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Smash Master
In addition to that, he's expressed interest in long-term (or at least post-release) balance adjustments (though sifting through whining and valid complaints is difficult), and general shifts towards making the game actually appealing to everyone. Which, while past games were certainly appealing to everyone, Melee was often considered too technical (and with good reason, a game can be very competitive without being physically demanding to frame precision), and Brawl was considered too casual (for good reason, it incorporated tripping, random frame delays, and generally slow gameplay by comparison).@Johnknight1 while I mostly agree with your long long post, I will say ol Sakurai seems to have less of a ego/god complex than he did in the Brawl era. I say this because it seems he's actually *surprise shock* giving two bird poops about us competitive folk this go round what with the removal of scrappy mechanics that weighed Brawl down, an emphasis on a more balanced roster after the Meta Knight fiasco from Brawl, and of course having the top devs of Tekken fame helping you make the next entry of your long running crossover fighting series certainly counts for something
Smash 4, so far, is looking to strike a near-perfect balance, with mechanics being discovered or elaborated on at each unveiling of the demo (such as pivot canceling), fluid character animations that make it look and feel good to play, unique character mechanics across a larger part of the roster (instead of just the ICs being double, and Lucario getting stronger with damage, we now have Mac's KO punch, Luma, Robin's tomes, and probably more), customizations which give players room to tweak characters in ways that we can't even grasp yet, faster gameplay than Brawl, more punishable defensive moves than in Brawl, easier techniques than Melee, and (while purely aesthetic) numerous flat stages to bring some much-needed diversity to the darkness of competitive Melee stage picks.
It's going to be on both major Nintendo systems, and will almost undoubtedly become the must-own game for each system.
Besides Awakening and whatever Fire Emblem games we get on the U eventually are.
In other words, it is currently apparent, from both the known and shown details of the game, as well as stated intents and other things we've not been able to get our hands on, that Nandai, NoA, and Sakurai are putting forth a very honest effort to make Smash 4 truly the best (over all) entry in the Smash Bros series. And if that works out as intended, then THEY will be entitled to every able Smash player giving their game a shot and seeing if it lives up to their individual expectations. For some, it won't. Plenty of people liked Smash 64, plenty of people liked Melee, plenty of people liked Brawl, and for that matter, plenty of people like them all and don't really consider one or the other to be an objectively better game.
Once that's all said and done, the major things to watch would be Nintendo's attitude towards Project M (the "light path" of supporting it as a devoted fan project that breathes new life into two old games, and the "dark path" of squelching the project as an infringement of intellectual property) and the modding community, Nintendo's attitude towards professional play of all Smash games (and mods), since all of them have their dedicated fanbase, and Nintendo's willingness to support a game that could well become their system-seller through to the next generation or later.
