Growing trends of Smash

[Boo_Destroyer]

Has anyone else noticed that there have been a few of these "growing trends" in Smash Bros. lately?


Some characters being mishmashes of vaguely related ideas as opposed to being just characters

Examples include:
-Duck Hunt using Hogan's Alley and Wild Gunman moves
-Pac-Man using moves from other Namco arcade titles

The Ice Climbers, despite being early NES reps, didn't have random Balloon Fight and Excitebike moves. But now that I think about this, I wish they did.

On another note, I've had this in mind when I wrote down this "character"...(s)


More stages being "games" instead of actual places (Though there's still plenty of those)

Examples include:
3DS: 3D Land, Dream Land (GB), Balloon Fight, Find Mii, Paper Mario, WarioWare Inc. (Brawl)
Wii U: Duck Hunt, The Great Cave Offensive, Gamer, Pilotwings, Wrecking Crew, Mario Galaxy, Mushroom Kingdom U

These kinds of stages work the best.



They should keep this up more often in Smash. If there ever is another.

 

[Khao]

Something they've been doing a lot to, which I absolutely ****ing love, is that they've been focusing a lot more on making characters feel the way they do in their actual games. The best examples of this are Mega Man, Little Mac, Robin, and Shulk.

When it comes to Mega Man, instead of making his iconic weapon a special move, they made it a part of several of his standard moves, making it feel far more like a tool you should be using all the time. The Mega Buster is Mega Man's standard weapon, and they captured that perfectly, the fact that he can use it by moving and jumping is just awesome, and makes Mega Man generally work exactly the way he does in actual Mega Man games.

Making Little Mac into a pretty much ground-only character was genius, because that's kind of how boxing works. There's no flashy moves, no kicks, no aerial nonsense, just straight punching, countering, fast jabs and good reflexes. And there's a second layer of this that is far more important to Mac's identity... I always has to roll my eyes a little bit when people say that Little Mac shouldn't have super armor on his smash attacks, or that they're too fast, because that's the whole point. He has super armor because it makes his attacks, even the ones that are not his down-B work as counters, and countering moves is a huge part of Punch-Out. Each time your opponent starts attacking, that's an opening for either dodging and hitting back (In Smash, that's translated to his Down-B) or simply attacking before their moves can reach you (and that'd be the smash attacks). Super Armor and counter moves are the perfect way to reflect that mentality. In Punch Out, you are rarely even throwing attacks of your own, but simply reacting to your opponent's. That's exactly how Little Mac works here, and it's kind of beautiful.

The others are a little bit more subtle, but a bit more obvious at the same time, Shulk's Monado Arts are a central part of Xenoblade's combat system, and even though you mostly use them to counter the visions you get during battle, they were translated pretty much perfectly to fighting game logic. And Robin, well, the fact that there's weapon/tome management at all is a huge nod to Fire Emblem, even if nothing is lost permanently, or even for relevant periods of time.

It's especially impressive if you compare all these new characters to the way old characters work.

What would Samus be like if she had been added to the roster today? If you think about it, she's kind of nothing like the character she is in her own games in terms of capabilities. I'm sure her iconic charged shot would work completely different to what we know it today, and I could totally see her having more projectiles on her standard moves. And where did those flamethrowers on her Fair, Usmash and Dtilt even come from?

Or heck, even Kirby's copy ability is something I can see working differently if he was new. Would he copy each character's standard B move separately like he does now, or would he have a smaller pool of generic abilities (like Fire Kirby), but each one being a bit more complex than what we know today? Would he even have access to special moves other than inhaling if he isn't wearing a Kirby hat?

Not saying the older veterans should be changed or anything, it's just fun to imagine.

 

[Reiga]

Sorry, wrote something on the wrong thread.

 

[Deleted member]

What would Samus be like if she had been added to the roster today? If you think about it, she's kind of nothing like the character she is in her own games in terms of capabilities. I'm sure her iconic charged shot would work completely different to what we know it today, and I could totally see her having more projectiles on her standard moves. And where did those flamethrowers on her Fair, Usmash and Dtilt even come from?

Samus's current moveset in particular kind of bothers me in this regard, especially in light of newcomers like Mega Man.
There's no reason at all why she shouldn't be able to charge while in the air (which Project M thankfully fixed), for example. But I guess overall it's not too bad; at least she has a pretty good variety with charge beam, grapple beam, missiles, morph ball bombs, screw attack, etc. Would have been nice if her custom move sets included things like Ice Beam or Wave Beam though...sigh.

 

[NavySmasher]

Something they've been doing a lot to, which I absolutely ****ing love, is that they've been focusing a lot more on making characters feel the way they do in their actual games. The best examples of this are Mega Man, Little Mac, Robin, and Shulk.

When it comes to Mega Man, instead of making his iconic weapon a special move, they made it a part of several of his standard moves, making it feel far more like a tool you should be using all the time. The Mega Buster is Mega Man's standard weapon, and they captured that perfectly, the fact that he can use it by moving and jumping is just awesome, and makes Mega Man generally work exactly the way he does in actual Mega Man games.

Making Little Mac into a pretty much ground-only character was genius, because that's kind of how boxing works. There's no flashy moves, no kicks, no aerial nonsense, just straight punching, countering, fast jabs and good reflexes. And there's a second layer of this that is far more important to Mac's identity... I always has to roll my eyes a little bit when people say that Little Mac shouldn't have super armor on his smash attacks, or that they're too fast, because that's the whole point. He has super armor because it makes his attacks, even the ones that are not his down-B work as counters, and countering moves is a huge part of Punch-Out. Each time your opponent starts attacking, that's an opening for either dodging and hitting back (In Smash, that's translated to his Down-B) or simply attacking before their moves can reach you (and that'd be the smash attacks). Super Armor and counter moves are the perfect way to reflect that mentality. In Punch Out, you are rarely even throwing attacks of your own, but simply reacting to your opponent's. That's exactly how Little Mac works here, and it's kind of beautiful.

The others are a little bit more subtle, but a bit more obvious at the same time, Shulk's Monado Arts are a central part of Xenoblade's combat system, and even though you mostly use them to counter the visions you get during battle, they were translated pretty much perfectly to fighting game logic. And Robin, well, the fact that there's weapon/tome management at all is a huge nod to Fire Emblem, even if nothing is lost permanently, or even for relevant periods of time.

It's especially impressive if you compare all these new characters to the way old characters work.

What would Samus be like if she had been added to the roster today? If you think about it, she's kind of nothing like the character she is in her own games in terms of capabilities. I'm sure her iconic charged shot would work completely different to what we know it today, and I could totally see her having more projectiles on her standard moves. And where did those flamethrowers on her Fair, Usmash and Dtilt even come from?

Or heck, even Kirby's copy ability is something I can see working differently if he was new. Would he copy each character's standard B move separately like he does now, or would he have a smaller pool of generic abilities (like Fire Kirby), but each one being a bit more complex than what we know today? Would he even have access to special moves other than inhaling if he isn't wearing a Kirby hat?

Not saying the older veterans should be changed or anything, it's just fun to imagine.

What if with Kirby, depending on WHAT not who he inhaled, he could wear different in game hats from his series and have appropriate move alterations to them depending on the hat worn. For instance, say you throw a bomb at kirby. You will think it'll explode and he'll go flying, right? WRONG! He inhales the friggin bomb and turns into "Bomb" from the Kirby games. His Side B works in a two part deal. Part 1 Places the bomb over his head like he is about to throw it, and the second imput throws it towards the side used for the side b input. And if you wanted to jettison any of these item powers, then you could just press b and it gives you a half second invincibility and game animation from the kirby games before he returns to base kirby. That's one way to make items more fun.

 

[Boo_Destroyer]

Some characters being mishmashes of vaguely related ideas as opposed to being just characters

Examples include:
-Duck Hunt using Hogan's Alley and Wild Gunman moves
-Pac-Man using moves from other Namco arcade titles

The Ice Climbers, despite being early NES reps, didn't have random Balloon Fight and Excitebike moves. But now that I think about this, I wish they did.

So I guess everyone hates Duck Hunt because of this now?

 

[Eisen]

Samus's current moveset in particular kind of bothers me in this regard, especially in light of newcomers like Mega Man.
There's no reason at all why she shouldn't be able to charge while in the air (which Project M thankfully fixed), for example. But I guess overall it's not too bad; at least she has a pretty good variety with charge beam, grapple beam, missiles, morph ball bombs, screw attack, etc. Would have been nice if her custom move sets included things like Ice Beam or Wave Beam though...sigh.

Imo they should have taken a few notes from Project M Samus.

Her having morph ball as a crawl and having a legit spot dodge is so much nicer. Frankly, it would sort of make up for her lack of ability to close gaps on faster projectile characters like Mega Man and Villager, since she could sorta sneak under them.

Also, the fact that she can charge in the air just makes so much more sense. At the very least, she could be allowed to charge it, but with some backwards aerial momentum since it seems like she's putting a lot of effort to keep the beam stable on the ground.

If Samus came around now, I have to wonder if she'd be a lot more like Mega Man and Shulk combined.

B - Change beams a la Metroid Prime
Side-B: Missile/Super Missile
Down-B: Bomb/Power Bomb (why she doesn't have Power Bomb, I don't understand)
Up-B: Still screw attack

Jab/Ftilt: Would pretty much work like Mega Man's mega buster so you could walk with it, but would use different beams that would fire at different rates and have different kill power/functions.

• Fastest: Power beam/Light Beam? - Kinda works like Fox's laser only a little slower and ball-shaped instead of a large line.
• Second fastest: Plasma Beam/Nova Beam - Basically a more "blob" looking beam that has decent kill power, but has some cooldown. It's fairly slow travelling
  
• Third fastest: Dark beam/Wave Beam? - Moderate stun and knockback, but significantly slower. Or, perhaps it could slow the enemy down instead? Second fastest travelling, third fastest in cooldown.
  
• Slowest: Ice Beam - Freezes the opponent, but has a lot of cooldown (puns) and is pretty slow to travel.

I'd pretty much leave everything the same, except changing her nair back to her pre-Smash 4 nair. I don't like the new one very much.

I have fantasies about a moveset for her like this, but I also think it might feel a little jank, especially now that Mega Man and Shulk are their own, fairly unique characters. I feel like Samus would be a good middle ground between normal combat and something like what Megaman has. It's an interesting concept, but I guess we'll never know unless a good PSA comes around.

 

[Sleeplost]

The mash-up of representation for movesets is great for representation for both 3rd Party and periods of time. Megaman is a representation of several Megaman games and is a representation of himself at the same time. Pac-Man, however, doesn't really have any natural fighting moves outside of the Pac-Man World games I remember playing a long time ago.

As for stages, I really like how some of them have objectives to provide a form of play that isn't just fighting. Smash, after all, isn't a traditional fighter, and limiting yourself to just trying to KO the other just doesn't feel right for a game as unique as Smash. Stages that provide interesting quirks like Pyrosphere which allow me to put Ridley in my control are fantastic and I can't help but love them. Yellow Devil is less than fun to face thanks to the fact that Dr. Wily's Stage is just too small. To be honest, I HATE how they kept WarioWare inc. in Smash 3DS. It was my favorite Smash stage to date, and Gamer just isn't the same.