I know i'm a bit late, but i'd like to put my input in this.
Okay to start off, I'm 24 years old so i've had my share of fighting games from N.E.S to the PS3 and i can honestly say that despite being somewhat skilled in fighting games i've never been the best.
I can understand why people get upset with traditional fighter fans because of the whole "It's not a real fighting game" quote they always use as they're defense against smash brothers. Yeah they're wrong because there are fighting games that aren't side scrolling fighting games that are fighters but they would bash it, and you know why?
Because they're stuck in they're ways, People use to say Power Stone, and Soul Caliber weren't real fighting games because it wasn't like street fighter.
Which of these fighting games take more skill to master is what really is what the problem is.
And if you were to ask me i would say Smash brothers is the more skill wise game because smash brothers has no cap for the maximum level of mastery. New things are still being learned about melee even after all this time.
In street fighter type games have an cap on skill mastery, and the cap is ruled by the limitations of the game.
But it's the learning curve that makes the true difference between the two, and this is where the Traditionalist kinda win this argument in they're opinion.
In the beginning for any smasher compared to street fighter is much harder to learn to play because they must first learn not to kill themselves having no barrier to stop you from killing yourself like in street fight leads to a ruff beginning because most smasher now in days didn't just decided to pick up a copy, they play with a friend who knew how to play, and here when it would make or break you from the game. Street Fight doesn't have this problem, you just get your butt whipped, and you begin your journey to learn to whip that other guy's butt.
And then they're the knowledge of the game, and I can use myself as an example here. I have been playing melee since day 1, but until about a year or two ago i had never knew of things such as wave shining, or shfflc (or as i call it Shuffling) I just played with friends who too never heard of these things we knew nothing of M2k or Ken. I would have never thought to D-air after shining with falco, i just used to just shine, shine, shine.
Advance tech we knew of now we had discovered by accident, but never thought to look deep into these things. Like the L-Cancel on the 64, we had learn that we could save are self from being hit when landing a D-air with Link by shielding when time just right, but we never thought that it would work with everyone, and all aerial attacks.
Street fighter does not have this problem, every advance tech you can learn just by looking in the game manual or looking looking at the command list in game, everything else are preset combo's, or glitches. I can do all Ibuki's advanced techs in SSF4, but i always lose every match online.
Street fighter learning curve is a lot sharper, then smash brothers is, but smash brothers learning curve is a lot higher.
They can play cpu's at they're maximum level and get better yet, we can't do that we have to find those better then are selves to reach higher level, hell back then i use to think my friend was the cap in skill level, how little did i know back then, and now im the one's who on top within my group of friends, and i still have much to learn.
In street fighter i'm done learning, and yet still get my butt kicked.
Oh, and if they give you beef about brawl, well now they got MVC3 a broken random glitched out piece of mess, and lets not forget they're old 3D street fighter games which we're completely unplayable.
