Just don’t hold on to your kitty too tightly.
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the part about solid snake was pretty funny, but the overall episode was pretty crappy. they talk about items and how being able to be turned off voids them as a negative then later on say they can randomly appear even if turned off. also the public service announcement inclusion at the end makes them seem biased from the get go.
Technically, they’re right, it IS a fighting game.
Is it a good one, HELL NO.
But it is one.
Also, DAT IKARUGA LEVEL 5 METAMORPHOSIS
I see Smash as a fighter. A rather unorthodox one. (Melee deserves a special mention).
I feel that they gloss over the part where they try to define a fighting game, and I sense that it’s because they’ve bought into the fallacy that the genre needs to be defined in a way that selectively includes or excludes games that may or may not be fighting games. This isn’t the way to go about it. Instead, I think it’s more instructive to talk about fighters in a way that excludes games that are clearly not fighters. How are fighters different from RTSes, FPSes, etc.? Some people would have issues with this, I suppose, since a definition that does this would probably include games like WWE Smackdown vs. Raw, and Power Stone, but I don’t really think that’s a hole, I think that’s a cup-holder, because now you have a definition you can do things with. If you want to start splitting hairs after that, you can talk about sub-genres. No one would really argue with you if you said Smash isn’t what my friends and I call a “traditional fighting game” (which is basically a nice way of saying Street Fighter clone), and very well they shouldn’t, because it’s definitely not. But Smash is definitely a fighter. That people get so worked up about proving this fact wrong is really strange to me.
I think what people generally mean by the question “is smash a fighter?” is that they have attached a certain worth value to calling a game a fighter, for no real good reason, and so what they’re really asking is, “is smash worth playing competitively.” In answer to that question, I guess it’s mostly up to personal opinion, but I think that this video answers the question pretty darn well:
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Smash **IS **a fighting game.
It’s just not as competitive or complex as other traditional fighting games. Doesn’t mean it sucks or anything. It’s not the type of fighting game which the FGC would accept.
I hope Playstation Allstars is good…
just because a game is a fighter, should not automatically qualify it to be played competitively. its a fun game, but theres waaaay too much stuff you need to alter to make it semi-fair.
god imagine if they had to do stuff like that at evo. banning certain characters/supers/moves/throws etc.
DPs and throws only would be pretty good actually…
What characters/supers/moves/throws are banned?
But the things which the smash community bans in melee (I’m not gonna defend brawl, ever) don’t exist in traditional fighters at all. That’s not really a fair comparison.
Most of the major competitive games out there, like counter strike, quake 3, star craft, and generally every fighting game, are notable in of their lack of random elements, or random elements that affect fair play very little.
Imagine if gems like in SFxT dropped on a random position on the stage and provided bonuses, or there were now stage hazards that move in random patterns, and there was an option to remove them. Don’t you think the fighting game community would disable these?
Well… Yes they would but the thing is, SFxT is more of a fighting game which the FGC would still accept since it’s like one anyway although, questions and criticisms would be raised by the FGC for sure. SFxT still acts like a traditional fighting game even if it had those hazards and such. Life bar, Super meter, Only facing the opponent, 3 to 6 button layout and the traits of a
"Normal" fighting game. I’m honestly not sure if the FGC would actually accept this as a fighting game if it were like that. Not sure but, it’s still very similar to traditional fighters so that’s what matters. Smash bros. is a fighting game BUT it’s not so similar to traditional fighters.
Smash bros on the other hand is quite unorthodox. Still, it is a fighting game but it has so much eh… “Random” mechanics like items, stage hazards, platforms, etc. Well, yeah it does have the type of strategies such as zoning, footsies and such.
In Smash tourneys, there were a lot of adjustments. They banned items, some stages and even Meta Knight. It’s as if the Smash community is changing the way the game is suppose to be played.
Still, I love the game and I play it competitively. I just know that the game is not meant to be played seriously but I still have fun anyway 
Point of order: items are not banned. They are off. It’s an important distinction because Peach could not use beam swords, Mr. Saturns, and bob-ombs if items were banned.
The argument of how the game is “supposed” to be played is also pretty insubstantial. There’s not really a way you’re “supposed” to play Smash. You can play the entire match in stamina with a goddamn poison flower on your head, and you’d be playing the game no more correctly than any competitive smasher. The point is that when people play for money, as a group they’ve settled on certain rules that by and large reflect a community stance on how they all want to play the game. In the context of Smash, that is wholly valid, and in fact encouraged by the game’s structure. You have the ability to turn off stages and items, so no one can tell me we’re not supposed to take advantage of that.
Moreover, the Smash community, I’d say, is more lenient with their rulesets than the fgc. It’s a woefully underreported aspect of common smash tourney rulesets that if two players want to play by a different set of rules, and agree to those rules for their set, they may. The official ruleset for a tourney is just what they default to if two players can’t agree to any other ruleset. I have seen tournament sets played on Hyrule Temple with items on, and the results were counted.
So frankly, I’m really tired of tcg enthusiasts who barely play competitive Smash accusing Smashers of playing the game “the wrong way,” when making such a claim is not only demonstrably false, but also not the right way to play Smash.
Incidentally, the fgc plays sfxt without gems, and those have a more predictable and less significant impact on the game than items. So it’s really kind of moot to argue about item bans anymore. This is something that just occurred to me.
I meant off 
Scratch the “How it was suppose to be played” part. This is what I meant:
It’s just Nintendo. They’ve tried their best to make Brawl sway away against the competitive crowd and that’s what made most players think, “Wow… They REALLY don’t want us to play competitively don’t they?”. Our way of playing Smash contradicts he way Nintendo wants us to play Smash which is why FGC players don’t accept Smash as a fighting game that the FGC would usually host in tournaments.
Sakurai did put an off option so that some players can have serious fights.
Then again, Smash is a fighter BUT it’s not the fighter that the FGC would accept. mainly because it’s very different from other traditional fighters. I’m not saying that the FGC should or should not accept Smash. I’m just stating the reasons why the FGC disapproves of Smash (The main gripe being Nintendo trying to make Smash a non-competitive game). Smash has similar traits to TFs in terms of
strategiessuch as zoning/rushdown, match ups, and other things. In fact, it has more traits that would make itself look like a fighter.
It doesn’t matter if Smash is not suppose to be taken seriously. There’s still a large community of Smash players that play the game seriously 
. We don’t have to state 99 reasons why Smash should be considered as a “fighting game”. IMHO, I’m fine with the game not being considered by the FGC.
I can see how you might call it less competitive, but only in terms of scale.
Complexity on the other hand, I’m curious about.
I’ve always felt that Smash was very complex due to the creativity involved in producing extended combos. Because of Directional Influence, there is a lot more to reading your opponent than predicting the direction they’ll tech. Percent Values also play a part in this because of the increased knockback they cause.
The way players can choose to navigate a stage also adds a lot of complexity in my opinion. Players have to decide, based on a number of factors, which approach will cover the most options or produce the best results.
So what exactly makes it less complex in your opinion?
There’s also air control, which to varying degrees separates aerial spacing and footsies from the ground game, much more than any existing tfg.
When I meant complex, I meant accessibility (They’re 2 different things. My bad there). Smash is easy to get used to since there are only 2 attack buttons but… Heh. Should have used the right word there :|. I’m not sure how having 2 buttons would make Smash less of a fighting game so… Just mind the competitive part 
With Sony-All Stars, Power Stone, and that Ninja Turtles thing, the Smash Bros. style of fighter should probably be put into its own Sub Genre. All we need to do is come up with a name for it.
A name will emerge. It will probably be something along the lines of platform fighter, since they seem to share an element of positioning and movement in a platforming environment in addition to the one on one combat.
it does have a name already, party game.
Party game makes it sound too childish. Party Fighter? So far, Platform Fighter seems to be the best fitting title.