Serpent Showdown – Smash Bros Ultimate Tournament with Mod HDR

Super Smash Bros is a long series with multiple games always having an active esports scene. Although, even with three different incarnations of the game regularly in competition, fans and players are constantly adding to it and throwing tournaments using modded forms of Smash Bros.

Ultimate is getting a new tournament this week. It is going to be played on the HDR mod version of the game. Presenting, Serpent Showdown.

Serpent Showdown

Smash Bros Serpent Showdown is an upcoming tournament that will utilize HDR. This is one of the biggest mods for the game to date and it builds on everything that the Smash Bros series has been in the past. This tournament isn’t going to be the biggest, and it’s no competitor to big events like the upcoming official Nintendo Smash League. However, this is going to be a fun side-event and a bit of a throwback to all the Project M competitions over the years.

The Serpent Showdown is going to take place April 9^th. Players will need to use the HDR mod to play while competing online. However, everyone should be using a LAN adapter, which will help cut down on some of the jank that can happen when playing online Ultimate.

The top prize for the event is a free mod commission along with $80 cash. Second and third place receive cash prizes too, but the commission is probably the big draw. This is a smaller Smash Bros event in terms of prize, but playing on a mod is making it stand out.

Smash Bros HDR

Smash Bros HDR is the mod that the Serpent Showdown is going to be played on. In the past, Smash mods like Project M were used to change some types of Smash games like Brawl to make them closer to Melee’s. Moving closer to Melee is always a goal for some. It’ll likely be the esports scene’s favorite title long after the last original GameCube Controller ceases to function. Project HDR is even more ambitious than these past efforts.

The last release of HDR came out in early March. It makes quite a few changes to the game. Think making ground movement very close to Melee. It will even be replacing the digital trigger press of a GameCube controller on the Switch with the actual analog input of the controller. It isn’t just about making things closer to the old games though. Stages have been changed in a big way along with new game modes and alt skins for the characters added.

A build of this scale is going to have teething issues, the devs have openly explained in their blogpost for the last release the difficulty in balancing the enormous roster of Smash fighters at once. However, the mod definitely looks interesting for esports play.

The HDR mod will follow a good tradition of Smash mods, but will it work for competitive play? At this early stage, there are likely to be some teething issues. However, the Serpent Showdown is going to be a great trial run. If the project can get enough momentum behind it, this could build into a fun side event at some Smash tournaments.