TheCatPhysician

it's supposed to launch this afternoon for japan, so that means like 11pm eastern time

hey look, the next trailer has been uploaded this whole time! someone on smashboards found the url: http://www.smashbros.com/en/trailers/t_ssb_brawl_3.html omg i dont want to spoil any of it

its only cool when evilhead does it

That would be awesome, I'm not sure if we're passing through there yet or what our schedule's going to be like though, so i'll keep that in mind

Should be 8am pacific time also check this out: http://nintendrone.blog.com/ this guy got an interview with someone from nintendo interesting no more clones eh?

ONE MORE DAY also nintendo.com says it's a major update

I'm planning on coming to the lower 48 this summer with my friends for a couple SSBM tournaments, Melee-FC Next and OC3. Is anyone from OCR planning on going to one of these? Links: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=95892 http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=99627

eh, you're just setting your expectations low so that you wont be dissapointed but might be surprised. good strategy, but it's almost guaranteed that something will happen because recently sakurai said something along the lines of "it's time that i should release some new information" and this was just after kojima got to play it and said it's already completel enough to be released and sell well and now a few days after all that was said there's this giant countdown on the site. dude, come on. just admit you're freaking excited

friendlyhunter, you sound like you're trying to get a reaction out of people and/or sound unique. does anyone know what he just said? I honestly don't get it.im not going to wet my pants because someone doesn't like my favorite game, but when you say it sucks for some reason that makes no sense at all, i just want you to clarify a little. just pick any one of the thousands of ssbm vids on youtube and show me where the graphics detract from the gameplay.

WHAT?! People are angry that Pichu is in Melee? Ok, not many people know this secret cheat for Pichu that makes him the awesomest character in the game, so I'll forgive you because you didn't know. Here's the cheat: 1: pick pichu 2: hold left or right BARELY. Like, move the control stick the smallest possible distance you can but enough so that it will still register as a movement. You'll know when you do it right because Pichu pretty much turns into a terrible monster that will scare the crap out of whoever you're facing. One time, a level 9 even got scared of it. Also, when you do it make sure to do it for a long time for a better effect. See if you can do it all the way across Final Destination without peeing your pants.

Also check out the articles in the Domination 101 forum on Shoryuken.com BTW I've always wanted to buy Sirlin's book but never got around to it. Has anyone here read it?

Oh whoops, I forgot he said it has to be a non-SSBM example. I don't really see why; we are talking mainly about SSBM after all, so wouldn't it be fitting if I used an example from the game itself to prove my point? But whatever. The thing I said about combos can be applied to any fighting game. Every fighting game (that's played competitively at least) has lots of advanced techniques that aren't found in the command list. This video shows some crazy Yun combos that would completely surprise anyone who thought there was nothing more to learning Yun than just learning how to execute his individual moves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HKg5u5hxQU One thing it demonstrates is Kara-canceling. You can give a move extra range by canceling certain moves into it, where you cancel the move before the hitbox comes out. This is shown when he is in Genei-Jin, and he does the palm which normally sends Yun too far back to do another palm directly, but he does a strong punch (which the very first part of the animation is the character lunging forward) then before the actual punch happens, he cancels it into a palm. And this is only the technical skill aspect we're talking about here. If you think a fighting game's depth is only as deep as its command lists, learn how to execute all the moves in any random competitively played fighter then play in a tournament. Why did you not even come close to doing alright? Because there's a lot more to the game then just executing moves. Even when strictly talking about the technical aspect of a fighting game, there is always much more to learn than the command list or instruction manual will tell you.

Rainman: It's not as simple as just spamming down + B. The point I was trying to make is that there is so much more depth in fighting games than just the single moves. The shine is a great example, not just because of shine spiking. The shine can be cancelled with a jump immediately, and that jump can be cancelled before leaving the ground with an airdodge directed at an angle into the ground, making you slide. So put all that together, and you in effect you just shined your opponent, then almost at the exact same time they are sent back, you're sliding along with them, able to do any move out of the slide immediately. This is kind of a jump into the advanced stuff because it involves a wavedash, and I havn't explained wavedashing and its uses without the shine yet. But anyway, this opens up a crapload of options, because you can now follow up the shine with any attack you want (assuming you're playing a character who doesn't fall from the shine or slide to far) before they even recover from hitstun. So if you wanted, you could just do another shine, and wavedash from that. This is an example of how much depth this move can add to the game with more than simply being able to press down + B. I guess I'll explain some more stuff with Fox and his shine. Now you may be able to perform a "down air." Again, like the shine, it's simple. Just hit down + A while in the air. But I'll explain a way to use the down air very effectively with the shine that goes way beyond simply executing the two moves in any old situation. To use the down air more effectively, there are a few things you can do. First, short hop. Press jump really fast (for Fox, the button has to be pressed for no more than 3 frames) and instead of jumping high he'll jump really low. This alone adds a lot of options for aerial attacks. Another thing you can do is fast fall. You probably know that once you reach the peak of a jump, you can press down for your character to fall faster to the ground. Combine this with a short hop, and you've got a really fast jump. The third thing you can do with these others is L cancel. If you're doing an aerial A attack and press L within 6 frames of hitting the ground, half of your entire ending lag is canceled. The L cancel itself opens up a very important option for the shine. With L canceling, you can not only combo every landed down air into a shine, which can open up a crapload of combos as I've shown, but it's too fast to shield grab. Shield grabbing is when you shield an attack, and grab right after the attack hits and your shield stun ends. Normally an attack's lag lasts longer than shield stun, so if you shield an attack and your opponent is within grab range, it's a guaranteed grab. But you can L cancel a down air (or any of Fox's aerials for that matter) into a shine faster than they can shield grab, if they try to shield grab the down air. But what if they shield both? This is where it gets a little tricky. Fox can do some really fast stuff directly out of his shine. One thing you can do is come out of the shine immediately with a grab: shine, jump cancel the shine, then cancel the jump before leaving ground with a GRAB. Yep, you can cancel the jump while in the crouch animation with a grab too. This is very very useful for running grabs, because it allows you to perform a standing grab while running, instead of a regular dash grab in which for most character's cases, they lunge out retardedly with a whole bunch of lag compared to the standing grab. But that's besides the point. Anyways, that's one thing you can do. Another thing you can do is shine the shield, jump cancel, cancel jump with shine before leaving the ground, repeat. This is really really fast. Theoretically, you could be doing shines 4 frames apart if you canceled everything as soon as possible. It doesn't have to be that fast though. But if you were perfect, you could just do this until their shield breaks. But it's very very difficult, and nobody can do it that long. The guy who can do it best can only get up to about 10 doubleshines. Something a little easier that a lot of Falcos like to do is cancel the shine with a shuffle'd (what I explained earlier - short hop, fast fall and L cancel an aerial attack) down air, canceling straight into another shine. Doing this over and over again can wear their shields down too, and just like with Fox, you can also switch it up by canceling a shine into a jump canceled grab as well. Eh, there's a lot more to explain and you probably can't really understand everything without actually learning it for yourself. But one thing's that for sure is that just because you can do all the moves the instruction manual tells you to do (which is freaking easy, really) doesn't mean you have mastered the entire game's technical aspect. Not even close. There is a whole bunch more that I'd like to explain about things like edgegames (which are unique to Smash - yes, you can get ring outs in SC2, but edgegames in that game are nothing compared to how complicated edgegames are in Smash. In SC2, you push your opponent off the edge and they die. Hoo hoo! Ok, there is a little depth to it - it's about character placement, getting your opponent into a vulnerable situation to fall off, and you can do things like parry an attack while standing at the ledge so your opponent goes behind and off.) In Smash there are a whole bunch of aspects to edgegames like edgehogging (not just to give them no option if they can only reach the edge, but to eliminate that possibility if they have the option of going to the edge or the stage), falling from the edge straight into a second jump (which opens up a whole bunch of new options), using the invincibility frames from grabbing the edge (ties in with the last thing - you can fall from the edge into a second jump to grab the edge again to get invincibility frames to abuse) and a whole lot more. There is too much to explain, you'd have to find out for yourself. I strongly recommend you try to find a tournament in your area to play a pro to see what it's all about. It's kind of ridiculous to act like you know enough about Smash to compare it's depth to other games when you havn't even played people in the competitive community. You're just going by what you've found out about the game. Edit: WHOA, heh. didn't realize it turned into a wall of text. I do that sometimes when I have nothing to do. Sorry. Edit 2: For demonstrating how moves can add much more depth to the game than simply being able to execute each single move, a simpler way of putting it is this: Combos are everything. You may understand the basic principles behind the moves they teach you in the instructional video. But that's got nothing to do with combos. You may be able to perform all of Mario's attacks one by one, but can you use them in such beautiful synergy like this? http://files.filefront.com/Mariotalityc2/;5312673;;/fileinfo.html

Faduger: Heh, I got to play with Skypal too a little over a year ago. It was my second time playing people from the competitive community, and I thought after getting thrashed my first time I might have a chance at being able to compete because I had practiced all the advanced techs and stuff. Boy was I wrong, but that was a lot of fun. Rainman DX: If you think a fighter's depth is determined by how many moves there are in the movelist, you have a whole lot to learn. =P I'm sorry but from your post I can tell you know nothing of Smash. There is way too much to explain, but if you're interested you should see if there are any tournaments in your area you can attend to play a pro. But just for now, here's an example of how depth goes much farther than simply being able to execute a single move. Anyone can perform Fox's shine. Just press down + B. But can you use it like this? An old Fox combo video. Shows the basics of the advanced ways to use the shine. Shinespiking, waveshining, etc. Oh, and go to these places to look for Smash events if you want to find one: http://www.smashboards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=51 http://www.smashboards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=89

Good topic, I've been thinking about something similar recently. One day I realized that I had quit video games, in a sense. I had been waiting like crazy for Twilight Princess to come out, and I was like OMG I'm beating it as soon as possible, then I'll beat it a few more times and explore every little thing. Don't get me wrong, it's all you could ask for in Zelda. But after I beat the first couple dungeons, I just couldn't bring myself to turn it on. The only games I like now are ones you can be competitive, so the only games I play right now are SSBM, DotA, and Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike (which I just picked up a week ago). Maybe I'll keep liking quirky games that come out for the Wii/DS that just keep you entertained for a little while, like Elebits. I played Elebits once, I had fun while I played it. But so far I really don't use my Wii anymore. I'm just waiting for SSBB to come out, I guess. On the topic of SSBM glitches and Soul Calibur 2: Soul Calibur just sucks. And button mashing gets you NOWHERE in Smash. I was actually able to beat my friends every once in a while my first time playing SC2 without even knowing the controls. They weren't competitive players or anything, but they at least actually played the game and knew stuff about it. Of course in any half-decent game though, button-mashing's effectiveness at beginning levels of playing is irrelevant to what the game is like at a higher level, because button mashing should become obsolete fast, or something is wrong. I tried getting competitive with SC2 because I thought it would be cool, but it's really bad. Wavedashing isn't a glitch; it's only logical that when you airdodge into the ground, your momentum will make you slide, and how far you slide depends on the angle you airdodged, how close you were to the ground, and your character's traction. People used to think they had a name for the animation dealing with wavedashing because with the debug menu, your character's animation says "landfallspecial" when you wavedash. But this animation is used for many other things, so it's not possible to determine how much the developers knew of wavedashing before hand. I'm sure they realized that airdodging into the ground would make you slide - the developers should know a lot about the game. Nobody knows if they intended for people to incorporate it into their game. But! The important thing is that it adds a lot of depth to the game, and it's awesome. L cancelling is DEFINITELY not a glitch. It was in SSB64, and Nintendo even taught you how to do it on their old Smash website. Also in Melee they improved it, making it less broken because it only cuts half of your lag frames instead of ALL, which was a bit ridiculous. But in Melee, L-cancelling works like this: If you are in the lag of an aerial A attack and you press L within 6 frames of activating your lag animation (hitting the ground), the lag animation is cut in half. That means it had to be specifically programmed to happen under those circumstances. Also they had to make a whole new animation where half the frames are cut away for each aerial A attack (except G&W's back air, which can't be L cancelled). I just like games like Smash and Street Fighter that have a lot of depth, and you can keep practicing and practicing to get better. My game is constantly evolving; I can watch videos of my own matches to see things I can work on, both technical skill and bad habits. And I can look for things to take advantage of that my opponent does, disrupting his game and forcing him to change and get better while he is always doing the same to me. It's not about being better than other people, it's about everyone bringing their game to a higher level so it's more fun.

It is funny how people keep on seeing that there was an argument about items, then think they are bringing something new to the table with "there is no right way to play the game" when that's EXACTLY what I've been saying the whole time. I had to reiterate the point a million times just for it to get acknowledged by like one person. I'm glad that you agree with me though; it's just dumb that you assume that everyone in the argument was trying to say that their way is the only way to play. That was Atmuh. I argued AGAINST that.

Haha! That happens to my friends who have Diablo also. Just a couple weeks ago a few of my friends started playing Diablo seriously again and one of them somehow managed to break 2 of the Diablo discs in one day at different times, and he's like never broke a CD before. And my other friend has gone through four or five sets.

ZOMG YOU DIDNT PLAY WITH ITEMS DID YOU?!! THATS NOT TEH ONE AND ONLY TRUE WAY TO PLAY MELEE!!!! i will not rest until everyone plays smash bros the exact same way i do go ahead and argue with me lololol

Just so people don't get the wrong idea (which like everyone in this thread who replied to me has), I was NOT arguing for what is the way the game is supposed to be played. I was being told by Atmuh that playing without items is wrong, which implies that items on is how smash is supposed to be played. In response, I am saying that there is no one way to play Melee. Everyone should play it whichever way they like. I know! Are you going? I'm up for a money match if we meet each other.

You can only get so good at poker. Luck still plays a huge part, which sucks. Fighting games are not like Poker. Neither is Chess. Why can't randomness be present in Street Fighter and Chess to determine who is the best, but it can be in Smash? This is getting old, just face it - items aren't good for tournaments/competitive play. Doesn't mean you and your friends can't use them. Doesn't mean items aren't great for having a blast with your friends at a party. Oh, and to the guy who's trying to start something about supers in Brawl for tournaments or whatever. Nobody knows exactly how those things work yet. If it's just an item, it will most likely be turned off with the other ones. Haha Kirby's super is awesome.

trolls lol It's too bad you wont back that up though. I'd like to see you go to a tournament and own these little kiddies with the star rod. I'm sure any one of them would gladly money match you with items on for over $100. lololol now here's the part where you make an excuse about why you won't do it. awww, the poor baby is scared to money match a little kiddie.

Ok first of all, nobody who plays competitively plays Hyrule. That stage is horrible. The main stages played competitively are Final Destination, Dreamland, Battlefield, Yoshi's Story, and Pokemon Stadium. And then we have this crap: You really must not be putting much thought into this...just think about this for a second. If two masters of the game are playing each other - two people who BOTH try to be as good as humanly possible - then it isn't about "well a good player can play against anything." They are going to want to fight a FAIR match so that they can determine who the winner is without knowing that the person who won only won because of sheer luck with items. This doesn't make sense. Can you clarify what randomness they had in mind before items and crazy stages? SSB has a wonderful balanced system of fighting. On top of that basic system, you can add items and crazy stages which just make the game chaotic and everything. Thanks for reading my posts. Really, thanks. I guess you didn't even read the big text I put in, so I'll explain this again: I'm not saying everyone should play without items! I've said this before, and tried to make it very clear. I am being told to "stop being a baby and turn on items." Remember my first post in this argument? I responded to that with this: Moving on... As I have said before, I'm completely fine knowing that people play with items. I am not trying to force my way of playing on people who play casually. You play with items and have more fun? Good for you! I'm glad that you are enjoying the game too. I play competitively, where items have no place. I have fun without items, and we both have fun. Again, you really must have not read my posts at all. I never said there was one single way to play the game. In fact, I said the opposite. Right at the beginning of my first post. And in big letters in the second one. And a few more times throughout my posts. I've been trying to make that clear enough, but apparently I'm failing. What? Items are part of the game, so is turning them off. Again, I'm not saying my way is the only way to play the game.--------- Ugh...I think I'm going to stop quoting every little thing to respond now. This takes too long. Onto Akaisen's post: Exactly. Maybe this guy is better at wording it then I am, but this guy is addressing the huge misconception here. Wormguy's post starts out more or less saying that whether items or on or off, the good people generally win and the bad people generally lose. This is true, but remember we're talking competitive Smash here. Competitive...competing. All the top players in tournaments are very close in skill, and items would totally decide the matches. Not good. Takes the fun out of playing competitively. No matter how much each of them practices, there is still a huge factor of luck. When someone has a problem with messing up certain moves, or doesn't have good combos, they can fix that with practice. But no matter how much you practice, you can't do anything about your opponent literally getting lucky with items. It's...yeah. Refer to Akaisen's post. Then he says it's no big deal that items spawn rapidly, and a crate exploding on your head is solved as simply as dodging away. Maybe for psychics, lol. You don't have enough time to dodge. Now the next part you write about, wormguy, is important. There is a misunderstanding about me saying items throw off the balance of the game. I should have made this more clear. You are saying that each item has its own strengths and weaknesses, so you just have to learn about each item and be able to use it effectively. That's reasonable, but that's not why I'm saying it throws off the balance of the game. It throws off the balance of the game because they randomly give huge advantages to players. Think of someone like Samus who is already balanced to have projectiles. She sacrifices for projectiles, while Marth on the other hand sacrifices projectiles for other things. So what if a Marth is fighting a Samus, and a really good projectile appears next to the Marth? Wow, what a jip for the Samus, huh? Marth doesn't sacrifice anything for projectiles while Samus does, and yet here is Marth with a better projectile than Samus, still not sacrificing anything for it. Now you might be saying "Well I know I'm good in my group of players. No matter what items they get I can still beat them because I'm that much better." But you don't realize how close the meta game is in tournaments. Just trust me, it really really makes a difference there. Now the next thing you say is pretty important so I'm gonna quote it: So you agree that putting items in Chess is a no-no. Now you say this isn't the same thing with Smash Bros. because it's frigg'n Smash Bros. Trust me, I know where your coming from. I know Melee is really fun to get four people together with all items on with crazy stages and just have fun with all the chaos. But Melee is ALSO able to be played competitively. Underneath all the items and crazy stages that make Melee so fun for certain people, there is a beautiful fighting system. That's why there are neutral stages, and the option to turn items off. It's for people who want to play that way. To play like competitive Chess players play Chess, or the way professional Street Fighter players play Street Fighter. Street Fighter is a great comparison because it is also a fighting game, and you can probably agree that items would be ridiculous to add to Street Fighter for the competitive players, just like it would be with Chess.Hmm...I might get to some of the other posts later. I hope we have reached an agreement though, wormguy. I respect that you like to play with items, and I would never want to force you to change the way you play.

Sorry. First of all, certain characters DO naturally have items/projectiles, but these characters are meant to have the items they have, and were taken into the consideration of the balance of the game. "Will I slash you with the beam sword?" That's pretty much saying "Am I going to use a close range attack?" Only certain characters were designed to be able to pose the question, "Will I attack you close range or use a projectile?" Items are COMPLETELY random. So are the crates that drop out of nowhere and tend to drop right on one player's head. I hear people say this all the time; items are part of the game, and you're taking them out. Now, try to be open minded about this. Items throw off the balance of the game. BADLY. Does this matter for people who play casually and don't care? NO. So these people can play with items - it makes the game more fun for them. I'm perfectly fine with that. More power to them. But Melee is able to be played like a party game, AND a competitive fighter. Listen:Items were put into the game. So was the option to turn them off. This isn't rocket science, folks. People can play casually or seriously. Items throw off the balance of the game, that's a fact. Some people don't like this, and they have good reason, for the way they play. Remember what I said about the Chess players? This is ridiculous. I mean if they made a version of Chess that had lots of fun random things that happened, some people would like it more than regular Chess. There are a lot of people who are very competitive with Chess though, so obviously there would be people who play regular Chess, and people who play chaotic Chess. That should be fine with everyone. You can choose which way you wish to play. But for the chaotic Chess players to demand that chaotic Chess be the only way to play is outrageous! Why would they want to ruin it for the people who play competitively? You can't always counter the item's effect correctly. Crates randomly fall on people's heads. Also, like I said earlier, certain items with certain characters completely throw off the balance of the game. Marth for instance has no projectiles, but for a reason. His attacks have incredible range, and he has really good priority. In terms of balance, he sacrifices projectiles for something else. If two Marth players who have practiced everything they could and had all the best combos for every single situation memorized and everything, a ray gun or something just being randomly handed to one of them is ridiculous. Items are completely random, and it's not a matter of having to be good enough to deal with them. Go give a grandmaster of Chess a version of this chaotic chess with random crap that happens and say "Hey, if you're actually good you'd be able to deal with the randomness." It doesn't work like that.

sup but seriously, the game can be played 2 different ways. i dont see why that's so hard to accept. items are in the game, so is the option to turn them off. im fine knowing that some people play the game different than the way i do, and use items and crazy stages. im glad they are enjoying the game. you're the one whos saying "NO EVERYONE MUST PLAY THE WAY I DO" so who's the baby? lolz to put this into perspective, imagine a couple grandmasters or something playing chess ultra-competitively. now imagine a new type of chess where completely random things that you can't control happen, like certain pieces suddenly getting different characteristics, or something like that. you just cant play that way competitively. sure the new chess would be fun for people who just want to mess with the game, but imagine it from the competitive player's perspective. ok you might want to think about this a little more. look, the goal of this game is to knock your opponent off the stage. usually a good place to start is hitting him. BUT! there's a problem: he doesn't want you to hit him, and in fact, he wants to hit YOU. so it's not as simple as just running up and hitting your opponent with whatever you want, right? you at first might want to say "alright, i want to hit him, so im gonna run up there and mash A." but if he knows that's coming, he can easily counter this, instead of just doing the same thing as you. so let's recap: the goal is to knock you're opponent off the stage, and you're going to want to start by hitting him. but hitting him isn't so easy, is it? surprising. in order to land a hit on him, you're going to have to OUT MINDGAME HIM. you can make him think you're just going to run in with a dash attack, but really you've already got a counter set up for his counter. and then another aspect is this: when you land a hit on your opponent, you can COMBO into something else. so these two things generally dictate how much damage you can do to your opponent: how often you beat him in mindgames and how well you take advantage of winning the mindgame by following up with combos. obviously when pros play, the mindgames are much more intricate then just counters for dash attacks. and they have combos memorized for almost all situations, and are always improving their combo game to best take advantage of anytime they win a mindgame. so the point is, when the two players are having a mind game, trying to land a hit, eventually one person will get hit. and they got hit for one of two reasons: they either messed up what they were trying to do (like failing the execution of a move) or they LOST the mindgame. WHAT?! you mean they can't just tell their opponent the reason they're winning because they got lucky? wtf no johns?!?! yes, they got beat fair and square. "but what about the other option?" you might ask. "if my opponent only landed a hit on me because i messed up, then just got more lucky then me! that's not fair!" look, tubby. it's like this: how often you mess up is dictated by how much you practice. why would someone ever practice in the first place? other than experimenting to find new things, it's to be consistent with what they can do. so they don't mess up as often. if someone practices more than you, then you can't complain about them being more lucky then you. luck has nothing to do with it. it's like a person who doesn't really play piano complaining that it isn't fair how much better dhsu is than them. he practices more, so he's better. now if two people who play competitively have to play with items on, that completely ruins the fairness. what happens if at the end of a close match, the match is ended because a crate dropped on someone's head? when someone has practiced their combos to perfection, having certain combos prepared for every situation, is it fair that random items or random things in the stage ruin their combos? we play our we, you play yours. why do people who play casually want everyone who plays competitively to play with items and chaotic stages? that's kind of greedy. you want the game to be ruined for the entire tournament scene, just so you can be happy knowing that everyone in the world plays the game the way you do? oh well, doesn't matter becaues it's not happening. also wtf is with this hyrule crap haha hyrule sucks

lolol you keep talking about how your friends think you would do good in tournaments because your ness is too good, but you don't know. why dont you just go to a tournament and find out? its fun