20XX

minor wip

About

20XX is a term in the Super Smash Bros Melee community referring to the hypothetical future where play has become so optimized that Fox is the only viable character, and matches are decided by port priority. The term has since branched out to other games, and derived into other versions for different characters.

Origin

The term 20XX originates from the Mega Man games, which are set in the indeterminate future of the year 20XX. The first game in the series using 2XXX, the second game 200X, and the rest of them 20XX. The concept in Melee was first outlined by commentator Kris “Toph” Alexander at the tournament The Big House 3 in October of 2013:

Geez, I really hope no more Foxes play on this stream cause I’m just gonna have to listen to this endless complaining about how good my character is… [Aziz “Hax” Al-Yami] has this running joke about--so you know how in Megaman, in the Megaman Show, it’s like, “the year is 20XX…”

So Aziz’s thing is like, “the year is 20XX, everyone plays Fox…” And there’s this whole postapocalyptic universe that is built off of Fox being the only viable character left… Humanity has reached its pinnacle… The peasants are living in poverty… And there’s these monasteries where these fox monks just levitate and TAS Fox with one character and with one hand, and win a tournament with the other…

The tournament metagame has gotten to this point where everything is played out to theoretical perfection, so they Rock Paper Scissors for port priority, and that’s the set, and everyone gets really excited about the port priority RPS. So RPS’s metagame has really evolved to where it’s really just like RPS tournaments are now. […] And then we have warriors like Kevin [“PewPewU”] Toy and Europhoria desperately trying to prevent the apocalypse, the Fox Apocalypse, from happening with their Marths…

Spread

On November 13th of 2013, Reddit user Nannose^[2] replied to a topic asking for an explanation, creating a copypasta for the meme (Shown below).

The year is 20XX. Everyone plays Fox at TAS levels of perfection. Because of this, the winner of a match depends solely on port priority. The RPS metagame has evolved to ridiculous levels due to it being the only remaining factor to decide matches.

On March 29th of 2014, Smash Boards user achilles1515^[3] uploaded a ROM Hack of Melee titled 20XX to train those for when the year comes. On November 25th of 2014, a game was put on the Steam Store^[4] under the name 20XX under Early Access with a trailer (Shown below, left). On June 11th of 2015, Youtuber GRsmash^[5] uploaded a video showcasing the top 10 20XX moments of competitive smash bros (Shown below, right).