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Filed under: Industry People, Masahiro Sakurai, Podcast, Super Bros. Smash For 3DS, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Super Smash Bros. Series

Source Gaming — December 2015 Review

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Even though the holidays came and went, winter is here for a little longer. December was another big month for Smash and Source Gaming. The Final Smash Broadcast aired on December 15th, 2015 and Source Gaming did its’ first live stream! Special shout out to Nirbion for working so hard on the layout for the stream, as well as all of the headers this month.

December was a big month for translations on Source Gaming. Four out of the top five articles posted this month were translations. Through the translations, Source Gaming has also been featured on GameSpot, IGN and Shoryuken as well as dozens of other great sites. We are very proud to positively contribute to video game journalism.

2014 View Count: 64,426
2015 View Count: 1,671,856

For the new year, Source Gaming will continue to grow and expand. Since Smash for Wii U/ 3DS development is ending in February, Smash coverage will start to dwindle as Source Gaming starts to focus on other research projects, translations, and videos on other Nintendo properties. So make it your New Year’s Resolution to read Source Gaming daily! 36 articles were posted this month, and we have a lot planned for January.

I hope everyone had a happy New Year.

Please follow the Source Gaming team on Twitter!

Check out the November 2015 Review here.

SourceCast (2):

The best way to access SourceCast is to subscribe via iTunes!

Source Cast #5 — “Who is an All-Star?” by SG Team

The SG Team discusses what character they think are all stars (que Smash Mouth). We were joined by Relax Alax for this discussion.
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SourceCast #6 Final Smash Broadcast Reactions by SG Team

The SG Team gives their live reactions to the Final Smash Broadcast. Originally hosted on Twitch.

Videos (4):

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Translations (13):

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Sakurai Column 494 — Are Updates a Bad Thing? by Soma
(Spoiler Alert!) Sakurai discusses why updates are a good thing.

Sakurai Interview: Fire Emblem 25th Anniversary by Soma
Sakurai discusses Fire Emblem’s involvement with the Smash Bros. series. Reveals that Marth was considered for Smash 64.

Cloud’s Victory Quotes Translated! by MaskedMan
MaskedMan translates Cloud’s Japanese lines!
God Hand
Sakurai Famitsu Column vol 174: “God Is A Trickster” by SutaMen
In a streak of bad luck, Sakurai is forced to stay indoors during his vacation. There, he plays God Hand.

News Flash! Smash Bros. Dojo: Trophy Gallery by Nocturnal_yl
Nocturnal_yl provides more Melee website translations! In this piece, Sakurai discusses trophies which originally debuted in Melee.

fast pace

“Fast Pace” – Sakurai’s Famitsu Column, Vol. 112 by Soma
Sakurai discusses storytelling in the Star Wars.

Sakurai Famitsu Column Vol. 496: Three New Characters, As Diverse As Possible (DLC Fighters Cloud, Corrin, and Bayonetta) by Soma
Sakurai explains why Cloud, Corrin and Bayonetta were chosen as the final DLC characters.

“You’re Free to Criticize. But Don’t Lose Faith” – Sakurai’s Famitsu Column, Vol. 495 by Soma
Looking at George Lucas’ comments, Sakurai discusses fan criticisms.

Fire Emblem 25th Anniversary: Sakurai on Fire Emblem by Soma
Sakurai discusses his own personal connection to the Fire Emblem series.

The following are character introductions on the Melee site. We’ll be trying to finish the rest of these in January!

News Flash! Smash Bros. Dojo: Yoshi by PushDustIn

News Flash! Smash Bros. Dojo: Peach by PushDustIn

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News Flash! Smash Bros. Dojo: Donkey Kong by PushDustIn

News Flash! Smash Bros. Dojo: Captain Falcon by Soma

Articles/ Opinion Articles (11):

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Metroid Series Representation in Smash by LIQUID12A/ Spazzy_D
LIQUID12A gives a great review of Metroid’s representation in Smash.

Nintendo Bakc Sales

Is Nintendo Bouncing Back? September 30, 2015 Analysis by SmashChu
SmashChu looks at the financial report to see if Nintendo is in the green.

Should Stickers Return? by Nantendo
Enjoyed stickers in Brawl? So did Nantendo, and he wants them back!

Localization and Censorship by PushDustIn and MaskedMan
PushDustIn and MaskedMan discuss the difference between localization and censorship.

Music to Smash To: Brawl (Part 3) by Wolfman_J
Wolfman_J reviews Brawl’s amazing soundtrack.

2015-12-10

Hype Responsibly by PushDustIn
PushDustIn reminds everyone to keep their expectations in check.

Nintendo History 101: Chibi-Robo part 3 by Nantendo
Nantendo finishes the history of the Chibi-Robo series.

The Corrin Controversy by PushDustIn
PushDustIn explains why Corrin is such a decisive choice in the fanbase.

Salt vs. Criticism by PushDustIn
After seeing the discussion on Corrin’s inclusion, PushDustIn clarifies the difference between “salt” and criticism.

The Extended Mario Universe by TheAnvil
TheAnvil attempts to map out the entire Mario universe in this ambitious project.

PROOF That Wolf Isn’t Coming Back by PushDustIn
PushDustIn reviews all the facts to show that Wolf is not coming back.

Source Gaming related (8):

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SG Choice #10 – December Broadcast by SG Team
The team reviews their expectations for the broadcast.

Announcement: Smash Weekly by PushDustIn
SmashBoards and Source Gaming team up to produce Smash Weekly!

SG Choice #11 – Who is an All-Star (Nintendo version) by SG Team
The team reviews who are the remaining all-stars.

ANNOUNCEMENT: SourceCast #6 Livestream starts! by Nirbion
An announcement that the livestream had started. Thanks to everyone that joined!

Final Smash Broadcast Reactions (Writeup) by SG Team
The SG team reacts to the Final Smash Broadcast.

Live reactions

SourceCast #6 — “Smash Broadcast Reactions” (Video) by Nirbion
Spazzy_D, Neo Zero, Nantendo and PushDustIn reactions to Corrin and Bayonetta.

December Smash DLC Review by SG Team
The team reviews the new DLC.

Monthly Reading List — December 2015 by SG Team
Sites/articles that you should check out.

Source Gaming Choice #12 — Best Games of 2015 by SG Team
The team picks their game of 2015.

Guest Articles (1):

The Case For: A Second Gen 6 Pokémon by Delzethin
Delzethin argues why a new Pokemon character could’ve been likely.

Stats for December 2015:

Total views for October 2015: 212,289

Top 5 most viewed articles:

  1. Sakurai Interview: Fire Emblem 25th Anniversary
  2. Sakurai Famitsu Column Vol. 496: Three New Characters, As Diverse As Possible (DLC Fighters Cloud, Corrin, and Bayonetta)
  3. Sakurai’s Famitsu Column Vol. 495: People Are Free to Criticize. But Don’t Lose Faith
  4. “Are Updates a Bad Thing?” – Sakurai’s Famitsu Column, Vol. 494
  5. PROOF that Wolf isn’t Coming Back

Top 5 Countries for Visitors:

  1. United States (+0)
  2. Canada (+0)
  3. United Kingdom (+0)
  4. Australia (+1)
  5. Mexico (NR)

Brazil, which was 4th in November, fell out of the top 5 this month.

Most commented on Posts:

  1. Final Smash Broadcast Reactions – 132 Comments
  2. The Corrin Controversy – 55 Comments
  3. PROOF that Wolf is not coming back – 34 Comments
  4. SG Choice #10 – December Broadcast – 32 Comments
  5. Hype Responsibly – 26 Comments
  6. SG Choice #11 – Who is an All-Star? (Nintendo version) – 25 Comments

TOP 5 COMMENTERS (ALL TIME):

Winturwulf – 288 Comments (+47 in December)
zoniken – 108 total comments (+36 in December)
Delzethin – 81 total comments. (+30 in December)
DonkaFjord – 54 total comments (+22 in December)
the101 – 46 total comments (+16 in December)

Some great comments:

We can’t feature all of the comments we get (really, we enjoy everything you guys write!) but the comments section continue to show great insight into Smash. Also, we really appreciate all the feedback it helps a lot.

Special thanks to the comments in The Extended Mario Universe have been incredibly helpful! Special shout out to Taiga, zoniken and Cart Boy.

On Sakurai and Lucas:

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I have to say, here, I agree with Sakurai, somewhat. He is doing a job here. Creating Smash and running it is an incredibly hard job, but it is still a job. He is getting paid to do these things, and enjoys a reasonable level of fame and prestige. However, it isn’t necessarily equal. For example, the references made above about people who quit the game when their character doesn’t make it in. For those people, the entire game and everything it represents means nothing if their character isn’t in it. For others, the small mechanics like inclusion of tripping or elimination of wave dashing mean the game is worthless. Those people look at the staggering amount of content and the titanic work required to create, program, pay for, include, market and release the game and dismiss all of that as garbage when there are things they don’t agree with. Think about anything you’ve ever put out and how anxious one gets when its received. When we do pay for our copy of these games, we are only buying a copy. These games aren’t intended for one person, they’re intended for a global audience, including those who’d never go online to discuss a video game. Asking a company to develop a game for only the intense, online competitive fanbase is asking them to hemmorage money, and that isn’t fair.

But, there’s a catch: we did pay for these copies. We as a public, are allowed to criticize the things presented to us, expecially if we paid money for these things. To some of those criticizing the game, they paid for their copy with their money, often times with expectations. Hen they didn’t enjoy the product, they’re going to feel disappointed or angry. Part of releasing a piece of fiction is getting a broad range of opinions.

I guess my comments about Lucas and Sakurai boil down to this: they need to understand the vocal internet presence isn’t everything, and toughen up a bit. But for us as fans, we need to understand that the people involved with creating the game often read comments about how its received. We need to get a better sense of empathy and realize blind hatred and trashing on a game is stupid and only serves to piss everyone off, with no positives. Sakurai put his heart and soul into something. No one ever thinks that you aren’t allowed to criticize something you bought and didn’t like, or a decision you didn’t agree with. But all these people want is for the fans to be aware of their hard work, for the fans to remember what went in to creating this massive thing. —RockyMiavia

On Sakurai choosing Corrin:

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I can see the difference between the reactions of Japan and the west, while western audience are terribly disappointed, Japanese audience are quite happy for Corrin’s inclusion as there’s more FE fans in Japan than the west. I think that’s the difference between Japan and the west. This is just my typical view, but FE series has a long history in Japan since the Famicom era, while the west never had such history after Melee’s release. Even FE series are released globally, they’re like Dragon Quest, which nobody still know or have interest with these new RPG games, which they simply strongly compare with the Final Fantasy series. I hardly seen or heard any FE or DQ fans in the west (even in Hawaii) than in Japan; even seen anybody playing those games according to Streetpass. But I don’t know how unpopular this game is in the west, nor how popular Fates is in Japan than Awakening. But in my case, even I’m not a fan of FE series, I’m still not disappointed about Corrin’s inclusion, as I’m well happy to have another new Nintendo character and as I wasn’t expecting anything at that time. But either way, even if Corrin and/or Bayonetta wasn’t included and somebody else was instead, there would be salt spread all over the place. Here, Smashboards, Youtube, Reddit, name it and they’re there. And it’s gonna be a hell kind of blood-clogging symptom to suffer for.

But if Corrin was decided to be included before Fates were released in Japan, why did they brought him to Smash this “late”? It does make sense if it was before localization, but that wouldn’t make sense if everybody already knew what the game’s gonna be like, and its really not a big advertisement. But if they wanted to promote a game that wasn’t doing well, then I could understand Splatoon’s exclusion; that games was already too popular and successful even before release. But even then, I wouldn’t think they’d promote a game that was meant to be a junk from the beginning, like Code Name S.T.E.A.M. They could’ve chosen some games that was released in this year 2015, which I could think of is Xenoblade X, Devil’s Third, Rhythm Heaven, Girls Mode 3, Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Chibi-Robo Whip Lash, Triforce Heroes, Paper Jam, etc. But as I agree they needed to choose a franchise that’s already in Smash rather than making a new IP, then it’s understandable that Fates was the only choice, if they REALLY had no choice or not. But even then, I think I could agree that bringing Corrin was a wrong timing, as they could’ve kept him for the next Smash.

However, I could see why Sakurai chose Corrin instead. Yes he is another FE character which people hate the most; but he’s not like any FE characters. They’re not another blue haired hero, he’s not another Marth clone nor a clone of anybody. Just like Robin, he’s completely a newly modeled character with new uniqueness which nobody in Smash had. He’s not even any typical sword fighter either, which his sword is almost a hybrid of a chainsaw with contains multiple hits. He also has a shape shifting ability as his main attacks rather than using his sword, and this Dark Stalker-ish move sets are something that no other Smash characters have. Comparing him with other FE characters, Corrin is one character from a different dimension of uniqueness, and that’s something Sakurai was looking for.

But even then, as I say his inclusion was an unexpected one, this Smash was full of unexpected inclusions. Some characters weren’t from fan’s requests. Animal Crossing was requested, but Wii Fit too? Bowser Jr. was requested, but Rosalina too? I can suspect some of these characters weren’t from the fans, but instead maybe from the staffs. That could explain where these characters came from. Even this could explain where did the whole Chorus Men idea came from before being debunked. But even if these characters were mostly came from the staff’s ideas, Sakurai still listened to fan’s requests (Cloud and Bayonetta’s inclusion are the evidence), which few requested characters were able to make it in. But even Sakurai can make anything possible, he’s a man who can’t make promises. I’m not saying he’s a liar, but as he can be a troll sometimes, he can’t promise anything to fans as those expectations will betray them and make them disappointed like this. He has his own ideas which nobody could know nor understand what it is. And eventually, this is still his first time using DLC for this game, and he’s still learning. If he plans to make Smash 5, he can try recollect those learning to make the game more better than before. As it’s important not to expect anything as hyping responsibly, we can still hope for those excluded characters to be in the next Smash, as Sakurai will have lots of free time to think what he can add to those characters from now on. -zoniken

On Salt:

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“There was no way to win. No matter who they chose people would complain because that wasn’t /their/ character that they lovingly voted for.”

This. There was some salt with Ryu’s and Cloud’s announcements, but nothing to the degree of when DLC ended. I think a lot of fans are upset because their favorite pick has no chance now, where as before it was “there are x amount of slots left, there’s still hope.” No matter who Corrin or Bayonetta would’ve been, there would have been complaints… I even saw tons of Inkling hate throughout the speculation period. (u_u) – Winturwulf

SmashShadow’s Criticisms:

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My criticisms:

Corrin who was an otherwise unrequested and unknown character from a series that has only done slightly well in the grand scheme of things and already had 5 other representatives from the franchise was a poor choice in my opinion. Other franchises should not have to suffer because Sakurai loads the game with FE characters. Donkey Kong is a series with close to 10 times the sales of the FE series and has barely received any new content since Brawl. Returns vastly outsold Awakening yet we don’t see Dixie or K.Rool anywhere even though they were both definitely heavily requested. Star Fox dropped down to 2 characters and they have a new game coming up as well. Wolf could have been made easily with the time they spent making. Kirby (while many will argue the main cast in completed) really didn’t get anything from any of the newer games in the franchise. Then we’ve got franchises like Golden Sun that have sold proportionally much better than FE as well and don’t even have a rep. Where’s Inkling who has produced one of the best and fastest selling games on the Wii U?

I also don’t think the idea of splitting the game in two served the franchise well. For one, there was even less incentive to buy a Wii U when you can get the 3DS version and for many casual players that was enough. Secondly, the amount of content that could’ve been poured into making one jam packed full experience got split between games. The Wii U version always felt lacking to me in comparison to brawl. It feels like all they added to the game was characters, stages, and 8-player smash due to so many of the modes being lacking or simply unrefined. Compare stage builder, smash tour, target blast in this mode to the likes of stage builder in brawl, target smash in Melee, and either of the previous 2 adventure mode. It just seems like we back tracked. The 3DS got Smash Run which was probably the best new single player mode (even though it suffered from lack of customization) but imagine having all those enemies show up in an adventure mode. There seemed to not be much for the single player. We also had to compromise for the less powerful console and lost out on a character. –SmashShadow

That’s it for the monthly update. Please let us know in the comments how we are doing. Comments, questions or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

4 comments
  1. Happy New Year Source Gaming team! 2015 was been quite a year with full of hypes, joys, salts, etc. Even it was quite a great year for the Smash DLCs. It’s also been few months for me to be here too, and I still enjoying reading every Smash and Nintendo related articles! Hope this new year 2016 will be a great year with more new things! Keep up a great work and have a wonderful new years holiday!

    zoniken on January 2 |
  2. I also requested a few things to get started on the 2016 year of Source gaming since I am a patron:

    Roundtable of several smash fan games and connecting it with Sakurai’s struggle between heralding the game and passing it down to others. Another would be a review on Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Volumes 1 and 2 when it comes to translations and content of the interviews.

    I will strongly hope that Source Gaming will succeed beyond Smash.

    If the Source team really wants to have a finale of Smash content, they could make a direct interview with Masahiro Sakurai so that the maker of smash and others will be better respected by the people across the world.

    mrjbrpg on January 2 |
    • An Interview with Sakurai would be amazing! It would be insanely difficult, because Nintendo and stuff, but it would be pretty much the fulfillment of all of the work SG has done. (Faints with hype)

      DekZek on January 2 |
  3. Hey!

    We will definitely be having a conversation about Sakurai’s future involvement with the series. Everyone on the site has a very different opinion on that, and I think in the end it matters what people individually look for in a Smash game, and what they think about Sakurai himself. Right now, I think it’s best to wait until DLC is finally over as that’s a topic that’s very appropriate at the end of DLC. We’ll definitely be looking at the Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Volumes 1 and 2, doing some sort of review.

    We would love to have an interview with Sakurai! It would be the ultimate accumulation of everything we’ve been working for (fixing all the misinformation, translating new and old pieces, etc). I think the future for SG is pretty bright, and I’m very optimistic about it!

    PushDustIn on January 2 |