What is it with Smash and these "big modes" in each game...

[Boo_Destroyer]

Full thread title: What is it with Smash and all these "big new modes" in each game only getting a few things right and failing miserably at others?

Here's something that's been driving me completely bonkers about Smash for a long time. Melee's Adventure Mode, Brawl's SSE, 3DS's Smash Run...All have some brilliant ideas behind them, but they're ultimately bogged down by other terrible things.


Melee: Adventure
Pros: Goes through Nintendo worlds
Cons: ...But only a few actual platforming levels, few enemies, and more regular fights

Brawl: Subspace
Pros: More robust platforming mechanics, enemy and boss system
Cons: ...But only a few Nintendo-related enemies and bosses and settings, and the story/cutscenes unnecessarily ate up a lot of space as a result

3DS: Smash Run
Pros: Finally gets Nintendo enemies right this time
Cons: Small, limited mode overall (Final battles are lame too), and can only fight said enemies in the main run


If there's one thing that legitimately pisses me off about Smash Bros., it's this.

Why couldn't all the good, right ideas come together in one place? I was hoping that Wii U's own mode would be an amalgamation of all those good parts, not some random throwaway board game. (And don't get me started on stage bosses) Or at least find one way to work in the enemies from Smash Run into the Wii U version, like a fourth match type: Enemy (Defeat the most to win).

 

[Xandra]

I mean... I can't give an exact reason since I don't work at Nintendo, but a random guess of mine would be because it's not even close to being the main focus of the game. It's just like a fun little random thing you can do if you ever get bored or curious. And while that's no real excuse to not try to improve something, the general lack of interest in those kinds of game modes (judging from the responses I've seen to them, most people are either indifferent or don't care for it enough to speak up) is enough to make Nintendo think, "Hey, why bother spending time and money on this when no one really cares about it in the first place?" (Not throwing them under the bus or anything! Just a guess.)

Also I personally really liked SSE and didn't have any issues with space being taken up but that's just me. :D

 

[Ravengeance]

It's rare for a game that has a main focus of multiplayer to also have an amazing single player experience. If I had to venture a guess I'd say just blame Sakurai. Most game companies have a development team that share input whereas smash has always had Sakurai to kind of have the last word on decisions. Things like character selection many people disagree with. I can't picture a bunch of American game developers sitting down at a table and being like "so we all agree, Pichu is a great idea for a character to put in Melee."
That's just an example but being that the multiplayer experience of just playing smash vs your friends is the primary focus most single player things in the game just are less of a priority and thus don't get the fine tuning to be the best they can be.

 

[Boo_Destroyer]

On a somewhat related note, whatever happened to the idea of stage bosses? In the first Direct, they made such a big deal out of them, like they were this special, important part of the game. But in the end, they were ultimately downplayed, and we ended up with just this few of them. It looks like the sort of thing that they planned to have more of, but it didn't work and we got just these few. (This also isn't helped by having so many returning stages this time)

Also, am I the only one who wants 64/Melee-style credits back?