Smash Bros. for the Wii U is finally out so there is so much for me to be happy about today. Smash Bros. (1999) was my childhood! And Super Smash Bros Melee (2002) was my formative years! And Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) was my adolescence! I wonder where the newest entry into the franchise will fall in with my life? I don’t know what else to say other than I’m super excited to finally play this.

Something you should know is that Smash Bros. is often a centre of debate for a lot of people out there.

“Is it a fighting game?”

“Is it a party game?”

“Is it a balanced experienced?”

“Was Melee the best entry in the series?”

A lot of these things are topics people have spent over a decade arguing about over the course of the series. My official stance is “who the hell cares, it’s SMASH BROS!” but I of all people can understand people who choose to waste their lives fighting meaningless battles over the internet. Smash Bros. is a hybrid of a ton of different genres. It’s a fighting game, party game, platformer, beat ’em up, button masher, and probably 3 other wildly different things that can be used to define it. That doesn’t stop any of us from trying anyways. To me, the first game was a hectic and beautiful mess, Melee was the technical fighting game that could stand up to the likes of Street Fighter games, Brawl definitely moved far away from that and is more accessible and easy to play, and contrary to popular belief, the newest in the series isn’t too different from it.

Many people like to say that Smash 4 (or more official known as Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS/Wii U) is what you get when you cross the solid competitiveness of Melee and the floaty forgiveness of Brawl, but in reality, Smash 4’s engine doesn’t stray far from Brawl‘s at all. There are still mostly no combos, matches between skilled players tend to take incredibly long, and now dodging and rolling have been made even easier. This doesn’t stop a ton of people dedicated to studying and treating Smash 4 like a serious fighting game just like they did Brawl, because Smash is generally what people define it as. That’s the most appealing part about it to me, it can be so many things for so many people. It’s like an empty canvass where one can slather buckets at a random pace and then somehow come out with their own unique masterpiece.

Because of that, you can write a million things more on the subject, but I can’t right now because I have a lot of… important work to get to. Real important. Not a videogame at all. Yup.

Quote of the Day:

“OH MY GOD!”

– Wario, Mario Party 2 (Japanese version)