I was super pumped to play Super Smash Bros for WiiU (which I will refer to as Smash 4 henceforth) but actually spent Night One playing Super Smash Bros. on 64. I finally had my actual old N64 hooked up.
The first thing I noticed is I didn’t have all characters unlocked- Luigi and Ness were missing. And I was also missing the Mushroom Kingdom 2 stage and Item Switch wasn’t available. I guess the majority of times I played this back in the day was at my friend’s houses.
So first thing to do was to unlock all the characters. I played through the Break the Targets of all eight original characters and unlocked Luigi. It was much easier this time around because I knew what to do. Then I played through 1P mode with Kirby on Normal and unlocked Ness. This was also much easier because I knew exactly what to do having run through it so many times a few weeks ago.
Then I played three games with Pikachu against a Level 7 Mario, a Level 8 Mario, and a Level 9 Mario. Without Item Switch I left Items to default but played on DreamLand and with four Stocks. I was really on a roll because I defeated each Mario without much worry.
Once I’ve run through the other Smash games, I need to come back to Smash 64 and unlock Item Switch at least. I ordered some replacement joysticks since some of my N64 controllers’ sticks are so loose they’re borderline unplayable. I keep coming back to this version, largely because of nostalgia and because it’s one of the versions I’lll be competing in. But I look forward to getting back to it, unlike Melee or Brawl, which I likely won’t return to often.
On Night Two I did boot up Smash 4. As part of marathoning these games is playing the main single player the first thing I did was head to that menu of the game. And I was immediately confused. It wasn’t clear what was the “main” single player component. After some web searching, it appears that “Classic” Mode is. There is no Adventure or Subspace Emissary in Smash 4. So, I played through Classic on Normal with Ness. The default setting of 2.0 was probably wrong, I didn’t have any trouble. Classic is just a series of battles. Thankfully, it’s not the running through the same stages as the 64 game again. It ‘s a little like a board game, your character looks like a little piece and then you move it to the piece or pieces you want to face. Towards the last stages, you are no longer given an option of who to fight against though, and the last foe is again the Master Hand.
I wasn’t impressed with the 1P mode. I may not have liked the platforming in Melee‘s Adventure Mode or in Brawl‘s Subspace Emissary but that at least felt like some time was put into the single-player experience. It seems totally perfunctory here. This is the first time more than 8 opponents could be in a battle at once and this is highlighted in Classic Mode. There are more than four player free-for-alls and 3 on 3 team battles. But they take place on tiny stages with no room to maneuver. Winning these battles isn’t about strategy, it’s about button-mashing.
After playing 1P, I played some VS Smash using Ness against random Level 6 CPUs. I played only on Battlefield and Final Destination stages. I was able to win without too much trouble, though there were too many self-destructs. The graphics for this still look nice, and the controls and movesets are pretty identical to Ultimate. But the backgrounds are so distracting! It makes it hard to see what’s going on. Also, it seems like the camera zooms in and out in this more than other Smash games, which is also a pain.
On Night Three I checked, and I had unlocked every character already. I guess I played this game quite a bit when it first came out because I don’t think I did anything other than play VS matches. So, the next step was checking what stages I had to unlock. I had only unlocked Kongo Jungle 64 originally.
So I went to Event Matches and just started playing through. Like Event Matches in the other game, to defeat them you had to meet certain conditions. For example one was use Pac-Man’s Final Smash six times in a row and another was to bury two Villagers at the same time with the Pitfall item. Most of them were just annoying. None of them felt like test of skills so much as following directions. For particulary annoying challenges I had no qaulms about putting it on Easy. As soon as I had unlocked Smashville and Pokemon Stadium 2 I quit this mode. As much as I complained about the Event Matches in Melee those did feel like an actual test of skill and they seemed to tangentially improve your play at that game. These are the worst Event Matches yet and don’t seem helpful for improvement at all.
Then, I headed over to online to try a few online matches. I played the For Glory matches and two For Fun. Each one was a glitchy, laggy mess. No accuracy at all in the button presses. The only way to play was to anticipate a number of seconds ahead. It was completely awful, even worse than what I remembered Brawl to be years ago. But that just may be me not remembering. I’m not using a wired connection like I am for Ultimate. Still, you’d think it would be a borderline playable.
I closed out the night trying to get a KO in Cruel Smash to unlock the Duck Hunt level. After a few tries, I gave up, it was just too hard.
The remaining levels to unlock are Duck Hunt, Pac-Land, and Flat Zone X. None of those are tournament legal levels and there are versions of all three that are unlocked by default in Ultimate. I’m not going to spend additional time trying to get them.
On Night Four I played the default 2-Minute KO Fest with Items on against CPUs Level 1-9. Using Ness of course. I beat Levels 1- 5, lost Level 6 in Sudden Death, couldn’t beat 7 and 8, and was 3-0’d by the Level 9 CPU. What’s nice about the CPU in this game, even at lower levels they’re not idiots, they’re just not as aggressive.
On Nights Five and Six I wasn’t able to play. On Night Seven I practiced some with Ness in Training and then played Level 9 CPUs under tournament rules on every tournament legal stage.
In the first match I was doing well, I was up one stock against Mewtwo. But then he came back and beat me even though I had him at over 80 percent before I was down to one stock. And then I mostly lost the rest of the matches, I was only able to defeat one CPU.
I can’t really blame anything. Ness seems to slow to react in this game. In fact, I got absolutely bodied by Pikachu. But I’m also not too interested in getting good at this version of Smash.
It seems like a lot of new levels or new variations of levels are introduced in 4. A lot of them are too large like the Great Cave Offensive. A lot of them have too many stage effects like Wuhu Island. Honestly, I felt like I lost more to the stages against the Level 7 and 8 CPUs on default settings.
I’m almost a 100% sure Ultimate will be the top game when I’m done this marathon. But so far it seems like each game after 64 I’m liking less than the one before.
I can appreciate the changes made for Smash 4. They brought in a lot of new characters, really made some effort in making the characters and backgrounds look good in HD, and infused some much needed variety into the stages. I just don’t like most of their changes. The gameplay still seems slow compared to Melee, 64, and Ultimate. I don’t feel like my character responds to my input commands as well as even in Brawl. Maybe the GameCube adapter is causing more delay in this game than in Ultimate? The new stages are too big and/or to stage effecty to be fun places for 1v1 matches. And while the backgrounds look great still, they actually distract from the gameplay.
Before I started this marathon I really thought this game would come in at number 2 behind Ultimate. Right now it feels like the last place game.
I think I’ll start next week with some Bayonetta practices and matches to finish Smash 4. She’s universally regarded as the best competitive character. But I’ll be glad to be done with this game.
Looking forward to diving deeper into Ultimate next week!