World of Light

[Dark Jaguar]

No big shockers in the latest cast announcement, but that's ok.  Story mode is back!  Apparently all the characters are getting washed away in a flood of purity.

[A Black Falcon]

It kind of sounds like one of those questionably-dubbed theme songs for a '90s JRPG. I'm sure Smash 5 will be great (apart from Zelda's really lame redesign, bring back TP Zelda!), but I'm not so sure about that song...



... And yeah, it sounds similar in Japanese. It's just a generic J-pop song then, I guess... it's definitely not my thing.

[Dark Jaguar]

I like the song, it's been stuck in my head all day.

Also, classic LTTP Zelda is superior, SUPERIOR!

[Dark Jaguar]

Pop song? It's done in a classical style though, as evidenced by the instrumental version.


It's just these are the lyrics. It didn't sound generic to me anyway, and pretty far from "pop". Not a single left leaning fish to be had.

Anyway, piranha plant is an interesting choice I can get behind. I just how how utterly random it is, and I kinda hope we get other random baddies. I think we can expect Waddle Dee next at this rate. It looks like you don't have to preorder the game to get it for free, just register a copy with Nintendo by the end of January.

[Dark Jaguar]

Which Smash theme is your favorite?

[A Black Falcon]

Removing the words from the song makes it a lot better! I do generally prefer music without words (classical, electronic, and such) to vocal music of course, and yeah, it's the same here.

As for which of the themes is best, it's really hard to say... the original game has the worst music, but the best concept, as the 'kid playing with toys on a desk' idea is explicitly shown. Melee's is a classic and as an intro video is certainly my favorite, though that Melee's the Smash game I played the most of by a wide margin is surely part of that. I only ever played lots of Smash because I was in college and the people I knew there often wanted to play Melee, after all. As for the newer ones, I don't know. They keep scaling up the length and ambition of the songs, but does that make them better?

[Dark Jaguar]

Removing the words from the song makes it a lot better! I do generally prefer music without words (classical, electronic, and such) to vocal music of course, and yeah, it's the same here.

As for which of the themes is best, it's really hard to say... the original game has the worst music, but the best concept, as the 'kid playing with toys on a desk' idea is explicitly shown. Melee's is a classic and as an intro video is certainly my favorite, though that Melee's the Smash game I played the most of by a wide margin is surely part of that. I only ever played lots of Smash because I was in college and the people I knew there often wanted to play Melee, after all. As for the newer ones, I don't know. They keep scaling up the length and ambition of the songs, but does that make them better?

All the games seem to continue that "land of imagination" theme the very first game explicitly set up. I'm a little wary of what this "world of light" subtext is intended to be. Are they saying the fans are too pure and trying to erase Nintendo by asking for change? Is it an anti-sjw screed? Or maybe it's some internal politics instead, Nintendo is making stories blander, and this is a fight against erasing the "character" they used to have (compare Chibi Robo Gamecube to modern Chibi Robos, the charm is lost when you take out the darker themes of a marriage under threat and a child trying to escape from it).

As for my favorite intro and song, Brawl's won for me, even though the gameplay has some major issues in retrospect. Both the song and the nature of the intro are just legendary. Smash 4's intro felt like a step down on both counts. Ultimate, that's going to be something Special. If the game's startup cinematic uses the instrumental theme and isn't a collection of in-game captures but a fully rendered intro, it should be good. The cinematic they did give us, that's for the story mode, so I doubt we've seen the "startup" scene yet.

[A Black Falcon]

All the games seem to continue that "land of imagination" theme the very first game explicitly set up.

They do? Other than the Master Hand final bosses and the various statues and stuff you can collect, what else are you thinking of here? I haven't played a lot of smash after Melee, after all... some here and there, but not a lot.

I'm a little wary of what this "world of light" subtext is intended to be. Are they saying the fans are too pure and trying to erase Nintendo by asking for change? Is it an anti-sjw screed? Or maybe it's some internal politics instead, Nintendo is making stories blander, and this is a fight against erasing the "character" they used to have (compare Chibi Robo Gamecube to modern Chibi Robos, the charm is lost when you take out the darker themes of a marriage under threat and a child trying to escape from it).

While watching that part, I was thinking about how strange the idea of an actual story in a Smash game is... like, the plot is "kid plays with toys", who needs this JRPG-esque voiced main theme and plot? It's kind of weird really. On the music part it kind of makes me think of the cheesy but amusing English Lunar 2 theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYeivB9FMYQ Now, it's good to have some kind of single player mode in a fighting game so if this mode is good I'll be happy to see it, to be clear. Good off-line single player modes are important things for fighting games to have. But I don't know if this was the way to introduce it -- I mean, what IS it? They show nothing of what this mode will actually be...

As for my favorite intro and song, Brawl's won for me, even though the gameplay has some major issues in retrospect. Both the song and the nature of the intro are just legendary. Smash 4's intro felt like a step down on both counts. Ultimate, that's going to be something Special. If the game's startup cinematic uses the instrumental theme and isn't a collection of in-game captures but a fully rendered intro, it should be good. The cinematic they did give us, that's for the story mode, so I doubt we've seen the "startup" scene yet.

True, we probably haven't seen the actual game intro yet.

An 8-bit version? That's very cool stuff, sounds great.

[Dark Jaguar]

The whole series has been expanding on it. Adventure mode in Melee centers on a slightly older kid and the introduction of "crazy hand". Master hand is the god of creation in the smash world, and Crazy Hand is the god of destruction. It basically represents a kid trying to break their toys.

Brawl's main villain has chained "creativity" and wants to imprison all the characters with the villain "Tabuu". That represents a kid getting old enough to feel the need to put all their toys away, playing with them is "childish", taboo.

Smash 4 makes WHICH kid we're talking about explicit, it's Sakurai. Master hand is corrupted, you're cleansing that corruption. Basically, Sakurai is burnt out, and you're helping him get excited for Smash again.

World of Light gets more speculative. There's now an army of Master Hands, and all I can think of is that representing the audience, everyone that wants to play. Beyond that, it's hard to say until we've played through the story. In any case, the story has a lot more in common with a lot of modern fighting game story modes, except once again it's all symbolic, nothing is "real" here.

[Dark Jaguar]

And here's the official Smash Bros Ultimate commercial. Something was missing, but that's been fixed now.

[Dark Jaguar]

Then there's this version, where the lyrics fit every single scene perfectly.

[A Black Falcon]

The whole series has been expanding on it. Adventure mode in Melee centers on a slightly older kid and the introduction of "crazy hand". Master hand is the god of creation in the smash world, and Crazy Hand is the god of destruction. It basically represents a kid trying to break their toys.

Brawl's main villain has chained "creativity" and wants to imprison all the characters with the villain "Tabuu". That represents a kid getting old enough to feel the need to put all their toys away, playing with them is "childish", taboo.

Smash 4 makes WHICH kid we're talking about explicit, it's Sakurai. Master hand is corrupted, you're cleansing that corruption. Basically, Sakurai is burnt out, and you're helping him get excited for Smash again.

World of Light gets more speculative. There's now an army of Master Hands, and all I can think of is that representing the audience, everyone that wants to play. Beyond that, it's hard to say until we've played through the story. In any case, the story has a lot more in common with a lot of modern fighting game story modes, except once again it's all symbolic, nothing is "real" here.

I presume this is just an interpretation? Because the games sure don't have much of a plot ingame... well, maybe Brawl, I never got very far in Subspace Emmisary.

[Dark Jaguar]

It's a pretty well established interpretation among the fans, and Sakurai has confirmed a lot of it, especially in recent Nintendo Directs.

[A Black Falcon]

For Smash 4 in specific where does it say any of that?

[Dark Jaguar]

It's called subtext.

[A Black Falcon]

How do we know that the kid is Sakurai, though?

[Dark Jaguar]

How do we know that the kid is Sakurai, though?

With absolute certainty? We don't, like everything else it's inferred.

[Dark Jaguar]

The story mode lacks a lot of "story", it's pretty much one stage after another. It's fun, though it lacks long form levels or various little baddies from across the Nintendoverse. Brawl is still undisputed ruler of story telling in this series it seems.

I did manage to unlock every last character a few days ago. That's fine, although first of all the unlock method is literally just time + number of matches, not given out through unique accomplishments like in previous games. Oh well, I basically got them all by backing out of story mode after every 3 fights or so. Notably, the difficulty level of "new challengers" is a lot higher now. In past games, if you somehow managed to lose, you could just do a single vs match and they would immediately challenge you again. Apparently people have been saying this time around there's some new menu option that lets you fight them again any time you want, except no because there's some 10 minute cooldown between matches, which I honestly don't get.

So, here's something funny. After unlocking all of them on their amped up difficulty fights, Nintendo releases a patch that tones down "new challenger" difficulty.

[A Black Falcon]

I haven't gotten it yet, but I've heard it's maybe the best Smash game since Melee? Anyone here think that?

[Dark Jaguar]

Smash 4 is great in it's own right, Brawl was the big misstep. The melee diehards are going to be disappointed no matter what, basically they won't be satisfied until wave dashing is officially implemented, and it's also literally just a modern port of Melee to switch.

So far everyone's loving the changes. It builds off of Smash 4, but in far more ways than people originally thought. Perfect shielding is taking me a bit to get used to. Now, you need to shield in advance of the incoming move so you can let go of the shield button in time. It means you have to anticipate it better and get a lot of consequences if you get the timing wrong. I'm not big in the competitive scene so my only concern is that it's fun, and yes, it is VERY fun. Pichu has a major tweak now, only hurting itself if it's moves actually connect.

[A Black Falcon]

So I've been playing Smash Ultimate... and yeah, it's great! This is definitely the best Smash game since Melee. The graphics, gameplay, and controls are all very good. The main issue I have so far is with the unlocking system; starting with so few characters and having to unlock the others may keep you playing, but it's kind of annoying, and the way you unlock them is clumsy. I mean, it's all just totally random! You can't do a specific thing to unlock a specific character, as it probably should work; instead you just randomly get characters as you play the game until finally you eventually get them all, though I'm far from that point so far. You've just got to hope that you randomly get the ones you want to play as sooner. I have gotten some characters I like playing as, but still, this should have been better thought through.

It's an even bigger contrast when you compare characters to stages. You start with eight characters unlocked, and like seventy stages! If there are too few characters at the start, there are maybe too many stages... well, maybe not too many, but it's odd how you get almost all the stages minute one but almost no characters. I'd think the two things would go together more.

But other than that, yeah, it's great. Smash Ultimate still isn't quite as fast-playing as Melee, but it is the best feeling the series has been since then and is definitely a bit faster and more fun to play than Brawl or Smash 4.

[A Black Falcon]

That World of Light mode sure is kind of weird... and ambitious, way more so than anything I remember from past Smash games' single player modes, what with the Spirit system, the huge map full of battles with modifiers, the difficulty level of some fights, and more.

[A Black Falcon]

So the first DLC character has been added, a piranha plant in a pot. Since I got the game early enough it was free, which is nice. I haven't gotten the character yet though... I really should get back to the game.

[Dark Jaguar]

Smash is granting EVERY WISH!





No, no you DIDN'T already see that last one. Watch it all the way through you RUBE!