Your experience exposing a girlfriend to smash

[Daddys Kisses]

My girlfriend has recently taken up an interest in playing smash brothers, after a bit of nudging on my part and some time spent watching me play a couple of matches with friends. She's said that she's always wanted to get into the series, but has never had access to a copy. As of right now, I play project M competitively, and really nothing else. Didn't like Brawl, moved away from Melee, and who plays the N64 for any reason besides novelty?

We've played a few matches of project M, but tournament rules are ingrained in my being. No items, four stocks, time limits, specific stages, you know. Although I'm used to this, I don't think it's a very welcoming environment for someone who is just entering the smash arena. I'm going to start turning on items and going through other random stages, and possibly even moving backwards to Brawl or Melee to see if she has any more fun there. She's intimidated by the amount of time that's been out since its release, and is shying away from it a bit, since she feels she won't ever catch up.

So, I'm fielding a question out here to the smash community. As the title asks, what is your experience exposing your girlfriends to smash brothers? What methods have you used to try to usher them in to the game we all fell in love with years and years ago?

 

[Timid_Panda]

Just went through this over the past month.
Sandbag.
Play random.
Its not fun for her if you just 4 stock her all day. If she sees how much you enjoy the game, it'll grow on her over time. I also watch Pro vids on youtube with my girl.

 

[Pluid]

We started with Brawl because I made a bet with her that if we played a series of 8 games with 3 stocks, and she took at least 1 stock out of all of them, then she'd win something.
Then we started playing PM and she's just fueled with the competitive drive of trying to beat me (which she can't do.)
I do typical tourney rulesets but I usually go rando or sandbag and try stupid stuff.
Fun times

 

[Shen B']

She just used Kirby's Down B the whole game. I didn't dodge them.

 

[Narpas_sword]

You want to play?
Sure.

Done.

 

[Engage]

Let her be Metaknight or Ike in Brawl, tell her to mash the A button like her life depended on it.

 

[Beorn]

I've had a similar experience to the OP. She wanted to play it after seeing how much I loved it and spent time on it. She picked marth in Melee and I sandbagged with Roy on hyrule temple. It was fun if I turned my brain off and rushed in. She actually managed to understand a lot of smash concepts and integrated them into her play, but it was all too overwhelming for her.

I waited a few sessions to let her get comfortable with the design ideas of the game. general things like spacing and recovering. then I sat her down and explained the concepts of edge guarding, comboing, and basic defense like shieldgrabing and spot dodging. She took to it all well enough then L canceling was brought up... That was kinda where she felt overwhelmed and got discouraged. She realized that you basically can't play the game without it against anyone who knows what they are doing.

She played Everquest for eight years strait and her favorite game ever is Dark souls ( which she has 100% and beaten 8 times) so it's not like a brought in a basic ***** to try and play this incredibly nuanced game.

We had a talk about it and why she stopped wanting to play. She told me that she never thought she would be good enough for me to actually have fun fighting her. I told her I just have fun turning the game on and mashing buttons because I love smash so much. She didn't like the idea that I was sandbagging and hardly playing and still beating her no matter what she did. I told her " If you aren't having fun then I'm not" and we agreed that it was something I did with my friends and we could play other games like Darksouls and diablo together to satisfy the needs of two gamers sharing a life together.


Edit: Also, Gf's and women in general aren't always relegated to being smash scrubs... This is the general process that I go through with anyone I try to get to play smash with me. Once we get to l canceling things go downhill. Even friends that I used to play smash with all the time casually falter when L canceling is brought up. I've realized that if I want to play smash and have a lot of fun. I have to go on smashboards and find good players in my area. Not everyone is down for the commitment.

(before someone say's anything. I actually love the mechanic of L canceling and find it very fun to execute. I don't want it taken out.)

 

[Sour Supreme]

Take no mercy.
4 stock every time.
Make her salty.
Salty to insane levels.
So salty that she gives you an ultimatum.
"It's me, or Smash Brothers."
You know what to choose.
Now, you've reached NIRVANA.

 

[RIP|Merrick]

LMAO, some of you guys sound super lame the way you approach yours girls with the series.

Who likes to get sandbagged, I mean honestly?

Anyway, so with my girlfriend, we just play the default ruleset because she, too, does not enjoy overly distributive stages and hazards and would rather play a fair fight on a neutral fighting stage. (That's my girl!) She mains Yoshi between all games, by the way, along with Lucas occasionally in PM. She had no idea about much of the deeper mechanics that make up the mod, but we would just battle it out and had fun together. Soon she became interested in how to l-cancel and wavedash like I would partially explain during a few matches, so I took her to Training and showed her how the techniques worked, and how effective they could be for her game. Well she picked up on them fairly quickly, noting the quick flash whenever she successfully cancelled an aerial and giving it many tries until she got the hang of it. Wavedashing for her was a little trickier, but she got a fairly good handle on how it works and could soon successfully do it without too much trouble. (Although at first she tried it right on the edge of a stage and fell immediately to her doom, hilariously calling me and my technique "utter s***") I was amazed at how much better she was playing just from l-cancelling her moves alone. She also started picking up on her Brawl habits, trying to space me out and baiting me into making a mistake. And you know, she's becoming even better and better the more we play, and especially when we enter small, local tournaments together. Obviously not everyone's girl will be as interested as mine was, and that's absolutely okay! I don't think we should be going weak on them either, though, because nobody wants to feel like they're not good enough. :D Just play many bouts when you can, and most importantly, have fun! She's been having a blast with the game.

(Small tangent, but recently she's been getting increasingly salty over me footstooling her Yoshi offstage, and she's been trying to develop ways to avoid those situations. We both get a good laugh out of it, hehe.)

 

[-Fatality-]

Some of these responses are weird, I'm pretty sure most women don't want special treatment or getting sandbagged just because of their gender. imo, just treat her the way you would any new and curious player.

 

[Rhubarbo]

To be quite frank, playing Smash with a girlfriend is like going bowling or mini-golfing. If she seems interested, it's probably because she's curious about why you love it so much (trust me, she checks your internet history and sees Smash Boards.) I suggest playing a few games in team mode and maybe doing classic or all-stars together.

If by some off chance she's interested in going competitive, train with her. I'm sure most of us had to hone our tech skill in training mode alone, so she'll appreciate the help.

 

[BrianAure]

Don't 4 stock your GF or you're going to have a bad time.

 

[victinivcreate1]

Try showing her hype matches of Melee/PM and then start playing with her. Ease her into it.

 

[Shen B']

Some of these responses are weird, I'm pretty sure most women don't want special treatment or getting sandbagged just because of their gender. imo, just treat her the way you would any new and curious player.

haha bro, I was with her friends and they were chillin with smash so I played on their level. Barely knew them so didn't wanna seem like tryhard who's Life is videogames... They were pretty nice to me, too.

 

[Timid_Panda]

Some of these responses are weird, I'm pretty sure most women don't want special treatment or getting sandbagged just because of their gender. imo, just treat her the way you would any new and curious player.

We arent sandbagging because they're females, Its because we're exposing new players to the game. No casual players I know think getting 4 stocked over and over for an hour is fun.

 

[GaretHax]

uhm, my experience has been about the same as introducing any other person to smash. Was it supposed to be different?

 

[-Fatality-]

haha bro, I was with her friends and they were chillin with smash so I played on their level. Barely knew them so didn't wanna seem like tryhard who's Life is videogames... They were pretty nice to me, too.

We arent sandbagging because they're females, Its because we're exposing new players to the game. No casual players I know think getting 4 stocked over and over for an hour is fun.

Oh, I didn't mean you explicitly shouldn't sandbag against women/gfs, I just meant if you ordinarily sandbag against newer players, then feel free to do so here as well. I know from experience that if you don't coddle newer players a bit all but the most steadfast will probably walk away from the event feeling a bit intimidated. I should've clarified that a bit more.

 

[Shen B']

Oh, I didn't mean you explicitly shouldn't sandbag against women/gfs, I just meant if you ordinarily sandbag against newer players, then feel free to do so here as well. I know from experience that if you don't coddle newer players a bit all but the most steadfast will probably walk away from the event feeling a bit intimidated. I should've clarified that a bit more.

it's all good bro. We got a gaming club at my school and I usually don't sandbag unless there's been a lot of disrespect. So it's kind of a trend I guess. I'd rather see people have fun than anything else.

 

[Deleted member]

lol what girlfriend

 

[DownWitDaWaveDash]

Spent a while getting my wife involved.

Taught her marth instead of kirby because I know that every scrub loves the dancing blade move

taught her the c stick so that should could do smash attacks

Taught her how to recover

Taught her how to use fair

taught her how to shield and spotdodge

then 2 weeks later...

taught her to play marth

taught her to use the c stick

etc

women suck at learning, i want divorce

 

[A6stringthing (A6ST)]

Girlfriend? I think I've read about those in books.

I'd love to try to get my girl into Smash but, I feel like it wouldn't end well, mostly because she's not much of a gamer so she'd be exploring uncharted territory, and it would take so long, Super Smash Bros 6 would be out by then.

 

[Timid_Panda]

Girlfriend? I think I've read about those in books.

I'd love to try to get my girl into Smash but, I feel like it wouldn't end well, mostly because she's not much of a gamer so she'd be exploring uncharted territory, and it would take so long, Super Smash Bros 6 would be out by then.

Anything I've said so far requires your girl to be a bit of a gamer already.

 

[victra♥]

She respects that i compete in and host smash tournaments and she's friends with a lot of the players, but she's not into the game (or gaming in general) so I just keep the two things separate.

Nothing worse than seeing some bloke bring his girlfriend to a tournament and she's just sitting around for 10 hours doing nothing.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Seriously though.

I just played as normal. Sandbagging is a **** move.

If she doesnt like it when you play normal, shes not going to want to get into it as much as you anyway.
No one likes to be patronised.

Unless you have a girlfriend who likes to be patronised...

 

[Timid_Panda]

Do you people really go "HEY, IM NOT TRYING MY HARDEST AT ALL".

 

[SpiderMad]

Spent a while getting my wife involved.

Taught her marth instead of kirby because I know that every scrub loves the dancing blade move

taught her the c stick so that should could do smash attacks

Taught her how to recover

Taught her how to use fair

taught her how to shield and spotdodge

then 2 weeks later...

taught her to play marth

taught her to use the c stick

etc

women suck at learning, i want divorce

Learning/Play regression with people who aren't too good at Smash: It's like you went through the movie Shutter Island with them. At the end, you find out they never really wanted to leave their current state: just enjoying the fun and such Smash brings the most they can without being technical or too time involved.

 

[Deleted member]

Take no mercy.
4 stock every time.
Make her salty.
Salty to insane levels.
So salty that she gives you an ultimatum.
"It's me, or Smash Brothers."
You know what to choose.
Now, you've reached NIRVANA.

i did this

i still play smash

 

[xXSciophobiaXx]

I've played a few times with my girlfriend. She likes mario kart far more, but every once in a while I can convincer her to play with me.

She LOVES jigglypuff, but boy is that a hard character to teach. Theres a certain difficulty to playing if you're not used to smash. I was trying to teach her the basics of weaving "spaced aerials." You're trying to jump, drift in the air, and input an aerial (hard I know). So naturally, in order to teach her to play the character, we played puff dittos.

I made the mistake of resting her at one point.

Now all she wants to do is learn to land rest moves. Talk about desiring to learn one of the hardest things in the game. So I tell her some of the more advanced stuff regarding knock-downs, reading getup attacks, standup, or rolls, to try to get her to land "real" rests. Its very hard. Additionallly i teach her to up tilt and up air and dair to rest "combos". Collectively a lot of this stuff should be learned after you've been playing for more than a year, so it hasn't really panned out that well.

Anyway, we still don't play very much, but when we do, I play the sandba… , I mean, bowser, and I get hit by rest a lot.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Do you people really go "HEY, IM NOT TRYING MY HARDEST AT ALL".

Perhaps our definitions of what we'd call sandbagging differ.

But in the same vein as above:

Does your girlfriend really not tell on her own that you're not playing your hardest?

 

[Timid_Panda]

Perhaps our definitions of what we'd call sandbagging differ.

But in the same vein as above:

Does your girlfriend really not tell on her own that you're not playing your hardest?

When we first started playing, I just relax on the AT, and just played the basics as I was explaining them to her. I guess I'm just too good of a teacher

 

[batistabus]

Be very patient. I know we all joke about "You Must Recover!", but the struggle is real for people who have never played before. Don't go all out, but don't do something blatant like standing completely still and f-smashing.

If she picks Captain Falcon, you know she's a keeper.

 

[Narpas_sword]

i dindt 'teach' my gf untill she picked a charater. she played random till she found one she liked. usually jumping in a

When we first started playing, I just relax on the AT, and just played the basics as I was explaining them to her. I guess I'm just too good of a teacher

Different GF's, Different people, Different relationships.
The storys about our experiences are all good to share, but giving advice to others we dont even know is a bit of a stretch =)

One of the earlier VG experiences i had with my gf involved borrowing her copy of Diddy Kong Racing and smashing all her records in 3 days =p

 

[Timid_Panda]

i dindt 'teach' my gf untill she picked a charater. she played random till she found one she liked. usually jumping in a


Different GF's, Different people, Different relationships.
The storys about our experiences are all good to share, but giving advice to others we dont even know is a bit of a stretch =)

One of the earlier VG experiences i had with my gf involved borrowing her copy of Diddy Kong Racing and smashing all her records in 3 days =p

I was just trying to be helpful to the people trying to get their chick into the game, but hey, you win the thread.
but I think saying things like this:


"Sandbagging is a **** move.
If she doesnt like it when you play normal, shes not going to want to get into it as much as you anyway.
No one likes to be patronised.
Unless you have a girlfriend who likes to be patronised..."

is just as bad..

 

[Narpas_sword]

I was talking about both of us when i said 'giving advice'. Didn't mean it as an attack.

 

[menotyou135]

Just ****ing play with her. Ask her if she wants to play and then sandbag if she wants. However, don't sandbag in completely stupid ways. Just don't try super hard. If you overdo the sandbagging, she will get used to playing stupidly. Also, you can always use the handicap option.

 

[Kaeldiar]

I find that if you put YOURSELF in an unfamiliar environment, it makes it easier not to take it seriously

Don't go too hard on her. You don't have to let her win, but don't 4-stock her all the time. You might consider 4-stocking her once or twice, then slowly go a bit easier so she starts feeling like she's improving. It helps her mentally beat the barrier of "I'll never catch up to people who have been playing forever.
REWARD HER FOR HER GOOD MOVES! If she knocks you off the stage, fall a little bit before recovering. Don't always recover when you can, but make an effort.
Play a random character.
Items on. Let her grab the good ones.
Don't limit yourself to tourney stages. Some of the others can be fun! (of course, what new player actually likes Poke Floats or Big Blue???)
NO EDGEGUARDING ALLOWED! If she can make it back to the stage, let her. Recovery is essential for new players (which is why a lot of them gravitate towards Peach or Zelda), so don't just shut that down. In time, you can start edgeguarding her a little more, but progress slowly.

Most importantly, you have to introduce concepts slowly. Smash is a very big game, and there are lots of techniques, even advanced ones. When she starts to get the hang of moving around, teach her how to tech and L-cancel. These are simple techniques that are quite rewarding. You can show her how to wavedash, but don't expect her to be doing it all the time. Just go slow, but keep it exciting!

 

[Deleted member]

If she picks Captain Falcon, you know she's a keeper.

if my woman picked CF first i'd dump her immediately

 

[Timid_Panda]

I was talking about both of us when i said 'giving advice'. Didn't mean it as an attack.

My controller broke, i'm on the edge.

 

[Narpas_sword]

My controller broke, i'm on the edge.

Oh god. My condolences.

It's a tough time, i know, but you'll get through it =)

 

[batistabus]

if my woman picked CF first i'd dump her immediately

What the **** is wrong with you?