Super Smash Bros. Melee

pop & funWikipedia2001

Super Smash Bros. Melee

the gist

Super Smash Bros. Melee is a 2001 crossover fighting game by HAL Laboratory for the GameCube, featuring characters from Nintendo franchises such as Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, Pokémon and Donkey Kong. Instead of a depleting health bar, it uses a damage percentage that rises with each hit, and higher percentages make characters fly further when knocked back. The game sold over seven million copies, becoming the GameCube's best-selling title. Its fast, deep mechanics kept a competitive scene alive long after its release.

how it works

Each character's damage counter rises as they take hits. Knockback force grows with that percentage, so a high-percentage character can be sent off the stage by a relatively weak attack. This makes positioning and timing more important than simply draining an opponent's health.

so what

Melee is a rare example of a game whose physics turned into a sport. Its percentage-based knockback became the template for the series and its competitive community, and many players still regard it as one of the greatest video games ever made.

the bigger pattern

Systems where scores or damage build up rather than deplete have appeared in other competitive games, where the rise in stakes makes each hit feel more dramatic.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · text CC BY-SA 4.0

Illustrative photo · Maxime Lorant, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

source: Wikipedia ↗

historyThe Public Domain Review1909 · United States

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

more on this

background

A Corner in Wheat is a 1909 American short silent film which tells of a greedy tycoon who tries to corner the market in wheat, destroying the lives of the people who can no longer afford to buy bread. It was directed by D. W. Griffith and adapted by Griffith and Frank E. Woods from a novel and a short story by Frank Norris, titled The Pit and "A Deal in Wheat". Griffith may have had a real-life inspiration: six months earlier, James A. Patten had actually cornered the market in wheat, and in some cities, the price of bread doubled from five cents to ten, just as in the movie.

In 1994, A Corner in Wheat was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

From Wikipedia: A Corner in Wheat (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗

see

D. W. Griffith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

G. W. Bitzer (cinematographer) under employment of the Biog…, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

DS Pugh, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Image: The Public Domain Review

source: The Public Domain Review ↗

12 min

politicsvideoABC News In-depth12:08

Usman Khawaja refuses to answer Sandpapergate question about Pat Cummins | 7.30

from ABC News In-depth

One of the darkest days in Australia's sporting history has been dragged back into the spotlight.

A new autobiography by former Test cricketer Usman Khawaja has made explosive revelations about the Australian Test team's 2018 ball-tampering saga in South Africa.

7.30 host Sarah Ferguson speaks to Usman Khawaja.

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With on-the-ground reporting from ABC journalists across every state and territory and around the world, 7.30 has the latest on politics, policy, the economy, cost of living, housing, health, climate and energy, national security and global affairs.

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