Amnesia Lane: A Smashing Good Time

Welcome to Fighting Games Tuesday!

It’s been a while since I did this sort of an Amnesia Lane. It’s not part of the unfinished business crawl, but I probably could have gotten away with saying I totally planned to write this long before now.

But with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate one month and one day away, it seems like this is the best time anyway to write about the Smash Bros. series. So here’s my latest game series retrospective via my memories.

Super Smash Bros.

My first foray into the original Nintendo 64 classic actually happened during my first job. For context: My first gig was a summer job at a stayover camp. While staff would spend Saturday nights in their own beds at home, the whole rest of the week we were in cabins on the premises. While there was a lot to do all day every day, that abundance of time lead to some oddly placed downtime.

I don’t know if the camp owned it, or if it was loaned by some counselor, but the “retreat” cabin for staff breaks had an N64 with a full complement of controllers and multiplayer games. But the only one anybody was playing was Super Smash Bros..

It seemed like a lot of fun, but I just watched for a good, long while. Not getting in the thick of things right away did me a great disservice; when I did play, I sucked. I had a hard time getting acclimated to, well, everything even though it seemed like a lot of fun. This need to overcome the skill difference lead me to maining Captain Cheesy — which was really confusing because there was ALSO a Captain Cheesy in my cabin mate’s copy of Marvel Vs. Capcom. As you might recall, this job was also the origin story of my time with the vs. series as well as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

In college, I would eventually come into an N64 (and Dreamcast) of my own buy buying up multiple bundles on the campus classifieds, picking them clean of what I wanted, then getting a good chunk of that money back reselling the excess. It was only after this that I got to start with a fresh cart and have the full experience of unlocking everything.

While there was a fair amount to the original game, I could still see there was room for more in a sequel.

Melee

If you want to clearly illustrate the generational difference between the graphics of the N64 and the GameCube, look no further than each system’s Smash Bros. game. They don’t compare by even the longest of shots.

Of all the past games in this series, Melee is the only one I’m keeping. And no, it’s not for tournament play.

While Ultimate does a great job collecting everything I wanted out of all the other old games, it’s missing some big things I love about Melee. I loved checking all the funny points-bearing bonuses each fighter collected after a battle. I loved many of the wonderful stages that would never be seen again (RIP, Poke Floats). I loved the last installation of fighter-specific Target Tests that served as a fantastic tutorial of their mobility and special moves. But I also miss the people I got to play it with.

Those people might be the sole reasonMelee is where my fondest memories of playing the series came from, as my memories of Melee are inseparable from my memories of college. Because I never did get around to taking a sixth psychology class, I guess Smash was my minor.

There was my roommate, who absolutely refused to play as any character other than Link.

My roommate from the previous year who was terrible at the game, but had tons of fun intentionally half-assedly role playing his fighters as the match went on. We had a good combo for team battles with him as the then-mysterious Fire Emblem characters that was able to take down the two people I knew who were that kind of player — the ones who could actually L-cancel and wavedash an all that other quirky crap.

I only ever mastered air dodging (easy), sidestepping (kinda easy) and directional influence (also easy, but you have to react quickly), myself.

Then there was the friend who inspired the Sudden Death video. If I was B-tier, he was A. Absolutely above my skill level but still beatable.

He mained Luigi with a side of Jigglypuff. His mastery of rest and rollout inspired me to try Jiggly myself, though I never improve my use of rollout beyond automatically ringing myself out. He used to play as Donkey Kong as well, until I ruined it for him… Like Captain Falcon, DK had a real wallop of a punch as a special move. Unlike Captain Falcon, DK neither named the punch after himself nor called out the attack, so I insisted on making up for that (because I was the classiest guy my college had to offer).

While Captain Falcon and his iconic punch returned as my main fighter, I played so much more Melee so often that I had the time to learn other fighters. I learned Fox and his speeder counterpart, Falco (black jacket Falco became my second main). I learned how to use Jigglypuff’s rest attack and slowly became dangerous with it. And then came Falco’s replacement as my main: Marth.

I wasn’t much of a finesse guy, so I never did become a master of tournament darling Sheik. But I did have enough finesse in me to maximize Ice Climbers’ damage by getting my positioning and timing right for Nana and Popo to both clobber your target with their hammers. I also discovered that Pichu’s lightning attacks don’t hurt him when they connect with an enemy instead. Given that he had the same moveset and mobility as Pikachu with a hurt box ⅓ the size, all I needed to do was keep moving and only attack at close range to really frustrate my opponents.

Still, I had no shot at fighting the real pros without resorting to items and/or hazard stages. Which was fine by me; I never understood the desire to take away everything that makes the game different from every other fighting game.

Most notably, I spent an hour or two getting used to Poke Floats just so I could lure people to die there. The truth is, hazard stages were never all that difficult, dangerous or random. You just need to put a little bit of time in to get used to them, that’s all.

I probably couldn’t out-adapt the pros if they actually, you know, TRIED. But they always refused, so I had a shot whenever I could convince them to do a round of something other than Fox only no items Final Destination.

And it was my willingness to try anything, experiment, learn and adapt that helped me move on from Marth (in white, whom I called Sigfried to go with my old roommate’s preference for Roy in his gold costume) to Peach (whom I called “Goth Peach” in the blue costume or ”Naughty Nurse Peach” in her white costume, because, as mentioned before, I was the classiest guy my college had to offer). Peach would remain my main straight on through as I astonished all my friends with how deftly I was able to combo them to their doom.

I was very fond of the years I spent with Melee it seems only appropriate that Brawl waited until after graduation to exist.

Brawl

Super Smash Bros. Brawl was when the now classic Smash series hype train technique started. I remember how exciting and fresh the original “Newcomer” video from E3 was. It, of course, started with a self-referential joke and a Kirby spotlight rolled into one, something we can expect for many Smash videos to come.

It also shows the difference in graphical power from the GameCube and the Wii was pretty minimal compared to the previous leap.

While future sizzle reels would go even further over-the-top, all the common tropes of the Smash Bros. hype video can be found here, including the Steve Jobs-esque “one last thing…”

I wouldn’t own a Wii until nearly two years after the game came out, so most of my time with Brawl was spent outside my home. When some friends bought there copy, they invited me over to give it a whirl. The thing that struck me most about it wasn’t any of the new fighters or even the greatly improved and embiggened adventure mode, The Subspace Emissary. No, it was the music collection that excited me.

Melee, of course, had some top-shelf remixes of classic tunes for its stage music. It also had a hidden, secondary track for most stages (and the menu screen, too boot) which was really up my alley as a game music lover. But Brawl had at least six per stage, with more that could be unlocked as random, trophy-like drops and though completing challenges.

That first night, I elected to stay behind while everybody went out to supper so I would have a chance to just sit and listen to the sound test. I mean, when else could I do it, right? I was dedicated to the music. And I’m certainly looking forward to Ultimate having more than three times as many tracks as were in Brawl.

Circumstances being what they were, I have much fewer memories of Brawl than I did Melee. I played with friends off and on, but since I lived further away from them post-college, it wasn’t often. It would be about three years after Brawl’s release that I would have a Wii and my own copy to play at my leisure.

While I did get through The Subspace Emissary and completed most of the challenges, single player really lost its luster when there were entire years between multiplayer romps.

I do remember not having as much fun fighting in Brawl, too. I mostly stuck to the new fighters because of some basic changes to the game engine. Fighters moved slower, and they jumped like gravity had been turned up. The game in general had a lot more weight to it, and it showed in how the heavier fighters seemed to be the ones best suited to its combat. Most of the Melee fighters I was familiar with were tweaked to the point the differences in how they played were quite stark; Marth, for example, had a shorter sword.

I never did settle in with a main in Brawl, even though I did tend to gravitate toward Ike.

While this version of Smash ended on a bit of a sour note for me, it did help me psychologically uncouple the concept of the series from my college environment in time for the next generation.

for Four

The first Wii U game I ever owned was Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. As is custom, a Wii U came 7 months later.

I first bought the 3DS version, seeing as that was the one I could start playing immediately. But what spurred me into buying the Wii U version early was Club Nintendo’s offer for the two-disc soundtrack. Remember, I am a music maniac.

If you think the hype train is strong for Ultimate you must have forgotten the lead up to the last Smash, because it was long and loaded. It jumped from having the big “newcomer” trailer to separate videos for each new fighter, all of which were awesome (except Villager; he really got the short end).

If you feel like you’ve been waiting too long for Ultimate since it’s first formal appearance, a whopping less than 9 months, remember that Nintendo dropped for’s videos for twice as long starting with 2013’s E3… following the game’s initial announcement at E3 2011. Which is more or less why I doubted Ultimate would be released this year; the hype train would be way too short. Oh, well.

While I mostly chipped away at Brawl over the five or so years I owned it before owning a Wii U, I’ve only had 3 to work with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (I dumped 3DS after Wii U was good to go, though I got pretty far along in it).

And while I enjoyed Smash 4 more than Brawl, it wouldn’t be long before a move into a new job destroyed my spare time. Ash such, I got a lot less out of 4 despite owning all the DLC and, once they actually started becoming available), a fleet of Amiibo. That being said, I made most of my Amiibo purchasing decisions based on them being swag rather than usable in Smash 4.

I did want to do much more with this game, but the notion it would soon be supplanted by a theoretical Super Smash Bros. for Switch as series director Masahiro Sakurai let slip when discussing the end of Smash 4 DLC development just made me want to wait it out anyway.

Though the fact that we’re actually getting more than a mere an upgraded port is quite heartening.

Ultimate (showdown, destiny)

I really don’t have much to say other than “hype.” I mean, it’s not even out yet!

So just have another video.