Community Competitor Spotlight: CakeAssault

CakeAssault is pretty much a household name for the Rivals community at this point. His dominance at LAN events can be traced all the way back to Genesis 5, where his legendary Game 10 set with a seemingly untouchable FullStream went down to the wire and is widely considered to be the best set in Rivals history. CakeAssault seemed to lie dormant during our exclusively online RCS Season 5, appearing in Top 8s but ultimately losing his 1st place ranking on the annual Top 50 list.

A new wave of Rivals players were born during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many people, including CakeAssault himself, were questioning what the first offline RCS event in a over a year and a half would bring us. What we received did not disappoint. Riptide, our largest LAN event to date, saw Cakeassault and long time adversary, Penguin, play 14 intense games over the course of Winners Finals and Grand Finals, where CakeAssault finally regained his footing as champion (Check out the famous video of CakeAssault’s celebration by turndownforwalt).

We recently reached out to CakeAssault to learn more about him and his history as a Rivals competitor.

CakeAssault at Riptide 2021. Photo by Jules.

How did you first hear about Rivals and get into the scene as a competitor?

CakeAssault: When I was like 11 or 12, way back when I would come home from middle school to boot up Brawl and play Kirby against Meta Knight CPUs, I found this really cool and shitty game called Super Smash Land, a de-make of Super Smash Bros made to play like it was for the Game-boy. I bought a Bluetooth adapter for my equally shitty laptop that would run Minecraft at 22 fps, and connected 2 Wii remotes to my computer and played Megaman vs Mario with my friend in this absolutely horrendous platform fighter. Then, maybe 2 or 3 years later, I reminisced on the fun times I had playing Super Smash Land, and went back to the website. I found that the same developer was releasing a new game, Rivals of Aether, and I followed the development pretty closely. When it finally released, I played it as soon as I got home from school, and started beating up CPUs with Wrastor just like I used to when playing Brawl. Pretty soon after I started playing, I found tournaments being posted to the subreddit, joined the steam group for tournaments at the time, and started asking my mom to use up some of our data (internet was hard to come by) so I could enter the tournaments once a week.

How long have you been competing in events? What is your typical warm-up regimen going into a major?

CakeAssault: According to challonge, my first tournament was October 30th, 2015, just a month after the game’s release. I remember playing this at my friend Jason’s house, accidentally leaving my controller at my house, and scrambling to get his Xbox controller working on my laptop before conceding and trying to figure out how to use a keyboard to play. But that kind of “competing” is very different from something like my first real major, Super Smash Con 2016, where I take the tournament a lot more seriously. When warming up at a major, I’ll spend however long it takes before my sets just playing against level 7 CPUs with 8 stocks until I feel that my execution is exactly where it needs to be, swapping around my controllers if I feel that they might be the issue. Whenever I finally feel that my execution is there, I’ll play against whoever is around and good enough to practice against until my set is ready, listening to music the whole time to stay focused.

How often do you practice the game and what do you focus on in a standard practice session?

CakeAssault: When I wasn’t swamped with school, I would play anything from 2-6 hours per day, especially when there were offline majors to prepare for. My playtime takes a steep decline whenever college picks up, but the things I focus on when practicing are always the same. The #1 thing I focus on is my execution when practicing, because if I’m flubbing inputs that I should be hitting all the time then I can’t really be improving. When I’m consistently practicing, this isn’t much of an issue, but is more of something that I need to focus on for 10-20 minutes when I start each session. When I’m out of practice, it becomes a real problem that I need to fix before anything else. Past that, I focus on innovating wherever I can with my game-play and experimenting with things that I would otherwise not do in bracket. The best way to stay on top is to keep finding new things to add to my game-play.

You’ve been the most dominant offline player since your incredible run at Genesis 5 in 2018. What do you see as your X factor in keeping that crown, and how do you stay ahead of some of the relentless newcomers making their mark on the scene?

CakeAssault: Nobody does it like me.

But actually I perform much better than others do when under pressure, especially with a crowd. When I’m playing hot, the adrenaline I get from playing in top 8 fuels my game-play, usually for the better. This is also one of the main things that helps keep me ahead of some of the new players, since most of them are new to competing on stage or in front of crowds at majors. Other than that, it’s a lot of the same stuff I do anyway. Consistently practicing the game, doing VoD review of my opponents, and finding counter-play to anything new they bring to the meta through trial and error.

What has been your proudest moment throughout your career?

CakeAssault: It’s definitely between winning Genesis 5 and Riptide. Genesis 5 was the first major win that started my win streak, and was one of the few wins I’ve made as the underdog going into the tournament. Being able to win a tournament from losers side always feels amazing, and doing it over the #1 player at the time was one of the greatest feelings. As for Riptide, it felt like I was proving that I didn’t fall off over the past year and a half when COVID forced tournaments to come to a halt. After enough 7th and 5th place finishes online, it was hard to convince myself that I was still as good as I used to be. It also reminded me of the feeling that comes with competing in person at a huge tournament like that, and why I love playing this game so much. Nothing feels as good as competing at a tournament like that.

As Season 6 progresses, what goals have you set for yourself to achieve?

CakeAssault: Continue being the best offline player and not catch COVID while doing it.

Do you have any personal hobbies or interests outside of Rivals that you’re focusing on this season?

CakeAssault: I’ve been practicing a lot of melee since Slippi came out and I wanna see how good I can get at Melee without falling off in Rivals. Plus school & actuary exams have been kicking my [butt] lately so those are a huge priority.

Is there anything you would like to say to the Rivals community reading this feature?

CakeAssault:Follow me on twitter

Also I’m a free agent rn hit me up frfr I don’t bite.