I’m going to take the path of least resistance, as usual, and describe something that I’m sure most people already agree on. SSBM was probably my favorite game of all time. Sure, it could have used a few tweaks to balance and allow more characters to hold up, but if you stay away from the “pro” community the game is fun on a lot of levels but needs 2 big fixings.

First: online play.



Don’t give me that bullshit from Brawl. That is NOT online play. That is a bastardization of something with great potential. It’s like taking the hottest girl you know and having her smell like cow shit and even if you can get past that, she’s got gonorrhea so you don’t really wanna touch it. Not very appealing, is it? That’s how I feel about Brawl’s attempt at online play.

That brings us to part b: remove Nintendo. Completely.



If that means removing the characters that go with them, so be it. Nintendo obviously has some great ideas but is so concerned with the simple minded that they can’t get past the idea that someone might want more substance than the shell they provide to mark off a requested feature on the spec. I’m tired of them rehashing shit that they know I’ll buy because when I was 12 it was the greatest thing in the world. I’m over it! In the version of smash that I want Mario could be replaced with a similar fat plumber named Dan and I don’t even care about his moveset as long as it’s balanced. I don’t have any allegiances to whom I’m fighting with any more, as long as I can do it in a manner that mirrors the smash experience. There was a digimon game that tried to do this, but unfortunately the people that created it forgot that there needs to be a little thing called fun in your game. Don’t try again; give it to someone that knows what makes a free-for-all fighter great.

Oh, and don’t make this game based around fighting with guns please… small arms looked like fun from a distance, but it really wasn’t what I wanted.



What I want now is a game on a platform that is more open (read: pc, you’ll see why). Make it free and put up a paypal link so the ones that can pay for it will (and they will if it’s not crap). Allow for new models, effects, maps, and items to be added over time. This could even be done by user submission that has to go through some judges panel before it makes it into the game. I bet it could even be created with some engine that already exists. I would love to work on something like this, and if I ever found someone that was I would offer my coding skillz.

So, now that I’m done dreaming I’ll recap. A smashlike fighter: good online support, no Nintendo.