CLG | Nakat: Why I Love Brawl

Nakat may be known these days for his strong play of Smash 4, but once he was one of the greatest names in Brawl. He was ranked number one on the Tristate Brawl power rankings and could command the Ice Climbers as well as Fox with precision. Needless to say, Nakat and Brawl have a serious history together. Recently, Nakat made a video on why he loves Brawl talking about some of the best parts of the game as well as his time playing it. Give it a watch!

Like the video? Think Brawl deserves to see more time to shine? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned to Smashboards for the best in Brawl news coverage.

 

I remember Nakat from Brawl, and I do believe Brawl deserves another chance.

Why? It's not going to change.
I believe it's a great game myself, but if people don't like it the first time around, a second won't be any different.

 

RIP Meta Knight's eyes. You'll be missed. While we're at it, RIP MK's Wings, RIP MK's Nado, RIP MK's Range, RIP MK's Infinite Cape, RIP...

Also RIP Snake. You and MK were like brothers.

 

The problem is the brawl community isn't as loyal compared to other smash communities. 64 players, melee players & Pro M players stick with the game through its up and downs. They do what they have to do to keep the scene alive. You can see this through tourney attendance, word of mouth and overall interest in the game. The Brawl community as a whole just moves on to whatever the next thing is (which is currently sm4sh) and when the current game has reached its limit, they will move on to the next game too. The first step to reviving brawl IMO is for the community to start supporting the game as much as other communities support their game.

 

The problem is the brawl community isn't as loyal compared to other smash communities. 64 players, melee players & Pro M players stick with the game through its up and downs. They do what they have to do to keep the scene alive. You can see this through tourney attendance, word of mouth and overall interest in the game. The Brawl community as a whole just moves on to whatever the next thing is (which is currently sm4sh) and when the current game has reached its limit, they will move on to the next game too. The first step to reviving brawl IMO is for the community to start supporting the game as much as other communities support their game.

And that's an interesting point. You could also argue acceptance over stubbornness but that would only anger Melee fanatics. Also More Fun or More Competative. Brawl had an amazing campaign(Subspace Emissary) and boasted a more casual audience while Melee had a lot of physics that accidentally made it more competative and fast paced. Melee became a sport and Brawl became a party. That's the biggest difference I see.

 

The problem is the brawl community isn't as loyal compared to other smash communities. 64 players, melee players & Pro M players stick with the game through its up and downs. They do what they have to do to keep the scene alive. You can see this through tourney attendance, word of mouth and overall interest in the game. The Brawl community as a whole just moves on to whatever the next thing is (which is currently sm4sh) and when the current game has reached its limit, they will move on to the next game too. The first step to reviving brawl IMO is for the community to start supporting the game as much as other communities support their game.

I do agree with this. Although I wouldn't say it's the Brawl community. Needs a different term/title. The progressive smash community shall we call it? Players who move on and play the most recent game in the series.

 

The problem is the brawl community isn't as loyal compared to other smash communities. 64 players, melee players & Pro M players stick with the game through its up and downs. They do what they have to do to keep the scene alive. You can see this through tourney attendance, word of mouth and overall interest in the game. The Brawl community as a whole just moves on to whatever the next thing is (which is currently sm4sh) and when the current game has reached its limit, they will move on to the next game too. The first step to reviving brawl IMO is for the community to start supporting the game as much as other communities support their game.

I think you are right here and if I were to be honest, with gameplay I would stick with smash 4.

I like Brawl but I found Smash 4, and melee tbh, to be more fun. I don't have that drive for Brawl when I got those two instead.

 

Brawl was the first smash game I played and many of the fond memories people associate with their first Smash game are in Brawl for me -
the sense of awe, the countless hours messing with friends and gimmicky stages, etc.

I think I'm of the few people here who loved Brawl because it's HUGE modding community. The ability to add pretty much any character, stage or song to the game quite massively extended its lifespan.

I have moved on to Smash 4, but I keep my copy of Brawl for that reason alone - experimenting with mods is fun.

 

I had fun with Brawl during its time, but I feel zero motivation to go back. It was my gateway into the smash community too, but I still don't want to go back to it. MK, ICs, tripping, dumb CGs, worse balance overall, ledgehogs...nah, I'm good. Smash 4 has nearly everything Brawl has, but more IMO. Not saying smash 4 is perfect, but the general styles of the two games are close, but smash 4 is just flat out better if you ask me.

Outside of the general brokeness, I did enjoy the near zero hitstun in brawl because of what you said. Basically nothing was guaranteed, so you had to outplay your opponent over, over, and over to close out the match. It was ironic that the game was so easy to pick up, yet so hard to be good at because the top players were just on another level.

Snake is also a character I miss. Watching snake players like MVD, Ally, DIO, Shogun, etc. was great. They had to play so intelligently in order to succeed with the character. High level Snake in brawl was beautiful thing, and I'm sad it's gone. Brawl doubles were great too, but I feel like smash 4 doubles are just as good.

Edit: if MK and ICs didn't exist in the game, it'd probably still be doing decently. Those two just ruin it imo.

 

Thank you, NAKAT.
Brawl is never dead in my heart, and will never be.
It's probably the game I played the most in my life, and my favorite one in Smash Bros franchise.

thank you for finally saying it

 

I feel like people don't think past the tripping and balance issues enough to actually appreciate what the game did well.

I like its aerial system the most out of any Smash game because pretty much everything about it just feels smooth and not "snappy" (Melee) or exaggerated (Smash 4).
Some people may not have enjoyed the momentum canceling or the lack of hitstun, but it kept the interactions close and frequent rather than brief (Melee) or few and far between (Smash 4).
The techs were also a lot of fun to experiment with and provided for a great set of tools, albeit less applicable to all (Melee) yet not so situational (Smash 4).

Granted, some of these points are just generalizations, but I do feel like there is something left to be appreciated in Brawl; for me, it's the overall pace and feel of the game.
I knew the game's balance was bad, but it never affected the way I thought about the game.
And Wario.
He was amazing.

 

NAKAT loves Brawl so much that he dropped out of bracket at APEX and SSC.

To shortly address such a stupid post that shouldn't be made unless you know the reasons why.

I made prior obligations with a panel for a presentation that interfered with Brawls time slot. I had to choose between the two and since I made a promise for the panel first and would really hurt everything had I left it I had to leave Brawl. Get it straight.

 

Nakat aside, there really is no denying that Brawl was a more technical and skillful game. Sure, Meta Knight and Ice Climbers may have been a problem for most players and salt made the game unpleasant to those who couldn't hack the match ups but you were either a player that knew that match up or you weren't. Not many top players complained about either character. At least not anymore than they do about any other character in any other smash title. They just played the game. Tripping was really the only thing that should have been taken care of with no trip codes in tournament play. That definitely should have been a staple, but even with tripping it really wasn't that big of a factor in almost all cases.

 

Even if there are people who do want to play Brawl competitively, the viewership and pressure on TOs to run such a slow game would not work. This guy talks about Brawl not having confirms, but then explains the nature of guaranteed chain grabs in the game. The chain grabs in brawl were closer to any sort of confirm that may exist in Smash 4. Personally, I believe that if Brawl were played with the same rules that Smash 4 is custom to now, it'd be more interesting to watch than Smash 4. The gameplay is much deeper and it doesn't have that awful rage mechanic that causes the match to be biased toward the person who takes the first stock. That means they get free knockback on a 2v1 last-stock situation. People will slam me for this, but Smash 4 has more fundamental flaws than Brawl did. It is still campy, floaty and has easier recoveries. Tripping may have been removed, but tripping could have also been worked around in Brawl at high levels. It's much like l-cancelling or z-cancelling in Melee/64; it doesn't add another dimension of thinking to the game, but you must cooperate with the mechanic to get better. Smash 4 does not know that setting yet due to all of the patches it receives, and frankly, Nakat is right about people being spoiled. It's extremely disappointing to even see top level players complain about patches when most of these guys came from the Brawl community, which had no patches to begin with.

Brawl GFs at Smashcon was pretty hype compared to most Smash 4 matches I've watched. There may be a lack of diversity in viable characters, but it doesn't really matter when the gameplay is deeper. Quality, not quantity. The level of awareness that Nakat describes of top level Brawl players can only come from mastery of the few viable matchups in the game. There will never be mastery of every single matchup in Smash 4 in its lifetime; there are too many, and the character diversity of Smash 4 is actually what is going to kill it in the end. Players don't have to adapt. They can just switch to one of their ten mains. Personally, I find it much more interesting anticipating how a person will adjust their playstyle rather than which character they will choose next. Having characters like MK and ICs gave the Brawl competitive scene a clear direction: to beat these characters. In Smash 4, there are clear top characters but they do not dictate the meta to the point where people rely more on adapting to them rather than waiting for patches. I'd much rather watch a game develop in the hands of the players, like S64/Melee/Brawl, than watch a game develop in the hands of Nintendo. Adjust the Brawl ruleset and I'd watch it over Smash 4 any day. As a TO myself, Smash 4 already takes way too long to run, so I choose not to host it. Resources are also extremely expensive. Brawl is cheaper to run and can be faster than Smash 4 with adjusted rules. It's too bad that so many people are bandwagoners who just want to move onto the next shiny thing... Brawl certainly does have more competitive potential than Smash 4. It just needs to be reevaluated. Smash 4 breaking the 2-stock barrier may actually unlock some potential for the poor game.

 

To shortly address such a stupid post that shouldn't be made unless you know the reasons why.

I made prior obligations with a panel for a presentation that interfered with Brawls time slot. I had to choose between the two and since I made a promise for the panel first and would really hurt everything had I left it I had to leave Brawl. Get it straight.

In that case, I was wrong to hold SSC against you, and for that I apologize.

But I still can't help but notice all the Brawl players who dropped after the Apex schedule got condensed, yourself included. The strongest testament to one's "love" of a game is willingness to play it under less-than-ideal circumstances. Brawl players (even decorated vets) just couldn't bear to compromise their Smash 4 play, so they gave it up to have a betier chance of showing off their shiny new tricks in the game with an actual prize pot. Giving up when things get tough doesn't do much to revive a game, and so long as y'all won't be so inconvenienced, Brawl will remain the zombie of the Smash series. It might shamble around under a blue moon once in awhile, but it will never regain its previous vitality.

 

Not counting its ability to be modded, Brawl only offers two notable things over Smash4:

1. Subspace Emissary (not perfect but still a lot of fun and better than what they replaced it with.)
2. Wolf/Ice Climbers/Snake.

And since I can get both of those things in Project M (which I unfortunately cannot play much anymore ever since my Wii died) there really is no reason for me to ever play vanilla Brawl again. For all intents and purposes, it's obsolete for me.

 

Brawl had a lot of really goofy crap that could very occasionally be utilized competitively (like windboxes halting all other knockback momentum) and a few things that might have been interesting to try and fit into a few characters' games (like infinite second jump renewal).

One thing I find interesting about it is that while hitstun was very low so was the recovery time on a lot of moves. This set up for infinites and some crazy pokes. It also suffered from some really outclassed moves in a few places (Ivysaur's DSmash, anyone?). I think it's a really fun game that unfortunately decayed into camping and infinites a lot of the time. But I enjoy watching high level players battle it out because they know their options and how to get the most out of them making their matches high-energy mostly.

Watching tool-assisted matches where the inane SDI capabilities are exploited is really fun, too.

 

I just wish the competitive community could just give Brawl a second chance. It deserves better than it has right now. Not helping things is these 2 menaces

 

For me to have started playing competitively weeks I am going to say that I am sticking with Brawl although majority plays Sm4sh and Melee. That decision alone is not wise and stupid, but neither is moving on with the crowd to something new. I don't own Melee or Sm4sh, but I had at least a chance to try them both out at a local tournament. I see why everyone likes it.

I know what majority of the community likes (in America anyway), but I can't seem to follow sadly. What's the use of spending more money on a new game and/or system and more time to master it? I'll more likely be donating money at the 2 dominate games than Brawl to be honest. Folks can't just go from one turf to the next and say "I'm going to dominate you all!" If anything, with the 4 games that's out there (and a successful mod) They're all different mechanics.

Sorry, but I'll settle with playing for $50. I'll be stupid enough to get into a bigger crowd for more money when I already have an advantage in the small crowd. 4 years went into Brawl, and I'm still learning. No sense of starting over with a new game. Just saying.

 

Brawl started me in competitive smash and it's still a fun game, and I love it. At the same time though, if the only way to "save" it is to ruin the game for the people who either put 6-8 years into MK/IC's, or thought they were the only characters that were fun. **** that let the game stay dead.
As other people point out there are still just as many ridiculous things if there are no IC's/MK. It's called learning the game, or developing your favorite character to new levels. People are still finding new things in Melee, so there is a ton of untapped potential in brawl still.

 

l never played Brawl really competitively. l remember playing it ALL THE TIME with my two brothers, though. Spamming lke's smashes and claiming to be a true competitor. Ugh, those times were so immature. l also remember looking on Youtube one day for Brawl tournament matches and the only immediate results were ones with M2K's Meta Knight. Mostly against ICs. That didn't help my view of the game.

Recently, l installed PM onto my PC, but my first try didn't run it, so l said **** it and tried to play Brawl on Anther's. Have you ever seen the Brawl chat on there, if you've been on the site? lt's the saddest thing.

Eventually, l got a player, and went to work with Marth. This could be just that the opponent was rather mediocre and unintimidating, but it felt nice, slow, and thoughtful. The game feels a bit less clunky than Melee or PM too.

Brawl GFs at Smashcon was pretty hype compared to most Smash 4 matches I've watched. There may be a lack of diversity in viable characters, but it doesn't really matter when the gameplay is deeper. Quality, not quantity. The level of awareness that Nakat describes of top level Brawl players can only come from mastery of the few viable matchups in the game. There will never be mastery of every single matchup in Smash 4 in its lifetime; there are too many, and the character diversity of Smash 4 is actually what is going to kill it in the end. Players don't have to adapt. They can just switch to one of their ten mains. Personally, I find it much more interesting anticipating how a person will adjust their playstyle rather than which character they will choose next

This is not something l've thought about. Until l read this, l really preferred the idea of more characters, so l could spend more time learning how to beat them. Now l realize that counter-picking all the time is something l've been doing a lot. Not saying that l think character CPing is bad now, but the lack of diversity is essentially why l haven't given Melee a shot over PM (that, and PM Ganon is gorgeous). Now l'm thinking of playing Brawl over Smash 4 too.

Before l can, l'd need to find some Brawl players in order to play.

 

Wii mote, no nunchuck. That's how we played brawl when we got it. I DIDNT KNOW THERE WERE TILTS!! I THOUGH THERE WERE ONLY SMASH ATTACKS and specials! !!!! lol scrubs to the max but me and my brother were young and we had fun all would just try to land warlock punch the whole game

 

Brawl was the first smash game I played and many of the fond memories people associate with their first Smash game are in Brawl for me -
the sense of awe, the countless hours messing with friends and gimmicky stages, etc.

I think I'm of the few people here who loved Brawl because it's HUGE modding community. The ability to add pretty much any character, stage or song to the game quite massively extended its lifespan.

I have moved on to Smash 4, but I keep my copy of Brawl for that reason alone - experimenting with mods is fun.

Yeah.

Especially when you're the one making the mods

 

Brawl is just....outclassed.
Plus, MetaKnight and Ice Climbers...:/

Did you like, even watch the first 5 seconds of video.

 

Gave me chills. (,:

 

At least Brawl don't have the friggin' OP rolls.

 

I love Brawl too. It gives me access to PM

No in all fairness I love Brawl, just less than all other Smash games

 

I thing i think brawl has that i kinda like is that it forces the player to really think about their moves, since grabs for example just sets up a certain situation, what can you do to make that situation advantageous. There were also a ton of specific situations to look out for, to not get jablocked as an example. It were also very good at being logical in how to escape combos for example.

As a MK,IC and Snake player that had my results in the first 3 years (around the time the scene for the game here died) I had a ton of fun tournamentsets and i felt I always made improvements to really understand the top of the metagame for my characters.

Whereas in smash 4, the metagame is all around the place and due to patches(rip supergood rosalina) I still dont even grasp the basic concept of what are strong options and not, more then using moves that stack well with rage is generally a good bet. adding to that though, is that i really haven't looked that far into optionselects and that is probably a MAJOR part why im still not grasping it.

EDIT: did anyone actually master this tech? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbzCPDefH5Q i still remember the day that happened, metaknight were soo good at continuously suprising how good he was!

 

l never played Brawl really competitively. l remember playing it ALL THE TIME with my two brothers, though. Spamming lke's smashes and claiming to be a true competitor. Ugh, those times were so immature. l also remember looking on Youtube one day for Brawl tournament matches and the only immediate results were ones with M2K's Meta Knight. Mostly against ICs. That didn't help my view of the game.

Recently, l installed PM onto my PC, but my first try didn't run it, so l said **** it and tried to play Brawl on Anther's. Have you ever seen the Brawl chat on there, if you've been on the site? lt's the saddest thing.

Eventually, l got a player, and went to work with Marth. This could be just that the opponent was rather mediocre and unintimidating, but it felt nice, slow, and thoughtful. The game feels a bit less clunky than Melee or PM too.



This is not something l've thought about. Until l read this, l really preferred the idea of more characters, so l could spend more time learning how to beat them. Now l realize that counter-picking all the time is something l've been doing a lot. Not saying that l think character CPing is bad now, but the lack of diversity is essentially why l haven't given Melee a shot over PM (that, and PM Ganon is gorgeous). Now l'm thinking of playing Brawl over Smash 4 too.

Before l can, l'd need to find some Brawl players in order to play.

I grew up with Brawl but I ended up switching to Melee later down the road... I still keep my old Pikachu as a pocket, though. I ended up switching because I enjoyed the tech in Brawl (QACing for Pika, DACUS) and I wanted more of it. I still think Brawl can be decent with modified rules, though. Maybe the stage list needs to be reevaluated and stalling rules must be in play.

 

The funny thing about Brawl is that despite being my least favorite game in the series, it's still one of my favorite games ever, just because the entire series is so good. Its an odd position.

 

I like Brawl more than Smash 4's current metagame because I had a main I liked to play as that wasn't banned.

Still better than Super Debate Bros for Wii U and BannedDS

 

...*trips*

 

Only things I miss from Brawl are Kirby and ZSS's old upB. That was one good pressure move/combo follow-up. Loved it.

 

Brawl was in a lot of ways a better designed game than Smash 4 is. I'm even gonna try to explain that, it's just my opinion.