Super Smash Bros. For Wii U
Note: This post was supposed to release in early-May 2024, in-between Ollie & Scoops and The Iron Giant, back when these used to just be Twitter threads, but due to technical issues and laziness it got delayed pretty long.
Back in October 2023, it was announced that Wii U and 3DS game servers would be shutting down in the following April. Since it was half a year away, a lot of people, including myself didn't bother revisiting their Wii U and 3DS games until a little later.
Coinbox 98
Back in March it was announced that the popular, primarily Smash Ultimate based online tournament series "Coinbox" would run a Smash 4 tournament.
While I think I would've gotten around to them before the shutdown anyways, this was the spark that brought me back to my Wii U and 3DS games. I was very excited for this tournament, Smash 4 was the very first game I'd ever gotten interested in the competitive scene of, but as someone who doesn't like to go outside often, who didn't have much (if any) tournaments nearby to go, before the era of online fighting game competition, there was never much of a chance for me to play in Smash 4 tournaments before. For my second time ever, I even used an ethernet cable!
Instead of playing my last main before Smash Ultimate, Sonic, I decided to play Pit instead, since I had fond memories of him, despite feeling held back him. I wasn't in this to win, I just wanted to play for the love of the game. Somehow even that didn't go as well as expected, because I had to wait like 2 hours in between my only 2 proper sets, since most of my opponents DQ'ed, but I had fun in the 2 sets I played. For anyone curious, I lost 2-0 to someone playing Lucas, and then 2-0 against someone playing Marth and Roy.
I don't have much insight to add to this, but I wanna mention the grand finals of the tournament, because it's something that'll stick to and amuse me for a while. Bayonetta was soft-banned, with a gentleman clause that required opponents to agree to allowing her, so things didn't just straight replicate the infamous EVO 2018 grand finals, but this grand finals mirrored that in a way. Up to this point, and still to this day, a certain "blue rat" has performed particularly well the Coinbox series, and things would stay all the same, even in this older game in which he was supposedly worse:
I don't wanna overhype this as some sort of EVO 2018 2.0 though, if you pick apart the contexts of both tournaments, there's a lot more frustration and spite involved in the 2018 grand finals. But alas, yeah Sonic The Hedgehog, or more specifically the player Sonix, won this tournament, and some people were left disappointed. I thought this was pretty funny though. I wanna document this a little as well, some people were left thinking that Sonic was actually underrated throughout Smash 4's competitive run.
To push back on this a bit, he wasn't a strictly better character, refer to the Changes From Super Smash Bros. 4 and Update History sections on his Smash Ultimate wiki page to the numerous buffs he got, but I think it's interesting to think about.
History Of My Mains
Since this was the first fighting game I got somewhat interested in the competitive scene of, it was also the first one I ever picked a main in. I picked Peach, because I think she's cute, and I like how her hover mechanic feels to utilize, and I like her turnips. Eventually I felt hindered enough by her weakness that I decided I'd play as a "well rounded" character instead, Pit. Pit's the character I have the most fond memories of, he's probably my favorite platform fighter character, and I could probably list a handful of things I like about him, but I think I'll save that for another time. Back when I was actively playing Smash 4 though, I also felt hindered by Pit because he was relatively weak compared to high-tier characters. For my third main, I picked Sonic, because I figured his Spin-Dashes and Homing Attack were easy to utilize, and people said he was pretty strong. I had fun with Sonic, and I think my assessment that he had a low skill floor was correct, but going back to the game I've kinda turned back into a Pit main since I don't care so much about winning nowadays.
YouTubers I Watched
This could also be fleshed out into its own blog post but, I wanna shout-out Alpharad. While his Smash 4 videos aren't even what drew me in, they are a huge thing I associate his channel with, and he (or well actually moreso Friends Without Benefits which used to feature him as a member) had a huge influence on me. As for Smash 4 specifically, he was the first to open my eyes to just how funny the game can be.
Another Smash 4 youtuber I really like is MySmashCorner. They've made some excellent tutorials, and some solid discussion videos that I think still hold up to this day.
Unfortunately the third Smash 4 youtuber I wanna bring up is a taboo topic nowadays, ZeRo. You can read about his controversy on the Smash Wiki, you probably don't need me specifically to explain it. In particular I wanna bring up this one video about Brawl Meta-Knight for being one of the first times I ever saw a video about a snippet of fighting game history. It's a type of video I've been wishing to see more of the first time I saw it, since fighting game history is interesting, but so buried.
Core Gameplay
Something strange about going back to this game now that I have a better grasp on platform fighters and fighting games in general is seeing just how weak a lot of characters' combo games are. A lot of characters' best combos are just Throw > Aerial, and that doesn't tend to do much damage. This makes the game very neutral heavy in a lot of matchups which I quite like.
Something else strange to go back to after being aquatinted with so many modern fighting games is this game's poor balance. For a low level (I had a 23% winrate on For Glory) player such as myself, while I know of Bayonetta's witchcraft, the more weirdly strong character to me is Cloud. What I mind moreso than the strong characters though are the weak ones. What were the devs doing with Palutena? One of her gimmicks I guess is that she has a wide variety of Custom Moves, but what she's actually supposed to be good at isn't really clear. Is it her Smash Attacks? At least she's not dysfunctional I guess.
Something I noticed with this game (and with a lot of other platform fighters) is how committal running is. I remember back when the game was relevant, 2 of my goto options out of running were Grab and Up Smash, and I also remember Foxtrotting a lot, and for sometime after I thought it was kinda strange that I did those things so much, but after playing the game again I realize that it totally does incentivize playing like that. The biggest culprit of this is the input system, because of how it prioritizes Dash Attack over so many other things. This in turn also incentivizes walking a lot, just so you have better access to your moves. I don't really like this balance around running, but admittedly in practice I don't mind walking so much.
I like how strong this game's defensive mechanics are, especially dodges. Some people are disgusted by players that constantly dodge, but I don't mind when people do that to me. I also wanna note that I like Power-Shielding more than Smash Ultimate's Parry.
Customs
Customs are a really cool part of the game, yet I think they're integrated in some incredibly flawed ways that really hamper their inclusion. It takes so much unnecessary grinding and menu-ing to engage with the otherwise fun set of mechanics.
You have to unlock every second and third Special Move which I don't inherently mind, but they're luck based drops and way too rare for my liking. Collecting all of the Special Moves was one of the very last things I did when completing all of the Challenges, which I didn't accomplish until hundreds of hours of gameplay, 8-9 years after the game's release. Granted, if I was more efficient about grinding for Special Moves specifically, I could've gotten them much faster, but every time I tried to grind for them I found it an excruciating experience.
Once you have all the Special Moves unlocked, along with tons of equipable items for stats and effects and stuff, there's another problem; the customization process is way too out of the way, making it incredibly tedious to interface with when playing actual gamemodes. This is something Smash Ultimate inproved upon vastly, in that game you can enter the Spirit Customization menus from most if not all modes that allow Spirits, while in Smash 4 you always have to back out of other modes when you wanna change your Customs.
As I mentioned before though, I think Customs are fun. I agree with some people that there's some missed competitive potential with the Special Moves since they're so horribly balanced, but I think people overlook that the Special Moves, along with the stats, and the special effects, are really fun when playing the game casually. One Custom I have a particular fondness for is one I created for Ike, in which I just made him fast and I would joke about Ike being the fastest character in the game.
Back during the game's relevancy I just kinda assumed this wasn't the case I guess, but nowadays I think some of the modes were actually balanced with Customs in mind. Coming to that conclusion helped me out a lot when completing the game.
Modes
I have a seemingly unpopular preference towards this games modes over Smash Ultimate's. In particular, my preference for Smash 4's Classic Mode does not seem common. I like and dislike just how random Smash 4's Classic Mode is. I think it adds a lot of replayability that Smash Ultimate's Classic Mode lacks to have random opponents, but I do think it could've used a little more structure to give it a better sense of progression. I also wanna note just how hard I think this mode is, and how accomplished I felt finally beating it on the 9.0 difficulty.
The online in Smash 4 admittedly wasn't good, but I have a soft spot for it anyways. For Glory in particular was a sham of a competitive mode for its so bad people genuinely don't think it exists skill-based matchmaking, but stuff like that I think is what makes the mode funny, and I like that it's funny.
There's a complaint I hear with Smash Tour in which people just find it confusing. I don't have this issue, instead I think it has a similar problem to Classic Mode, in which it just has too much randomness to feel cohesive. The final match is actually too consistent though, it's always the same rules on Battlefield.
All-Star Mode is probably the least controversial to say was better in
Smash 4 than Ultimate. It's just nice to have it as its own actual mode
and not just a Multi-Man Smash variant. Speaking of Multi-Man Smash,
Smash 4 has quite a few variants of the mode which I think is nice.
Target Blast, while not a favorite of mine, I prefer over Target Run
since Target Blast has more maps and utilizes the physics blocks a more
in more interesting way I think. Then there's Trophy Rush, Master
Orders, and Crazy Orders which I think are all solid modes, and none of
them really have Smash Ultimate equivalents.
Of all things I think I might actually prefer the Challenges in Smash Ultimate over Smash 4. In Smash 4 some of the Challenges are exceptionally brutal, which yeah I imagine the point is that they're hard, but it gets beyond a point of being fun for me.
I'm conflicted on the Events mode. I remember them being more interesting than Smash Ultimate's Spirit battles, but the few I played when combining for 100% completion were actually kinda dull. I didn't put in the effort to replay all of them though, so I left not really sure what to think.
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