I Don’t Care About Super Smash Bros. Brawl

2008 March 17

Yes, you can say writing a post about SSBB entails that “I care about it,” but I can also say you’re an idiot.

Getting that out of the way, let me explain why I — a massive fan of Super Smash Bros. Melee — came to be completely indifferent to the release of its sequel, a game many fully-grown adults have been looking forward to with the excitement of their 12-year-old counterparts with whom they probably embarrassingly waited in line at midnight a week ago.

I turned in my Nintard card a couple of years ago

Maybe it was going through my high school years. Maybe it was the disappointing trio of Metroid Prime 2, Zelda: Twilight Princess, and the naming of the Wii. Maybe it’s that Nintendo has been surpassed by multiple developers. Maybe I’m no longer a manchild slave to a Japanese gaming company. I just know I don’t slobber over every (or any) big Nintendo release anymore. Super Mario Galaxy almost got me, but one game wasn’t enough. The fact that I don’t play games too much with my friends in person anymore, combined with the fact that pretty much no one I know owns a Wii, sucked any wind out of my hype for Brawl, the last hope for a while that Nintendo had for getting my gaming dollar, meanwhile I like to also play casino games in the two up casino so I can also make some money as well.

I have more than enough to play on my Xbox 360

Call of Duty 4, Burnout Paradise, Mass Effect, Halo 3, Guitar Hero III, and tons of XBLA titles. I’m not going to be done playing all of these games for a while. Playing a game where Mario and Sonic fight each other might have been high on checklist when I was in elementary school. YEAH SNES VS. GENESIS

I have rediscovered 2D fighting games

After at least a dozen years of ignoring true 2D fighting, I have recently purchased used copies of Guilty Gear X2 #Reload and Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. I cannot believe the awesome I have missed. And King of Fighters XII looks amazing. Just look at it! I now understand the contempt many hardcore fighting fans have for the Smash Bros. series. It is truly child’s play in comparison.

Brawl is slower than Melee

Apparently, the Japanese dude behind Brawl felt that going back to original Nintendo 64 speed was for the best, as he thought Melee was too hectic. This only adds to the proof that this game is MADE FOR CHILDREN.

Its fans on the internet frighten me

The GAF hype thread for SSBB was the biggest in GAF history. It was an embarrassing collection of manchildren circle-jerking over every bit of information. Five pages would be dedicated to the announcement of a new stage. I’m disgusted that I even made a post about the game a year ago. I’m not even going to acknowledge other things might or might not have posted on the internet concerning the game.

And the fans in real life too

And I quote:

When I was leaving the mall, this group of nintendorks was walking in. The mall security guard was all, “YOU AINT COMIN IN HERE BITCHES!”

Later, we were walking away when this same group of dorks from behind us yelles, “YOU GUYS GET THE GAME?!” My friend and I started to walk faster. “CAN WE SEE IT!?” We began to walk a little bit faster. “WE JUST WANT TO SEE IT.” I started to run.

Luckily we made it back okay.

The horror stories of midnight launches never cease to amaze.

The online implementation is total shit

Between PC online gaming and now XBL, I expect halfway decent online features and performance in my gaming. Nintendo has pretty much never supplied this. Tetris DS is one game that was great to play online, but it still had friend codes. Not to mention that’s a handheld, where I don’t expect quite as much. Brawl doesn’t keep stats in matchmaking, has friend codes, and has no way for friends to communicate with one another. Good job, Nintendo. No stats in matchmaking because you want the focus to be on “fun.” Sounds like my gym class 15 years ago. If you had fun, you won.

I’m not going to buy a Wii anytime soon

$250 is too much for a console which only has two games that I’m interested in playing. Granted, I could most likely get a good amount of my money back if I sold the console after playing the games, but it’s still a pain in the ass to find. And since that’s the case, there is no price drop in sight. I hate people.

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  • http://speedinguptostop.blogspot.com/ joe h

    Allow me to address some issues:

    I’m never been a nintard in my life (with the exception of N64, but I mean, come on) and I agree there are better systems out there.

    …like my 360 (although I don’t have much money atm for anything new).

    Can’t really argue with that, although I prefer 3d myself (Virtua Fighter particularly).

    Now this, I haven’t really noticed. Some characters seemed to be sped up, like DK, to make them useful. I guess if there really were a difference, I’d know playing them side to side, but not really while I’m playing.

    Ok, the fans are incredibly awkward as well. Incredibly. INCREDIBLY. When SSMB, sweet mother of christ, every one shit their pants while I kinda shrugged and was like “Oh, cool, new smash.”

    and in real life? More embarassing. We showed up at the midnight release like, 6 minutes to midnight. There were some creepy characters, like one guy who lit a cigarette but never inhaled, and a guy who had 100% pure girl hair (if you couldn’t see it from the front, it definitely looked like a woman). Take that, and the people who screamed and honked their horns when they got their game (like, hey moron, your dumbass waited 7 hours to get a game 3 minutes earlier than the people who showed up 4 minutes ago). This is definitely a negative towards the game that Nintendo can only correct with mass genocide.

    Yea, online is pretty lame.

    My friend bought (well, x-mas present) a wii for us to play, but I would never get a system for one game, really.

    So, basically, if you’re friends got smash, I wholly endorse it, really. It improves just about everything (I mean, a sequel 7 years in the making, it has to). It’s still the best game to play with a group of friends in my mind, but if you try your hand at anything else (online) you’re better off not bothering with it at all.

    Also, there’s no mic, because they knew the wave of mouth breathers would be entirely too annoying to prevent & remove.

  • http://thesomewhatmanlynerd.wordpress.com/ CajoleJuice

    You’ve got it right. All it boils down to is being able to play with friends in the same room a decent amount of time, and that doesn’t happen much for me anymore. I just play COD4 with friends over Live.

  • http://speedinguptostop.blogspot.com/ joe h

    I really need to get Live and some live games. It’s a shame my birthday is in December…

  • http://cloudwalking.tumblr.com Lauren

    The thing I’m honestly looking the most forward to is playing through the Co-op mode with Marco. That and the fact that I can play online with my friends back in the states (if it works lol) is what really sold the game for us.

    I’ve been looking for something that will get my non-gamer friends to play too, and I’m hoping Brawl will be like Melee in the fact that people aren’t intimidated to just pick it up and play it. Melee was cool for really casual gamers because you could tweak so many things and make it easier/harder/just crazy, so it worked for beginners in that it’s just stupid fun. Shit, even my parents played Melee with me.

  • http://www.owensoft.net owen

    brawl is lame but the fan boys are eating it up. it’ll probably sell more that mario galaxy.

    what does 2D fighting games have to do with anything? everybody knows that is slower than melee how did you find out without playing the game?

    PGR4 rules