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

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Hey guys, I [PushDustIn] am back! I really enjoyed my vacation, and feel ready to tackle the next set of projects for Source Gaming!

The site almost has 4,000 comments total. It’s kind of insane to think how much Source Gaming has grown. I still remember when I got my first comment…I was so stoked. Even though there has been (almost) 3,999 more that feeling hasn’t diminished at all! I really appreciate everyone that comments on our stuff. So cheers 🙂

This article looks at comments spanning May 11th, to May 16th (Japan time).

haruhisailormars

At least with Sakurai we know what bias to expect. People assume Fire Emblem “bias” is getting in the way of “insert popular Nintendo character here” getting in but we don’t know if a new producer could have more bias or if they also aren’t bias to “insert Nintendo series of choice here”.

Unfortunately we don’t know if the characters in question will make it even under a different producer. It won’t stop people within certain groups assuming the “problem” with them being included is gone. The saddest part is the grouping assumption made with both Sakurai and the fans themselves.

I don’t doubt he is bias but I’ve contemplated being in the driver’s seat and I can’t seem to figure out how to add more content for Donkey Kong, Metroid, Mother and F-Zero without effecting new franchises or Mario/Pokemon. It seems extremely hard to balance it.

To be honest I think the balancing with representation was fairer now than it ever has been in the past. Look at these categories.

New franchises
Existing franchises with new representation
Male to female ratio
Close combat to distance fighters ratio
Nintendo character to guest character ratio

At least in the first two categories, the balance is there. It just depends if you agree with the franchises chosen for increased representation.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

I feel like you highlighted something important here. We don’t know how a new director would act. They could easily be more bias than Sakurai, or cater to the casual crowd even more. Sakurai is in an impossible position as the creator of Smash. Since Smash draws such a wide range of fans, no one is ever going to be 100% satisfied.  Fans of a wide variety of series like Final Fantasy and Wii Fit could be easily drawn to Smash just because that character is in the game.  Everyone is going to want something else in the game.

 

PigmaskColonel

Q: What about a Wario Land stage instead of a Mario Land stage?

Sakurai: *laughs*

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

*cries*

Javadoze Bowl (@Javadoze)

Though I would’ve love to see what the Mario Land stage would’ve been like, it’s an understandable cut given the sheer amount of Mario stages in the game already. Though DreamLand is a cool stage, it seems a waste to have the gameboy stage concept be used on only one franchise and not multiple games at once.

I loved the Yoshi’s Woolly World stage and it also had the extra bonus of representing a game that hadn’t released yet. Though, the lack of Kirby’s Epic Yarn representation is kinda sad for how much I loved that game (a music track or two from the game would’ve been fine…)

Also, it’s interesting how Nintendo creates the boxart. Nice of them to put Samus in the center of the WiiU boxart and Link at the forefront of the 3DS one. It’s refreshing how Mario isn’t quite the main focus of them this time around.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

A Tetris stage would have been so fitting for the GameBoy though. Licensing might have been difficult.
Yeah, the box art detail was an interesting tidbit. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sakurai had some sort of say in the box art though.

DekZek

Ok. All the info that I have about those games is from a quick online search, so I might be off in some places.

For Tekken 7: Fated Retribution, It is a separate version of the Tekken 7, using it as a base. Ideally, this version is balanced separately to include the new characters. In that case, the characters are rebalanced, and so long as you are playing Fated Retribution, you have those characters. Competitively, those games should be treated as entirely separate from each other, as they are balanced separately.

Street Fighter V: Since it is possible to buy the new characters with Fight Points instead of Zenny, the experience/effort gap is slightly lessened. Also, the fact that all of the characters are veterans (so have an established playstyle) makes said gap smaller, since experienced players can have a rough estimate of what other DLC characters are capable of.

Blazblue: Couldn’t find any useful info, so… IDK

Also, I am making the assumption that balance is top priority, and not potential profits. Obviously this isn’t true, but it’s much easier with that assumption.

From: SG Choice: Pokkén DLC Characters

Soma actually made a post comparing DLC across fighting games. A lot of them have options for buying single characters. Capcom vs. Marvel 3 is the perhaps the best example of a “worst” DLC for a fighting game, as the content has been removed from PSN/Xbox Live due to Marvel Licensing issues. So there’s an example of a fighting game…that is played competitively that had DLC. Companies will want to make money, that’s their top priority.

Mettaur

I don’t see conspiracy theories stopping no matter how many questions Sakurai addresses. The number of questions people have pertaining to Smash is never ending as is, and sometimes his answers can just lead to more questions. On top of that, if people don’t get the answer they want to hear they’ll just claim Sakurai is lying through his teeth and go right back to touting whatever conspiracy theory sits best with them.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

This is the sad truth. People will never be happy with Sakurai, and will refuse to accept any rationale answers. I remember when I debuted Is Sakurai a Liar?, and half the comments I got were people saying ‘Well…Sakurai is still a liar. And a troll.’ Most people didn’t seem to bother to entertain the notion that they have misconceptions about what was actually said. It’s a lot easier to tell people wrong information than it is to tell them that the information they know is wrong. I have a lot of experience with this ;_;.

DonkaFjord

But at the same time it very well is strategic-
Lucina alongside Dr. Mario and Dark Pit were alts who were given different slots in the roster because they were made onto clones with play style differences… We were told that they were to kind of pad the roster in the short development time they had with nothing else to really work on and that they took a considerably smaller amount of work to make since they were balanced to whom they were cloned from and not the whole roster.

Same goes for Roy as well as being a fan favorite. Robin, Ike, and Marth are there for obvious reasons and are different from one another (Robin- Latest Lord, shows off the mage side of FE, Ike isone of the most popular lord outside of Japan also appeared in two FE titles as a major character, Marth is the original lord and “mascot” for the series.)

Corrin was a mix of promotion and potential and Intelligent Systems apparently tried really hard to show Sakurai how they could be different (probably knowing that the next smash bros game will be too far down the line to have him/her featured.)

Also the licensing and legal work costs time and money, so it is easier to work with things a company or its subsidiary owns, and with a company that is actively pushing for something to happen because they might be able to diffuse some of that workload/not having to pay royaltys/etc.
It is part of the reason Smash Run is very heavy on Kid Icarus representation-Sakurai mentioned that their models were already made with the 3DS in mind, he didn’t have to ask for permission to use the characters (Or get them Okayed that they are behaving in the way the original creator intended,) and because he admitted he designed things in Kid Icarus with Smash Bros. in mind.

The truth probably falls somewhere inbetween- He might be less worried about over representing a franchise he likes, but I don’t think he went to IS trying to add in a tone of FE characters or eagerly lobbied to add FE characters.

Fire Emblem also is one of Nintendo’s older series and has been a part of their line-up since the Famicom, so to some FE is as big of a series in Nintendo’s wheelhouse as Metroid, Zelda, Kid Icarus, Kirby, etc. and it holds the same nostalgia and prestige to them.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

Great comment, and very well thought out. I can see this being the case.

Sprial

The game saves your item preferences too.

Just felt like pointing that out.

From: Why Time is the Default Option [in Smash]

That’s a good point. I feel like the 3DS version should have saved the mode selection as it already saves what alt you would like to use.

 

Anyway, that’s it for this week! Let us know in the comments below if we missed an excellent comment!

PushDustIn

5 comments
  1. It is definitely seeing my comment up there-
    Also congrats on the (nearly) 4k comments!

    DonkaFjord on May 17 |
  2. *Exciting

    DonkaFjord on May 17 |
  3. I kinda agree that Marvel VS Capcom 3 had the worst DLC, even these DLC are easy to obtain without paying by simply hacking the game for free. Two characters aren’t even enough, and even the costumes may be surprising with full of references wouldn’t be something that’ll impress fans because there’s no difference that you’re still playing a same character.

    But I guess there might had been some difficulties dealing with Capcom with DLCs. Not to mention Spider Man in this game was already been killed by that spider-eating vampire jerks in one of those Spider Man crossover comics. Damn those freakin’ web sipping butt cheaters…

    zoniken on May 17 |
    • I mean “dealing with Marvel with DLCs”, not Capcom.

      zoniken on May 17 |
  4. I agree that the 3DS version should have saved mode selection. Since the 3DS works better for 1-on-1 battles, whereas it’s much easier to set up a multiplayer battle in the Wii U version, the stock format makes more sense than the time format does, and I find myself switching to it very often on the 3DS. Well, I can at least appreciate that it saves what it does save.

    Also, if you count the time I was featured twice in #8, this is the tenth time I was featured, and I still remember this quote: “No Spiral you don’t get a prize :P. Try for 10!”

    So… what do I win? 😀 (Just kidding! I’m pretty sure other users reached 10 before I did anyway)

    Spiral on May 17 |