Pichu Stage: Sprout Tower
Sprout Tower
From Pokémon Gold and Silver
In Pokémon Gold and Silver, the site of the first gym challenge is Violet City, home of Falkner and his bird Pokémon. However, before taking him on, one must make it through Violet’s other landmark feature, the Sprout Tower. It is a Japanese-style structure with three floors of Monks that all use Bellsprouts. The most memorable feature players often remember of the Tower is its wobbling center pillar, thought to keep the structure from collapsing by providing constant shifting leverage. Rattatas are able to be encountered inside, but during the night, this becomes a rare chance for players to catch a Gastly. Sprout Tower was initially planned to be in Melee according to an old interview with Sakurai, but was cut for unknown reasons along with Akanea and Ice Top. With this being the ultimate Smash game, it would be awesome if this scrapped concept returned.
This a thin, vertical stage with a solid base at the bottom and five pass-through platforms in sequence at the top, making it somewhat a stretched-out version of Tomodachi Life. However, the placement of these platforms make it unique: the two larger ones on the edges of the roofs can be ledge grabbed, but the smaller ones cannot. The smaller platforms serve multiple purposes, from being assistants to characters with weak jumps making it higher up the tower to being a strategic control point, as the raised elevation makes opponents on the lower ones have to use different, higher-reaching attacks, but those on the bottom don’t have to fear of being struck from the bottom, creating a flip-flopping king of the hill-sequel situation. No conventional damaging hazards take place on the stage, but every once in awhile, one of the middle sliding doors will open, showing the pillar in the middle begin to sway to the left or right...
...and the entire state will tilt by about 20-25 degrees that direction! Suddenly, certain blast zones become closer or farther and terrain becomes slanted, changing up the flow of battle! After about 20-25 seconds, the central pillar moves back in position, stabilizing the stage to its regular layout. Matches on this stage are fairly standard but take a wild but manageable approach in no time!
The stage has a day-night cycle, going through a cycle every 3 minutes or so. This has no effect on when the Tower tilts. During the day, the left or right doors will occasionally open to reveal the inside, where Bellsprout might be dancing, Rattata might run around, and/or a monk may be watching. However, during the night, the Rattata are replaced with Gastly, which float on the inside and out, not harming any fighters. In the background lake waters below, Poliwag and Poliwhirl might swim around, and in the trees Pineco swing around on the undersides during the day and Hoothoot come and roost in the trees a night. In the distant background on rare occasions, Ho-oh and Lugia can be seen flying around at day and night respectively.
MUSIC
Violet City/Sprout Tower (Remix)
Pokémon Battle! (Gold and Silver) (Super Smash Bros. Melee)
Dark Cave (Remix)
Rival Silver Battle (Remix)
National Park (Remix)
Route 42 (Remix)
Dragon’s Den/Champion Lance (Remix)
Legendary Beasts Battle (Remix)