What if Smash wasn't a fighting game?

[Terry Bogard]

My brother and I often play Smash together, but we realized something weird about it. My bro put it best: "It's weird how a game meant to celebrate games does so by making the characters fight each other." Kinda hard to show love for games when you're beating the snot out of them.

That got me thinking about what Smash would be like if it didn't have fighting. We've already seen what a platform fighter without crossovers would look like (Rivals of Aether, for example) so I wonder what the inverse would be. A game that has every IP in Smash, but is not a fighting game in any way. What genre would it be? Would it have a story with a central protagonist? I realized the best thing to do is let the fanbase take over! What do you think Smash would be without the fighting?

 

[Northsouthmap]

Smash would probably be a mascot racing game like Mario Kart if it wasn't Smash. It would not have a story mode since the main inspiration is Mario Kart.

 

[ssbashworld]

I can imagine an rpg like project x zone. I think a musou game were you take on hoards of enemies from the various franchises would be really fun but for whatever reason i dont find that super likely.

 

[Kirbeh]

wdym? It's already not a fighting game; it's a party game. Or an action game according to Sakurai.

Mirroring the above posts, I think a kart racer or something like PXZ lend themselves best as alternatives. Otherwise, I could see a double down on the party game aspect and make it Mario Party but for all of Nintendo.

 

[Thegameandwatch]

Maybe something similar to Kirby Super Star or Subspace.

 

[AlRex]

Project X Zone, Namco X CAPCOM, Super Robot Wars, again, those are probably the best template for if you wanted to do a “serious” version of this that wasn’t a fighter.

Otherwise, a party board game with a few characters + Nintendo themed mini-games (basically cross Mario Party with Nintendo Land and some NES Remix), kart racer maybe or maybe not, but a car combat game would be cooler and more distinct from Mario Kart. A co-op platformer could be fun, too, but probably has to be more limited in character selection. Would basically be like Super Mario Bros. Crossover but official + with more original stages, perhaps. Using a lot of comparisons to get the ideas across.