Poll of the Day > Favorite Smash Bros. game?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Nothing will compare to the amount of time I spent on Melee, but Ultimate takes everything good from that game and just adds more.

I cant believe how many characters are in it. Im really loving Ultimate. Only been playing it for a month or so, though

FrozenBananas posted...

Nothing will compare to the amount of time I spent on Melee, but Ultimate takes everything good from that game and just adds more.

I cant believe how many characters are in it. Im really loving Ultimate. Only been playing it for a month or so, though

Pretty much exactly this. Melee was a bigger part of my life, but that's purely because it was around during the era when I had friends over to play video games every Friday after school. If Ultimate were available at the same time (or if I were 13-17 now, though the world of gaming has changed so much in the last 20 years that I'm not sure the overall experience would be the same), we'd have been playing that instead because I'm pretty comfortable calling it the better game.

Melee

the only thing that disappoints me about ultimate is that there wasn't more of it.

also still no adventure mode.

adjl posted...

Pretty much exactly this. Melee was a bigger part of my life, but that's purely because it was around during the era when I had friends over to play video games every Friday after school. If Ultimate were available at the same time (or if I were 13-17 now, though the world of gaming has changed so much in the last 20 years that I'm not sure the overall experience would be the same), we'd have been playing that instead because I'm pretty comfortable calling it the better game.

We have a Super Smash Bros club at the school I teach at, they meet every day at lunch.

And as much as a lot of people disagree, I think every subsequent Super Smash Bros game was overall better than all the ones that came before it. Brawl didn't deserve the hate it got. Melee was definitely better for competitive players (tripping was definitely a terrible gameplay element and shouldn't ever have existed) but otherwise Brawl added so much to the series that it was a net improvement.

I have absolutely no care for Smash 4 and likely will never play it again but despite that I can still say it was better than the previous games (even if it was totally forgettable).

faramir77 posted...

We have a Super Smash Bros club at the school I teach at, they meet every day at lunch.

That doesn't surprise me, but I'm still not sure if I'd fall into the same routine of getting together with friends weekly for local multiplayer games (Melee dominated, certainly, but we played a bunch of other GC games as well) in today's gaming market. It's so much more typical now for me to play online with friends instead of getting together in-person, and while part of that is the greater difficulty of getting together as adults (and not just because my friend group is scattered around multiple cities), part of it's also just the greater variety and flexibility that's available playing PC games online.

I dunno, it's just a different world now than the mid-2000's. It's hard to say what might have changed about how I played with friends. It's also largely a moot point.

faramir77 posted...

And as much as a lot of people disagree, I think every subsequent Super Smash Bros game was overall better than all the ones that came before it. Brawl didn't deserve the hate it got. Melee was definitely better for competitive players (tripping was definitely a terrible gameplay element and shouldn't ever have existed) but otherwise Brawl added so much to the series that it was a net improvement.

I have absolutely no care for Smash 4 and likely will never play it again but despite that I can still say it was better than the previous games (even if it was totally forgettable).

I'm generally inclined to agree. I fully understand why Melee remained the competitive standard until Ultimate (and still maintains a strong competitive presence), but by and large I haven't gone backwards with Smash outside of specifically choosing to play Melee in a couple more competitive settings. For the purpose of "I feel like playing Smash now," I've always defaulted to the most recent versions (though not playing regularly with friends, my total time investment in each game has dropped compared to Melee and - to a lesser extent - Brawl).

I also agree about 4. It was definitely an improvement over Brawl in many ways, but it was thoroughly forgettable. Brawl has a distinct identity that left a lasting impression on me, Ultimate has a distinct identity that left a lasting impression on me, but 4 is just kind of there. I'm guessing it's the platform split that did that: because I played it on two different platforms, I'm kind of conflating two semi-different games' experiences into one. It was also the first one that I really didn't play with friends to any meaningful extent, so that doesn't help.

Brawl because you can mod it into Project M, while I have nothing against Melee it is a bit dated in terms of playability.

The base game is alright too but that's just me.

In most other topics like this, I'll trend towards later entries as they are often just better in the vast number of ways. Brawl and Ultimate (never played 4) are definitely better but this is one instance I feel like I have to give the award to Melee; it's such a HUGE step up from 64 and has aged incredibly well (64 in comparison is hilarious in how broken it is)

aHappySacka posted...

Brawl because you can mod it into Project M, while I have nothing against Melee it is a bit dated in terms of playability.

The base game is alright too but that's just me.

If you're counting mods too, have you tried slippi for melee? I've heard it has some good qol, but I've never tried it

Ultimate > Melee > 64 for me. Havent played the others. Dont consider myself a particularly big fan though. Only got Ultimate after FF got its 2nd rep, and am not sure if ill get a future entry.

None of the above.

agesboy posted...

If you're counting mods too, have you tried slippi for melee? I've heard it has some good qol, but I've never tried it

Nope sorry, but everyone who loves Melee seems to swear by it or so it seems.

Melee.

I would've chosen Ultimate but the input lag makes it worse for me compared to Melee, so Melee it'll be.

Ultimate is the best game for the fighting itself, Melee is the best game for literally everything else. Character unlocks, Adventure mode, the trophies - all were at their absolute best in Melee.

64 is still and always will be my favourite.

Melee

Wii U, the newest one that didn't change the jumping so much.

darkknight109 posted...

Character unlocks, Adventure mode, the trophies - all were at their absolute best in Melee.

I think character unlocks and trophies were better in Melee just because it hit a sweet spot for the number of them. Starting with 14 characters and unlocking 11 is a good number: Enough base characters that you don't feel deprived if some characters take longer to unlock (and are therefore more satisfying when you do get them), enough unlockables that you feel like you have something to work toward, but not so many unlockables that the unlock process feels like a slog. Similarly, the number of trophies was high enough for 100% to be a genuine challenge (including several with really difficult unlock conditions), but not so high as to be disheartening. Subsequent games had so many characters that unless they're being unlocked quite rapidly, it'd feel like a huge chunk of the game was walled off and that you had a significant ordeal ahead of you, so they kind of had to streamline the process a bit (though I think a single run of SSE unlocking them all was a bit much). Trophies kept the Melee structure, but because there were so many, trying for 100% was a lot more daunting and less tempting than it was in Melee (similar to how I'm never going to even try for 900 korok seeds in BotW/TotK).

Trophies also ran into an issue from Brawl onward that we can't really blame on the games themselves: In 2001, most of us were able to learn new information about Nintendo's history from trophies. The Internet was still relatively new (Wikipedia didn't even exist), and a lot of the characters and games featured in Melee were actually totally unknown to many of Melee's players, especially in the west. By the time Brawl rolled around, though, there had been 7 more years of information being exchanged, Western players learning about Japan-only games that might otherwise have been introduced to them through Brawl (in part because Melee kindled an interest), emulation and the VC giving people an opportunity to learn about pretty much every retro game that was high-profile enough to be featured as a trophy, and enough active discourse around Smash and which games could be featured in it that people already knew most of what the game could teach us. There just aren't any surprises left in Nintendo's history that Smash could teach us that we can't/haven't already learned elsewhere, which kills a lot of the magic that Melee's trophies offered.

Of course, part of that's just getting older. Internet or no, I was inevitably going to know more gaming history by age 19 than by age 12. I can't necessarily speak for what experiences current 12-year-olds would have playing Ultimate for the first time and comparing that to my experience playing Melee, but even so I'm pretty confident saying that the games featured/referenced by Ultimate's roster and trophies are less obscure now than those featured/referenced by Melee were in 2001.

I'm also now realizing that Mr. Game & Watch was as old when Melee released as any character from 2003 would be in a Smash game released today, and I'm not sure I'm quite ready for that realization. Still, it illustrates the point kind of nicely: In 2001, Mr Game & Watch was a piece of obscure ancient history that most of Melee's players had no first-hand experience with and knew nothing about. I can't think of a single character introduced in 2003 (or thereabouts) that would fill a similar role of being both too old and inactive for modern audiences to recognize but also a significant part of gaming and Nintendo's history.

Definitely Ultimate.

https://youtu.be/Cy1k9PFjf3I?si=5HcYj4P6ZfCCrpAu

This is hands down one of the best matches I have literally ever played just from the 2nd match alone. I'm Zelda.