(Originally published to Glitchwave on 6/29/2024)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Developer: Bandai Namco, Sora
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre(s): Fighting
Platforms: Switch
Release Date: December 7, 2018
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a subtle reminder of Mr. Masahiro Sakurai’s mortality. Between the endearing birth of the first Super Smash Bros. game on the N64 to the metaphorically roaring, arena-filling crowds of fans, the crossover franchise has garnered since then, two decades have passed over the course of Sakurai’s life. For twenty years, the creative director and chief organizer of Nintendo’s annual celebration of a new console (in my eyes) has been straining himself to the point of total exhaustion. The rush of Melee’s release is the only documented case of Sakurai suffering from a potential mental breakdown. Still, one can imagine that once the franchise he spurred rocketed off to the skies of Nintendo’s golden gates of high repute, the ACE inhibitors he’s been taking for his high blood pressure prescribed to him during Melee’s development still needed to be administered daily. In the efforts to continue making Super Smash Bros. the unique and well-rounded experience that we fans expect, the series has throttled the poor man’s psychological well-being and probably ate up the vital, irreversible time he could’ve been spending with his family and friends. What I’m trying to illustrate here is that Sakurai is tired. He isn’t the hopeful spring chicken that he once was when the prospect of Nintendo’s eclectic cast of notable characters beating the everloving tar out of one another was but a promising spark of ingenuity he devised so long ago. I’d be willing to bet that the Switch will not be Nintendo’s swang song system to retire its unparalleled tenure in the console wars. Sadly, the “ultimate” descriptor in the handheld hybrid’s delegated Smash title probably connotes that we’ll be saying sayonara to Sakurai’s collective of Nintendo’s finest. However, it isn’t time to break out the handkerchiefs just yet. “Ultimate” also carries implications that this game is the franchise’s first-rate outing: the dominating Smash title that renders all of its predecessors obsolete and is substantial enough to satiate the fans for the remainder of their days. From the exorbitant amount of content Smash Ultimate provides, this was clearly the objective. However, I still find a few discrepancies in referring to this game as the pinnacle of the Smash Bros. series.
One initial panoptic aspect of Smash Ultimate was the promise that every single character ever featured as a fighter across the previous four games was going to be included, and there was no trace of hyperbolic bullshit in this marketing ploy. EVERYONE is here, from Nintendo’s five-star generals to their respective lieutenants, to the equally esteemed representatives from foreign lands Sakurai has borrowed as a result of his now impeccable skills as a Nintendo ambassador. All third-party restrictions bound by copyright law have been torn to shreds, and all characters who faced debilitating complications that deterred their return to the series (Ice Climbers) have successfully passed through the security clearance thanks to Ultimate’s exclusivity to the Switch console. As they say, if you’re near the end of your days, it’s best to “go out with a bang,” and hosting a party where every conceivable friend and chummy acquaintance positively confirmed and reciprocated the invitation is an astounding prospect that will make all of those who did not receive such an honor envious. In fact, one prevalent theme in Ultimate is the cumulative progression of the series in terms of its roster, showcasing how Smash. Bros has become such a tremendous representative in Nintendo’s catalog of IPs that it can now introspectively curate its own history alongside its parent company’s on the whole. The starting lineup available to the player in Ultimate is the humble selection of Nintendo’s heaviest of heavyweights initially granted to the player when booting up the first Super Smash Bros. on the N64, and the character unlocks are ordered sequentially by when they debuted as a fighter in the series. While tailoring the game’s progress in this fashion makes me somewhat sentimental, I still have to decree that Ultimate’s strive for character comprehensiveness is an overall detriment. Naturally, promising the inclusion of every past character means that the clone characters, mostly from Melee, bans have been rescinded and are polluting the roster with their redundancies once again. Pichu, a character that should ideally embarrass Nintendo to revisit, still harbors that damnable habit where he hurts himself upon using what little lightning he can conjure up from his underdeveloped body. It’s still as pitiful as it was three entries ago. Adult Link, Toon Link, and Young Link all sharing the screen simultaneously is a paradoxical clusterfuck, even though I’m fully aware that all of them are technically different characters as written in the Zelda lorebooks. I complained about his return to Smash 4 and I’ll extend the quibbles to his continual presence here, but the fact that one of the two Marios went to med school is superfluous when they are both combatants in a fucking fighting game. I’d pick on Smash 4 for introducing Lucina, aka Marth who menstruates, but the newer clones are better organized with a new feature known as an “echo fighter.” They are clone characters with discerning characteristics in their respective franchises, distinct enough to be included as a fighter, yet not distinguished enough to warrant an individual slot in the roster. Even if they are selected as what is essentially a skin, every clone character is a nuisance and I want them out of my house.
What I’d rather have instead of clone characters taking up valuable oxygen is allowing some breathing room for a crop of fresh faces, which is the aspect of every subsequent Super Smash Bros. title that makes us gamers all giddy like schoolgirls and wet our pants in pure anticipation. Because Ultimate insists on acting as an encompassing cavalcade of everything the previous titles featured, only six original characters were added to prevent the roster from combusting like an oxidized beer keg. While I’m disappointed at the paltry amount on hand, at least they’re all solid choices. I’m certain that more than half of Ultimate’s development was dedicated to arguing over whether or not Ridley would be a practical inclusion, and a fraction of that time was spent scaling the purple space dragon’s immensity down after surrendering to everyone’s vocal wishes to see him in the roster. Another conniving creature introduced as a Nintendo villain representative here is the scaly, bloodshot renaissance (alligator)man King K. Rool, even though he didn’t make so much as a cameo in the resurrected Donkey Kong Country titles from Retro Studios. Animal Crossing could’ve added their rapacious real estate tycoon raccoon Tom Nook to the stacked lineup of Nintendo villains that Ultimate introduces but evidently decided that his peppy, overachieving secretary Isabelle had a brighter overall appeal. Even when Ultimate can only offer a crumb of new character content, Pokemon still prevails in augmenting the roster with one of their now hundreds of beasts to choose from. Similarly to Greninja, Sakurai sticks with the trend of adding a starter pokemon from the newest of Pokemon iterations, and it’s the WWE Smackdown fire tiger Incineroar, who I can’t believe doesn’t have any trace of a fighting type in his genetic code. Considering that the era that directly predates Ultimate’s release is the lackluster Wii U period where it seemed as if Nintendo were actually going to bow out of the console market, there aren’t too many exemplary new franchises worthy of fitting into the fleeting spaces of availability. Their tame, yet charming tackling of the third-person arena shooter genre with Splatoon is the only new Nintendo IP of note that the Wii U produced, so the Inkling avatar from that particular game is the sole representative of a franchise that didn’t exist yet when the previous Smash Bros. game was released. As far as exercising Sakurai’s reach into the pockets of outside developers for potential fighters goes, the one he grabbed this time made me sequel with delight. Classic Konami vampire hunter Simon Belmont from the NES Castlevania shared the same topping placement on my wishlist as Mega Man did in the last Smash Bros. game, and also featuring his blue-garbed descendant Richter Belmont as an echo fighter is also a nice additional touch to expand the occupancy of the series. Speaking of which, this new method of padding the roster ekes out a few more familiar faces who share a square with a pre-existing character. Samus’s phazon doppelganger Dark Samus adds yet another villain from the Metroid series, Princess Daisy extends her role from Peach’s tennis partner to standing by her side in the art of fisticuffs, and those Fire Emblem fans who (glibly) advocated for Chrom after he was excluded from Smash 4 can now be slightly satisfied they’ve now squeezed him in as essentially a dryer version of Roy. How Dark Pit is still greedily bunking in his own square while the iconic secondary Street Fighter character Ken Masters is perceived as “spicy Ryu” here is beyond me.
I delayed my disappointment for Ultimate’s meagerly enhanced final roster, for I had the foresight to know that an influx of new characters would be gradually introduced via DLC content. Another connotation to this title’s “ultimate” moniker is the wild and boundary-breaking selection of pulls that Sakurai has obtained to specialize Smash’s final outing, which is why the slew of downloadable characters are overall odd and ostentatious. Firstly, I will politely ask for Nintendo to cease snooping on my private life through the technology that I purchase, for announcing Joker from Persona 5 at the exact time that I became infatuated with that game is too eerie of a coincidence and now I’m addled with paranoia. Even though oversaturation has ruined its allure, incorporating the gender-specific Steve and Alex avatars from Minecraft into the mix still makes for quite an enthralling crossover, an indication that Sakurai can penetrate the indie circle. What I stated pertaining to select characters from Smash 4’s DLC choices having tremendously powerful movesets also applies to Cloud Strife’s white-haired nemesis Sephiroth and Dragon Quest’s generational avatar “Hero,” and the latter’s special move possesses magic that has the potential to KO an opponent with only a little more than zero percent damage. Terry Bogard and Kazuya are fetching tributes to fellow fighting games that most likely influenced Smash Bros., and Sora from Kingdom Hearts is likely a dream come true to finalize the roster if he suits your fancy. As for my fantasy the DLC fulfills, heaving Banjo and Kazooie back into Nintendo’s grasp (where they belong) relieves the series biggest “what if” scenario. I can finally sleep a little more peacefully at night knowing the bear and bird duo finally got their chance to pelt Mario with blue eggs. As for Nintendo’s own that needed a second wind of consideration, fans approached upcoming Fire Emblem: Three Houses protagonist Byleth and Min Min from the out-of-the-womb ARMS with nothing but contempt and cynicism. Everyone who discounted these two as cheap advertisements fails to realize that Super Smash Bros. is a glorified marketing scheme to sell players their IPs using the characters and stages as samplers. Why do you think Roy was featured in Melee? There was no booing and hissing at Pyra and Mythra’s release, for the Xenoblade ladies have a joint relationship unseen since Zelda and Sheik were torn asunder. I can dispute whether or not each of these characters is worthy of the Smash Bros. first-class mile-high club before the plane is permanently not allowing any more passengers to board. Still, at least every character I’ve mentioned constitutes one as opposed to the Piranha Plant stage hazard that launched the DLC cycle. There’s a conspiracy behind that one’s inclusion, for sure.
If you’ve assumed that Ultimate’s stages have been given the extensive retrospective treatment as the characters, you’re correct. Not every stage across the franchise makes its return in high definition. Instead, Ultimate offers a plethora of handpicked “greatest hits.” Even though the developers have chosen to show a bit of restraint, the stage selection is still bloated enough that the total number of new areas to duke it out comes to a resounding four. One commonality between them I’ve now noticed is that they’re all inherently propped up in precariously high places: Mayor Pauline’s New Donk City skyscraper, the Great Plateau Tower where the landscape of Hyrule from Breath of the Wild can be awed at, and the Moray Tower construction sight where the inkling kids from Splatoon douse each other with paint. Should I at least be thankful from a fan’s perspective that Dracula’s throne room caps off this paltry pair of uninitiated settings? Again, this issue was corrected with the injection of DLC content. A few highlights from the purchasable selection include the overhead backdrop map of Mementos in all of its lurid, black and red glory, the top of Spiral Mountain just before the bridge leading to Gruntilda’s lair, and a generic Minecraft world set that a twelve-year-old could’ve created in less than an hour. We can applaud the developers for managing to make the Hollow Bastion from Kingdom Hearts so captivating without using any of the series’ shared intellectual makeup with a certain evil corporation that shall remain nameless. That’s one copyright that will stay guarded like the gates of Hell.
This trend continues with Smash’s items as most of them are an eclectic mix of everything the series has ever offered for “casual” players who like to spruce up their bouts with explosions and other ancillary effects. A few of my favorites that I allow into the gameplay when I’m not trying to impress someone are the reaper’s scythe from Castlevania, a black hole with a swirling vortex of energy, and the quirky mushroom enemy from Earthbound whose poison properties confused the player in unwillingly invert their controls. The fake smash ball will teach the player a lesson for integrating this overpowered super move item into the fray, exploding in their stupid faces for trying to crack it open. One peculiar aspect about the new pokemon that pops out of their balls is that the developers have reverted back to the old days of the franchise. Abra will annoy the fighters by teleporting them slightly off course, an Eevee will adorably tackle a foe (as if they’ve forgotten it's the Pokemon equivalent of a mood ring), and Ditto actually makes an appearance and copies the fighter’s physical form as it was rumored to do way back in Melee. The similar assist trophy item is also amusing and curious, but the ones featured here have the underlying connotation that they’ve been rejected as prime-time fighters and have to settle for a subsidiary role. Knuckles the Echidna has been denied, they passed on Zero from Mega Man(X), and poor Waluigi is still making minimum wage with his ground stomp and tennis racket combo despite how vociferously the public has been clamoring for him to share equal billing with Wario. Relegating Shovel Knight to a lowly item is what angers me the most, for I desperately wanted to pogo jump on Mario’s thick skull as this charming indie gent.
While the selection of new items that Ultimate provides is as limited as the content in the other categories, this title does alter the base combat to a distinctive degree. I’m not certain if I’ve ever discussed this topic in any of my previous Smash Bros. reviews, but Nintendo hates the marvelous mistake that was Melee. They can’t stand that the most fervent of fans still opt to play this supposedly “obsolete” and “primitively unsophisticated” entry, primarily because the revenue funnel that was once connected to Nintendo’s bank vault was severed when the company killed the Gamecube. To really hone in on Ultimate’s “ultimate” imperative, this title is the first time since Melee that the developers have humored emulating that game’s fractured combat flow that players exploit to a masterful craft-a ruse to make Melee players get with the times and start donating to make Nintendo reach their desired profit margin once more. The result of their efforts with Ultimate’s gameplay is that while it did not convert the Melee heathens to the side of commerce, the diehard fans of the franchise’s second title still seem to convey a healthy sense of respect towards Ultimate’s fighting gameplay. The flow and energy of the combat are frenetic with many opportunities to execute several different moves in a matter of milliseconds, including the advanced ones discovered by professionals while playing Melee. The air dodge maneuver can be used to recover to the stage again, and there is a secondary, lighter shield available to every character. Honestly, I’d feel confident declaring Ultimate’s combat as the best of the series if not for one specific aspect. The quickness of Ultimate’s combat is sullied by dramatics. Every effective hit, especially when the opponent’s damage is in a higher percentage, slows the rate of combat like a fight scene in an anime. A freeze frame flash of electric red and black will accompany a likely finishing blow in a stock match when the player has exhausted all of their lives. This ends the match with style, but not with an ounce of grace. Ultimate’s odd cinematic flair it adds to the combat is a real pace breaker, and it’s a shame due to how it nearly touches the same soaring skill ceiling that Melee accidentally established.
Sadly, Ultimate does not offer the same extensive level of additional features to the menu as one would expect from the other Smash Bros. attributes. Many of the fighting variations return from previous titles such as training mode, home-run contest, a stage-building tool, and the ability to make Mii fighters in the specific brawler, shooter, and swordsman trio. Classic mode attempts to personalize the trajectory for each character by constructing a specific route that is somewhat logical, but still needs some suspension of disbelief to be immersive. The journey for some characters will lead to the series resurrecting a feature that skipped over Smash 4 (not counting stage bosses) from Brawl: boss battles. Instead of grappling with Master Hand and his mentally unstable twin to the left, characters like Mario, Link, Kirby, Yoshi, and Simon Belmont will face their respective mortal arch-villains from their mainline series. Giga Bowser looks just as ghastly with an HD upgrade, Marx is the most difficult boss to predict with his teleportation abilities, and the duel against Ganon emulates the fiery final fight from Ocarina of Time splendidly. The battle against Dracula is practically a cut-and-pasted 3D rendering from the first Castlevania game. Why is Yoshi paired with the Rathalos from Monster Hunter, and why is this fire-breathing Gargantua here if there are no fighter representatives from his series in the roster? Last time I checked, dragons and dinosaurs are not cousins, unless Nintendo is trying to suggest that they’re both beasts from the fantasy realm like a bunch of thick-headed creationists. Oh, and the steel purple transformer Galleom reappears from the Subspace Emissary to stomp fighters into the dirt once again. Some may argue that battling a juggernaut enemy with a large health bar distracts from the series’ focal fighting style, but I quite liked the boss battles from Brawl because they expanded the parameters of how the fighting style of Smash Bros. gels with another 2D situation.
What Ultimate omits from Smash Bros.’ is equally as extensive as what it includes. Target tests are nowhere to be found, event matches no longer supply the hardest scripted challenges, and All-Star mode is a bastardized version of itself where all of the fighters progressively fall from the sky until the player’s endurance exhausts. The most tragic cut Ultimate makes to the series’ traditions is the trophies, which I’ve always been fond of for their ample collectibility and art gala vibe while perusing through each individual series' history. Something in Ultimate that has a similar function to the collectible angle of the trophies is another relic from the series that should’ve been buried along with Pichu. Remember the stickers from Brawl? Those clip art cutouts of various characters too obscure to sculpt into the trophy gallery that gave a select fighter a marginal stat increase? They were lame ass in Brawl, and their underwhelming utility doesn’t change here. What particularly makes me disgruntled is how prevalent stickers are in Ultimate in lieu of the trophies' absence. A disorganized scrolling vertical list of every sticker the player has collected is featured as a reference, with no descriptions attached or air of sophistication to be found. To expound on this offense, Ultimate attempts to add personality to the sticker feature by “feeding them snacks” that increase their stats. I’d feel less embarrassed treating my office supplies to a tea party like a little girl does with her dolls. Googling images for any kind of content in a video game is the epitome of laziness, and I can’t believe my beloved Smash Bros. has resorted to this and made it a significant selling point.
But the piece de resistance of Ultimate that should surely garner forgiveness for the game’s uninspired aspects is “The World of Light,” another stab at a story mode campaign after the prospect of one was met with reluctance for the previous entry. Beginning with the cliffside setting that ended the Subspace Emissary (with more faces in this photo op), an army of white gloves that resemble Master Hand soar over the fighters like a battalion of jets, led by an angelic being with an abstract, ornate physicality. The center creature streams thousands of inescapable energy beams that disintegrate each fighter one by one, engulfing this world in a state of blank oblivion. The sole survivor of the cataclysmic scene is none other than Kirby, who is like an eldritch cockroach underneath his adorable bubblegum exterior. Kirby now has to rescue his Nintendo colleagues and those paying out-of-state tuition whose souls are floating in the ether of defeated nothingness. This adventure is conducted from a top-down view of the world map that features an eclectic assortment of topographies, painted with a pastel hue that gives the map a childish aesthetic fitting for one of those kid’s carpets. Souls of fighters and other characters of note from the realm of Nintendo are constant obstacles in traversing this vast landscape and once a fighter is unlocked through defeating them in battle, they are free to use to give the pink puffball time to rest his feet. While some of the set pieces found in this world are neat like the interior of Dracula’s castle and the globe that pinpoints each main Street Fighter character’s nationalities, the World of Light amounts to nothing but a fatiguing grind of various brief fights between the player and a CPU made up to resemble the character of a sticker as much as humanly possible without actually adding them as a legitimate fighter. How cute. The climatic fights between light angel Galeem and his dark copy Dharkon are the only truly unique slice of content this campaign offers besides the elevated scope of regular bouts provided by the story and world map. Subspace Emissary puts this slog to shame.
Sakurai is so lucky that I’m such a stupid slut for Super Smash Bros. Otherwise, my rating of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would align with the critical venom I’m spewing on this game that I feel it deserves. How can I be the only person who feels like the supposed apex of Nintendo’s most opulent and self-indulgent franchise leaves a lot to be desired? It’s missing so many of the integral assets that comprise the series' identity, but it also injects way too much from previous titles that it feels like a Smash Bros. compilation rather than a new entry. Despite what people may say about titles like Brawl and Smash 4, which is redundant now because Ultimate feels like a direct expansion of that game, Ultimate is the first Smash Bros. game I’ve felt dissatisfied with. Still, I have to admit that the little bit of expanded content Ultimate adds makes it the one I fall back on to satiate my Smash Bros. cravings since its release. Again, it’s all up to irrational reverence more than anything. Sayonara, Sakurai. I guess this is an adequate swan song for your series.
