So here’s a fun story that happened at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2022. There was a panel featuring several of the guests, Kyle Mccarley, Tony Oliver, Chris Hackney and Bill Butts and it was an event where you can play Super Smash Brothers with them. Now I am a huge fan of all of these incredible actors and I really love the game so I thought I would stop by and hopefully play at a round with them. What I got out of it was one of my favorite convention stories of all time.

So the way it was set up all of the actors were playing on one TV and there was another TV set up for four more players. At the start of the panel we were asked to line up and the important thing to remember is I was fifth in line. When the time came the first four players were called to the stage to play against each other on the second TV while the actors continued to play their own game. It was a lot of fun to watch but after the actors finished a game Kyle stepped away to moderate and suggested calling the next person up to play in the spot he just vacated. This was when I quickly realized I’m the next person.

At this point a lot of realization happened. I’m about to play a fun game with some of my favorite actors. Then I realized it was all on stage where everyone can see me and the stage fright came at full force. I am walking on stage and coming close to tripping way too many times. I’m now sitting next to Chris Hackney and we start playing a round. I picked one of my personal favorites Ike. Tony ends up going out first. Shortly after that Chris is out, kind of my fault, and then it’s left to Bill and I. Now at this point I assumed I was done. Bill had all three lives left and I was down to my last one. I quickly get the first KO since Bill was pretty damaged already. As he’s respawning I managed to assemble all three parts of the dragoon and use it to get a second KO. All of a sudden it’s down to one life each but again I’m thinking it’s still game over for me.

He then gets a pair of the bunny ears and I know I’m in trouble since he already had a serious speed advantage. To my surprise he jumps too high and sends himself out of bounds and victory was mine.

Because I won I got to play another round but this time another fan came in and replaced Tony. I didn’t win this one but it was so much fun being able to play another game. At that point I walked off stage, rejoined my group and quickly left for the hotel because I knew there was nothing else I could do that day to top what just happened and it was dinner time.