Smash Melee has had a huge amount of attention payed to it over the years, and one source of player obsession has been the Home Run Contest.
In brief: Smash Bros. games are about racking up damage to a target, measured in percent. The higher the percent, the further an attack target flies when struck. The idea of the Home Run Contest is to do as much damage to a special Sandbag character, which doesn’t move on its own, in 10 seconds, then to hit it as hard as you can, usually with a baseball bat item, to make it fly as far as possible.
The Home Run Contest has been in every Smash Bros. game since Melee, and its first implementation has lots of weird things about it. Like, if you set the game language to Japanese, you get a slightly smaller platform, which makes your distances count slightly longer.
Lots of oddities are pointed out by Youtuber “Practical TAS”, in their 26-minutes video, here. Warning: serious geekery ahead!
