Smash Bros Direct 8.8.18: This is truly the ULTIMATE Smash Bros experience.
This post is rather "image heavy" so give it a few mins for it to load all the images! <3
Nintendo announced this highly anticipated Direct centered on Smash Bros Ultimate just after Melee pro player Leffen had gotten a crushing victory over previously finalist Armada, during the Super Smash Bros Melee Grand Finals at EVO. We were lowkey expecting this but only after a few days from EVO? That took us by surprise since most companies DO their showings at EVO and not after them! But the fact that we were struck by a direct announcement which was only going to air after a few days, during such a hyped and rejoiced moment at EVO, hit us hard. The crowd was wild and expectant. Nintendo had created a spark of intrigue and rumours that would only be quelled by Nintendo's own doing... And boy did it hit us hard with this Direct's content... Here's how.
At the same instant the countdown to the start of the Direct ended, We're struck with an odd but recognizable character trailer. We know what we're getting into but we don't know what character is getting in at such early phase of the trailer.
All we see at first is a creepy castle. Rain is downpouring from the gray clouded sky like if it was trying to bring it down by turning it into a miserable little pile of secrets... We then can observe a creepy, big and bulky figure under a raincoat, standing in front of the castle and then delving inside it. The trailer then cuts to Luigi...? who's misfortune seems to follow even through this unrecognizable place. He's being followed by mummies, floating medusa heads and many other spectres who haunt him until he seems to find himself upon a rather menacing and creepy one... In fact, Luigi encounters Death itself.
If you know a least a little bit about death's personifications on video games, you can imagine what would the outcome of this encounter be... Luigi being all scaredy cat and such and not a high enough level for him to even look at Death's flaming eyes and stay his ground, passes out upon realizing his situation... And literally 3 seconds later, Luigi dies by Death's scythe as it takes hold of his poor ol' plumber's soul.
But not without any price to pay. Just right in the moment where Death is contemplating Luigi's soul, it's jaw is smashed by a very familiar flail whip coming from the big and tall bulky figure we had seen before.
After delivering this massive critical hit, the bulky figure reveals itself after a suspenseful close up as the one and only SIMON BELMONT as if it wasn't obvious, from the Castlevania Series.
BUT BELIEVE ME, THERE'S MORE.
Just as the trailer unfolds and we get a better look at Simon's moves and overall gameplay with his versatile chain whip, another cinematic hits us. As Simon grows weary and damaged from battling Dracula (Who is now a new boss in the game!!!), Belmont finds himself in a position where he's ready to take the last hit from the vampire but an unexpected blood related savior comes as a new fighter to save his hide. The one and only:
Richter Belmont joins the fray as an Echo fighter or a rather well put clone of Simon Belmont and I think it's an addition that really doesn't hurt the game in any way, they would just be adding 1 character with a lot of skins if you look at it from a certain angle(?) but it's a nice addition to the cast nonetheless, Simon and Richter Belmont represent the old glory days of the SNES when Castlevania was popular on them, although Symphony of the Night got some love too with Alucard as an Assist Trophy!. Take a look at all of the screenshots!
Take a look at the Smash Bros x Castlevania Trailer!
You thought that was hype? I thought that was hype.
But those were not the only strikes Masahiro Sakurai had prepared for us. Just before we can catch our breath from the last announcement, Sakurai mentions:
BOOM, MORE CHARACTERS, BABY! Although they're echo fighters (More or less, clones), the announcement of these fighters is not a bad addition at all to the roster because of how frantically these characters were asked for since their games came out. Take a look at the Honorable Shepherd Chrom from Fire Emblem: Awakening and the Phazon Tyrant Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime series!
Take a look at their Announcement Trailer!
Now let's talk a little bit about them because since there's this huge wave of Echo Fighters coming and going through the roof, I think people will start to see them more as fodder than actually unique characters on their own, which is the point of why they're actually there in the first place, so let's define a bit of what Echo Fighters are, specially Chrom and Dark Samus
Echo Fighters are what basically Lucina is to Marth and Dark Pit is to Regular Pit. Characters who are based on other characters but these new Echo Fighters have a quirk that makes them unique, they have certain moves, animations, properties and trait changes that differentiates them from their original or base counterpart. In Chrom's case specifically, we know his base or original (if that can be said anymore) counterpart is Roy, BUT if you observe and detail really hard, you can notice that he's not a Roy clone because he can be seeing using both Marth, Roy and Ike's moves as well. Meaning he is a mix of three characters into one, which seems like a great idea to me when you have a character people really want but not a lot of space to improve or improvise in terms of creativity.
Talking about Dark Samus brings a little discrepancy or a plot hole on my aforementioned argument because she can be seeing using the same moves as Samus, her Base or Original counterpart. Now, i'm sure there's some uniqueness to her moveset and animations besides her looks but it just isn't appreciated in the short timespan of the trailer.
Something other worth mentioning while we're on the topic of Echo Fighters is that now we can sort of customize how our character selection screen looks. We can choose to either have our Regular and Echo Fighters separated or have them on top of each other so the selection screen doesn't look menacing at first sight.
VS
Stages, Items, Pokemons and More!
After the big bombs were dropped, we get to the small details, those that make smash play like smash when we're having fun with friends and by that I mean, Stages, Items and NEW GAME MODES.
For stages we get a lot of returning ones, classic stages that marked their ground on previous installments of the series. We get Melee Pokemon Stadium, Great Bay and Fountain of Dreams. As for the other installments we get Stages like Summit, Magicant, Gamer and Brinstar Depths as well. We're also told that stages will now be selected before we get to select our characters, adding on top of all these new things a new layer of strategy when it comes to choosing our characters.
We also get introduced to a new mechanic called Stage Morph where we can now choose 2 stages for one match and they will switch periodically over the match without any interruption to the actual gameplay. Here's a little video!
We also get a new look onto some new stages! First up is the new design of Battlefield which I think is absolutely amazing and really shines on the style which this new entry is trying to go for. A new Mario Odyssey stage is introduced as well, New Donk City Hall! A stage that will take us on a ride as we fight ourselves either for glory or for fun. Here you'll find some screenshots.
Music selection is no longer restricted to stages, now it's restricted to series so you actually have a bigger pool of songs to play on even a bigger pool of stages! but also, take a look at the total amount of songs in this entry!
Masahiro explains that all of the series featured on Smash Bros have left a really big mark on gaming history and that they should be honored like the icons they are. That's why there's so much work put into stages, character and music details. Since Smash Bros is a celebration of basically all of Gaming, it needs to treat these icons with respect and glory.
Chargeable Final Smashes are now an option you can turn on and off! This consist of a Final Smash "Meter" like in Street fighter where you build up energy and then release it in a rather powerful Special move. In this case, these Chargeable Final Smashes are a weaker version of the original Final Smash you can execute with the Smash ball. But for the sake of making Final Smashes more common and make the gameplay more dynamic, this is implemented. This also means you can get more than 2 final smashes in less than 10 seconds during a match, definitely setting up a really frantic gameplay!
We're also introduced to new Game modes such as Squad Strike which consists of 2 up to 5 players setting up a squad of fighters and then duking it out till the last man stands. This was also labelled by the community long before this announcement as an Iron Man (when it was only 1v1) or Crew battles when it involved at least 4 players.
Smashdown is also introduced as a new mode where at the beginning of the game you have all the roster eligible but whenever you use a character, it can't be used anymore by any of the players again, generating a new layer of mind games and strategy as the round progresses.
Classic Mode is back! This time each fighter has already a set path of opponents for it to overcome in the same familiar way it happened during past entries. But what I notice this time is that classic mode is set up as a little made up story for each and every character as they clear it.
In terms of Pokemon and Items, we get an assorted variety raging from old pokemons to new ones from the latest Pokemon Sun and moon. We also get some Fire Emblem and miscellaneous items into the fray. BUT we also get new and returning assist trophies. Check them out!
And then as the last pokemon shows up, an assist trophy interrupts the video so they can be shown as well! Take a look at characters like Zero from Megaman, Shovel Knight, Gray Fox, Krystal and many others. And last but not least, MY GOOD OLD BUDDY Rathalos from the Monster Hunter Series, who is now both a BOSS and an ASSIST TROPHY!
After all of the New Items and Assist Trophies are done being announced, Masahiro Sakurai manages to give us a little sneak peek of how the main menu of Smash Ultimate looks like BUT we also notice that there's a hidden mode which Sakurai won't tell us about yet. They sure know how to keep us on the edge of our seats, am I right? For all we know this could be a new Subspace Emissary or a new boss rush mode we don't know anything about, the possibilities and hype are endless!
And with this last sneak peek of the Main Menu, the Direct seems to come to an end and oh my god did we get a lot of content, didn't we? Let's go through it one more time!
- 4 New Characters
- A total of 103 Confirmed Stages
- A total of 900 Songs or 28 overall hours of the biggest gaming music library
- Squad Strike and Smash Down
- A Bunch of new Pokémons, Items and Assist Trophies
- A new character at the end of the Direct... WAIT WHAT?!
After Daddy Sakurai fades to black, we can hear something really really heavy walking on the ground, making the earth shake. A few seconds later we get some shots of the main Nintendo characters fighting against their respective Rivals, hinting to what's coming next. (Which are really cool, take a look!)
AND THEN BOOM BABY, DONKEY KONG IS HERE
IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS I'LL TELL YOU RIGHT NOW, THIS MEANS THAT ONLY ONE CHARACTER CAN BE THE NEXT ONE ADDED TO SMASH AND THAT CHARACTER IS
KING K. ROOL... ?
WHAT?!
People almost didn't believe the guts it took Sakurai to perform this joke for the whole Smash Community. You know because he voices King Dedede so that was basically him laughing at us, lmao.
With the King's Announcement the Direct truly ends this time and we're left with a black screen, only to think about what we've just seen. But i'll leave that thinking part up to you!
I think it's fair for me to comment on how much I like this direct and how amazing it was because of the quantity of new things announced! If this keeps up the momentum it has until it releases on December 7th of this same year, this game could probably bring the Nintendo Switch to new heights that have never ever been reached before.
Now before I disappear again into the Abyss of playing Pokémon Omega Ruby for 10 hours straight, I'd like to mention I really like Richter's design and would probably try to main him if his gameplay is as comfortable as other character's I've played as. I really really liked Chrom's and Dark Samus' Announcement as well and I know how badly they've been asked for by the community so that's really a big deal for smash and it gives the game a lot of points for the fan service. But without nothing much else to say, i'll leave you guys to comment your thoughts but not before you get a look at the King's announcement trailer down below!
Let me know what you think and what you like and don't about this Smash Bros Direct! Sound off in the comments down below!
DISCLAIMER: All of the images you've seen on this post were taken straight out of Smash Bros Ultimate Official web site or taken as screenshots from the Smash Bros Direct Youtube Video None of these images are mine in any sort of shape.
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Thanks again guys! Really appreciate it.
I skimmed through the post but all these characters are too realistic from what I imagine Super Smash Brothers to be, that's not a bad thing (actually it always had characters as much ore more realistic than those.) It's just... different?
Glad Nintendo Switch SMB is going to be this big! Nintendo is my favorite handheld company and while it's not my favorite publisher, it's still high in the list!!
They do have their bad business practices but you can't deny that sometimes they hit it out of the park with their games.
I think the big step towards these graphics happened during the last entry on Wii U and I don't blame them because all of these series have different art styles and I think it's a titanical job to put these all together in a world where they would coexist. So far i'm liking it! Chrom looks a bit off but hey i'm happy he's in!
Some of the business practices in fans POV are actually great business strategies! The good is more than the bad in their case in my opinion.
Your post is amazing , I used to play Brawl and always wanted megaman to show in, Also Gray Fox and the Belmont family are a good add :D
Thank you! I feel like Nintendo is just trying to get almost every classic character onto smash in some form or way. Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, Megaman, etc.
We really got get you posting more often! Perhaps more shorter form is your way. I hope you find some new games to be inspired by. I know a couple are having some struggling coming up with ideas still. Some of said it help to play a different genre of games.
I have to get inspired and then write immediately! Otherwise I just end up dropping my ideas... But hey, I'll get to writing in a bit!