It is funny that there is so much arguement over whether it is a party game or a fighter. I don’t understand why it can’t be both. We have action rpgs. First Person adventure games. Puzzle platformers. What is the point of trying to place and limit a game to one single genre. Yes Smash is a party game but it is also a fighting game. It uses a great mix of elements from both genre’s which allow it to be a very successful casual and competitive game.
Someone who was saying that items on is saying its a fighting game, good stuff.
Not bashing seth at all, but he clearly doesn’t play brawl
im tired of seeing smash topics/articles on srk
Who cares about what Capcom thinks?
They think that SF4 and MvC3 are fighting games:smokin:
Funny how this topic completely missed Seth’s point on why Items should be on.
Yes to this.
It’s like putting a football (soccer) thread in an American football league thread and saying it should be considered football by the (American) football players.
RESULT?
Completely irrelevant and redundant responses are all that will surface. It’s just like… wut? and duh? all over the place.
Just a few pointers here.
Saying ‘Most people don’t give a damn about priority or cancelling and more about their favorite character’ is like saying…
- Most people who like hockey don’t care about the technical/tactical/strategical part of winning and just cheer for their favorite team.
and/or (and this relates directly to a common stereotype other communities [SRK] have about the smash community)
- Most people who play Melee absolutely hate Brawl and all of them bicker amongst themselves about which is better.
Those groups of people/players (including the type you know that love their favorite character) make up a VERY small portion of the community.
Take some things into consideration. For one, SRK/your local friends at school aren’t going to be the ones that are really involved with the actual community. Look at how many threads there are about “What is your MVC team?” around here, even though it’s THE ‘COMPETITIVE’ FIGHTING GAME FORUM. And compare than to the quantity of posts by those who play very high level competition (Also, naturally, the better players won’t be spending time posting/going to local school gaming things, they’ll be playing)
Then realize that in a Forum/place where another game (Melee/Smash) is NOT A ‘COMPETITIVE’ FOCUS the ONLY things that WILL surface, are those threads about ‘What’s your MVC team?’ (Smash main) since that’s the ONLY type of Smash community that will surface here.
Just look at things that way and it’ll make more sense.
PS: MVC is the game that ‘Whoever hits the buttons harder is better’ was a meme for. 
PPS: Melee doesn’t have glitches that are exploited, that’s a common misconception. (Again, often by the ‘Casual’ crowd, because we all know it IS a party game after all)
Yeah, you should be rephrasing that as ‘why I hate Brawl’ though. As none (like literally 0%) of that actually applies to melee or 64, so don’t get those 3 mixed up. In fact, melee probably has more 0-deaths combos (or infinites/auto-kill things as the fighting community calls them) than any fighting game, 64 has by FAR more than any fighting game (possibly in history). It’s really silly how insta-death 64 is and melee can be sometimes, and nothing is banned in either of them. Luckily there are multiple stocks (lives) in Smash games. That would suck otherwise. More than if MvC3 had 1 life, and that game is the most recent TOD-everything on the market! haha
Just a btw really, Brawl =/= Smash, there are 3 games and none of them are similar almost at all. 
Pretty much what Triple R said.
Melee is ridiculously technical and fast, sure, but seizure is an exaggeration. It’s likely on par with MvC2 and a GG (oddly this is true), but in a completely different way. The precision is through the roof, maybe more-so than any other game, but it comes from other areas other than rapid elaborate button sequences that the combos and ‘mix-ups’ of FGs are focused around.
There’s a reason the competitive Melee community will never deter away from the game, and mildly swear it’s the best game ever made.
There’s a reason it’s stronger now than it ever has been and continuous to grow and accelerate in growth, never fading.
It’s a freak of nature and a fluke, and both a party game and a tournament game equally the same way, by essentially accident.
If you want to find the truth about Melee, what you hear on SRK forums/people in other gaming communities/your local school gamers, is not the way to do it and should never really be taken with much seriousness.
The game is around today for a reason, through thick and thin it’s still stable and more than ever.
If you want to know why, the other way is to give it a try. Until then, you might be missing out, you might not, whatever you think doesn’t change a thing, but it would be nice to actually ‘know’ why people play it. Wouldn’t it?
Just some thoughts. 
<3 all games (well most anyway hahah)
PS: Capcom is silly (or whoever said that initial post thing)
But then again, anything could be taken 'competitively’
Pokemon fml… XD
Also to add, on topic…
Nintendo spent more time on Melee than any other game, possibly in Ns history to date. Immediately after SSB, they went to work and didn’t stop for a couple years, the largest staff N ever had working on a single game at the time, and for a long time.
Knowing what that took, there was NO WAY they would bother going through all that again to try and make something that could even compare to Melee. So they took it in another direction, which is exactly what they should have done and what they did.
Brawl is an amazing party game, out-classes Melee for that. Which is what they wanted. There’s no reason that SSB4 is going to try and out-class Melee or Brawl for what Melee and Brawl are. They’re taking it in another direction, again, even announcing long before-hand that those are their intentions. It won’t be a Brawl or Melee just like Brawl isn’t supposed to be what Melee was, though the Brawl community tried in unfortunate ignorance, but Brawl remains a great party game to this day.
It’s very comparable to MvC2/MvC3. MvC2 is a great game with staying power and was 1 of a kind (with a baby pre-game) just as Melee was. Then MvC3 came along, trying to be what MvC2 was but failed, and still fails with UMvC3. It’s a combo technical showcase game if anything. A CASUAL fighting game. Just as Brawl is a casual Melee. Those 2 were forced to be like their ancestors and it didn’t work, it WON’T work, because their ancestors were amazing. There’s no reason to try an duplicate them, and they should be taken in other directions. The INTENT of the communities/companies/everything clash, and THAT is why things turn out to be ‘jokes’ when really… they’re EXACTLY how they should be/inevitably would be if everyone was aware of the situation.
lol kind of AKA, Nintendo did the right thing (not trying to make something out-match a masterpiece), Capcom did the wrong thing (trying to make something out-match a masterpiece), both communities of players got confused (tried to play like they were masterpieces from long ago).
Tadah!
The first part isn’t true. Melee was developed in 13 months where Brawl was over 2 years. The team for Melee was also only part of HAL Labs. where Brawl was made up of many more developers. I will also say your putting Melee on a pedistal I think. To competitive players, it’s great. But for the rest of us (which is very large, in the millions) it was just another great game in the series.
Otherwise, I think you make a good point.
Capcom admitting that Brawl is a fighting game? Duh. It says it’s a fighting game right on the box. :encore:
Personally, I’ve always thought of the Smash series as a “fighting game” rather than a “party game.” In my personal opinion, the only reason that people view it as a party game is because you can play with 4 people at once and there are items (which people neglect to mention that you can turn them off). The smash brothers series (though obviously people argue about Brawl and whatnot) can be a competitive fighter; it all depends on how you play it. If you just button mash and spam the same attack with Smash Balls and explosives set on high on Hyrule Temple, then it’s not being played as a competitive fighter. If you are actually thinking strategically and planning for your opponent’s actions, attempting to fake them out and hit them hard for mistakes…then it’s being played as a competitive fighter.
Personally, I like all three smash games. Each of them is good competitively in their own way, and in turn, each has their own “faults.” The original was pretty well balanced and didn’t have anything outright “broken” in it (other than items which could be turned off anyway), though the high hitstun meant high damaging combos that could mean 0-death situations (though the high hitstun is also why the original is my favorite of the three; it means that there are a ton of different combos that you can do). Melee was a more refined version of the original, though slightly more unbalanced (which, in my opinion, is to be expected of any fighter with a decent-sized roster). Brawl I think is where the series took a new direction. It’s a fun game, and can be competitive as well. Meta Knight aside, it is a pretty balanced fighter as well, with basically every character being viable in some way. My only complaint is the lack of hitstun. Sure there are follow-ups and frame-traps, but there are basically no “true combos” outside of team matches. It also means that you can actually be punished for hitting your opponent if you perform an attack with enough recovery, which can be very annoying in air-to-air combat. Still, while it may have more faults than the previous two, it is still a very good game in my opinion, and very fun to play. And in the end, I think it’s all about how much fun you have rather than whining about how the game should have been to make it more competitive and whatnot.
Also, not to hate on Brawl or anything, but I should mention something. People are saying how Melee sucked compared to Brawl because you had wavedashing, L-canceling and other exploits? People fail to notice, or even mention, that Brawl actually has more exploits in it than Melee ever had (I’m not referring to things like the “black hole” glitch either). I mean, there’s the whole thing where you slide across the stage while performing your up-smash, there’s the one where you cancel your dash attack with an up-smash, you have the flying under the stages, you have the edge camping with Marth and Meta-knight (drop down from the ledge and then up special to instantly snap back onto the ledge)…heck, Link has around 15 exploits alone! So think about that the next time you’re going to compare the two…
So, is this supposed to be like some sort of victory for the embattled Brawl fanbase? Nobody cares. Brawl is a fighting game. Not a very good one, but still a fighting game.
Brawl is not really a traditional fighter, its more of a party fighting game. It is also a terribly butchered version of Melee, I do enjoy playing it sometimes however.
Hey folks, not got much right to comment here on a lot as I’m just an up and coming new addition to Brawl (Very very late to the party of course).
I always wanted to play it - Much like how I started in SF4, I started out by noticing the sea of YouTube movies of the game in action and it just made me want to be a part of it, despite never having played an SF game since SF2 - So, seeing Brawl in full flow for the first time gave me an impression that this would be a fun game to play.
Sadly, I’m only able now to mount a copy of it to Dolphin Emulator on PC as I don’t have neither a WII or GC to enjoy either game (Melee or Brawl) in true format. Still, one thing is very apparant to me in this “Debate”.
Much like SF2, or even 3S, SF4 cannot be compared to any of them - Much like how Brawl can’t really be compared to Melee. They may be similar and/or have a core basis for it’s foundation, but they are all different games in their own right. Brawl is to Melee what further advancements of SF is to the older games - A step in a different direction - As much as Capcom would claim SF4 was an attempt at a 3D SF2, it just simply isn’t. I couldn’t imagine SF being as successful if it was churning out nothing but remixed versions of SF2 for all these years, so seeing a ‘sequel’ to Melee being just an attempt at an improved ‘copy’ of the original would also given it a 50/50 chance of succeeding or falling on it’s face - I wager they really didn’t want to take that risk given the amount of effort made to get the right to use so many non-Nintento related characters - Isn’t it the first game Sonic & Mario, for example, two very long ‘competitors’ in gaming, was placed in a title together? I know there’s been quite a few since, such as the Olympics and other such things, but to wrap up so many characters alone in one single game would have taken a lot of time and money, nevermind the developement of the actual game itself.
I’ve never played Melee, but I’ve seen it and spent a lot of time hearing of it and reading up a lot of discussion between many people from different angles. The conclusion is that, while there are people who play both, the dominant playerbase for each game are pretty individual - And this should be the attitude people adopt. If you prefer Melee, stick with it, enjoy it, help it grow and continue on dispite it’s age as it’s still a success. If you prefer Brawl, same deal, keep the game ongoing and flowing. If you have no issue with either, all the more power to you! The fact that they are both still highly played after so many years, with other people dedicating their time to re-creating new versions to try and cater for everyone, just stands testiment to how cherised both really are and how depressing it is to read threads like this and see so much venom on both sides trying to either justify their preferred game, or bash the other. It’s totally unneccesary and does nobody on either side any good at all.
Way I see it, I’ve nothing bad to say against Melee - How can I? Never played it… As for Brawl, I enjoy it, so what else really matters?
I just wish I was in a position to play them against other people - As fun as it is playing Bowser vs multiple Lv9 CPU characters, that is not what it’s all about - But someone like me who can’t even appreciate the game in it’s true format as either a fighting game, or party game, against other people, can still say they enjoy it.
Either way, it’s not like anyone should be waving peace flags and trying to get along, but trying to proclaim which is better over the other is somewhat futile, especially when both games are getting on in years - Should be happy both are still being played today, that means something for both of them.
Just an outsiders worthless 2cents.
It’s not a fighting game in the traditional sense,
Then again Quake and Call of Duty both get referred to as shooters…
I think it’s best to refer to SSB (all of them) as competitive platformers if you want to give an accurate description.
Actually, I prefer to refer to Smash Brothers as a fun game. Do I take the game seriously? Not really. Do I play against people who take the game seriously? Yes. Do I win? Not a lot. Whether I’m winning or not though, I don’t really care; I’m just having fun. Actually, this is the mindset that I take with any game. I don’t really care if that game is competitive or not. When it gets right down to it, I care about the fun factor. Why do I play Street Fighter? Because it’s fun. Why do I play Marvel vs Capcom? Because it’s fun. Why do I play Smash? Because it’s fun. (And yes, I do take Street Fighter seriously, or at least more so than Marvel and Smash, but it’s still fun to play.)
I wish people would have more of this mindset when it comes to fighting games. I know that most fighting games are created to be competitive, but I still think that people should have fun when they play games, even in a competitive environment. No, I don’t expect top players at EVO to be laughing and joking in the midst of play, but I would like to think that, deep under those serious expressions, they’re having fun while they’re playing. Sometimes I think that people get lost in the whole competitive mindset that they forget why we would play these games in the first place; to have fun and to have a good time.
I think I went a bit off topic there. Probably could create a whole new discussion with what I just wrote. Anyways, more on-topic, if you want to get technical, I still think that Brawl is a fighting game. I think competitive platformer is a title more deserving to a game like Mario Bros. Most people don’t refer to it as a fighting game, I think, not because of the items and the “party” factor, but because it doesn’t play like a traditional fighting game. It took a different spin on the fighting genre, attempting to be unique, and in my opinion, succeeded admirably. I believe that most people (warning: stereo-type incoming) just see the different gameplay and think that this isn’t a fighting game because it doesn’t play like Street Fighter. Now whether it’s a “competitive fighter” (which I believe it can be, whether or not the developers intended it to be) is a different argument entirely.
I enjoy all three of the games. I did like the first two games the most, however.
Melee opened the doors to a new competitive experience. Brawl was an attempt to subvert that and make more of a party game. Regardless, it can still be plausible for it be a fighting game… A rather different, funny, and unorthodox one.