The "Ken Combo." Despite being a simple string, it is undoubtedly one of the most satisfying combos in Super Smash Bros. Melee: a simple swipe of the sword followed by a powerful spike that sends the opponent plummeting into the blast zone. For the thousands of Marth players honing their Melee skills, this combo is a staple. But only one has the honor of being its namesake: Team Liquid's Ken Hoang.
Long before the days of sponsors and streaming, Hoang was using the combo to win just about every tournament he attended, earning him the title "King of Smash." Nearly a decade later, Hoang and his combo are still going strong.
ESPN spoke to Hoang about the history of the technique he made famous.
"I started as a Marth main in Melee, tried Captain Falcon first, but didn't like the way he moved," Hoang said. "My brother Manacloud unlocked all the characters, and I gravitated toward [Marth] just by the way he looked."
Unlike Super Smash Bros. 64, a competitive scene popped up around Melee rather quickly, and it didn't take long for Hoang to make a name for himself by winning local events and high-profile money matches. However, Hoang considers Tournament Go 4 in 2003 to be the event that launched his professional career.
"I started taking Melee seriously when I entered my first national," Hoang said, referring to the Tournament Go series, put on by Smashboard's Matt Deezie. "Basically, if I didn't win that tournament, I would have probably stopped competing in tournaments."
Fortunately, he did win, beating nearly 100 competitors and kicking off what would become one of the most successful professional Smash careers of all time, thanks in part to Marth and the always reliable "Ken Combo."
But at what point did that series of moves become the "Ken Combo?"
"The combo was officially named after me around mid-2005," Hoang said, adding that it was originally a combo he developed for Captain Falcon in Smash 64. "I was the one who invented most of the Marth meta-game at the time. Not a lot of people knew what Marth could really do, so when they saw me do a Forward-Air to Down-Air, they decided to call it the 'Ken Combo.' I think it has a nice ring to it."
The technique was so useful, players quickly started devising new ways to employ it.
"The classic 'Ken Combo' is simply a F-Air followed up with a D-Air, but there are many variations," Hoang said.
One variation is the more complicated "Reverse Ken Combo," which requires the player to land the F-Air's rear hitbox, producing a weak knockback and setting up the D-Air to hit while Marth is facing away from the opponent. In the patched PAL version of Melee, Marth's D-Air can be Meteor Cancelled, which led to the creation of the "European Ken Combo," which replaces the D-Air with a Reverse Dolphin Slash finisher instead.
Regardless of which variant one attempts, Hoang stressed that these are difficult combos requiring precise spacing and the right situation.
"It has a lot to deal with the person's DI, what their percent is at, where you hit them with the position of Marth's blade," Hoang said. "Timing seems to be the hard thing with performing the combo."
Few players ever get the honor of having a combo named after them, and Hoang is happy that it is a part of his legacy.
"Even though the Melee meta has changed a lot, the foundation of what I created is still there," he said. "I think it's still pretty cool to have a piece of my legacy connected to Marth, and people know exactly what it is."