With all the excitement surrounding the recent reveal of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a Japanese Twitter-user who goes by Yuyan shared a touching story about an unexpected childhood friendship through Smash Bros. that has gone viral and retweeted over 100k times.
Here’s Yuyan’s feel-good story about how he met T-kun, the “Jigglypuff Master”:
This is a story that always comes to mind whenever there’s talk about Super Smash Bros., about T-kun who wasn’t able to attend classes back in elementary school. He stopped attending from the 2nd grade, and I never even saw his face before, but one day in 4th grade my teacher asked me to deliver him some printouts. When I arrived, his mother opened the door and I happened to hear Smash Bros. sounds.
“Oh, that’s Smash Bros.!” I exclaimed. “Ah, you know it? Would you like to play?” asked his mother. After agreeing to it, his mother happily went to go talk to T-kun. 10 minutes later, I took my shoes off and went in. The moment I met T-kun he just handed over a controller, and with no small talk whatsoever, we just started playing right away.
“No items, three stock—is that cool?” he asked.
Coincidentally, T-kun’s proposed rules were the exact same ones I played with my friends. Next was the character selection. I picked Kirby. Of course, I changed to the blue Kirby. Then T-kun picked… Jigglypuff!? At the time, that was a character that people only used if it was part of some kind of punishment.
“Which stage?”
“Hyrule.”
That was my favorite stage. My fight against T-kun began.
The result was an overwhelming victory for T-kun. I couldn’t even take a stock from him, and only managed to get him to 58% damage. It was a complete loss. That was the first time I was defeated so badly.
“One more time!” I said, as T-kun nodded.
We ended up playing three more hours. I couldn’t even win a single time, let alone take a stock from him.
It was 7:00pm and T-kun’s mother called for supper.
“Would you like to stay and eat?” she asked, but I turned down the offer. We were eating chirashi sushi for dinner, so my father told me to go easy on lunch.
However, I told them “I’ll be back again.”
The next day at school, I couldn’t stop talking about my time playing Smash Bros. at T-kun’s home.
“I couldn’t even take a single stock in three hours. To top it off he used Jigglypuff!” Upon hearing those words, my friends in class were very interested. Immediately after school that day, six of us went to visit T-kun’s place. His mother was a little surprised, but she let all six of us in.
Everyone other than myself challenged T-kun, one by one. First it was Fujiwara-kun. He picked Ness. The result was, of course, an overwhelming victory for T-kun.
“Let me try again one more time!” said Fujiwara-kun. However, the second match was also 0-3.
At this point, everyone was fired up. “I’m going to my house to get some controllers,” said Yoshida-kun as he left to his house.
Everyone watching these matches just couldn’t wait longer, they all wanted to play with T-kun as soon as possible. Shortly after, Yoshida-kun showed up with a pair of controllers so we were able to have 4-player battles. Meanwhile, Sugawara-kun lost two matches just like that.
“Let’s do team fights!” Yoshida-kun suggested. So it was me and T-kun against Yoshida-kun and Kondo-kun.
T-kun was a force to be reckoned with, even in team fights. It would’ve been the same had I not been there. The two of them were so fixated on beating T-kun, they didn’t even bother with me. Even while up against two, T-kun never lost a single stock. The 1v2 fights continued from there. In three hours, nobody was able to take a single stock from T-kun.
Once again, after we finished with the game that day, T-kun’s mother asked “It’s almost dinner time. Do you guys want to stay and eat?” and we all agreed, but it wasn’t the alluring smell of delicious curry—we were all interested in T-kun. “We don’t often eat this much, so sorry if the portions are small,” she said, but none of us cared.
“How are you so strong?” “How do you do that one move? The one that blows you away,” we all had a bunch of questions. We ended up playing another hour or so after dinner. My father gave me a good scolding afterwards.
The next day, we started calling T-kun the “Jigglypuff Master.”
From that day onward, we visited Jigglypuff Master’s home after school. We went every single day and T-kun’s mother always greeted us with a smile.
By using methods I learned from T-kun, I evaded attacks. I made sure to think about attack timing without leaving unnecessary openings. I started thinking about the height of my jumps.
Then a few days later, the time finally arrived.
At last, we managed to successfully take a stock from T-kun. I don’t remember exactly who it was, because at that moment it wasn’t the game screen but another vision that stuck to my mind—It was the first time seeing T-kun express disappointment. And it made me happy.
In the end, we continued visiting T-kun’s home everyday. Until one day.
The morning of that day, I was talking to the guys about “Who’s going to Jigglypuff Master’s house today?” as usual.
After the morning greeting, our teacher said “Starting today, T-kun will begin attending school again.”
Just as he said that, T-kun opened the door and entered the classroom. He looked smaller than I remembered seeing him at his house. However, that was unmistakably T-kun, no, Jigglypuff Master.
“Jigglypuff Master!”
“Master!”
The master softly chuckled as we shouted.
Now that T-kun started attending school again, we were able to take him along with us to the homes of Smashers from other classes. In the end, not a single person was better than T-kun at Super Smash Bros. throughout the entire school year.
By the time T-kun graduated, he was famous at our school.
The reason I became friends with T-kun back then was without a doubt thanks to Smash Bros. Being a poor talker or a quiet person had nothing on it. The fact of being “good at a game” just blew everything else away.
I can’t say whether games can help with studies or if it’ll ever find a place in the Olympics. However, I can say that the charm of video games knows no limits. This is something I learned from meeting T-kun.
If you’re wondering what happened with T-kun and whether Yuyan is still friends with him, a bunch of people asked the same thing. According to Yuyan they continued playing video games all the time until the end of elementary school. However, Yuyan and his family ended up moving away afterwards so he went to a different middle school. He says that back then everyone didn’t have mobile phones so he regrettably ended up losing touch with the Jigglypuff Master. However, he hopes that somehow T-kun catches wind of the story so that he could one day reunite with his old friend.
Published: Jun 15, 2018 06:30 pm