You might have watched some Melee matches, but judging by your post and this line in particular, you likely just played Brawl. Everything you just posted is awful in more ways than one.
I’ve seen plenty of Melee matches – but when was the last time you saw a big Melee tournament anywhere? Even Comicpalooza here in Houston’s Smash tournament is Brawl and they are putting $1000 dollars into it.
It’s hard to consider Melee relevant to anything when you don’t see it anywhere outside of the inner sanctums of the Smash community. Everyone talks about how great 3rd strike was, yet you never see that around either because it’s not relevant to the current tournament scene outside of side tournaments.
Be defensive of your precious Smash brothers all you want, but at least face the fact that Brawl is the game people think of when they think about Smash these days. People can harp about the good old days technical depth in Melee, but at the end of the day Brawl is the current face of Smash – just like SSF4AE is the current face of Street Fighter, regardless of whether or not Third Strike was the better game.
I’m not defensive regarding Smash, or even Melee - I’m defensive against bad opinions. I’m pretty sure Melee had its largest tournament ever just last year (Genesis, maybe? Not sure, don’t pay attention to the scene much anymore). Alphazealot suggests numbers are strong for the game in general, still, with many tournaments throughout the year. I doubt 3rd Strike at the height of its popularity even compared.
How relevant to the FG scene Melee (or even Brawl) is to the scene at large - is irrelevant. Especially in consideration for how self-sustained they are.
Brawl is such a bad game, I don’t even consider it cannon. I always make sure to mention I’m referring to Melee whenever talking about Smash.
First, there’s no such thing as a “bad” opinion, there can be uneducated opinions – but that assumes the opinion references the pertinent information in some way or would otherwise benefit from it. The fact that Melee had a big tournament last year doesn’t really equate much to what I’m trying to say…
I’ve never said anything about Smash not being a popular series, and I’ve said nothing against Melee as the hallmark of the game’s quality – but when the average person thinks of Smash, Brawl is the game that comes to mind, purely because its the most recent – Numbers be damned. If people cared about numbers then Brawl probably would never have been played in a single tournament.
Just saying that, unfortunately, Brawl is Smash Bros for the average person these days. And the only reason I brought up the Third Strike example was not to try to goat some “Street Fighter is better and more popular comparison” comparison, but to point out that, for example, the last sentence of your last post is EXACTLY something someone would say about Third Strike compared to AE, because arguably, Third Strike is the technically superior game. Just meant to point out that the comparison was parallel in terms of quality among people who know what they are talking about.
Bullshit. Melee is the game for a smash player.
Lol. An uneducated opinion is typically bad for the very reason that it misinterprets or misses the pertinent information completely when forming statements. I’m sorry, but your parents lied to you.
I don’t even know what this is saying, honestly. Turnouts don’t matter in a competitive scene for Melee because Brawl holds the general mindshare? Mindshare is determined by tournament numbers? What?
The sentence you’re referring to is simply explaining where I stand in regards to discussions involving the series. It makes no real attempt to extrapolate from either game’s mechanical qualities. That’s much different from how 3S purists tend to speak in regards to SF4. Especially since many of them actually play SF4 and actively contribute to its popularity.
Average person =/= Smash player…
I’m not going to bother with trying to re-explain any of this again…
Yeah, me either.
Why does everyone want Smash to be competitive so much? If it was built like a traditional fighting game then it will alienate a lot of players who simply want to play the game for fun. Smash may not be as respected a lot of other fighters but Smash’s(or should I say Nintendo’s) target audience had always been causals or people who don’t normally play games. Nintendo’s target audience had always been these people and the minute they implent those competitive elements that Melee fans want, it starts to lose its appeal and it become just another fighting game that only fighting game nerds (no offense) play.
Nintendo is not supportive of the competitive scene and I am starting to see why. Competitive players don’t really play solely for fun but for bragging rights and money. Nintendo had always been about making fun games and if they do a good job they make a lot of money off it. So what if some characters are to powerful or the stages are too unpredictable or the items are too annoying or it doesn’t wavedashing, frame rate, etc.? Smash is silly chaotic fun and that is not going to change anytime soon.
Sorry SynikaL, but i disagree. I highly doubt that anyone in that community would be playing the game had they not have nintendo characters to boost it’s popularity. I looked up Brawl back in 06 when brawl was coming out to see what it was like, and I came across a comment about ken being the best smash player. I looked him up and saw the game. Popularity contributes to a competitive scene, the more popular your game is, especially a multiplayer one, the more likely that it is to have a competitive scene. It happened with sf2, being one of the first competetive gammes of that caliber. I am not going to say that it is the only contribute, but the Nintendo characters within the game contributed largely to the following the game has today, to say otherwise is looking at it as though nothing about the game’s popularity was simple, even though there may be more complex reasons.
Again, that’s simple-minded. You’re looking at one aspect of the game’s appeal in a vacuum. You bringing up Ken to prove some sort of point is ironic considering how often he remarked that he didn’t actually care for the Nintendo aesthetics of the game, which is why he originally chose Marth (he didn’t recognize him as a Nintendo staple) and actually preferred Street Fighter games to Smash, overall (these were salty remarks he made just before he decided to quit the first time, due to people not liking him in the community. So it was probably bullshit. He ended up coming back later and dominating further, solidifying his passion for the game. It just bears mentioning). It’s just that he managed to become good at Melee, so he stuck with that game.
Also, people outside the Smash community helped develop tech for the game. Empire offshoot Deadly Alliance comes to mind.
Mario Kart is plenty popular and has sold more units than the Smash series. Why isn’t its competitive community making waves? GTA 4 sold a lot of units last I checked. Why aren’t people playing that competitively, period? Probably because people think its mechanics are trash in the context of competitive gameplay.
I’m sorry, but to say I can’t divorce my appreciation for Mario and behold the gameplay on its own merits is stupid. Of course, the aesthetics helped draw people in. *But people don’t travel across the world/country and put thousands of dollars on the line just because their favorite game has Pikachu in it. *When you make the decision to play a game competitively, what you appreciate most about the game changes completely. If this weren’t true, Brawl’s existence would have never been a problem. No one would’ve complained about its garbage mechanics, because it still has all the stupid Nintendo characters present in Melee and then some.
lol smash bros
total scrub game for people who can’t do an srk motion
ViolentDjango, I really do think that you’re the one that’s just plain not getting it. In fact, I have a hard time believing at all that you got all that deep because just from reading your posts, it seems pretty clear that you’re stumbling on a fundamental point to SynikaL’s posts, which anyone who has come to any remotely deep understanding of the mechanics and gameplay of Smash games can tell you: Melee and Brawl are wholly different games. They share the same fundamental goal of removing an opponents options of avoiding the blast zone, but their way of crafting gameplay around that goal is different in an almost innumerable number of ways.
That you don’t grasp this fact that all dedicated smashers, even Brawl players, confirm, is evident in the fact that you continue to insist that all Smash games can be thrown under the umbrella term, Smash Bros.
Basically, I’m sure if you were explicitly dismissive of Brawl, there wouldn’t be as many people calling you out. The issue is that you seem to think Melee is the same game as Brawl, and you dismiss it out of hand. The point is that Melee, although intended as a game for young adults to dick around with at parties, is in fact, very deep and highly competitive. Maybe it doesn’t have what you want, but that doesn’t mean lumping it with Brawl doesn’t do it a huge disservice.
they’re all garbage what’s the difference
inb4 my little horsey faggot throws a hissy fit about hurr durr u dont like mai game
- I wasn’t saying that all Smash Brothers games are the same.
- I already expressed that Melee was a vastly superior game to Brawl, and that if any game was going to be the hallmark of Smash Brothers’ viability as a competitive series it would be Melee.
- My point was that the average person, i.e. someone who isn’t already a forum-attending part of the Smash community or the FGC in general thinks of Brawl when they think of Smash Brothers, not because of the quality of the game, because purely because it is the most recent – just like how the average player thinks of Street Fighter 4 and Marvel 3 instead of Marvel 2 and Third Strike…
The issue isn’t my lack of understanding of what they were trying the say – my mistake was trying to re-explain my point when it had been so clearly missed. Apparently it just made things worse. I wasn’t trying to “umbrella” the games and I didn’t even reference the fact that the series wasn’t intended to be competitive – because none of that was relevant to what I was saying.
I used to compete in Smash on a local level, and I was a huge fan of the series – including Brawl, despite its flaws – I actually spent a lot of time defending the game’s viability (and getting shit for it) despite how comparatively bad it was because I feel every game deserves its own chance in the name of due diligence. You guys are just so busy being hyper defensive of the game to be able to have any kind of conversation or debate about it. Frankly I just can’t be bothered.
“You guys”??? Whataya mean "you guys"?!!
I guess, then, I’m just not sure how to interpret this bit.
What it looks to me like is, you started out dismissing the series as a whole (not to insult it, or anything). Then, when you were called out on it, you started talking about how average people take “Smash Brothers” to mean Brawl, which is so unrelated to what anyone was talking about, it can’t even be called a tangential discussion. The fact is, you don’t have the luxury of deciding what the discussion is about, since your first post was a reply. If there’s a misunderstanding, it’s because you are the one missing the point.
It’s not too hard to figure out- Super Smash Bros. and it’s sequels were fun. Still are, outside of it’s current scene. It’s not surprising a scene was created around the game because it’s got a major built-in audience, is basically the definition of ‘easy to learn, hard to master,’ and is both very flashy and very technical at the same time. It took years of gaming history and shoved it into one package that just hit all the right notes. The Smash games reeks of fanservice and polish and joy and flair and depth to explore, but most importantly, the Smash games were just a huge blast to play, especially with other people who truly and genuinely loved the game- much like any other competitive fighter. No sane person would spend the time it would take to consistently perform actions like L-canceling (a technique required to be performed virtually every time you used a jumping attack to be competitive) if there was not a genuine passion for the game, and no bad game could inspire that kind of passion in so many people.
I was there when what would be the first major breakout of the scene first started up- in Northern California, the spring after Melee launched. The Tournament Go series, the Bay Area Biweeklies, etc. Back when the game was new, the player base was open minded, and it about playing some Smash Brothers and not playing the ‘right’ ruleset for it or the ‘most competitive’ stage selection- partially because there was not one for the time, but mostly because they wanted to keep Smash intact. Over a year came and went, and the most radical changes to the game were the removal of stages that had obvious horrific flaws for competitive play- Icicle Mountain for it’s ability to kill heavy characters with a random speed-up (It could rise faster then Bowser or DK could keep up with- if they were already low on the screen they were dead), Yoshi Island 64 for cloud camping,
But then the major question came up- what would it take to get Smash Bros. recognized by the greater fighting game community?
The answer should have been one that’s basically been adopted by both the Smash and greater Fighting Game community these days for spite instead of acceptance- ‘Who cares? Let’s play our game!’ But at the time Smash was starting to outgrow it’s britches. Melee tournaments were going from local affairs to inter-state to national to finally international- as early as 2003 players from Europe were already coming over for events, by 2004 Japan was coming too. And the guys behind Tournament Go were looking at trying to convince Evo to host Smash for the first time for Evo 2004. But the outside was not sold on the game. Weren’t sure the scene had matured enough. Wasn’t sure the game had competitive depth. They needed to be sold on Smash as an actual fighting game, and left it to the Smash community to go out and do it.
And so starting Summer 2004, people began talking rulesets- some communities had already adapted a no item, limited stage selection like New York, while others like NorCal had only banned the bare minimum to keep the game competitive without being totally broken. After a lot of debate, the scene for a while tried to put out a somewhat unified face in terms of ruleset in an attempt to get itself taken seriously- one that tried to absolutely minimize the random factors and player vs environment factors of the game to focus as greatly on the one-on-one aspect of the game as it could- ironic, the actions they first took to reach out beyond their community and draw the interest of other fighting games groups would wind up forming the mindset that would wind up ostracizing the Smash community from both it’s casual fanbase AND other fighting game communities. Some, like myself, slowly splintered off from the community during this time, but many many more trickled in- happy to know the game they lapped up so eagerly on their sofas with friends on slow weekends was actually becoming serious business and wanted to help push it into becoming a real breakout success.
The rest, of course, is history. Evo finally gave Melee it’s shot in 2007 to some moderate success, and invited the Smash guys back to help break in their new game that turned into the community wedge that was Brawl @ Evo 2k8- ironically enough, because this time Shoryuken and Evo wanted to test out the new game in it’s fullest while the Smash community, who years prior cobbled together as minimal a ruleset as possible to get themselves invited to Evo in the first place, were confused why SRK didn’t just want to grandfather in Melee’s proven rule list. But by then Smash wasn’t just another up-and-coming community- it was a huge and unique beast all it’s own, unlike anything that had really come before or has risen up since. So it wandered off and still continues to really do it’s own thing, drawing in new faces every so often that want to have their favorite Nintendo characters beat each other up in a brawling game that offers a genuinely unique experience that isn’t really offered anywhere else.
Almost front-page worthy.
The wall of text just felt relevant with the recent collapse of the URC. The URC was both the ultimate realization of what the Smash Community first started to do in 2004 to form a true fighting game community and what, ultimately, was really wrong with the competitive Smash community in general- a very small selection of Tournament Organizers getting together to try and dictate to everyone else how the game has to be played if you want your Smash tournament to be taken seriously. Which isn’t a problem if it’s a very broad and obvious set of decisions- such a thing happens with virtually every fighting game anymore- but started grossly overstepping on the specifics of the ruleset to the point where even some of Smash’s ‘major’ tournaments started ignoring it.
While Smash is a little different in respects to other fighting games in terms of needing some ground rules set, it should always be at the final say of the Tournament Operator what the final ruleset is, and more importantly, that those who are ‘in charge’ should not actively work against Tournament Operators who choose to use to follow different rulesets, especially ones that restrict less things instead of more. More tournaments are always better for a community then less, and as long as the ruleset in question is not making the game completely unrecognizable from itself (especially if it’s not restrictions, but the lack thereof that is the dissent from the given norm.) then at the very least it should be allowed to co-exist in peace and succeed or fail based entirely on the merits of player interest in that ruleset. The leadership of the Smash community has been guilty of attacking it’s own base as far back as mid-2005, bullying any tournament operator who was not using the extremely restricted stage list propose to help the game be taken seriously, and with the end of the URC and the Unity Ruleset returning to being a recommendation instead of a ‘requirement’ for recognition by Smashboards, maybe we’re finally moving towards the time where the Smash community may become more accepting of the one thing anything needs to accept for anyone *else *to accept it- itself.