Create one of the best fighters ever, wish you made Mario Party

Kold

http://www.1up.com/news/masahiro-sakurai-reflects-super-smash

It's been nine years -- jeez, already? -- since Super Smash Bros. Melee was released for the Nintendo GameCube. The multiplayer fighter wound up becoming the GC's #1 release, with over seven million copies sold worldwide, but as designer Masahiro Sakurai explained in his most recent column for Famitsu magazine, development wasn't exactly fun and games.

"On a personal level, Melee had an extremely grueling development cycle," Sakurai wrote. "Some of my other games did, too, but Melee sticks out far ahead of the pack in my mind. I worked on that game for 13 months straight, after all, without a single Sunday or holiday off that whole time. During parts of it, I was living a really destructive lifestyle -- I'd work for over 40 hours in a row, then go back home to sleep for four."

What drove Sakurai through all that work? "I seriously felt like a man on a mission," he said. "With the original [Nintendo 64] Smash Bros., there was no guarantee the game would be well-received at all -- I had my hands full just trying to make it into the completely new sort of fighting game I had in mind. With Melee, though, the previous game did well enough that Nintendo and the character designers knew what I wanted in advance. And I wanted a lot. It was the biggest project I had ever led up to that point -- the first game of mine on disc-based media, the first that used an orchestra for music, the first with 'real' polygon graphics. My staff was raring to go, and we plunged in full-tilt from the start. I pushed myself beyond any limit I could think of because I doubted I'd ever have this sheer amount of work in my hands ever again."

Looking back, nearly a decade on, Sakurai seems proud of Melee overall. "Melee is the sharpest game in the series," he wrote. "It's pretty speedy all around and asks a lot of your coordination skills. Fans of the first Smash Bros. got into it quickly, and it just felt really good to play."

However, he has one particularly deep regret: the game's accessibility level. "I had created Smash Bros. to be my response to how hardcore-exclusive the fighting game genre had become over the years," Sakurai said. "But why did I target it so squarely toward people well-versed in videogames, then? That's why I tried to aim for more of a happy medium with Brawl's play balance. There are three Smash Bros. games out now, but even if I ever had a chance at another one, I doubt we'll ever see one that's as geared toward hardcore gamers as Melee was. Melee fans who played deep into the game without any problems might have trouble understanding this, but Melee was just too difficult."

Accessibility has always been a watchword in Sakurai's design style, and there's little doubt he learned a lot from the Melee development experience. "If we want new people from this generation of gamers to come in," he concluded, "then we need it accessible, simple, and playable by anyone. You can't let yourself get preoccupied with nothing but gameplay and balance details. That's where the core of the Smash Bros. concept lies, not on doggedly keeping the game the way it was before."

Thing is, Brawl is boring. It's unbalanced and it's just plain chaotic. Melee, despite being close sourced, was incredibly balanced and had a constantly evolving metagame for 9 years.

I wish the guy would just go join the Mario Party development team and hand over the SB franchise to someone who can appreciate what Melée was fir gamers.

Xinkai

BRRRAAAAAWWWWWLLLLLL

UberPrinny_Baal

I've a lot of respect for Sakurai.

I read a "Ask Iwata" interview where it was revealed him and Iwata basically programmed the original Smash Bros 64 on their own (with a third guy for music). They've both gone on to way more important things since with Iwata being a very successful President of Nintendo. It's good to know such high up people have done their time "in the pits" and churned out great stuff.

Sakurai also made one of the best damn action-puzzle games ever.

Sakurai also had a lot of forethought in where he wanted the series to go as well. He had the concept of Smash balls and King Dedede being playable from the beginning, and apparently the audio for King Dedede's Final Smash was from an unused Smash 64 audio file. That's all pretty cool.

It's a shame that Brawl wasn't what Melee fans wanted it to be, but I'm still convinced Melee was an accident in how hard-core it ended up being.

Realistically speaking, nobody at Nintendo is probably capable of doing another Smash Bros game except Sakurai; and even if someone was, having a deep hardcore fighting system wouldn't be anywhere on their priority list.

Orim

Didn't brawl have tripping? That automatically kills the game as far I'm concerned. I'm all for random (ST ^5) but that is the most ridiculous mechanic I've ever heard of in a game.

Beyond that I've read that both have their pros and cons. From what I've read I've never seen a decent argument against Brawl outside of the tripping one. Makes me think Brawl+ might be the best of the lot. Shame it's not easily accessible.

UberPrinny_Baal

Orim wrote: »

Beyond that I've read that both have their pros and cons. From what I've read I've never seen a decent argument against Brawl outside of the tripping one. Makes me think Brawl+ might be the best of the lot. Shame it's not easily accessible.

I'm not sure that Brawl has any pros as a fighter really. As a title it's awesome that the character roster got so much larger, they added new items, new stages and loads of music.

From the perspective of an engine its really jarring going between any of the Smash games.

The closest equivalent I can think of would be if you can imagine the only iterations of SF were:

Street Fighter 1 -> Super Turbo -> Vanilla IV

The second one was such a gigantic and amazing improvement over the first that all our jaws dropped, but then the third changed the pace, the engine and most of the mechanics so drastically it almost doesn't feel like the same game series anymore.

K.O.Kiki

Kold wrote: »

Melee, despite being close sourced,

All fighting games are closed-source

Kold wrote: »

was incredibly balanced

yet had defined Top-to-Low tiers

Kold wrote: »

and had a constantly evolving metagame for 9 years.

because it came out during a barren time for fighting games... and on the GameCube :pac:

Kold

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

yet had defined Top-to-Low tiers

Yeah but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuuQCqvp_0s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFPI5JNPyDI

Tier lists are gonna happen in any game. It's inevitable. But howcome it took about 7 years for Jiggs to climb as high as he did? Speaks volumes for the depth of SSBM imo.

UberPrinny_Baal

I played bucketloads of Melee, it was always very clear Jigglypuff was a beast.

... who can commit suicide by blocking too much.

K.O.Kiki

Tier lists define how easy a character is to use/win with.
They speak nothing about player skill or matchup familiarity.

Kuroda came 3rd in SBO 2009, OCV'ing teams with Q (who's as low-tier as they come).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ2DYqoMJLI

Orim

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

I'm not sure that Brawl has any pros as a fighter really. As a title it's awesome that the character roster got so much larger, they added new items, new stages and loads of music.

From the perspective of an engine its really jarring going between any of the Smash games.

The closest equivalent I can think of would be if you can imagine the only iterations of SF were:

Street Fighter 1 -> Super Turbo -> Vanilla IV

The second one was such a gigantic and amazing improvement over the first that all our jaws dropped, but then the third changed the pace, the engine and most of the mechanics so drastically it almost doesn't feel like the same game series anymore.

That's an interesting comparsion but I still don't see how that takes away from Brawl being a decent enough FG in it's own right?

Aside from some time Smash 64, I've never really played them (aside from a few minutes to learn that sausage resets are godly) but I have read a lot about them. They tend to be interesting arguments because they are the most fractured I've ever come across. It tends to breakdown into hardcore Melee players, hardcore Brawl players, the easygoing middle of I'll whatever and the derpy "Smash isn't a fighting game" trolls.

Now the middle players aren't necessarily casual players. They can be some of the most hardcore fans of the series as a whole but they often come into the slot of being seeing the benefits of both games and accepting them and dedicating more to whichever they prefer. They seem to just tear down the arguments of both sides (aside from the tripping one).

But I may be just waffling now when I really should be working.

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

yet had defined Top-to-Low tiers

Everything has defined top tiers. Chess has a defined top tier, RPS has a top tier. There is no way to make a perfectly balanced competitive sport/game/whatever. And if you bring any iteration of VF I will slap you next time I see you.

GorySnake

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Tier lists define how easy a character is to use/win with

No they dont.

Vyze

Orim wrote: »

Everything has defined top tiers. Chess has a defined top tier, RPS has a top tier.

What? No.

In chess and rock-paper-scissors, both players have identical tools as each other. What are you defining "top-tiers" as in this case?

Kold

Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think you'll find many players of Melée praising Brawl for anything more than it's variety or graphics perhaps.

UberPrinny_Baal

Orim wrote: »

That's an interesting comparsion but I still don't see how that takes away from Brawl being a decent enough FG in it's own right?

Decent enough? Yeah it's fine. It's a nice little title, lots of unlockables, "story" mode, cut-scenes right out of fanfiction.

It's pretty natural that it ended up splitting the Smash community though, because it isn't the game Melee fans were waiting for (it honestly isn't as good), and Smash-like games aren't a massive industry like 2D fighters, you don't have a choice from entire series like SF, KOF, Blazblue, Marvel, Guilty Gear etc etc etc. There are exactly three games to choose from, and one is noticeably dated.

Edit: Dan I have no idea what your "waffling" paragraphs mean, I'm pretty sure that's English, and I recognise a lot of the words, but all put together it makes no sense to me.

Kold

Vyze wrote: »

What? No.

In chess and rock-paper-scissors, both players have identical tools as each other. What are you defining "top-tiers" as in this case?

Star Wars rebel alliance is clearly top tier.

UberPrinny_Baal

Kold wrote: »

Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think you'll find many players of Melée praising Brawl for anything more than it's variety or graphics perhaps.

Melee and Brawl players are massively cliquey and surprisingly hateful; so your statement is true about popular opinion, but I have no idea what your point is.

Also why are you writing it "Melée"?

Yreval

Vyze wrote: »

In chess... both players have identical tools as each other.

Chess players and theorists generally agree that White begins the game with some advantage. Statistics compiled since 1851 support this view, showing that White consistently wins slightly more often than Black, usually scoring between 52 and 56 percent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess

Vyze

Yreval wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess

I'm sure there's probably a similar statistic where people who play on the P1 side win a very small amount of matches more than P2, or vice versa.

chopperbyrne

Chess is taken in turns and white moves first. They'll always have a slight advantage.

Queen is still top tier though.

GorySnake

Orim wrote: »

That's an interesting comparsion but I still don't see how that takes away from Brawl being a decent enough FG in it's own right?

Honestly, even if you took out tripping from Brawl, it's one of the worst fighting games ever made.

The Smash Bros. series is quite lacking mixups, there's no crossups, no high/low mixups, so offense is based around baiting your opponent, baiting spot dodges that would be used to avoid a grab and then punishing their recovery from it, stuff like that.

With Brawl, they did everything they could to nerf offensive options and buff defensive options. For nerfing offense they A) Removed Wavedashing and Removed L-Cancels. People like to troll and laugh at how Melee players cry over Wavedashing being removed from Brawl but it is a valid complaint, without Wavedash your movement in Brawl is a lot slower and its more difficult to bait out spot dodges and pokes. For those who dont know L-Cancels basically reduced the recovery on aerials, with L-Cancels it's a lot more difficult to safely approach/pressure your opponent with aerials.

For defense, there's a lot less blockstun than in Melee, spot dodges were buffed (I could be wrong here but it definitely felt like there's less recovery frames). Air dodges were definitely buffed, in Melee after an air dodge you lost control of your character until you hit the ground, in Brawl you have full control of your character after an air dodge (only you cant air dodge in a direction now). Also, the game's a lot floatier than Melee and recoveries for every character were buffed, making it a lot harder to actually get a KO

There's probably more points I'm forgetting.

After all that tripping is the icing on the cake.

UberPrinny_Baal

Vyze wrote: »

I'm sure there's probably a similar statistic where people who play on the P1 side win a very small amount of matches more than P2, or vice versa.

Your statement doesn't really mean anything.

Going first is a tangible benefit.

Similar in SF4, you can get crossed-up in one corner, not the other because of the Engine. So since you're more likely to end up in the corner you start near, one side does present a slightly higher benefit than the other.

It doesn't make a difference in the actual 39 character metagame, but if everyone could only play the same character (like Chess) you would obviously see an emerging pattern in data of advantage for the non-crossup side.

Owwmykneecap

Orim wrote: »

Everything has defined top tiers. Chess has a defined top tier, RPS has a top tier. There is no way to make a perfectly balanced competitive sport/game/whatever.

Pong.

chopperbyrne

Owwmykneecap wrote: »

Pong.

Street Fighter

Orim

Owwmykneecap wrote: »

Pong.

chopperbyrne wrote: »

Street Fighter

My stupidly hyperbolic statement has been smashed to pieces. Shouldn't make sweeping generalisations when trying to keep a dozen plates spinning.

@Dave; Yeah that paragraph makes very little sense to me either. Too many things on my mind, which is why it's all over the place.

I was trying to say something along the lines of : The hardcore Melee and Brawl fans seem to just have shítty arguments for why one game is better or worse. The moderate fans make better arguments against both games (basically shutting down everything the diehards try to argue with). However due to the larger amount of Melee fans, Brawl comes out looking quite good for an outsider like me.

UberPrinny_Baal

Orim wrote: »

I was trying to say something along the lines of : The hardcore Melee and Brawl fans seem to just have shítty arguments for why one game is better or worse. The moderate fans make better arguments against both games (basically shutting down everything the diehards try to argue with). However due to the larger amount of Melee fans, Brawl comes out looking quite good for an outsider like me.

I can't really comment on that, as I tried to stay out of both fandoms bitching. The communities for both games aren't the friendliest.

Aside from the image projected by the fans, Melee is genuinely the best of the three.

As a newbie I could probably play any of the games with you, and you wouldn't see much of a difference, except that the controls of Smash 64 are slightly different and the game modes are lacking.

UberPrinny_Baal

RopeDrink wrote: »

I'm actually upset Kiki claimed Tier Lists are about 'ease of character play' which is totally false.

You are correct about Kiki's incorrectness.

AFAIK Meta-Knight in Brawl is comparable to or worse than Sagat in Vanilla IV.

He has his own tier at the top, then there's a space, then there is the top tier.

Orim

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

You are correct about Kiki's incorrectness.

AFAIK Meta-Knight in Brawl is comparable to or worse than Sagat in Vanilla IV.

He has his own tier at the top, then there's a space, then there is the top tier.

You see this is the type of thing of I've read about. From what I hear from Brawl the whole Meta-Knight thing is completely misconstrued. He doesn't have his own tier and in fact based on the pure maths of match ups, he's is not top. However he is the best character because he has no bad match ups.

Equally to weaken Brawls position his tornado move is supposed to be so good that it literally makes some characters completely unviable.

UberPrinny_Baal

You may then have read more about Brawl academically than I did then. I can only tell you from experience it was very frustrating fighting in mostly Meta-Knight tournaments.

The Melee tiers were a lot more balanced, but slightly harder for us specifically to discuss. I don't know how widely known this is among non-Smash players, but the EU version received additional balances and bug-fixes before launch that the US one doesn't have, so they're not exactly equal. But pretty much all online Smash Boards discussion is about the US version only.

K.O.Kiki

K.O.Kiki wrote:

Tier lists define how easy a character is to use/win with.

I fail to see how this is incorrect.

Ryu in SF2/4 is easy to use: his DP is gdlk, his Super/Ultra is easy to use (and therefore, easy to get a hit with), his FB zoning is amongst the best.
This makes him easy to win with.
His matchups are tied into his DP/FB game, and defined by how hard it is for his opponent's character to get around the DP/FB zoning.

jill_valentine

Vyze wrote: »

I'm sure there's probably a similar statistic where people who play on the P1 side win a very small amount of matches more than P2, or vice versa.

For instance, that fighters who wear red win more than fighters who wear blue:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0518_050518_redsports.html

Ramza

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I fail to see how this is incorrect.

Ryu in SF2/4 is easy to use: his DP is gdlk, his Super/Ultra is easy to use (and therefore, easy to get a hit with), his FB zoning is amongst the best.
This makes him easy to win with.
His matchups are tied into his DP/FB game, and defined by how hard it is for his opponent's character to get around the DP/FB zoning.

Tier lists are not how easy it is to use or a character or even how easy it is to win with them, it statistically shows how, if two players of equal skill, played each other, what chars would win how many games out of ten

His DP may be gdlk, and his FB Zoning, but that doesn't have anything to do with ease. I doubt there's many people on this forum who could properly use Ryu's fireballs actually if I called it out :rolleyes: