The Super Smash Bros. series of games holds a very special place in heart. I’d like to take a walk down memory lane, as they say, and enthuse about my journey with this series. I’m going to try to be verbose and describe things you wouldn’t know if you aren’t familiar with Smash. This story spans more than a decade, so, be warned, this is a lengthy post!
The Beginning
It’s 2008. You’re a kid at a house party, and your group decides they are done playing outside, so everyone comes in. The host turns on the Wii. The host’s mother pops in and not-so-politely reminds their child to choose a game that everyone can play. The host has 4 Wii Remotes, but only 2 pairs of Nunchucks. What’s a game that’s more exciting than Wii Bowling, but can still be played with these controllers?
Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
This is where it started for me. I was immediately fascinated by the game, and the sheer amount of characters I didn’t recognize. “What game is he from?”, “How did you do that?”, and “Where is my character???” where all constant questions I asked while playing Brawl in my Elementary days. I’m sure my peers got annoyed by the constant queries! I didn’t have the game at home, and my mom (whose house was the one with the Wii, unlike my dad’s) was unlikely to buy it for me, so I made sure to play it and absorb as much knowledge of it as I could every birthday party and every family gathering. Smash 64 and Melee too, if that was the version the friend whose house I was at had, from their older siblings’ home console.
I guess for some time it just hadn’t thought to ask if I could buy the game, because I remember my mom agreeing to buy me Brawl if I could scrape up the money for it. I was always good about saving money from birthdays, so $40, or possibly less if we got it pre-owned (I don’t remember), was easy for me to find. One trip to GameStop later, I was playing the game I had been dying to get my hands on. I quickly beat Subspace Emissary, the game’s story mode. This is probably where my enthusiasm for the Ominous Latin Chanting trope began. I would continue to play it frequently, either on my own against CPUs or with my brother, usually the former.
Another distinct memory of Brawl was watching CPUs duke it out while being sick in bed with the Swine Flu. Getting that terrible sickness as a child is just my luck, but I guess at least Brawl made it ever so slightly better?
Before I write any further, I need to describe important context. The Smash series has optional random elements (items and stage hazards) that competitive players turn off, since in a competitive game, ideally the skill of the players determine the winner, not random elements. Since these elements are on by default, most people consider having them on the “correct” or “intended” way to play the game. In reality, though, the game designers were always intent on giving players the options to be able to play however they want. The only correct way to play is just whatever rules you have the most fun playing with. Being a fighting game, Smash can easily be played in a competitive setting with the random elements turned off. Competitive players obviously intend to win, turn off the random elements, and take the game seriously, while others view this as unfun and stick with items and hazards. This has always created a divide in the playerbase, which is honestly fine; to each their own.
Even in 2008, I recall reading about the competitive Smash scene and international tournaments on SmashWiki, and the general competitive attitude towards Brawl (“Even with random elements turned off, Brawl is not suitable for competition”). Even still, I recognized that the best Smash players in the world were incredibly skilled, and unconsciously looked up to them. I started playing against CPUs without items and on Final Destination, and I think I wasn’t half bad with my main, Lucario, at least for a kid my age. I guess I don’t have many memories of Brawl after that, because I didn’t really have anyone to play it with…
Smash 4 pre-release
Late in Middle School, I recall having conversations with a good friend of mine about Miiverse (Nintendo’s botched social network) posts from the Smash Bros series. Director, Mr. Sakurai. Mr. Sakurai regularly posted development updates for the new Smash Bros game, a dual-release for 3DS and Wii U. We just called it “Smash 4”, because it was the fourth game in the series, and because the games’ actual titles sounded like that (They are literally titled “Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS” and “Super Smash Bros. for Wii U”). This friend was probably more into those development updates than I was, as I distinctly remember him being excited for the post that confirmed Sonic the Hedgehog was going to be returning from Brawl. I also remember being put-off by him talking about Project M, a Brawl modification, because I perceived it to be illegal and immoral (more on that later).
It was still going to be a good while before these two games were released, and this friend and I just stopped talking after middle school, because we went to different high schools. I still followed the Miiverse posts, but there just wasn’t much to say about Smash until closer to the release of the new games.
Smash 4 3DS was going to receive a limited Demo, which could only be played so many times, and was limited to a handful of characters. Even with those limits, it was a big deal! It was stated early on in Smash 4’s development cycle that the game’s pace was going to be sped up, and it was going to be more competitively designed, which was a welcome change from Brawl’s intentionally slow and “casual-friendly” design. The Demo would be an early preview of the new iteration’s changes. Due to how release schedules work, the Demo was set to be available in Japan a couple weeks before it would be available in the states (I think, it’s hard to remember something like that). As such, information and footage on the Demo was lucrative. The content and discussion on the internet about the Demo was my first exposure to the greater Smash community on the internet. I still wasn’t entirely sold on the super-competitive aspect yet, but at the very least I started to pick up on a few bits and pieces of the terminology of that side of the community.
Smash 4 3DS
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS was released in the United States on October 3rd, 2014. It quickly became the game I played in all of my free time, even by myself. The game had a well-received and very fun side mode, named Smash Run, in which players ran around a large map beating up enemies from different games and collecting power-ups. After a set amount of time, all the players would come together for a random Final Battle to determine the winner.
On the other hand, Smash 4 had a “custom moves” feature, which in hindsight was really quite silly. I played the game’s singleplayer modes a whole lot, trying to unlock these moves. Around 50 characters of the base game each had 2 alternate moves for the 4 directions of special moves; this makes for around 400 unlockable moves. These custom moves did not have concrete methods of unlocking them – it was literally random which move(s) you’d unlock after completing one of the singleplayer modes, if any at all. I had some fun trying to unlock them all, but in hindsight it was much more of a hassle than it had any right to be.
Even still, many lunch periods were spent playing Smash 3DS against a friend I had just made (this was early in high school). Smash 3DS was a big deal for me. Many, many hours were spent unlocking the “secret” characters, grinding for the custom moves, playing with that new friend, and reading the content and watching the videos on the internet all about it.
Smash 4 Wii U
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U was released only a month later, in November of 2014. These two games were largely the same, with a couple of different side modes and controller options (obviously) between them. They both received the same updates and DLC. The 3DS was not regarded as good platform for competition since it was a portable console, so the competitive scene for Smash 4 really started with the home console release. A couple months into playing the Wii U version, I started really following the nationwide competitive community. I didn’t want to stop playing the game, despite completing all of the singleplayer content in both the 3DS and Wii U versions (besides unlocking the custom moves, which were widely considered too hard to unlock). I began to study the game, trying to understand it at a deeper level.
I really started to play to win. However, this meant I could only find people to play competitive rules with online. I would easily beat my friend and brother with my rulesets, so understandably they didn’t want to play those modes, and would rather play with the random elements.
Despite being able to beat people close to me, the games’ online competitive mode – For Glory – was brutal. But I understood I needed to get better at the game, and there was many things I still did not understand. Online, there is always discussion of getting better at the game, and the point is always made to get involved in your local smash community. I was surprised to learn that there is a Smash community in nearly every city in the US, each with weekly tournaments. The Smash Bros subreddit has a handy directory of links to local Facebook groups, and it was easy for me to find out where my closest local tournaments were.
One problem – I didn’t have a driver’s license. To step out of this story and into my reality at the time, I was able to get a practice permit, but was dealing with depression. This was a regular feature of my adolescence. While I somehow managed to maintain decent grades with just my school work, I was unmotivated to work towards or learn anything that “mattered” the second I left school. I regularly passed out when I got home, so much that I had a name for it – “stress sleeping”. When I was awake, I was probably playing For Glory. At this point, the sheer amount of time I spent on For Glory was probably more a function of escapism than of having fun with the game. Even still, I wanted to participate in these local tournaments, but it was quite a drive and my parents were not enthusiastic about taking an hour to drop me off, drive back home, and then another hour to drive back and pick me up.
After much deliberation with my dad, he agreed to take me to my first tournament in June 2015. I’m guessing summer break had just started, based on the date. The tournament was across town, and I recall my dad had a talk with me about learning to drive on the way there. Anyways, I arrived at the venue, Wii U Pro Controller in hand, and entered with the tag (name) Train. This was unlike anything I had ever seen before. There were a bunch of TVs, each with a Wii U, and a whole bunch of players. It was exciting – these were people who were good at the game, and could talk about it with a deep understanding of its mechanics. They were like wizards to me!
Relatively shortly after signing up, my match was called. “Train and Kev to Stream Setup” announced Nike, the TO (tournament organizer). I wasn’t sure what the significance of Stream Setup was, but now I know. This was the console that was being streamed to the local Smash community’s Twitch channel – and also being recorded. This is usually reserved for the better players, so I have no idea why my first tournament match ever was called to it, but honestly, I am glad that this was the case.
My first Smash tournament match ever was recorded and uploaded to YouTube here. If you know anything at all about Smash, you’ll know that the Player 1 here, me, is just awful. I roll a whole lot, don’t actually perform any combos, and self-destruct my last life at only 20% in the first game. I had some slightly better gameplay with Lucario in the second game, but I still got easily destroyed by my opponent. I recall Kev being a good sport, and looking back on the gameplay he sometimes let me get away with of my bad habits. I think I said something like “Sorry I’m bad” but was quickly reassured that it was no trouble and that he even had fun playing against me. This attitude was not something I had expected. While I didn’t expect a full roast, I definitely didn’t anticipate such a positive response to such a convincing win from my opponent.
Since it was my first tournament, and I didn’t know what “double elimination” meant, I thought I was already knocked out of the tournament. I remember getting up and saying “welp, that’s it.” However, the other players there were quick to stop me and direct me to my next match. If I remember correctly, my next opponent played Dark Pit, and beat me pretty easily, similar to my first opponent. While he wasn’t as enthusiastic, he did smile, nod his head, and said something along the lines of “good games man”. I can’t remember the tag of my second opponent, but at this point I was happy about my experience despite being absolutely wiped.
Personal Revelations
My dad took me home, and I made a post on the local Smash group’s Facebook page, thanking the TO, the venue, and the players. In the post, I also wrote about having social anxiety and appreciating the welcoming environment, and mentioned that I wasn’t very good at the game. Throughout the afternoon and next day, I got a couple of comments on that post showing the same mentality that I saw from the players at the venue. “Glad you had fun, hope to see you again!”, “Good games”, things like that. One comment stuck out to me that responded to my perception of my skill. It was something like, “That’s okay dude, honestly we are all bad. You just gotta take every loss as a learning experience and stick with it.”
In hindsight, this is rather obvious advice, but after simply being told this, and seeing that mentality in action in this community, I really took it to heart. My terrible loss of my first tournament was far from being a permanent mark on my personal Smash record. “Going 0-2” (0 wins, 2 losses; immediately eliminated) was something that everyone had to go through. This was a drastic difference to what I had believed about merit/skill from my schooling. Until now, I was simply unaware that anything short of perfection could have any positive outcome. With what I had been taught and shown, how else was I supposed to think about failure?
As an aside, I am pretty sure this concept of failure is a well-known phenomenon within “gifted” children.
For me, this was a life-changing revelation. But really, it was just another day in the Smash community. The Smash community is one of constant improvement, albeit in this children’s party game. The Smash community taught me the Growth Mentality where my parents and my education has failed. And for that, I am grateful.
Back to the game, though. I was now certain I wanted to stick with it and get better. That summer, I managed to get my parents to take me to a few more weeklies. I had a long way to go before I would be able to beat anyone, but just by being present at the tournaments, one starts to pick things up. The Smash community has a whole bunch of terms and slang, (enough to fill a 30-minute video guide), as do most competitive communities. I had already known some of them, but I started to understand some of the more complex ones (like “Directional Influence”, “Command Grab”, “Tech”). While these are not strictly necessary to improve, it’s important to understand how the game is talked about if you really want to understand all of its mechanics. This learning process was exciting for me, as I started to feel like I fit in, even though I was shy and could not get a single win.
I still played Toon Link, and while I did learn things about the character from my local Smash community’s obnoxious Toon Link main, I knew the character wasn’t considered anywhere near as strong as some of the top-tier characters, and started to wonder if I should choose someone else if I really wanted to stick with the game. At this point in time, Smash had never had a well-balanced roster of fighters, and it felt like a waste of time trying to learn a character that was considered mid-tier at best in a game with such dominant top-tiers.
DLC Chronicles
The Wii U did not sell particularly well, due to poor business decisions on Nintendo’s part. For this reason, it was stated that the multiplayer Nintendo games on the console would receive around 2 years of content updates, since it would be easier to get current Wii U owners to spend for new content for games they already had than to push new Wii U consoles. This must have proved effective, as we have seen the same pattern with several Switch titles, even though the Switch sells like hotcakes.
Anyways, both Smash for Wii U and 3DS was going to receive new content in the form of new fighters. This was extremely exciting, as what characters got into the base roster of the game was already a lucrative subject, and there would be several more chances for people’s favorite characters to show up. After the first 4 additional characters (Mewtwo, Lucas, Roy, Ryu) were released by June 2015, it was revealed that there would be a Smash Ballot, where players could vote for their favorite character to join Smash (potentially, given that it was a realizable character, especially since third-party characters require licensing deals and legal paperwork).
This is where the character campaigns really started, and when the “x 4 smash” Twitter accounts took off. Personally, I voted for Wolf from the Star Fox series. He was in Brawl, but cut from Smash 4 for unspecified reasons, and I liked the other Star Fox characters, even if I didn’t really play them. There were many fan polls asking who you voted for in an attempt to calculate the odds of “who’s getting in”.
I’ve always had a “any additional content is good content” attitude to these DLC characters, but given that there would only be so many characters, the discussions about potential fighters can easily get very toxic. “You want X? Waste of a slot.”, that kind of thing. While the build up and hype of a new character is always fun, there is also always people setting themselves up for disappointment.
The first post-ballot character was Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII. This was an insane crossover. Final Fantasy was a series that wasn’t really on Nintendo consoles. There’s always been some spin-off FF games, but in fact the developers of FFVII (Square Enix) had stopped developing it for the Nintendo 64 and jumped ship to PlayStation. From Wikipedia:
After delays and technical difficulties from experimenting on several real-time rendering platforms, Square moved production to pre-rendered video, necessitating the huge capacity of the CD-ROM format and therefore departing Nintendo for the PlayStation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII
While I wasn’t really into Final Fantasy at the time, I knew about this history – and for some reason I had interpreted Cloud’s reveal trailer as an announcement that Nintendo was acquiring Square Enix. Anyways, the hype at this point was bordering on hysteria. I cannot stress enough how unforeseen this reveal was. If I recall correctly, there was a post on the smashbros subreddit with thousands of comments guessing the next character. Not a single person out of thousands had guessed it would be Cloud. This hype consumed me, and just from the look of him I knew I would be maining this character. He was released, and I quickly picked him up. Cloud really clicked with me, and I started to play the game a lot more, and enjoy it. He also just happened to be the second best character in the game.
The next character, to many peoples’ disappointment, was Corrin from Fire Emblem Fates. There is a perception that there are too many “anime swordfighters” in Smash; Corrin was another one of these (I will make a separate post about the whole “anime swordfighter” argument some time later). Fire Emblem Fates wasn’t even out yet in the West, and the trailer for Corrin was very obviously an advertisement for the game. Honestly, the disappointment here was justified – the impression was that all of the final DLC characters would be determined from player votes, and not influenced by corporate decisions.
However, to “make up for it”, I guess, the final DLC character for Smash 4 was revealed on the same day. Bayonetta, from the Bayonetta series. I wasn’t super familiar with this character, but I knew that Nintendo basically saved the series while it was on its deathbed and got Bayonetta 2 as a Wii U exclusive. Bayonetta is an intense and combo-heavy action game, so Bayonetta in Smash had to be the same. Indeed, her Smash appearance was intentionally designed to be very strong and combo-heavy. In addition, she has a move which counters opponents and slows them down – Witch Time. Once competitive players started playing her, it was quickly realized that this character could combo you into a KO from 1 touch, even without Witch Time.
This character was broken. As in, Bayonetta functioned, but far too well – she broke the balance of the game. Again, smash had never had a balanced roster of characters, but this new character that was so overwhelmingly overpowered, that she was being compared to Brawl’s dominant best character, Meta Knight. Bayonetta was the death of Smash 4. Smash 4 was supposed to be have competitive play in mind with its design, but Bayonetta alone made many people stop playing the game, competitively and casually. Some regions even banned her, but a character ban is really hard to get everyone to agree with.
As a side note, Cloud was also incredibly strong, and widely considered the 2nd best character, behind Bayonetta. There was even a “pocket Cloud” meme; a “pocket” character is a character you might only play for a tactical advantage against a certain other character. Cloud was considered to win most matchups in the game, and was very easy to just pick up and play. However, while he was a very over-centralizing character, he was not hated nearly as universally as Bayonetta. In fact, it wasn’t universally accepted that he was the 2nd best character until after Bayonetta’s release. Cloud played some part in making people drop the game, but Bayonetta is and was still considered the unhealthiest character for the metagame.
Lull Period
While I tried to pick up and practice Diddy Kong, the theorized (but never realized) counter character to our Bayonetta overlords, Smash was… dead for a lot of people. Some time in 2017, my Wii U just stopped working. It wouldn’t turn on. My brother was the last person to use it, and I have no idea what he did (if anything), but honestly, I was not super mad. I was bummed, but I wasn’t really playing my Wii U anyways. I was still unable to go to tournaments, so there was no reason to practice.
By this time, Nintendo’s next home console, the Switch, was already available. I got mine the first day it was available, to be prepared for the inevitable Smash Bros. on Switch. I’m sure many people did the same. Nintendo was porting a bunch of Wii U games to the Switch, and it was widely believed they would do the same with Smash. While a port instead of an entirely new entry would be disappointing, the other Wii U ports were significantly updated, so it was believed that Smash Switch would get balance changes (namely Bayonetta nerfs) and a few new characters. Of course, this was all speculation. It would be a while before we got any news.
Smash Ultimate Prerelease
The next Smash game was teased at the end of a Nintendo Direct presentation on March 8th, 2018. You can watch this teaser here. This was a huge surprise, on many levels.
Let me walk you through this experience. I was actually in a Calculus classroom after school, working on some homework. I was also subtly watching this Nintendo presentation on my phone. Again, it was a mystery when the next Smash game would be, but it was widely accepted that there would be a Smash on Switch, given Nintendo’s past and business model. Because of this, I always made sure to watch the Nintendo Direct presentations live, no matter where I was, so I could experience the hype for the next Smash game myself.
In the thirty seconds of the teaser, it looks like a new Splatoon game is about to be announced. My thoughts are “Not Smash, but Splatoon is a fun game, so okay.” Suddenly, the background goes dark. “What’s this?” The Splatoon character (Inkling) turns around, to see a massive, flaming Smash logo. “This is real. This is happening. Smash is coming to Switch. It’s Happening.” Under it, is Mario and Link (in his Breath of the Wild appearance). The screen fades, and a never-before-seen Super Smash Bros logo appears. And then, the year 2018 flashes on the screen. “Super Smash Bros. is coming to the Switch this year!”
I could hardly contain my excitement, but I had to, because I was in a classroom that other students were in, also to get help with homework. I’m sure that I fidgeted a bunch and it drew some attention, but nonetheless I was able to finish that homework and leave the classroom. The same friend that I played Smash 3DS with at lunch happened to be there that day, and on leaving the classroom, I immediately enthused to him about what had just transpired. His response was just “okay”, but I didn’t expect him to be as excited as I was. I was hyped. I recall spamming the Ron Paul It’s Happening GIF in a couple of friend’s group chats.
One problem – the fact that there would be a new Smash game, and the fact that Inklings would probably be playable fighters, was all that was known. The game’s title was not even known yet. There were no gameplay footage, no hints, for months. 96 days to be exact. This info drought was painful, but it also brought about a whole lot of discussion on the internet. Facebook, Smash-focused Discord servers, and r/Smashbros were consumed by speculative posts. The hot topic was Is Smash for Switch a new entry in the Smash Series or an improved port of Smash 4? The pattern of Wii U ports on the Switch seemed to indicate it would be a port – but I knew, in my heart, that this was an entirely new entry. (Actually, I knew it because I could tell they would not make a new logo as seen in the teaser if it was just a port). The second hot topic was Who’s Getting Cut? This happens for every entry of every fighting game, as the roster of fighters is usually very different between entries, aside from the mainstays. The only “guaranteed” fighters were the “Original 12”, the characters that were in Super Smash Bros. on the N64. I had basically accepted that Cloud would not be making a return, and that I would have to find a new main.
On June 12, 2018, at E3 2018, more information about Smash for Switch was finally revealed. You can watch this presentation here. Again, I’m going to walk you through some moments I had watching this presentation, as I remember them fondly. (You can skip this next monster of a paragraph if you really want).
Mr. Sakurai, the game’s director, starts with a joke about what the Smash series is about. He says, or rather, the translator says, “Super Smash Brothers is an action game, about smashing beloved game characters off the screen.” Then the screen reads, THE END. I am confused, but this doesn’t last long as the words (Just kidding.) appear shortly after. It was a very strange joke to start a very important presentation off with, but it’s a joke that I appreciate now that I look back on it. Mr. Sakurai knew just how much fans had been waiting for this presentation, and he wanted to tease us one last time before we started getting into the actual information. Translator says, “I’m sure you are all eager to find out who will be joining the roster this time, so we made a video to showcase some of the fighters appearing in the game” The video starts, and we get a look at how the stage Battlefield will look in this new entry. It’s beautiful, I think, but before I know it, Mario comes out with highly detailed denim overalls. This game already looks amazing. Graphics aren’t my first priority when it comes to games, but I welcomed the look of this game with open arms. Samus, Kirby, Bowser, Link (albeit as he appears in Breath of the Wild), DK, Fox, Falco, Marth, Zelda (matching her appearance from A Link Between Worlds), Sheik, Villager, Meta Knight, are all revealed in a rapid-fire fashion. These are all characters nobody expected to be cut from the new entry. In the same slide as Meta Knight, Mewtwo appears, who was cut from Brawl but returned as a DLC character in Smash 4. His return was not unexpected, but it wasn’t a sure-thing. Sonic, Peach, and Pikachu were expected as well. But then a pair walks into the screen. It’s Ice Climbers, the two-in-one fighter who was cut from Smash 4 due to technical restraints. Awesome. Inklings are shown off next, who was already known to be in this game, but here we get a first look at their moveset. Captain Falcon, and Zero Suit Samus, both characters expected to return, but Wii Fit Trainer as well, a character that was widely thought to be cut since they aren’t really a character and only represent the game Wii Fit. Weird, but I’m sure some people are happy. Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard, recombined into the character Pokémon Trainer, after only Charizard made the cut as a standalone character in Smash 4. Okay, cool, love that they are bringing the trio back. Ness, who was expected to return, and Lucas, who was not, both from the Mother series. Ryu from Street Fighter! So it looks like we getting most of the Smash 4 DLC at least, but I bet Cloud won’t be here. Ganondorf also shows up, in his Ocarina of Time appearance. Ike, from Fire Emblem, in both his Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn appearance. I thought he would be getting cut, but I guess he is a fan favorite with the chant “We Like Ike!”
Cloud. Cloud appears and is actually returning to the next Smash game. My heart skips a beat. Everyone thought he would be getting cut. I get to keep playing Cloud. I am so surprised, but I don’t even really get to take that in because the presentation continues in the same rapid-fire fasion. Snake, from Metal Gear Solid, who was widely thought to be a one-time guest character in Brawl, and who the Smash community thought would not be returning to Smash in a million years, appears on the screen. He is accompanied by the text:
EVERYONE IS HERE!
My heart skips a beat again. Every. Single. Character. Will be returning to Smash Bros. I am at home watching this presentation, so I jump out of my seat in excitement, but the presentation continues without giving me time to pop off. Pichu, who hadn’t been seen since Smash Bros. Melee in 2001, makes an appearance, but the presentation goes on. More characters, more characters, and then it gets to Bayonetta. Oh no. Well, this only makes sense since every character is coming back. Surely they will nerf her. More characters, more characters, and then Corrin. Ugh, okay, but I can’t be upset that Corrin returned since everyone is coming back anyway. More characters, and then Young Link and Toon Link are shown. Like Pichu, Young Link had not made an appearance since Melee. Having played a lot of Toon Link in the last game, I was excited to try out both in this new game. The presentation continues, confirming that every single character that had ever been in Smash would be in this game.
All of the returning fighters have been shown, so the screen fades to white. Then, that new logo from the teaser shows up, but this time, it has the word ULTIMATE under it.
This is the ultimate Smash game, I think to myself. It’s happening.
The presentation goes on, detailing a whole bunch of welcome changes to characters and the game. The game’s pace is sped up, even more than Smash 4. “Echo Fighters”, a way to denote which characters are derivative of another. Clones are always controversial in fighting games, and this was a nice way to say that these clone characters weren’t taking up as much development time like a original character would. Airdodging is shown to be similar to how it is Melee, and a new mechanic called Perfect Shield (or as the community calls it, “parrying”), lets you counterattack an opponent by releasing your shield at the precise moment that your shield gets hit. When playing 1-on-1, which is the competitive standard, characters deal more damage, making the game faster paced. And finally, Ridley from the Metroid series would be joining as a playable fighter, after being highly requested for nearly 20 years.
This is the ultimate Smash game. And the release date? December 7th, 2018.
The wait began. Although there would be two more presentations, it was difficult for me to just wait. My consumption of Smash content on the internet increased, to the point that it was at an all-time high. The speculation went wild.
There was an August 8th Smash Direct which revealed Simon, Richter, Chrom, Dark Samus, and King K Rool (another highly requested character). It was also explained that you could save rulesets instead of having to set the rules every time you started the game. This was a very welcome change for both competitive and casual players.
In October, there was a “Grinch Leak” that supposed that someone who worked at a promotional printing company had revealed the final characters before Nintendo did. I certainly believed it, at this particular leak had an extreme amount of effort put into it to make it seem credible. I will probably make a different post about just how insane this so-called leak was at the time. It was eventually proven false in the November 1st direct, which revealed Ken and Incineroar as the final fighters. While this was a surprise to me, I wasn’t disappointed by it and continued to watch the direct. In addition to these new characters, we finally got information on the games’ Adventure Mode, the Spirits system, and how Online play will work.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, it was revealed that the game would be getting DLC fighters, just as Smash 4 did. Nice! However, to many people’s surprise, the first DLC character was revealed to be… Piranha Plant? Piranha Plant is a Mario series enemy – not even a real character. The Plant’s inclusion as a fighter was absolutely hilarious and made many people hysterical. Piranha Plant would be a “bonus” DLC character, one that you’d get for free if you pre-ordered Smash Ultimate, and not part of the Fighters Pass. A character like this had never happened before. I didn’t know I wanted this!
I had already pre-ordered Smash Ultimate digitally long before this presentation. Now I just had to wait until that day – December 7th. With all the hype, it was a tough wait. But I held out.
See Me In Ultimate
I remember mashing A on the Switch menu to check if I could play yet on the night of December 6th. In this moment, I literally could not wait. The night of December 6th was a Thursday, meaning I would be staying up til 12AM on a school night, and presumably playing for a bit and missing out on some sleep before school. But it didn’t matter. I had been waiting for the next Smash for more than 2 years, and I was going to play it the moment I was able to, dammit!
The game booted, and the into song Lifelight began to play. Shivers. It’s finally here. I laid down in my bed with my Switch in Handheld Mode, and selected the game’s Adventure Mode, World of Light, from the menu. I didn’t want to bother with versus mode yet, both because the games starts you with only 8 characters and you have to unlock around 60 more, and because the story mode just seemed really promising.
Right off the bat, I could tell I was playing a different game. It just feels different than Smash 4. Knowing what I know now, I can tell you the differences in the two games’ engines, but in that initial moment it was just a feeling. And it was a good feeling. The game is so much smoother that Smash 4. It’s difficult to describe, if you aren’t already familiar with the series, but I could tell the developers really wanted this game to be fluid and fast.
I got about 2 and a half hours into World of Light before feeling tired and putting my Switch into sleep mode. Satisfied, I put myself into sleep mode as well. I would, of course, bring my Switch to school tomorrow and play it at lunch. I played Smash that whole weekend, and got my first taste of versus mode against friends. None of us had all the characters yet, but I knew that I already loved this game and was going to compete in local tournaments.
I completed 100% of World of Light within a handful of days, and began working towards 100% completing all of the content in the base game – Challenges, all Spirits, all unlocks. This actually took me til February, but I had a whole lot of fun doing it. I really thought this would be the undisputed best Smash game ever, and by extension the best Fighting Game of all time.
I will post my full thoughts on the game in a different post (as a review) sometime. While I still love Ultimate, I think I am more willing to acknowledge its (handful of) flaws than I was in 2018. Anyways, back to the timeline:
Sure enough, weekly tournaments started up in my area shortly after the games’ release. Once school ended (for good, as I had graduated), I started going to these weeklies regularly. I also participated in a few Online tournaments. I wanted to take the mentality I had learned from the Smash 4 era and actually apply it. I was going to git gud at this game. Even with the massive roster, Ultimate was and continues to be the most balanced Smash game ever. And with a bunch of venues starting new Ultimate weeklies, there was going to be plenty of opportunities. This was the best time to really get into Smash.
I had a bit of a problem, though. A fundamental part of playing competitively is having a main character that you put a lot of time into practicing, but I couldn’t decide on one. I didn’t want to play Cloud. He was nerfed in the transition from Smash 4 to Ultimate, and it felt like I was playing a constrained version of him. He was definitely my best character at the game’s launch, but it was hard to stick with a character you are constantly reminded is weaker than they used to be. In hindsight, Cloud was nowhere near as gutted as Bayonetta was, and I think I was overreacting to my own perception of his nerfs. I tried a few of the characters that were considered good in the early meta, like Pichu and Roy.
It took a while, but after participating in my local Smash community, and talking with the regulars, one character in particular looked promising. Young Link, returning from Melee, is a fast and combo-heavy projectile character that was known to be a good character from the very beginning. I picked him up, and it clicked pretty fast that this was going to be my main.
Now that I had my main, I was set on practicing and gitting gud with him. I spent a lot of time in the new and improved Training Mode practicing combos and techniques. I involved myself in the local community and picked up advanced concepts about the game and ways to think about competing that I had not considered before. It took a lot of losses, but eventually I did take a win from an opponent. This was a great moment for me, but it turns out improving would not remain that easy. Despite that one win, I would continue to suffer 2 losses and 0 wins for many weeklies.
If you were there, you remember how I made my recurring results a topic I brought up in the local community a lot, and even attempted to make a group within this local community centered around immediately getting eliminated from a tournament, as was regular for me. I wanted to make a separate blog post about that – I feel like that is a social experience that is separate to the game itself. There’s a lot of cringeworthy interactions (on both my end and others’) to unpack there.
I competed regularly throughout 2019 – I definitely improved a lot, but I still have a long way to go! There were a lot of weeklies in my local community, one for almost every day of the week. This was my only social outlet since school had ended and I was not about to take out a loan to go to college like I was “supposed” to. Again, that is a whole other topic that needs unpacking… Anyways, I had a lot of fun up until the beginning of 2020, when the whole world shut down. This was really hard for me, as my one social outlet as well as my main means of entertainment had essentially been taken away. Not that it wasn’t justified… While I haven’t caught it myself (at the time of writing), I do have the misfortune of knowing what COVID-19 does to people.
Having focused so hard on improving at in-person tournaments, I started to understand why so many Smash players bemoaned the online mode of Ultimate. Fighting games are games of extreme precision down to the 60th of a second, and Ultimate has an absolutely unacceptable degree of latency when playing online. On top of the latency, matchmaking and player ratings are very questionable in Smash Ultimate. Unfortunately, Nintendo is behind-the-times when it comes to online games. I played Smash Ultimate Online on and off, but at one point I decided to stop trying online and started playing a certain different Smash game…
But for now, I want to walk you through the journey of DLC characters for Ultimate, and the general perceptions of hype
DLC Chronicles 2
All the while that I was competing, the game continued to get DLC characters. At the time of writing (March 2021), we still have two characters left.
I already described Piranha Plant, the “bonus” DLC character from launch. Piranha Plant or just “Plant” is a very odd fighter, that takes moves from the many subspecies of the Piranha Plant enemy from Mario. It’s considered to be too weird of a character to be that good, but it’s still very amusing to fight (and be reminded that it’s actually a playable character).
The first (non-bonus) DLC character is Joker, from Persona 5. He was actually revealed the night of the game’s release, at The Game Awards. I had never played Persona, but Persona 5 was a big title in the gaming world at the time, and lots of people expected Joker to be in Smash. Even if I was unfamiliar with the character, I was excited for Persona fans, and was very excited to start the DLC cycle for Smash Ultimate. Turns out, Joker is considered to be at least a top 5 character in competitive play, even after being slightly nerfed in an update. He’s not a bad inclusion, but I wish they didn’t make his “comeback mechanic” Arsene so potent. Still, Joker is a cool DLC character.
Hero is the name for a character that represents several main characters from the Dragon Quest series. Dragon Quest is huge in Japan; just to give you an idea of that, a common anecdote about the series is that Dragon Quest games are just disallowed from releasing on weekdays, because they cause a huge downturn in productivity. At a glance, Hero looks like a Link kind of fighter, but they made him have a bunch of magic attacks that even use a magic bar (“MP”). He’s a mixed basket of magical attacks. His Down Special, Command Selection, pulls up a menu that allows you to select a spell. Which spells show up on the menu are mostly random, and several of these random spells are extremely powerful. One of these spells, Thwack, literally has a 1% chance of instantly killing an opponent at 0 damage. On top of that, all of his smash attacks have a random chance of being a “critical hit”, dealing high damage and knockback. While the concept of randomness being built into this character is definitely faithful to Dragon Quest, it caused a huge stir in the competitive community as randomness is generally seen as being uncompetitive. Indeed, there has been a small handful of competitive sets where the Hero’s opponent actually dies with 0 damage after being hit by a Thwack. While this was definitely frustrating and can still happen, in the current metagame, Hero is generally considered a mid-tier character, as his spells are only useful as long as he has MP, and his sword attacks aren’t particularly fast. After the playerbase started to learn how to play around Hero, the negative attention generally died down. As for my opinion, around his release I was definitely for banning the character from competitive play, but I admit my bias as Hero has a random spell called Bounce that invalidates projectile-based characters (like Young Link). I still don’t like his randomness, and have definitely felt like games have been “stolen” from me because of it, but I no longer think Hero is ban-worthy. The counterplay to him is easy enough and his spells can’t carry him to the top of international tournaments.
Banjo and Kazooie, from the classic Nintendo 64 game of the same name, has been a long-requested character, and finally joined Smash as DLC fighter #3. Banjo’s inclusion had always seemed like a pipe dream, since the Banjo and Kazooie franchise had long since been bought out by Microsoft, which is of course a rival game company to Nintendo. It was a fantastic surprise to see Microsoft’s cooperation and support for Smash. Starting in Smash Ultimate update 5.0.0, there’s a little ©Microsoft on the title screen. In Mr. Sakurai Presents Banjo and Kazooie, Mr. Sakurai even states that if you want to play the game Banjo is from, you can play it on the Xbox. It’s kind of insane to think about, but this was made possible with the then-new trend in the game industry of cooperation and cross-platform play. Banjo and Kazooie have a bunch of moves from the source game and some neat referential animations (like the Perfect Shield pose referencing the 1-Up statues). However, to many players’ chagrin, this highly requested character plays rather slowly and prefers to launch projectiles from afar with Kazooie, a playstyle referred to as “lame”. I’m not really sure what the Smash community expected. Nonetheless, I am glad Banjo and Kazooie are finally fighters in Smash, even if people complain about their implementation. I’m super happy for the Banjo and Kazooie fans and really excited about the possibilities this cooperation opens up.
Terry from the Fatal Fury series of fighting games is the 4th DLC character, revealed on the same day that Banjo and Kazooie were released. This was a “who?” character for a lot of people, but I had seen him before on the arcade cabinets of the venues I went to to play Smash tournaments. Fatal Fury is probably most popular in Mexico and South America, and this DLC was very well received there. Terry is similar in concept to the Street Fighter characters, but he has a Super Special Moves mechanic that lets him unleash two very powerful moves if he is over 100% damage. He’s very unique in that he was a forward special and back special move, whereas most characters just have one side special. The characters that originate from traditional fighting games take a great deal of skill to use, so I welcomed another one. With Terry’s presentation, it was also revealed that Smash Ultimate would be receiving six additional DLC fighters after Fighters Pass 1.
And finally, DLC #5 is… Byleth, from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Before I even talk about how the character works, I can’t stress enough just how fierce the negative reaction was to this character’s reveal. The previous 4 DLC characters had been third party characters, and it was assumed (on no real basis) that the final DLC character of Fighters Pass 1 would also be a third party, non-Nintendo character. Many players voiced their discontent on social media, and some even got particularly toxic about it, going after Fire Emblem fans. Once again, I will make a seperate post about the entire “too many swordfighters” controversy some time – it’s a whole mess. Having played Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I was really glad we got Byleth (the player character of FE3H) instead of the most popular character and antagonist Edelgard. I expected a third party character as well, but I was not disappointed by this inclusion. Players can play as both male and female Byleth and as color swaps that represent the titular three houses of the game. Despite what Smash fans may have you believe, Byleth uses 3 weapons on top of their signature whip-sword, which again represent the three houses from the source game. Unlike other DLC characters, Byleth is a fundamentals-based character with no gimmick, trump card, or comeback mechanic (other than using a variety of weapons). I really like the playstyle they were going for, and at the time Byleth was my favorite DLC character. Unfortunately, Byleth is very slow and struggles in competitive play. This is a little odd, since Byleth does not have a slow speed stat in the source game, but I guess if you actually equipped all of the weapons on Byleth in-game they would be weighed down and not be very fast. Still, I tried to play Byleth for a good while, just for fun.
Starting off Fighters Pass Volume 2 is Min Min, from ARMS. ARMS was one of the early Switch first-party titles, and while it has a small cult following, it struggled to really take off. ARMS is a weird fighting game with not much content, after all. The premise of ARMS is characters with stretchy arms launch their fists at each other. Initially, it was revealed that the next Smash character would be “a character from ARMS”, which lead to much speculation. ARMS doesn’t have a main character, instead having a small roster of very different characters, as most fighting games do. While the characters Spring Man and Ribbon Girl are on the cover art of ARMS, Min Min only appears in-game. Even so, Min Min is the most popular character in the game and even won the Party Crash event in ARMS. So, Min Min was chosen to represent ARMS in Smash. Min Min in Smash is very unique; instead of having a neutral special and side special, these moves launch her right arm. Min Min was designed very faithfully to her origin game, which is always cool to see. However, this means she gets to safely keep her distance and launch her arms from very far away and still hit opponents. This is very frustrating to deal with, but is not unbeatable. Since Min Min came out at the height of the pandemic, her competitive viability is a topic for debate, but it is generally agreed upon that she is a strong character whose ability to hit you safely from an extreme distance far outweighs her poor recovery. I liked ARMS as a game, but Min Min in smash definitely has a “lame” playstyle, but again it is not unbeatable.
Steve from Minecraft was a surprise reveal on October 1st, 2020. I had an inkling that this would be the new character – the timing of this reveal would be similar to Minecraft Live 2020. Minecraft is obviously a massively successful game, but it was always thought the concept of the game would never translate over from Smash. To many people’s surprise, Steve was added to the game and he carries over a lot of concepts from Minecraft. As soon as the reveal trailer dropped, the internet went wild, and Twitter even crashed. Completely, for several minutes. That is just how unbelievable this character was. Steve was my “meme pick” – a character I wanted in Smash, but I didn’t believe to be possible. I’m a fan of Minecraft, and although I don’t actively play it like I do Smash, Steve is definetely a character that deserves a spot. He is very unique for a Smash character – he can mine, craft tools, and even place blocks. Mr. Sakurai stated that the 100+ stages in the game had to be reworked to allow Steve to place blocks in them. In a way, when you play Steve, you are playing Minecraft in Smash, instead of just playing as Steve in Smash. It’s super weird and out of place, but hilarious at the same time. Similar to Min Min, the combination of a unique moveset and no in-person tournaments to test them out due to COVID, no one can say for sure what how good of a competitive character he is. Unlike Min Min, however, there is no general perception about his viability; some are confident that Steve’s unique gimmicks are very good, but some are confident that Steve’s entirely different gameplay is simply ineffective in Smash. Steve’s alternate costumes include other Minecraft characters, Alex, Zombie, and Enderman.
Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII was revealed as the ninth DLC character at The Game Awards 2020. Sephiroth was certainly a surprise – Cloud only barely got into Smash Ultimate, and it looked to many like Square Enix was being stingy with its characters. Sephiroth, the antagonist of Cloud’s source game, was a huge surprise and made many people excited. While there was some cries about another “anime swordfighter”, Sephiroth was very well received, thanks in part to his epic trailer. Sephiroth has an extremely long sword, and his gameplay in Smash shows it. No character has ever had such huge, disjointed attacks. He also has a huge fireball attack and a comeback mechanic, One-Winged Angel. Many compared his gameplay to Byleth’s spear, except the rest of the character is actually effective. He is thought to be a strong character, but again, we cannot know until in-person tournaments return.
Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are both the tenth character, revealed on February 17th, 2021. Pyra is a slow but heavy-hitting, and Mythra is extremely fast but doesn’t hit very hard. These two can transform between each other at will, which already makes for an interesting gimmick. At the reveal, there was a collective groan for another “anime swordfighter”. At the games’ launch, Rex, who is the main character of Xenoblade 2, was reduced to a Mii Fighter costume, and the Smash community thought that Xenoblade 2 would not be getting any fighters in Smash. We were wrong. I wanted more Xenoblade characters, but I didn’t want a Xenoblade 2 character. I’m a Xenoblade fan, but I would have proffered Melia from Xenoblade 1. I think Xenoblade 2 is a very flawed game (I will write a review on it sometime), and the Xenoblade series as a whole is going to pick up from where Xenoblade 1 left off, not the second one. Even still, I am glad this inclusion is going to bring more people into the Xenoblade series. Despite the initial reception, once the character was released, competitive players were quick to claim that these two were the most fun DLC character yet. I have to agree with this – Smash’s previous incarnations of transforming characters did not fit well together, but these two complement each other so well. We won’t know how good they really are in competitive play until tournaments come back, but Mythra especially is a very, very strong character.
That’s all the DLC characters at the time of writing. There is two characters left in Fighter’s Pass 2. I think there is a slight possibility will get one more “bonus” DLC character after that. We’ll just have to see!
Quarantine; A Critical Look at Ultimate
Smash Ultimate’s online is bad. It’s really, really bad. Even if you are playing with friends and completely ignore the flawed matchmaking, there is a disgusting feeling of latency even on perfect connections. Smash is a fighting game, with precise gameplay and techniques that must be timed. Nintendo has always been behind the times with online play, but until the Switch playing games online with the console was free. You need a subscription to Nintendo Switch Online to be able to play Smash Ultimate over the internet, and this makes it all the more painful to try to play Smash in these conditions. It’s absolutely unacceptable that Nintendo did next to nothing to alleviate the problems with Smash Online’s many problems during a pandemic where the only way to play is online. I tried some internet tournaments, but it is so easy to recognize you are playing in far-from-optimal conditions. While I still participated in Smash discussions online, I was pretty much forced to stop taking Smash seriously, and even stopped playing Smash altogether at one point.
Well… I stopped playing Smash Ultimate. Remember Project M, that Brawl mod I mentioned way at the top of this page? Project M seeks to make Smash Bros. Brawl more like Smash Bros. Melee. Project M had long since stopped development for fear of legal action from Nintendo, but some other modders picked it up and rebranded it as Project Plus. P+ started gaining notoriety from Smash Ultimate players as they became disillusioned with Smash Online. Instead of playing on a Wii, P+ is played online with Dolphin, a GameCube and Wii emulator. Smash Melee is played online with the same emulator. The online emulator play experience for both of these games is far better than Smash Ultimate’s online experience; that’s just how bad Smash Ultimate online is. P+ is a very different and much more difficult game than Ultimate, but I started playing it anyway. I never played ranked games or did online tournament for P+ but I did play it online with friends for a handful of weeks. I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. P+ is a labor of love from fans, and I highly recommend trying it to any Smash fan.
It says a lot about Smash Ultimate Online that many people including myself couldn’t tolerate it and stopped playing the official game and started playing a fanmade one. I started to notice just how fluid P+ is, when Smash Ultimate still has a ways to go before it can truly be called the ultimate Smash game. I’m not just talking about online; the act of simply moving around the stage is fun and fluid in P+, while Smash Ultimate’s movement is stiff. I could be more descriptive, but I would have to get into the specific mechanics of the game, and I think I have made my point already. P+ made me realize I was ignorant to just how freeform and fluid a Smash game could feel like. Since Smash 4, the Smash series has slowly been trying to be more like its second incarnation Melee, after completely changing direction with Brawl. It’s really unfortunate that they just couldn’t go all the way with Ultimate. Ultimate is designed to give fans everything that they ever wanted – every character returning, a handful of new and long-requested characters, tons of stages and music, a story mode, lots of DLC, enabling competitive play, and more. It’s just unfortunate that the Smash series will never again be able to realize the fluidity and sheer staying power of Melee (Despite being 20 years old, Melee is still played and enjoyed by many).
I don’t hate Ultimate, though. It’s still my favorite game. P+ is really difficult to play with any degree of competency. Ultimate is not, and is by far the easiest entry to get into competitively. While I probably won’t take Smash seriously until the pandemic is fully and completely over, I really do love Ultimate to bits, even if I think it falls just short of its goal in gameplay and its online mode is completely unacceptable.
That Summer
I would be remiss to not mention the plethora of sexual misconduct allegations in the international Smash community in the Summer of 2020. That topic is very much a can of worms and I would like to make a separate post about it. You can read about it here if you really want to. The should be obvious, but apparently it is not, so let me be clear: abusers, harassers, and the like of any kind absolutely do not belong in the Smash community in any way, shape, or form. Despite having no real position in the Smash community and thus being completely unqualified to do anything about this, I have made it a point to myself to do what little I can to make the global and local Smash communities a more welcoming and safe space for absolutely everybody. I want others to be able to experience the same community of healthy competition, self-improvement and fun that I have been able to experience throughout the past 5 years.
Conclusion
Anyways, on a lighter note, I’m glad I finally got this story out there. I sure had a lot to say. And I have a whole lot more to write about, judging by how many times “I will make a separate post about this” appears in this post.
Smash is very special to me and I doubt I will ever stop playing it. I will compete in local tournaments for as long as I enjoy them. I have some goals to work towards in competitive play, and I am very motivated to work towards them once the pandemic ends.
Thanks for reading. I love sharing my journey with this series. I hope you enjoyed!