Board 8 > Is Smash Bros a fighting game franchise?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Tekken, Street Fighter, and Virtua Fighter fans claim that Smash isn't a fighting game series.
Mario and Rayman fans claim that it is.

What do YOU think?

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I consider it a platform fighter, which, to me, is a sub-genre of fighting games.

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it's not that far off from Little Fighter 2 which I considered a fighter +20 years ago so yeah

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It's definitely borderline, but I think it's just distinct enough to be its own thing.

To me, the most telling thing is the lack of cross-play between Smash and every other fighting game. Most fighting game players embrace multiple game franchises, but there's a schism between Smash communities and the rest, which speaks for it not fitting in.

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Its whatever the player wants it to be at the time. The David Bowie of video games

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It's obviously a fighting game. It's just different than the beat-'em-up fighters like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Less redundant imho.
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Platform fighter

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no but it is an rpg series
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trdl23 posted...

It's definitely borderline, but I think it's just distinct enough to be its own thing.

To me, the most telling thing is the lack of cross-play between Smash and every other fighting game. Most fighting game players embrace multiple game franchises, but there's a schism between Smash communities and the rest, which speaks for it not fitting in.

That's cultural. There's bad blood there. Plenty of people still play both, and if you do it's hard not to see all the similarities.

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Yes, but its fair to say that it's a very dumbed down fighting game, like how Mario Kart is a dumbed down racing game
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No, it's not fair to say that. It has a very negative connotation. It's one of the games in the genre with simplified controls. Playing it at a higher level isn't simple. I sure as hell can't do well in it.

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It's a party game more than a fighter. There are elements it takes from fighting games but yeah not a fighter. There is too much platforming in the gameplay-- I think when you introduce defeat and victory conditions that aren't dependent on your opponent you're bending the genre too much.

It's as much a fighting game as metroidvania games are RPGs.

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Party game genre: Mario Party clones, other minigame collections, Smash Bros
Makes sense

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The serious answer is platform fighter by the way.

Edit: oh someone already said that and people just ignored it ok cool then.
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it's weird how people say Smash doesn't have enough similarity with Fighting Games but then group it in with the genre of Mario Party, Nintendo Land, WarioWare, Rayman Raving Rabbids, 1-2 Switch and the like

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pyresword posted...

The serious answer is platform fighter by the way.

Edit: oh someone already said that and people just ignored it ok cool then.

It's correct. And that's a subgenre of fighter.

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It has created its own brand new genre.

Similar to how the MCU has some superficial similarities to the superhero genre but has just enough differences to be considered its own genre now.

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ftr Little Fighter predates Smash a good 4 years! with Power Stone as well coming the same time as Smash anyways. I'd also put Castlevania Judgment in between Power Stone & traditional fighters. The genre has always had a lot of diversity since the beginning - ditto goes with many Dragon Ball fighting games particularly with Budokai Tenkaichis, and then we've got Dissidia very much doing its own thing as well.

no other genre enforces the same sort of rigidity that FGC types believe in, and when closer similarities gather it merely spawns a sub-genre. They don't all have to be clones of each other

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GMUN, some of the games you listed are considered Arena Fighters. It's like the go-to formula for a lot of anime-licensed fighting games.

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GuessMyUserName posted...

it's weird how people say Smash doesn't have enough similarity with Fighting Games but then group it in with the genre of Mario Party, Nintendo Land, WarioWare, Rayman Raving Rabbids, 1-2 Switch and the like

Those games don't have a ton of similarities internally when you think about it. "Party game" is a genre based on when you play it (in a party setting) and varied gameplay experiences

Smash Bros has those varied experiences, between modes and stages (stages are the big reason it's not a fighter-- so many of them are so gimmicky that the game no longer plays remotely like a fighter) and rules. Compare the gameplay of autoscroll Mushroom Kingdom with items to Final Destination no items, to break the targets, board the platforms, coin mode etc etc

There's a reason fighting game venues play Smash in a very narrow set of rules and stages in competitive. It's not a fighter-- it's a party game that manages to come close enough to a fighting game with a specific subset of rules so that people who really like the game can be competitive about it.

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I wonder if your tune would change if Nintendo started selling it with the "subset" rules as the main rules and everything else as secondary options for a niche party fanbase. (as many other platform fighters do)

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The home run bat makes it a sports game

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pjbasis posted...

I wonder if your tune would change if Nintendo started selling it with the "subset" rules as the main rules and everything else as secondary options for a niche party fanbase. (as many other platform fighters do)

95% of the stages being disabled by default and all items off is an interesting "subset" to be the default but yeah if so I might

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I mean the next installment doesn't have to have all those levels. They might decide that's not important to their audience anymore.

If Street Fighter decided to have a robust single player mode with a flexible engine that allowed for something more akin to a Final Fight game campaign with bottomless pits and stage hazards and items, would it cease to be a fighting game because the 1v1 section took up less "space" in the package?

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Having gimmicks doesn't take away from being a fighter, plenty fighting games other than smash also have them, even the stage hazards you claim to be a dealbreaker. Like huh? Stage hazards are literally a similarity to other fighters. You're immensely exaggerating the effect hazards & items has to diverge Smash into some entirely different thing, when items on or off is little more than a preference. They don't transform Smash into some entirely different game, what tourney organizers restrict to has utterly no barring on the actual base game.

"Varied gameplay experiences" really? Smash has quite a consistent core gameplay system that isn't anything at all alike to the variety of party games doing entirely different activities, and other fighters are very much allowed to have some of their own minigames as well. If anything you're just piling on more similarities Smash has just to different degrees, hardly an argument that makes them opposed.

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Depends how much space it got cut down to. No one would call Double Dragon 1 a fighting game even though there is a fully functional fighting game in there in Vs mode.

I mean the Tekken series has these side modes too-- but they're all presented as side components and no one says Tekken isnt a fighting game despite having functional Volleyball and Beat Em Ups in the games. The only people who present 90% of stages, side modes, and all items as a "side component" of Smash is the weird competitive Smash fanbase.

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Er, how should I put this... Double Dragon is a beat-em-up. The characters in the vs. mode control exactly like they do in the campaign. We could call the vs. mode a fighting game by the standards of the day, probably, but not by modern standards. But Double Dragon itself is certainly a beat-em-up and vs. mode is a minigame. Smash Bros, like Double Dragon or Tekken, all the characters work the same across all the different modes. You play SSE, they don't exactly feel like they're designed for a 2D platformer, right? They're designed for people to fight each other. They have weight, normal moves, special moves, throws, blocking, etc. Now, looking back to the original Smash Bros, it was generally viewed as a simple game where you could fight 3 of your friends in chaotic settings with random chaos happening everywhere. People play it competitively now but back then the focus was on "party" gameplay. So that became one thing people wanted from the series. Melee amped up the complexity and the competitive side. So now you can say there are multiple different games in Smash Bros, if you want. One's a fighting game, one's a party or action or platform game. But they're all the same game.

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Lopen posted...

Depends how much space it got cut down to. No one would call Double Dragon 1 a fighting game even though there is a fully functional fighting game in there in Vs mode.

I mean the Tekken series has these side modes too-- but they're all presented as side components and no one says Tekken isnt a fighting game despite having functional Volleyball and Beat Em Ups in the games. The only people who present 90% of stages, side modes, and all items as a "side component" of Smash is the weird competitive Smash fanbase.

Is Halo a single player game or a multiplayer game?
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Lopen posted...

The only people who present 90% of stages, side modes, and all items as a "side component" of Smash is the weird competitive Smash fanbase.

You realize the viewership for competitive smash is higher than other fighting games. Feels disingenious to make it seem small when it's probably becoming the actual way to play. Certainly no one is streaming 4 player items on smash.

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4-way Smash is the only way to play

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ZaziGuado posted...

I consider it a platform fighter, which, to me, is a sub-genre of fighting games.

Evidently that term isn't that wide-spread given this topic.

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Hi, big fighting game fan and player of lots of traditional fighting games here

It's a fighting game


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LeonhartFour posted...

4-way Smash is the only way to play

I had a friend who would turn the CPU on if we only had 3 people.

Thought that was the weirdest thing because who wants to play with computers

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nothing weird about that, it's what you have to do if you're playing alone or don't have enough people

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I give my sister a cpu teammate to help her out and take the pressure off

... I should think about amiibos to fill that role but I forget

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You sound bias.

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pjbasis posted...

I had a friend who would turn the CPU on if we only had 3 people.

Thought that was the weirdest thing because who wants to play with computers

We do that all the time with my friends...

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I went to a party recently and we played 8-player Smash, a controller died and we replaced the spot with a computer to fill the void

CPUs are like family

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Even dumb family is family I guess. Admittedly, AI has come a long way since Melee.

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yeah playing against the Melee AI and my friends who are very bad at Smash probably taught me a lot of bad habits

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For real. I have not quite been able to shake off my instinctual rolling habit from my Melee days, which is really punishable by skilled players.

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damn this thread still works 15 years later huh

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you people are all weird

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being weird is better than being a nerd

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Wow Leon was slycooper all along

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if I was slycooper I would have deleted that post already

or would I

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tagging leon as slycooper

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fungah foiled again

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I never really thought it could be anything else.

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Smash is a fighting game, it's just a gimmicky one. Just like Mario Kart is a racing game even though it has banana peels and such

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