Melee's developers

[oakleaf]

How ironical is it that the development studio that created Melee also had so many Kirby centered projects, and yet Kirby sucks so much in Melee?

Now, jokes aside, how come we have so little information regarding these people?

I mean, with a community so big and so diverse, how come nobody ever emailed those guys and asked questions about the physics, or the metagame. It seems that (a) the physics formulas we have are (clever) extrapolations based on raw data, and (b) we still haven't figured out everything.

I saw this 2001 documentary trailer the other day, and I'm thinking that I would pay a ****load of money to get some insights on Melee's development. It would be amazing.

Email is free. Maybe these guys would be flattered to explain some details after almost 10 years.

 

[Stratocaster]

Do you know who 'those guys' are or how to find out who they are?

Do you know their email addresses?

Do you know Japanese?

I think the answer to these questions is usually 'no' for most of us, which is why none of us go about emailing japanese game developers. Besides that, they may have agreed to some sort of confidentiality, not sure.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Why don't you just read the credits and google some names?

I dont think many of the developers care about the community. Imagine some project you've done for school, and then someone emails you 10 years later asking about it. Would you care? Even if they did care, they may not be able to answer very many questions without looking directly at the code which they probably don't just have laying around their home laptop, not to mention they probably are legally bound and can't discuss it.

Most of the information we have is from people who study in game phenomena directly through observation and experimentation. Others study the game by viewing the code in ASM (or similar low level language) or examining extracted files (such as texture and audio files); the former being relatively long and tedious while the latter is similarly pain staking but better understood and more useful.

 

[oakleaf]

Do you know who 'those guys' are or how to find out who they are?

Do you know their email addresses?

Do you know Japanese?

I think the answer to these questions is usually 'no' for most of us, which is why none of us go about emailing japanese game developers.

In my original post, I'm talking about "a community so big and so diverse". I'm living in France, mind you, so I don't know the actual american community personally. But it seems to be huge, and I wouldn't be surprised if people on this very forum knew some japanese speaking fellows.

I dont think many of the developers care about the community. Imagine some project you've done for school, and then someone emails you 10 years later asking about it. Would you care? Even if they did care, they may not be able to answer very many questions without looking directly at the code which they probably don't just have laying around their home laptop, not to mention they probably are legally bound and can't discuss it.

/speculation. We have to try in order to know the answer to this kind of questions.

Why don't you just read the credits and google some names?

Because the whole point of my post was to underline the fact that with such a big community, there has to be japanese speaking people somewhere to do what we can't do.

Now a general observation to people answering: you can also be polite/respectful you know. It works too.

 

[SSBMLahti]

That's so epic lol.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Tbh, I have no interest in contacting the developers. I provided a lot of very real reasons why contacting them would have no effect. If you think otherwise, feel free to contact them, i'm sure many of them know english

 

[0Room]

I love HAL, because they're famous for NOT paying attention to their community after the game was released. I remember somewhere that they did an interview where someone on the team said "I heard we had tournaments, but we don't really watch the community at all. We just move on." [years ago, so don't hate me since I don't remember where/when/who said it]

And since they played Melee during the development to figure out what to take out for Brawl, I think it's safe to say they don't care.

 

[Jonas]

And since they played Melee during the development to figure out what to take out for Brawl, I think it's safe to say they don't care.

THEY didn't play Melee. Game Arts did. As far as I know, Sakurai is the only one on the Brawl development team who was directly involved with Melee's development.

In "Iwata Asks", I believe Sakurai told Iwata about some of his staff showing him their GC controllers, which were horribly worn from playing so much Melee. It's not that they didn't like Melee, they just liked it for different reasons, apparently (ie they were probably scrubs/casuals).

 

[ryuu seika]

How ironical is it that the development studio that created Melee also had so many Kirby centered projects, and yet Kirby sucks so much in Melee?

But that's his best feature!

Ok, bad jokes aside, Kirby provides a unique gameplay element in Smash which, while it doesn't make him a good fighter, makes him really stand out as a character. Everyone who has ever played a Smash game knows Kirby, regardless of their gaming background. Can you really say Melee didn't do Kirby well?

 

[Jonas]

Nah if you didn't already know and love Kirby, after playing as him in Melee you'll hate him from losing so much

and from 64 because he is ghey

 

[oakleaf]

Okay, I've just sent an email in English at the address provided on their website.

Nothing to lose.

 

[Caleb Wolfbrand]

I remember looking at the credits and seeing this as one of the first names :

Kouichi Watanabe
Playable character programmer


Playable character programmer sounds kinda important and relevant to our interests