When I first got brawl I was disappointed. Very disappointed. I had been waiting for the game for months. No, it wasn’t because it lost some of the “advanced techniques” that melee had. It was the core gameplay. Melee was an advancement of Smash 64. More characters, more stages, AND more options (such as sidestepping, crouch canceling, directional influence, etc.). When brawl came out, we got a couple of more characters, a shitty kirby game as a single player mode, and a couple of more options: crawling (something not all characters can do and is pretty useless), random tripping (…), and being able to do reverse aerials while running (something that is useful for only a few characters). Instead of expanding on melee’s gameplay, they kind of threw some of it out and put in some useless stuff and more characters. I thought maybe in a couple of years, people would figure out how to expand the game so that it would more interesting, but even after quitting for two years, I can still hold my own at a brawl tournament. If I stop practicing melee for just a few months it takes me a while before I’m able to catch up to the current level of gameplay at tournaments.
If anybody prefers brawl to melee because of its balance, well they are just wrong. Snake and Meta Knight have been kings of the brawl tournament scene since day 1 and looking at how characters are ranked now, nothing has changed. Yet melee’s tier list is changing constantly: suddenly Pikachu, a random low tier, is receiving the lime light. In brawl Snake’s upward tilt attack (where he lifts his leg straight into the air) has more horizontal range than Link’s sword. I’m sorry, I just can’t take that as a serious attempt to balance. You would’ve thought they would’ve learned what was so wrong with moves like that since there was a move similar to that in melee (Shiek’s forward tilt) but instead they ignored it and made the problem worse. What’s even more of a joke, Shiek’s forward tilt in brawl is an infinite combo (it combos into itself!!!!) on some characters. There was nothing like that in melee.
I’m a fan of Smash 64 too (though I’m very bad at it) even though it’s a slow game. It’s a slower game than brawl when it comes to the speed at which characters move. But it’s also an extremely technical game. In order to ensure that you don’t get combo’d to your death every stock you have to have precise inputs with the control stick. In melee they made it much easier to get out of combos, just hold the control stick away from your opponent or down if you’re on the ground. You can just be holding the control stick from before you got hit and it will still alter the trajectory of you knockback. In brawl, instead of making it easier to control your character to do advanced movements, they just removed those options. How lazy is that. It doesn’t matter if there are more characters, if there is nothing truly unique about them, why does it matter? That’s why the two characters that are the fastest/most powerful and lots of range are at the top of the tier list in brawl. I don’t’ care about the speed at which brawl goes, I care more about the options I have at each instance, and in brawl I always have less options than in melee.
What really makes smash awesome and what draws me to it instead of other fighting games is that it’s not a fighting game. It’s some weird mix of platforming and fighting. It’s basically a video game version of the kid’s game “King of the Hill.” It’s probably not the first iteration (I know a couple of mario party), but it’s definitely the most in depth. At it’s core is a very simple formula that acts as a base for an extremely complex game. The “technical skill” that is required to be good at this game is not about pressing 5 buttons to throw a fireball, but controlling your character with the control stick and jump buttons effectively and efficiently. Anybody that has mastery of the inputs using the control stick and the jump button could easily place well in a national tournament.
One last thing, the sales of brawl were not that impressive. Melee sold significantly more copies (~7 million) than Smash 64 (~1 million) on a less popular system. Brawl sold ~10 million copies on a much more popular system. That’s pretty horrible in terms of growth.
P.S. Thanks for talking about EarthBound. I found it kind of funny though that you said it didn’t sell well since you never fought dragons and things like that in the game, when in fact you fight a giant Kraken and multiple dinosaurs. Shows how bad the marketing campaign was. I honestly think that if they had emphasized the fact that you fight the police and a street gang at the beginning it would’ve flown off of the shelves.
You’re not attacking Wii Sports or Just Dance. All you want is the same sort of quality found in the previous iteration of the series. You were expecting that type of quality to either continue or to get better.
It would be one thing if the game was attempted to get better but failed, but it is clear there was no attempt made. There were many ‘distractions’ such as the single player mode that took attention off the fundamentals of the game.
One reason for a developer to ignore the fundamentals and go off in an odd reaction would be if he was following the dogma of creativity. “Work on game balance? That doesn’t sound very creative! Let me create some characters and cut-scenes instead!”
All I want from Nintendo is a restoration and strong fundamental approach to three games: Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, and Mario Kart. I do not think this is too much to expect.
Mario Kart is almost already there. Going back to the SNES roots in Mario Kart DS was the right move. However, there is much work to be done. The blue shell should be removed or have an option to be removed. The feather needs to return. I’d like to see a return of Bob-omb Blast. I worry that Mario Kart is going to enter a period of decline where ‘distractions’ are pursued like ‘hang-gliding’ and ‘riding in water’ which is very non-Mario Kart type things. What I really, really want from Mario Kart is to go back to the simplicity and charm of just karts. Mario Kart is not Spy Hunter where the kart turns into a boat or dodges 15 vehicles on a wide ass road.
Super Mario Brothers is nearing the horizon of where I want it to be with Mario 5. NSMB DS was disappointing in its main game. But the multiplayer aspects of Mario 5 forced development to re-examine the fundamental gameplay and level design. And it turned out much better. Super Mario Brothers is not just a 2d platform game, it is exploration of the Mushroom Kingdom. Every Super Mario Brothers game has carved out Mushroom Kingdom in a new way whose content spills over into the side genres like Mario Kart, Mario RPG, Mario sports games, etc. The only exception to this was Mario 5 and is where the game falls flat. The game brought nothing new to the Mario mythos. This didn’t matter since it had been 18 years since the last game. But with the next 2d Mario, it will matter greatly. Super Mario Mii shows that Nintendo is going a ‘lazy’ approach to their flagship game series (because Miyamoto doesn’t consider it the ‘prestige series’ even though the market does). The identity of the game revolving around Miis tells me that not only is the approach going to be lazy, it will not involve the Mushroom Kingdom because Miis have no place in the Mushroom Kingdom (just as Miis would look out of place in Hyrule or Planet Zebes). Meanwhile, a 3d Mario for the handheld, which no one asked for or wants, is using the Tanooki suit. This is why I am no fan of Miyamoto. The guy’s personality is that of a jackass. In person, I’d give him the middle finger.
With a restoration of Zelda, this restoration is the most remote and already has two feet in its grave. I’ve already gone into detail about how Zelda needs to be restored, so no point in going into it here.
A strong trio of 2d Mario, Zelda, and Mario Kart would put out the fire of the original Core Market and place Nintendo in a much more stable place. The reason why Nintendo is so unstable, why their sales drop so much, is because their original core market is on fire. To those who remember, you know what it was like when Super Mario Brothers 3 came out or when Super Mario World came out. Or when Link to the Past or Zelda II came out. Or when quality Mario Kart games came out.
We can throw Smash Brothers into the hopper as well. The recipe for Smash Brothers is very simple. Continue the quality with the game balance before you do ‘innovation’ and ‘surprise’. If you do not, you start off with a fire with your core fans that the fire will end up spreading and burning down the series.
These are all simple concepts. Nintendo knows them. However, the resistance coming from Nintendo to them is quite remarkable in itself. I’ve told you that American news media is in decline because if people complain about a story (because it wasn’t news and people expect news from news stories), the journalist will respond, “Screw you! If you don’t like it, well, HERE IS MORE OF IT!” Nintendo’s response is very similar in tone. “Don’t like my cell shaded Zelda? Screw you! HERE IS MORE OF IT!” “Don’t like the story of Smash Brothers Brawl? Screw you! HERE IS MORE OF IT!” “Don’t like maternal instincts in Metroid? Screw you! HERE IS MORE OF IT!”
It is as if Nintendo would rather destroy their game series before they surrender their self-identities of ‘creators’.
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