a 13th-place finish most recently at UGC Smash Open. He declared on his personal stream not too long ago that 2017 would be "his year." With a new coach and improved lifestyle habits, he's dedicated himself to the cause.
The Genesis series historically centers itself around these two competitors; all three previous events featured an Armada vs. Mango grand finals, with Armada coming from the winners' side of the bracket and Mango from the losers'. Mango won the first Genesis, but Armada took the lead after winning Genesis 2 and 3. While many are excited over this potential rivalry and grand finals matchup, there are many other competitors that stand in their way this time around.
Mew2King has put on quite a show in the past few months with a win at the most recent Smash Conference in Florida and his incredible losers' run at UGC Smash Open. He has yet to win a tournament that has featured at least three other "gods" in the modern era of Smash, but he rides heavy momentum into Genesis 4, where he will be seeded second overall.
The lack of a work visa hampered the majority of Leffen's 2016, but his Fox looks tournament-ready again, with a recent win at Don't Park on the Grass. Recently, Leffen spent most of his time practicing with his fellow Swede, Armada, in a mini-bootcamp. If he can nail a good bracket, he also has a great shot of winning Genesis 4.
Not too far behind, Hungrybox started the year strong with a win at Evo 2016, but faltered in the second half of the year, as he did not win a major event. He comes into Genesis 4 further handicapped with a broken finger. While it's unlikely he'll perform at anywhere close to full capacity, his fundamentals are so good that you can't count him out of the running.