[LEFT]Super Smash Bros is the first game that I ever became competitive in. I was 12 at the time (2006) and came across some MLG videos while looking for ways to improve my game against some friends. Ever since then, I have been a fan of both the original Super Smash Bros. and its sequel Super Smash Bros. Melee. In 2011, I started to get bored of Smash and decided to convert to traditional fighters so I could play a game that developers actually support and play online since I live in an area where competitive gaming doesn’t necessarily exist well in a large form.[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]But this article isn’t about me, it’s about Super Smash Bros. in general and why I believe it is underrated by the Fighting Game Community. In this article, I will take some negative quotes that I commonly see used against smash and explain in my point of view why they’re biased. Before I begin, I will be using Melee as my primary example because I believe Brawl makes the series look bad for plenty of reasons and Super Smash Bros. 64 isn’t popular enough to even bother using as an example.[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]1. Super Smash Bros. is not a fighting game, it’s a party game.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]A. This one is one of my favorites because it’s all based on opinion. Most people like to insult Smash because of its cover. Yes, Nintendo is geared towards children more than mature audiences, but is that really enough to instantly dismiss it as a fighting game? Not at all. Let’s pretend that Smash wasn’t developed by Nintendo and all of the characters were original and not from previous Nintendo games. Now, looking at the gameplay of Smash, it follows most definitions of fighting games, which is to control a character and engage in close combat. Yes, I understand that many of the game’s aspects make it a party game like their wacky stages and ridiculous items, but party game or not, the game can still be taken seriously because we can restrict stages and turn items off. Just because Smash doesn’t involve commands like quarter circle forwards, shoryukens, 360’s, etc. etc. doesn’t make it not a fighting game. Just because Smash doesn’t use a traditional health bar doesn’t not make it a fighting game. Just because Smash has different stages rather than one stage with different visuals doesn’t not make it a fighting game. These are all aspects that make the game a unique fighting game rather than following Street Fighter with its traditional 2D fighting.[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]2. Super Smash Bros. is a 2 button game.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]A. This is a true statement, but can cause many people to misunderstand it so I believe I should clear it up. Smash includes 2 primary buttons. Normal Attacks (A) and Special Attacks (B). Out of these attack buttons, you are able to form many different types of attacks depending on the which direction you are holding the control stick. Think of it as unique attacks in Street Fighter, but with every attack. If you add up all of the different attacks you can perform in Smash, it ends up being close to traditional fighters.[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]3. Having to alter the rule set in order to make the game competitive isn’t worth it, is stupid, takes too much time, etc.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]A. Halo is a perfect example of a competitive game that heavily alters the rule set in order to make it as balanced as possible. Just because the default rule set has no stocks, all items and stages on, and so on, doesn’t automatically rule it out as a competitive game. As a matter of fact, these rule sets are normally set up on all stations before a tournament starts and are ready for the entire tournament. Button checks in traditional fighters take much more time than setting up a rule set once before everybody even starts playing. On top of that, having the freedom to alter rule sets allow us to take balance into our own hands. We all know about the many complaints in Street Fighter x Tekken about its timer. That’s a perfect example of why having a giant customizable rule set helps instead of hurts the community.[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]4. Smash was never meant to be competitive so therefore, it shouldn’t.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]A. This is often said by those who haven’t done any sort of research. I’ll give a brief history lesson. Before Smash was created as it is on the N64, it was originally planned to be titled “Dragon King: The Fighting Game.” Somewhere along the line, they believed that adding Nintendo characters in replace of unique characters would help sell the game, which it did. We will never know if the wacky stages or ridiculous items were part of the original game plan, but from beta images it seems that those things were never implemented until after the fact that someone told Sakurai (the game’s director) that it should be Nintendo based instead of something unique. Either way, that didn’t stop Sakurai from adding competitive aspects to the game. L-Canceling (sometimes known as Z-Canceling) is a technique where you press your shield button a few frames after performing an aerial attack to cancel the lag completely in SSB64 or by half in Melee. Many people believe this was a glitch since there’s no mention of it in the game or its manual, but if you browse the original Japanese website of Super Smash Bros. 64, they discuss L-Canceling and how it’s performed. Wavedashing in Melee is something that is also believed to be a glitch. Sakurai has confirmed himself in an issue of Nintendo Power that he was aware of wavedashing during the development of Melee and decided to leave it in, probably for us to experiment with. The only reason they took it out was because they saw the movement advantages it gave advanced players and they wanted to shorten the gap between the casual players and the competitive players. It wasn’t until the development of brawl that they wanted to shorten this gap and basically destroy the competitive scene that we in the smash community all knew and loved.[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]5. The Smash scene wants approval from the Fighting Game Community.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]A: I’ve only heard this here at Shoryuken. There are a few of us that play both games and will try to convince those who bash smash to rethink their statements, but that doesn’t mean the smash scene wants approval from the Fighting Game Community. As a matter of fact, the smash scene has their own home at Smashboards.com and if you browse there regularly, you would see that the smash community is doing great at surviving on their own and no where is it mentioned that we want to merge with the FGC or Shoryuken in order to survive or gain popularity. The smash scene is perfectly fine with being their own independent community and by doing so, it works out much better in the long run.[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]6. The Smash scene is full of immature pre-teens and teenagers.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]*A: I can’t speak on the behalf of Brawl as much as I can for Melee, but most of the Melee tournaments that I attend (some tournaments host Brawl and Melee), I am usually the youngest at 18. This statement about everybody being teenagers may have came a long time ago during the start of Smash, but everybody is pretty much grown up now and those who are getting into competitive Melee aren’t younger kids because they have no interest in playing a 10 year old game. I would bet that if there was a survey done on the age groups that attend Smash tournaments, it would strongly center around the early twenties and late teens. *[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]I plan on adding more to this thread when I start to notice more commonly used biased statements. The intention of this thread was not to convince those who bash the game that it’s good, but rather inform those who are unaware about the game and avoid only having the biased people as a reference. If you haven’t given smash a try and are interested in trying something vastly different, I strongly suggest Melee if you like faster paced games or SSB64 if you like games with powerful, devastating combos, but keep in mind that due to not having support from developers, there is no ULTIMATE, TURBO, CHAMPION EDITION type expansions for these games and they aren’t necessarily the most balanced. That being said, the game is always evolving and characters that were once known as bad a few years ago have become good. It’s quite interesting how games can end up balancing themselves out. Experimenting with rule sets and stage bans also help keep the game fresh and help balance it.[/LEFT]
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[LEFT]If you have any questions about smash, I believe I have enough experience to answer whatever you would like to know. Try to keep this thread civilized with mature questions and responses. Those who post material that serves no contribution to the discussion will be reported. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope this article has helped those understand the game who didn’t understand it before.[/LEFT]
Because everybody sees melee better than brawl, see it as this:
Melee: Competitive
Brawl: Casual
You struggle in vain youngster, Smashbrothas have tried to prove their game to the FGC before, but to no avail, we shall not accept it nor your arguments. You too shall fail.
http://www.terrariaonline.com/attachments/okay-meme-jpg.3008/
http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/41606_180065213182_2781_n.jpg
Saying Super Smash Brothers is a real fighting game is like saying Mario Kart is a real racing game (Take this statement as you please).
There are fighting games that have been published like the Street Fighter and Tekken series.
There are racing games that have been published like Forza and Gran Turismo.
So you be the judge of Super Smash Bros place in the realm of fighting games.
I don’t understand why Smash players need the approval of the FGC so bad
do you type these things up on Starcraft boards too
just playing what you like and stop caring what people on the internet think
I’m not looking for approval of the FGC whatsoever and surprisingly enough, the Smash community doesn’t want approval from the FGC as much as you all think. If you ever visit Smashboards (the Shoryuken of Smash) then you would see that traditional fighters and SRK are rarely mentioned, if ever. We have survived on our own for about 10 years and the last thing we need is approval of another community in order for us to survive.
You all have seemed to have missed the entire point of the thread, which I expected. It’s not for approval. It’s to clear up biased opinions for those who might actually be interested in the series. It’s obvious you all don’t care, and that’s perfectly fine, but I don’t see why you wasted your time to post.
Smash is a fighting game… But it’s not meant to be competitive. It’s suppose to be a party game.
- Sakurai does not want it to be a complex one which makes it not like other fighters like SF
- The fanbase of smash is what made the game competitive with all the item and stage adjustments
I honestly don’t care if the FGC does not accept the game. I still have fun with it. Competitively or not.
Expect competitive stuff in SSB 4. Sakurai made some promises to make Smash more competitive at the same time, accessible for the beginners as said in the recent interviews… Hopefully 
I lost all hope after Brawl and I personally don’t have much trust in it’s sequel, but I would like to see these interviews. Do you happen to have links?
If you don’t wan’t our approval and your gang can survive on it’s own, then what’s the point of trying to clear these “biased opinions”? Why do you people care what everyone else thinks of your game or community when all you do is hang by yourselves and seem to be just fine with it?
http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=114587
http://andriasang.com/comw97/iwata_asks_smash_bros/
I’m not sure whether he’ll pay attention to the competitive side of smash. Maybe he’ll do the exact opposite again. At least he and Iwata discussed the opinions of the competitive community.
Take the time to read before making replies like this. It’s all right here:
Yes, we are fine by ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in newcomers. Some people in the FGC may be interested in playing smash someday and a lot of them will probably go to their home site, which is here at Shoryuken, and go to the Smash subforum. This thread’s purpose is to clear up all the biased statements that are flooded in every smash topic and article on the website. I figured that there needed to be at least one thread to show the truth in it all so people aren’t going by those who don’t know anything about the game and just judge it by it’s cover.
Yeah, the FGC will always shun smash because its not typical to other fighters. :S
It was meant to be a party game, but the smash community made it into something more than that. The only problem is the rules, everyone in smash always bitches about the rules, stages, character bans ect. I think that is the main issue with smash. If everyone could agree on a ruleset then it’d be a great and more stable game, but since it’s a game we have to make rules around in order to make it competative that’s what makes everything unstable I think.
Let’s ban this stage, let’s ban this character, let’s make a ledge grab limit, let’s make an air time rule, all these different tournaments have so many different rules that it’s frustrating and confusing for newer peopleto get into the scene. Don’t get me wrong, I love smash, I’ve been playing it for awhile and I see the community as a family to me almost, but I think the rules and instability is the current downfall of the game. What other people think of smash is irrelevant, and it doesn’t matter as long as you enjoy it. It be nice if smash were still at big events like EVO and seasons beatings like they were years ago, but there’s nothing we can do about that except have smash stabilize its own community before they worry about being accepted by the rest of the FGC or even how theyre viewed in other communities.
Just my two cents. good read though OP.
The banned characters, ledge grab limit, and air time rule (which I have no idea about) is all Brawl. It’s another reason why I believe the game looks bad, they have ridiculous rule sets. That being said, the changes in rules is our only source of balance. Here at Shoryuken, people don’t bitch about rules as much as they do about certain things being too good or broken and in response, the developers fix these by adding a patch. Sadly, not one smash game contains any type of patch and we’re stuck playing the game as is, so changing the rules is the best we can do.
This should explain to a lot of people why Project M is a big deal in the smash community but everyone else thinks we should just play Melee. It’s not like that at all. Think of it as a SUPER Super Smash Bros Melee or something along those lines. It aims at balancing the cast of Brawl while reviving Melee’s gameplay to make it a true expansion to the game we all love instead of a brand new one that is near impossible to enjoy at a competitive level.
I still don’t understand your reasoning, nobody who is interested in the Smash Bros. series comes to SRK in hopes of finding like-minded people because this isn’t a SB forum. Also most likely nobody who is involved in a real fighting game or the FGC is interested in even trying out SB. So again, why are you even here? Let me ask you, is the Smash community so low on people or something if you’re trying to catch new fish here? Seems desperate.
You’re really hard to get through. Of course nobody who is interested in Smash Bros will come to SRK to find like-minded people, but those who may already be active in the FGC may go here first before browsing deeper since there’s already a forum here. If they go here and see the shit that’s posted here they are very likely to be turned off immediately from all the false information. Maybe not everybody involved in the the traditional FGC is interested in trying smash but you can’t speak for everybody. There are some people who may be interested. I’m here because I play both Melee and SFIV and after seeing all the biased statements on Shoryuken and being a high school senior who has no more classes to take and spends 4 hours out of his school day in a computer lab with very limited internet access, I had plenty of time to waste.
Your purpose in this thread is none, so why are you wasting your own time to argue with me over something you seem to not care about?
I think there are better ways to waste your time instead of convincing us of the legitimity of SmashBros, which is, I will once again remind you, a wasted effort.
How I waste my time is irrelevant. Again, you can’t speak for everybody. I already understand that many people in the FGC will not pick up smash and I’m perfectly fine with that. That being said, there may be one person neither you or I are aware of that may find this post worth reading, and to me, one person is enough for it to be worth it.
I’m asking you to please leave this thread if you have nothing worth contributing. If you continue to post irrelevant comments in this thread then I will report you.
Ah I see. Well you do realize how old melee is right?
If the scene were more active I could see the point in trying to get people to come out and play, but idk. I’m sure the smash scene will kick start when the next game comes out. 
Also that new FC looks hype. Melee wont ever die. Haha it just old as fuck. And so is brawl. Haha it’s been like 4 years?
0_0
Melee may be old, but the rise of fighting games in general have actually affected Melee as well. We’re having record breaking tournaments almost every year for a game that’s 10 years old and in my area (Missouri) we keep gaining more and more players. I’m not sure how active it is elsewhere but in Missouri and the surrounding areas, it’s growing.
And yes, FC does look hype. Me and my crew will be attending