Fuentes is Smashing the competition
6/3/2026
“Super Smash Bros.” is such a large part of Fuentes’ life, he played it on his wedding day. Pictured here (different day) facing Cody Schwab, the No. 1 “Melee” player in the world.
“Super Smash Bros.” is a platform fighting game that first hit CRT (tube) TV screens via the Nintendo 64 in 1999. Since then, it has had a total of five iterations across multiple gaming platforms and spurred one of the most active competitive gaming scenes in the world.
Local player David Fuentes, who goes by Slowking, got his first taste of the game at 5 years old while playing with family.
“My uncle got us ‘Smash Bros. 64’, I would have been like 5, and we just played it from there. It got bigger than I’m sure Nintendo thought it was gonna be. The first time I played ‘Melee’ was actually in Mexico with my cousins,” Fuentes said.
The franchise pits some of Nintendo’s most popular characters, like Mario and Donkey Kong, against other famous characters from different IP’s like Steve from ‘Minecraft’ and ‘Pac-Man.’
Fuentes, whose main character is Falco from the ‘Star Fox’ series, first got his taste of what competitive gaming could be like by speedrunning, where gamers try to finish games as fast as possible by taking advantage of glitches and exploits.
“That’s how I found out about competitive ‘Smash.’ There was a game store in Sioux City that hosted a ‘Melee’ tournament. So, my friends and I went down there, and that’s how it all started,” Fuentes said.
After having success at the tournaments at Game Lair in Sioux City in 2015, Fuentes started traveling to Iowa City and Des Moines to compete. Becoming more engrossed in the Iowa scene, Fuentes was ranked fifth in Iowa despite living in South Dakota, something he notes as one of his first big accomplishments.
“They were like, ‘OK, he’s here. He’s getting these wins, we have to put him on it.’ That was really satisfying for me, to have that drive and be able to establish myself, even though I’m living way out here in Sioux City. It might have been a driving factor for me. I’m going to do this. I’ve got to prove a point,” Fuentes said.
Most of the Iowa “Melee” community.
Outside of the weekly events the local group holds, he won a regional event in Indiana in March against 81 entrants, and in 2024 he won the Cream City Convergence in Wisconsin, one he called his breakout event.
“There are a lot of people who are on the cusp and could win these events, but it’s so much harder to go and win these tournaments and be the best player there. It’s really cool to be that person. Now, I’m not winning like a 1,000-person tournament or anything like that quite yet, but I’m still doing super well,” Fuentes said.
The thing he mainly focuses on doing at tournaments is outperforming his seed. At a recent tournament in Boulder, Colorado, he was projected to place 13th and ended up placing ninth.
“That’s the goal. You want to exceed expectations, not only for yourself but also the expectations the other people have put on you by how they seeded you in the bracket,” Fuentes said.
World rankings come out once a year, and Fuentes is currently ranked 50th in the world for Melee. He received his first world ranking in 2022 and has only risen since.
“It is incredibly hard to do. The game as a whole gets pushed further every single year. So every year it’s harder to get to that level and stay at that level. That’s one of my biggest accomplishments in my head, getting there and not only staying at the level, but also improving every single year,” Fuentes said.
One might think that in such a competitive environment, friendships would be difficult to come by, but not within the Iowa “Smash” community. The group hosts weekly tournaments and regularly travels to tournaments all over the U.S.
“We’re so tight-knit. We have all these extra things that we’re doing together and hanging out and helping people move, or whatever it may be. Some scenes don’t have that. People come to Iowa from Minnesota or from Kansas City, and they’re like, ‘You guys are all friends, it’s super homey,’ ” Fuentes said.
“To kind of be the figurehead of the community, and then have everybody be super friendly with each other, to the point where people are noticing when they come out of the region, how homey everyone is, is a very prideful thing for me.”
Fuentes was sure to say the friendliness and overall welcoming community is not down to him but the overall kindness of the Iowa Smash scene.
Fuentes also puts his event organizing skills to work not only at the West Des Moines Marriott, but for the Iowa tournament as well. He says that on June 20, they will host the biggest Iowa Melee tournament to date. The Run, Don’t Walk 2026 tournament will have more than 170 players from Iowa and around the country and will surely put Slowking to the test. n
Cyote Williams was born and raised on the south side of Des Moines and writes about entertainment, sports and personalties across the Des Moines metro for CITYVIEW. Phone: 515-953-4822 x333.
