There's a new game coming out in December that has me feeling like a 7-year-old in my pajamas, waiting in anticipation to unravel a present shaped like a video game on a gray Christmas day. That game is called "Super Smash Brothers Ultimate", which is the fifth installment in Nintendo's iconic "Super Smash Brothers" fighting game series. It pits Nintendo characters from almost every franchise against each other in a free-for-all fight. They have a wide range of characters that consist of traditional Nintendo giants like Mario, Yoshi, Link, and Pikachu, but also characters from third-party games Sonic, Solid Snake(Metal Gear Solid Series), Cloud (Final Fantasty), Ryu (Street Fighter), Pac-Man, and Mega Man.
Smash is Nintendo's marquee fighting game franchise. The "platform fighter" has always been a fresh take on how a fighting game should run because the goal isn't to run your opponent's health down to zero. The goal is to knock your opponent off the stage. The more they get hit, the harder and faster they get knocked off. Below is a short video from "Smash Bros. Melee" that quickly goes over the main tenets of the game.
They've been pumping these games out since 1999, and over the years dedicated fans that have been playing since childhood have kept these games alive. They've cultivated a tournament scene propped up by mostly grassroots enthusiasm. The people in the community have grinded relentlessly over the years to get this unorthodox fighting game on the same level as traditional titles like "Tekken" and "Street Fighter" in a tournament setting. After much hard work and perseverance, the community eventually drummed up berths at multiple "EVO" Championship Series aka the most prestigious fighting game in the world.
There have been two Smash games at Evo every year now since 2015. This next iteration of the Smash Brothers series will more than likely grab a coveted spot in next July's EVO tournament along with the most popular version of the game, "Super Smash Bros. Melee" which came out in the year 2001. Not every fighting game gets a chance to be featured at EVO. There was a period where the Smash Brothers. series dropped out due to dwindling fan support, but we are now riding a consistent wave of Smash enthusiasm at the moment.
During the "Smash Bros Melee Grand Finals", viewership peaked at 193,540 unique users watching from the streaming service Twitch, and thousands of spectators viewing in-person. "Smash 4" is the most recent edition to the Smash series though. That game's Grand Finals only drew 48,216 different people. The game is dying for a couple of reasons. One is that we are on the cusp of a brand new title in "Smash Ultimate", so buzz for this fading game is dying down. Another reason is that there is a character in the game that is so overpowered that she single-handedly killed the suspense and intrigue of the tournament scene. Her name is Bayonetta. She's basically the Golden State Warriors of the Smash world. There are 57 other characters on the game's roster, but we know that come time for Grand Finals of a major tournament, it's probably going to be two Bayonettas versus each other. That's freakin' horrible from a fan's perspective.
Due to the nature of its objective, Smash is a game that has always relied on movement. All the top character choices have quick moves that you can chain to push your characters off the ledge in a well-timed sequence. We just haven't seen a character who pushes this concept to the limit like Bayonetta
Her overpowered-ness lies in the fact that her aerial maneuvers are far superior to anyone else. It's a game where you need to knock people off the stage to claim victory, and she's just too good at getting them off, and keeping them off. She can chain certain moves together that when timed right can slowly push opponents to their death even when they have all their health or just came back to life. On top of that, she has a move that slows down time allowing her an even bigger window to set up those overpowered aerial combos on hapless opponents. Check out this video below of players being mercilessly killed by this broken character.
She's LeBron barreling down full-court in transition for a dunk. She's prime Peyton Manning marching down the field during the two-minute warning in a regular season game. She's Alabama football in the SEC. She's the Detroit Lions trying to lose a game during 2008 season. She's Ronda Rousey giving an armbar and every other character is Cat Zingano. All I'm saying is, the outcome is inevitable.
Nintendo, for the most part, has foolishly distanced themselves from supporting the tournament scene in the past, but recently they've taken steps to make slight amends. They reached out to the competitive community to gather all the top players across their different Smash games to participate in a pre-release invitational tournament. The game's top players got to go at it in the new Smash game in front of a Twitch audience of nearly 200,000 people. It's a nice gesture yea, but the ultimate sign of good faith to the competitive community would be to tone this character down immediately.
It's really in the company's best interest to level the playing field by diluting Bayonetta's abilities. Esports are a rising tide, and this has always been Nintendo's main entryway into that world. A lot of the company's other titles consist of adventure games or kid/puzzle games that wouldn't draw an "esports" title. The games that pull high viewers in esports are first-person shooters, fighting games, and MOBAs like League of Legends (MOBA stands for multiplayer online battle arena - Nintendo doesn't really mess with these). If Nintendo decides not to make major changes to Bayo and she comes back as strong as before, she's going to run the table once more. If that happens, all of this new title's momentum will dissipate like a Warriors 3-1 lead with no Kevin Durant.
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