The Story

Smash World Forums (SWF) aka Smashboards, is an internet forum where players of the video game series, Super Smash Bros., can discuss different things about the game, primarily the competitive scene.

As like any other fighting game, characters are divided into "tiers" depending on how good or bad they are. Top-High Tier characters being the best, and Low-Bottom Tiers being the worst.

A highly anticipated and adored character, Sonic the Hedgehog, finally made his appearance into the Smash game series as a third party character in the installment known as "Super Smash Bros. Brawl". High hopes were had for the hedgehog when the game was released, but over a short period of time it was quickly realized that he was a poor choice for tournaments due to his lack of reliable or powerful KO moves.

Many players on the "Sonic Boards" (A subforum exists for each individual character to discuss their strengths/weaknesses) were quick to pick up a secondary (a secondary being a second character to use to support their "main" character's poor matchups) or just drop him all together.

Overtime, the boards became very unproductive and was left without a moderator for months and became referred to as "the back alley of SWF". Spam overtook the boards leading to very humorous discussions and inside jokes amongst only the Sonics.

A user known as "KirbyandSonicRock14" (commonly referred to as "KASR") was known for his horrible grammar and spelling. The following spelling mistake, or "misteak" if you will, took SWF by storm.

View the thread here

Many users became obsessed with this meme and made endless topics simply to "Steak" or "Winning Steak". Eventually, the joke would become too much for one board to handle and the steak sauce leaked throughout the whole site. The majority of the community became angered by the Sonics over the amount of spam in important topics, and most didn't even understand it since very few actually explained. These later became known as "Sonic Invasions".

Things like A1 steak sauce and posting Haunters would become associated with supporting or being a Sonic main.

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:093:

Now… How does Haunter come into place?

A troll amongst the Sonic boards who goes by the username "Boxob" was very popular and was known for putting a Haunter gif at the end of all of his posts (this was done by simply entering the code :093: and the site would replace it with the following smiley…

His threads would always guarantee at least 3 pages of posts in a matter of minutes, and lulz would ensue at super sonic speed.

For a long time he went unpunished, but the mods finally started to take more authority amongst the boards and handed out infractions or bans at will. Boxob eventually became banned every other week, so he would make alt accounts to keep spamming (he would of course still post Haunters which made it all too obvious it was him). Sonic boards eventually got a permanent mod, and things started to get more serious. Many users got banned, infracted, and spam threads were closed near instantly. This angered many, and Boxob would be the first to bash and censor dodge to get his point across.

Then the day came where he would get a permanent banned. Many users, even those outside of the Sonic community, were shocked to see him gone. What SWF didn't expect however was the loyalty of his friends/fanboys. Soon, a rally was started amongst the boards where users would silently petition by putting Haunters at the end of all of their posts, just like their steak crusader.

Eventually, with enough perseverance, Boxob was allowed to make a new account. Many Sonics still sport the Haunter in order to show their pride and superior lulz amongst the rest of the posters.

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The Guide on How to Play Sonic

Whenever a new user would come to the Sonic boards during the "Steak era" making their own threads asking questions that have already been answered in stickied threads, the Sonics would initiate over the top flame wars.

The most famous of all posts belongs to the user "ROOOOY!" when a n00b wanted to learn how to get better with Sonic.

Eventually, users would just copypasta this post repeatedly until the thread got closed. Sometimes making minor changes to the original post for lulz.

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Sonic makes Mid Tier

Ever since the "Sonic Invasions", Sonic mains got harassed by the community, not only because of their spammy past, but as well as for maining who was supposedly a terrible character.

Sonics decided to follow the mighty words of KASR and before you know it, Sonic started to bring in consistent results for months on end, far superior results to any Low Tier or even most Middle Tier characters. Then, on June 5th 2009, the new Tier list was released, with Sonic in C Tier. Sonic barely made it out of Low Tier, but was officially viewed as a Mid Tier character. Sonic had also risen more than any other character on any Tier list in Smash history with a tremendous 8 spot jump. A popular phrase then became "Steak+8" and Sonics would make fun of other Low Tiers by saying things like, "Wow, you guys main Low Tier. Get good +8".

Many Sonics didn't know how to handle it. Some were enraged, since they believed he was truly garbage. Others had uncontrollable outbursts of joy.

One incredible example being a user named "infzy", who posted a video of himself eating a steak with A1.

This is the most up to date Tier List, and Sonic is still currently ranked as he has been for over a year now. This period shall be referred to as "A Winning Steak".

+8

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Urban Dictionary Entry
Entry created by Australian Sonic main, "djbrowny"

Verb: The act of being 'steaked' by a Sonic main the the video game Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The Sonic player delivers the proverbial steak to the enemy, upon which they become 'steaked'. This can happen in a wide variety of forms, such as;

Being beaten by a Sonic player while using a character with a large matchup advantage,

Losing a stock to the spring – uair attack string
Stage-spiked by a bair,

Getting hit by a full charge hypnosmash and losing a stock very early,

And many more, all involving utter humiliation on the victim of the steaking.

The steak also symbolises what all true Sonic mains strive for. Whilst steak in itself can be won through winning matches, it can only be achieved through the steaking of all who stand in the Sonic players way on their path to epic victory.

The steak originates from a member of the Sonic community of old, where it was stated that a winning streak with Sonic in tournament play would be forever synomous with a winning steak, thus the useage of steak to defeat his enemies.
(Sonic player) (runs off-stage to perform a back-air stage spike)
(Opponent) (does not dodge in time, and loses the match)
(Sonic player) "YOU GOT STEAKED, SON!"

(Sonic player) "Just came home from a tournament, got 1st :)"
(Fellow Sonic player) "How was it?"
(Sonic player) "Tough matches the whole way through, grand finals I 2-stock steaked this snake player with 2 cypher grab KO's"
(other player) "NICE! Bringing home the steak!"