Project M did it first: Sakurai and fan labor

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

For a while now I've been studying fans' takes on official copyrighted works - fan fiction, fan works like brawl in the family, fan games like project m and ssf2, etc. and it's really got me wondering some things.

Part of me doubts that sakurai would really be following something like project m, simply because nintendo would probably fear a lawsuit or something if some fan claims he "stole their idea" (which is really lame cuz YOU'RE THE ONE BORROWING IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!), but a couple things have come to mind:

Charizard is now a standalone character - project m did it first (with charizard even!)

Megaman is now a playable character - multiple fan games did it first (not the least of which being the smash flash series) and he was majorly fan requested

I'm sure I can think of more, but I think it would be worthwhile to discuss what level, if any, fan input has on sakurai's decision making process.

Because if any castlevania or (Heaven forbid) dragonball z stuff gets in, you know people are gonna speculate.

 

[Substitution]

1. Mind you Squirtle and Ivysaur were also separate. And Project M is a mod of Brawl, of which had Charizard in it's roster.
2. Mega Man believe it or not was just as popular as Sonic. Heck, he was the popular third-party rep for SSB4.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Super Smash Bros.- Sakurai made it first

 

[aBBYS]

Of course they look at fan reactions because they are the ones who buy your game, but Sakurai isn't the type who does what everyone else does. I think he reckoginze that Project M exists, but I don't think he studies it closely and makes decisions based on it.

 

[praline]

For a while now I've been studying fans' takes on official copyrighted works - fan fiction, fan works like brawl in the family, fan games like project m and ssf2, etc. and it's really got me wondering some things.

Part of me doubts that sakurai would really be following something like project m, simply because nintendo would probably fear a lawsuit or something if some fan claims he "stole their idea" (which is really lame cuz YOU'RE THE ONE BORROWING IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!), but a couple things have come to mind:

Charizard is now a standalone character - project m did it first (with charizard even!)

Megaman is now a playable character - multiple fan games did it first (not the least of which being the smash flash series) and he was majorly fan requested

I'm sure I can think of more, but I think it would be worthwhile to discuss what level, if any, fan input has on sakurai's decision making process.

Because if any castlevania or (Heaven forbid) dragonball z stuff gets in, you know people are gonna speculate.

LOL Because someone could do that to Nintendo when Project M is an illegal hack of their game.

 

[ImaClubYou]

LOL Because someone could do that to Nintendo when Project M is an illegal hack of their game.

Not illegal.

It's only illegal if you try to sell it.

 

[DaDavid]

Fan INPUT probably has a healthy bit to do with what is implemented into the game.

But fan games are not a direct source of fan input. Fan input, surprise surprise, made the fan games do what they did too.

 

[[TSON]]

Friendly reminder that Sakurai doesn't make all of the game decisions.

That being said, I don't find it completely preposterous that someone at Namco/whoever has tried one of the big fangames (PM/SSF2/Crusade/Brawl+/Brawl-), and subconsciously or consciously included some stuff from them. These guys do have to do some research before they work on a game... and if you google "Super Smash" the second suggestion is SSF2. If you search for Smash Bros. tournaments, you see a lot of PM, etc.

Unlikely, maybe, but completely out of the question? Nah. There's quite a few things that the fangames/mods did that are appearing in this version of Smash, and some of them are completely out of the box ideas/the similarities may be nearing "too many to be a coincidence" level.

 

[Smash G]

I've said it before to this very same thing... ALL of these things are OBVIOUS. Let 100 devs make a Smash Bros and many of them would do these things.

The thing is people seem to think they're a lot better at original thinking than they are. There is absolutely nothing amazing about how Project M and Sakurai made some identical decisions. Nothing. It's not like Sakurai reads his fan mail and says "I'm going to copy this". It's just that there's a certain amount of parallel evolution here where people come up with the same ideas without any interactions. And honestly I've not seen any ideas that Project M or other things did that were so amazing that Sakurai or any random internet fan couldn't think up themselves without any interactions. Especially when I see crazy OBVIOUS things like Charizard as his own character and MEGAMAN playable... Seriously about half the population of Earth thought to make Mega Man playable.

Nothing to see here! Move along...

I'm sure I can think of more, but I think it would be worthwhile to discuss what level, if any, fan input has on sakurai's decision making process.

No it's really not. First off the examples I see every time this comes up, again, are terrible examples that anyone could think up.
Plus it's 100% speculation unless Sakurai says something. You might as well talk about what was going through Darth Vader's brain when he first tried to go to the bathroom with that suit on.

 

[Ryuutakeshi]

Just a note that in many cases Nintendo cannot accept ideas from the public. There are many reasons for this but I understand IP rights to be a big one on this. So even if Sakurai did take inspiration from PM, he or Nintendo could never legally say so. Even though PM is a hack of their own game (and they could take issue with that if they so chose) any original content used in PM technically belongs to the creators.

Or so I understand. The dinner was a while ago so I may be misremembering things.

 

[Fatmanonice]

Of course they look at fan reactions because they are the ones who buy your game, but Sakurai isn't the type who does what everyone else does. I think he reckoginze that Project M exists, but I don't think he studies it closely and makes decisions based on it.

Pretty much this. Megaman's chances for getting into a Smash game eventually were pretty high to begin with and Charizard being by himself (and the other two probably being cut) was likely just the end result of technical issues and Charizard being by far the most popular of three. I'm not even sure if Project M really has a presence in Japan yet outside of really dedicated competitive players so, while he may be aware of it, I seriously doubt it affected any of his decisions for SSB4.

 

[ndayday]

Smash G is right. it's flattering to think that Sakurai would take ideas like in PM but everything people bring up is coincidence. If you asked 50 people what Zelda stage would be in SSB4 50 of them would say Skyloft, Donkey Kong's new roll has always been there in DKC and it's more like "took you long enough," Mega Man is one of the most requested 3rd party characters, Charizard is a very popular Pokemon and his "addition" makes sense when considering that transformations are removed.

I've seen people speculate moves being lifted from PM and to that I just think that it's a deliberate decision to change moves that made more sense in Brawl's engine which as we know was made with aerial combat in mind. For lack of a better way to explain it atm this game seems to be made with the intention to make smashes, aerials and KOs "feel good." The slashes in the air, added graphic effects, rocket trails behind launched opponents, meteor smashes where there weren't any...these all point towards a new theme of "satisfaction."

 

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

I've said it before to this very same thing... ALL of these things are OBVIOUS.

No it's really not. First off the examples I see every time this comes up, again, are terrible examples that anyone could think up.
Plus it's 100% speculation unless Sakurai says something. You might as well talk about what was going through Darth Vader's brain when he first tried to go to the bathroom with that suit on.

Yeah now that I think about worthwhile wasn't the best choice of words, but it is still fun to speculate. Wishful thinking I suppose.

Just out of curiosity what would be some things that the "fans did first" that people WOULD like to see? One that a bunch might not consider would be all the different fonts that each character uses for their name in their percentage box in crusade.

 

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

So in a previous thread I mentioned how some of the elements of Smash 4 were done by fan games first - Solo Charizard and Skyloft in Project M, Megaman in Smash Flash (technically Pacman too as an assist trophy), etc. And most of it most likely was coincidence...as I was told, these were all ideas many fans had in the past. But I think I might be on to something here.

Everybody has their own ideas about who should be in Smash. Growing up for me, I learned from my friends whose uncles worked at Nintendo that if you beat Classic Mode on Very Hard with 1 life you could unlock Goku. EGM had their infamous Sonic and Tails April Fools' Day hoax. It wasn't until Brawl came into play that people could actually do something about it. With texture and model swaps, even imports, the options were limited. Now it was Mario vs. Pikachu vs. Hatsune Miku vs. Darth Maul in Ponyville (or Dracula's Castle) and nobody batted an eye. You want Melee physics? You got em (PM). You want insanely powerful character? You got it (B-). You want obscure Weegee, CD-i and Super Mario Bros Z references? You already know the answer...

So what does Sakurai do? Instead of waiting for us to infiltrate the Wii U and 3ds' hardware, he gives the people what they want. You want Goku? You got him as a Mii Brawler. You think Link's not fast enough? Here's an accessory to make him faster while still keeping the game balanced. You want Mario to have a giant fireball of doom? Just change the B attack via this handy menu - no computer programming knowledge required.

Am I connecting dots that aren't there? Is this merely smash's logical progression or could it be reactionary? Would love to hear what you guys have to say.

 

[Hong]

Threads merged. Perhaps people have some new thoughts on the matter with the reveal of the Mii Fighters, and Nintendo's response to Project M.

 

[Mr. KoopaTurtle]

I think Sakurai has also implemented character specific changes that PM has managed to do first. It was discovered that Yoshi could jump out of shield for instance.

 

[Renji64]

Tripping sakurai did that 1st. Balanced Smash game PMBR did it 1st.

 

[Jade_Rock55]

But Project M isn't an actual game it's just files overwriting what brawl was.It's still brawl.

 

[TimeSmash]

It's definitely possibly Sakurai could have taken ideas from any of the popular games or hacks mentioned. Why are you all forgetting Super Smash Land haha? GREAT game and idea.

But direct copying? I don't really think so. I mean there's always the chance but he's not really a cut-and-paste kind of person (then again there's things like using Zelda's same TP style in SSB4, but it is a whole new character model even if the two look similar in both games).

@ Hong , could you be more explicit on what Nintendo's response to Project M was?

 

[Hong]

@ Hong , could you be more explicit on what Nintendo's response to Project M was?

In a summary of Prog's stream:

Finally, he talked about Project M. Before I go on here, you needn't worry: prog believes the Nintendo (at least the reps he spoke to, this isn't a company-wide policy) are not going to shut down PM. All prog said was that they are aware of it and are even intrigued by it. However, due to the legal implications involved with it Nintendo is not going to do anything about it. They are going to remain hands off and... "let it rock" so to speak. However, that doesn't mean Nintendo supports it as they don't and will not officially acknowledge it (hence why Peachyhime's accomplishments could not be mentioned, they don't want to detract people from the new game: Smash 4).

 

[DakotaBonez]

Part of me doubts that sakurai would really be following something like project m, simply because nintendo would probably fear a lawsuit or something if some fan claims he "stole their idea" (which is really lame cuz YOU'RE THE ONE BORROWING IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!)

The way you capitalized "YOU'RE THE ONE BORROWING IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!" makes it sound like ya got something against the project m team, and I hate how you imply that they would sue nintendo for copying their ideas.

I think they got a good laugh when Skyloft was added to smash 4, because they had also put a skyloft stage in Project M.

Anyway Sakurai has taken some fan input, specifically with Diddy Kong and Little Mac to appeal to western audiences and For Glory mode to appeal to us.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Pretty sure numerous smash mods did a lot of things before PM did that Smash 4 has.

 

[Hong]

A lot of what PM did, they did because it makes more sense.

Sakurai is creative, innovative, and thinks of interesting ways of solving things... but I would like to think having some of the best minds of Bandai Namco, who are storied fighting game developers in their own right, would really help to illuminate some otherwise glaring ways of vastly improving the experience. The team formed for Brawl on the other hand had a lot of new folks just getting into game design.

 

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

The way you capitalized "YOU'RE THE ONE BORROWING IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!" makes it sound like ya got something against the project m team, and I hate how you imply that they would sue nintendo for copying their ideas.

That wasn't directed towards the project m team at all. There have been instances in fandom studies where fans have actually sued original creators for "copying their ideas", that's who I was aiming it at. Usually the cases never stand in court but one author had a good chunk of her world wrested from her this way. But I prob coulda been less jerky

 

[MechaWave]

Pretty much this. Megaman's chances for getting into a Smash game eventually were pretty high to begin with and Charizard being by himself (and the other two probably being cut) was likely just the end result of technical issues and Charizard being by far the most popular of three. I'm not even sure if Project M really has a presence in Japan yet outside of really dedicated competitive players so, while he may be aware of it, I seriously doubt it affected any of his decisions for SSB4.

Why on earth would the other 2 be removed for technical issues, of all possibilities?

 

[DunnoBro]

Super Smash Bros.- Sakurai made it first

Technically the makers of Dragon Fighter made it first and Sakurai added the ability to give them nintendo characters to use.