Origin of my Homebrew Channel hat

A lot of people have asked me what my Homebrew Channel hat means and why I have it etc etc, so here's the story in full.

It all starts with Super Smash Bros Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube, yep the old 2001 video game. Despite it's age the game still has a very active and thriving competitive scene for it, and it's a community I've been involved in since 2017 or so. I started attending University in 2018 and there was when I especially got involved the community, my school has a local Smash Bros club and by the end of my freshman year I found myself involved in the club's e-Board. This continued my whole time throughout school, I was even President of the club my senior year and it was through these years I found my passion in event hosting and being a TO (Tournament Organizer, community term for those who host and run events).

Being an old game Melee has some bugs and problems that the overall community has decided to patch out, and therefore we have to play on modded consoles in order to use these game mods. We play the game on the Wii console since it's backwards compatible with Gamecube games and has more processing power, and so as a TO it's important for me to know how Wii modding works and how to set that up. Homebrew is a term that has many definitions but in the world of video games it refers to modding game consoles [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_(video_games)], and the Wii is no exception. The Wii as a system has these fun little apps on the homescreen called channels, like the Mii Channel, Wii Shop Channel, etc. and in order to run mods on the Wii you install a custom channel known as The Homebrew Channel.

I know all the ins and outs of setting up The Homebrew Channel and running software off of it, including the custom software we use to play Melee in the current day. In particular in Boston I'm the person who everyone in the scene knows to ask questions about it, or if anyone ever needs their Wii modded they come to me and I do it for them, as well as if people have troubleshooting etc etc. Back when Discord has the username#1234 naming scheme my username was just my name plus some random numbers, but when it changed to actual usernames I had to come up with a new name and I landed on the name homebrew_wizard in reference to my skills with Wii homebrewing.

As for the hat itself back when I used to use Twitter I stumbled across someone in the community who does custom embroidering and they were showing off a Homebrew Channel hat they had made, upon seeing this I wanted it immediately and reached out and just bought it from they straight up. In addition I also commissioned them to custom embroider me a homebrew themed sweatshirt (ask me for pics if you wanna see it's dope), giving me a full homebrew wizard fit hahaha. Nowadays I like wearing the hat at events I host for fun or I just wear it in everyday situations where I want to wear a cap, and as for non-Melee events I wear it at I like doing that as it stands out and makes it easy for people to spot me.

Finally for anyone curious about the Melee Boston scene I'm heavily involved in it! I'm apart of melee.boston which is a team of TO's and production people who host and run events in the city, in particular every Tuesday in Allston I host New Game Plus Revival (https://start.gg/ngpr , https://melee.boston , https://live.melee.boston). If you're ever curious about the game, the community, tournaments, etc. don't hesitate to ask me anything or reach out! :)

- Iris "homebrew_wizard" Woodley