Super Smash Bros.

Well, Melee did have a very active competitive scene for years. Only really beaten out by MVC 2.

It's really Brawl where Sakurai insisted on making it a party game. With Sm4sh, he intended to make something that both the casual and competitive crowds can enjoy.

Mind you, I do think both mindsets can coexist, as I am open to playing with items and without items on.

It's also easier to learn the basics of a Smash character as opposed to a character in, say, Blaz Blue.

No, no, you misunderstand me. What I meant was that a lot of people from outside the Smash community didn't consider it a legitimate fighting game even during the golden age of competitive Melee. I heard a lot about that back when I was active on Smash Boards in anticipation of Brawl. Lots of "party game" and "button masher" being thrown around.

That kind of criticism came mostly from members of the traditional fighting game community, and I'm pretty sure it's because those people take pride in mastering a game that's difficult to even pick up, unlike the newbie-friendly Smash games. So the Smash Bros' series low level of entry is recognized even by its detractors.

Oh, I got ya.

Weird that its detractors call it a button masher even though that does lead to losing in Smash because you need to strategize in order to win.

This is coming from someone who has a friend that tends to spam a lot and never gets the idea to stop spamming Skull Bash if it fails each time.

I do really feel like the degree of dedication actions and buttons have to each other in Smash is a really strong point in its favor.

I think a general thing with fighting games too is that some players will just pick the characters who are conceptually cool.

Like, Diddy is a better character than Charizard, but Charizard is more popular than Diddy because Charizard is more exciting compared to Diddy (Fire-breathing dragon vs. Spider Monkey).

Okay, Diddy in general has the issue of being Boring, but Practical compared to his Smash co-stars which are an anthropomorphic fox, a hedgehog with Super-Speed, an Umbra Witch, an electric mouse, a pink puffball who can steal powers, a masked swordsman, and a green dinosaur. Among numerous others.

When I hear/see "buttonmasher" it's more of the image of somebody playing Street Fighter by getting close to the opponent and then furiously mash all the buttons while wiggling the control stick/pad all over but moslty to the opponents general direction (in futile manner of trying to make a QCF without understanding how easy it actually is) in hopes of accidentally pulling a combo or super.

Most of the time, that won't work, but for a few of the Shotoclone characters, they might accidentally pull off a three hit combo finished with a Shoryuken or Shin Hadoken if they got any meter.

Such an approach would just result in a tilt, a special and unnecesarry double jumping in Smash.

edited 11th Jan '17 1:55:34 PM by Geist-Fox

The fact that Smash Bros. is "simple controls, complex actions" rather than the other way around is why I prefer it to traditional fighters.

And it still failed at that. How on Earth will more hitstun time turn away the casuals?

And even then, he still had this completely wrong mentality about the competitive scene.

For example, why couldn't the omega version of Mushroom Kingdom U just simply be the area the level starts only with no icicles, water sprouts, Kamek, or transition?

Omega Pyrosphere? Just remove Ridley

But Sakurai seems to think that everyone only wants to play on Final Destination. It's a miracle there isn't an omega moveset gimmick where everyone has Fox's moveset,

...There's definitely an active competitive scene for Smash 4 though.

It's been quite well-liked and is often considered at least something of a bridge over the gap made by the release of Brawl, in fact.

Heck, the Sm4sh scene is even bigger than Melee's at this point.

I would have preferred a hazard switch in the official games.

I've toyed with the (admitedly complicated) idea of Alpha and Beta stages in addition to Omega and Normal selections- Alpha stages have no random hazards- So spikes or Danger Zones stick around but nothing invades- Beta stages are Battlefield variants.

Shouldn't be that hard to do. I'm sure there are dev tools to toggle off environmental hazards for testing.

And Battlefield would just be adding three generic platforms.

There are some platform layouts that would be pretty cool to have without random nonsense trying to murder you. Wario Ware for example, and even Lumiose City on 3DS, if they found a better way to switch between Layouts.

Wario Ware doesn't have differing platform layouts...it just has the main thing and the flat land mini-game screen.

That's what I'm talking about. If we could have Wario Ware without the minigames, or Wily's Castle without Yellow Devil, they'd be great for competitive play.

On alightly different topic, here is one man's reaction to all the "Goku for Smash!" requests◊

I love how the Switch presentation tried to pass off Stretchy Arm Boxing as the next deep, complicated, competitive fighting title, but Smash Bros. is supposed to be the fun party game.

Speaking of, I want to see Spring Man and Ribbon Girl as fighters in Smash. They can be alta of each other.

Everytime I see people refer to Spring Man as an ARMS character, I think of Mega Man.

"You'd think a genius would invent an inescapable room of spikes WAY before he invented a Spring Man!"

I guess we did get a new fighting game IP from Nintendo, though.

...still waiting on Nintendo vs. Capcom, though.

Seriously, all things considered, that series could potentially overshadow Mahvel in popularity, and even Yoshinori Ono wants to do it, but it has yet to happen.

edited 16th Jan '17 7:05:50 PM by WaxingName

I don't think there's an audience for that if it's a traditional fighter.

Half of why Smash is so popular is because it's not one - you don't need to memorize button combinations, etc.

so taking a greatly reduced "greatest hits" version of Smash's roster and mashing them against Street Fighter and/or Capcom characters in a traditional fighter would appeal to a much smaller audience than the one that already enjoys Smash, since that pick up and play party fun wouldn't be there unless it imported something like X Tekken's double dramatic battle.

Tatsunoko Vs Capcom offered a solution: have a simpler, but limited control scheme that uses only a few buttons, and the more traditional control scheme that opens up all the options.

Or... they could make it just Smash with half the roster being Capcom characters. I want a traditional fighter, personally, but either works.