ESAM Investigates the Truth Behind Dream Land

Dream Land 64 is one of the oldest returning stages in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and a tournament staple throughout the Smash Bros. series itself. It shouldn't come as a surprise that players investigate the ins and outs of this nostalgic stage.

Eric "ESAM" Lew, a top Smash Wii U Pikachu specialist, recently released a video in which he tries to find the reason behind many weird interactions that occur with this stage. For instance, Pikachu is able to perform its Quick Attack Cancel (QAC) technique on Dream Land, but not on most other tournament picks.

ESAM compares the functioning of QAC and Wario's Dash Attack to determine what exactly makes Dream Land behave like it does. Find out more in the video below:

Be sure to subscribe to ESAM's YouTube channel, and to follow him on Twitter.

Stay tuned to Smashboards for more practical videos and Smash related content.

 

Sakurai please fix.

 

Wonder how that happened.

 

What about Diddy's banana or Ness' d-tilt? Do characters avoid jab locks from those? They probably do. I guess this is the go-to stage for avoid jab lock confirmed kills.

 

Good to know. Next question, is this grounds for banning the stage? This property changes the behavior of normal gameplay. Not very much, but between this minor issue and the major wind issue I can only hope that the Smash community comes to its senses and bans this POS stage after realizing that this stage is only legal because it's been grandfathered in for being the least awful stage in 64.

Wonder how that happened.

If I were to guess, it's because there was an issue in development with the wind not correctly pushing characters on a flat plane. It's V-shaped about the middle, so it was probably done intentionally. Then, supposing my guess is right, somebody forgot to change the stage back to normal or they wanted/tried to but the V-shape was still necessary for some reason.

 

I can only hope that the Smash community comes to its senses and bans this POS stage after realizing that this stage is only legal because it's been grandfathered in for being the least awful stage in 64.

funniest & most ridiculous thing i have read all night.
seems like you're projecting your own opinion a bit too hard there. the property difference in the stage isn't that big of a deal, and neither is the wind. people will always make an excuse for something instead of playing the game and learning to adapt. no reason to ban a perfectly good stage, especially when legal stages are already as few as they come. if the people complaining about small things like this had their way, duck hunt and lylat wouldn't be legal either, and then all we'd have is 4 legal stages.

 

funniest & most ridiculous thing i have read all night.
seems like you're projecting your own opinion a bit too hard there. the property difference in the stage isn't that big of a deal, and neither is the wind. people will always make an excuse for something instead of playing the game and learning to adapt. no reason to ban a perfectly good stage, especially when legal stages are already as few as they come. if the people complaining about small things like this had their way, duck hunt and lylat wouldn't be legal either, and then all we'd have is 4 legal stages.

Delfino and Castle Siege got banned for far less. Yeah, you could cheese on them, but their cheese wasn't an ever-present part of the stage. How many times has an attempted magnet hand ledge grab been denied due to Whispy? More than a few. How often does the sudden gusting screw up your spacing and/or cause an aerial to whiff? All the ****ing time.

**** Dreamland. It's only legal because BF and FD aren't selectable in 64 Versus.

Lylat's stupid too, but we need a 5th stage to be a starter. At least it's less stupid than it used to be, and a lot more predictable to boot.

 

It's V-shaped about the middle, so it was probably done intentionally.

Not necessarily. In terms of collision data, no stage has a single, unified line across the entirety of the main platform. (Side note: this is because putting both right and left ledges on the same line doesn't work.) Many stages, then, have the stage split in half, with one point in the center, one at the right ledge, and one at the left ledge, with two lines between these points forming the stage itself. Thus, in order to get the V shape found here, only one value would need to be slightly off compared to a normal stage.

Peeking into Dreamland's collision data, I found that the two points at the ledges are at height 0.009, whereas the point at the center is at height 0. For a sense of scale, Dreamland's side platforms are at height 27.009. This is mere speculation on my part, but given that both the ledges and the side platforms have .009 in the decimal spaces, the developers could have moved the ledges and side platforms up by 0.009 at some point for whatever reason and forgotten the center of the stage.

I may test how the wind works without the sloping at some point. Regarding legality, we do have Dream Land as a counterpick rather than a starter precisely because of the wind etc.

 

Delfino and Castle Siege got banned for far less. Yeah, you could cheese on them, but their cheese wasn't an ever-present part of the stage. How many times has an attempted magnet hand ledge grab been denied due to Whispy? More than a few. How often does the sudden gusting screw up your spacing and/or cause an aerial to whiff? All the ****ing time.

**** Dreamland. It's only legal because BF and FD aren't selectable in 64 Versus.

Lylat's stupid too, but we need a 5th stage to be a starter. At least it's less stupid than it used to be, and a lot more predictable to boot.

Delfino had transitions that lowered the ceiling to ridiculous degrees, most of the transformations promoted camp2win. Castle Siege was a horrid mess. The first transformation is too small, and the other 2 are camp2win.

 

The real question is why DL64, BF and Miiverse don't count as a single stage in the stage striking/counter picking process, similarly to FD and the Omega stages.

 

The real question is why DL64, BF and Miiverse don't count as a single stage in the stage striking/counter picking process, similarly to FD and the Omega stages.

BF and miiverse do, because they're identical baring the main platform's shape (not surface). I think DL64's main platform lenght is different from BF/MV, and also the wind effect is a part of this

 

Other factors that separate DL from BF / MV include the different platform layouts in terms of proportions, as well as the lower ceiling.