Smash 4 will never be the game we want it to be, and that's okay.

There are just some immutable truths in the world. Nintendo wants to be and finds pride in being different, and Sakurai does not want Smash to be a competitive fighting-game. No matter how much we want Smash 4 to be the spiritual successor to Melee, it will never be. Of course, this much is obvious. There is no way to do advanced techniques like wavedashing and L-cancelling, and there is so much post-move and landing-lag. But beyond that, I'm starting to see how Sakurai is very much like the late Iwata.

Iwata once said we would be able to play DVDs on the original Wii. Then he recanted that statement, saying that we already have several DVD-players in our homes anyway. Part of the reason DVD-playback was dropped was cost; there is some licensing fee or whatever. But another reason was that Iwata, like Sakurai and Nintendo, do not want to be like everyone else. I don't know about you, but I feel this way in certain areas of my life as well; we want to feel special.

Sakurai said that if we wanted to play a competitive fighting-game that badly, we should just play a 'real' fighting-game instead, or more precisely, a game designed from the ground up around fighting one on one. He is referring to games like Street Fighter and Tekken. A lot of people did not and will not take that comment lying down.

"So he's telling us to just play something else?"

"Pretty much."

It might be viewed as a passive way to live life, but I see the wisdom in it. Why fight for and desire something that does not exist, when there exist alternatives that possess the very things we desire? I took to heart what Sakurai said, and I bought Street Fighter V, a game built from the ground up to be nothing more than a competitive one-on-one fighting-game.

Why doesn't Sakurai want Smash 4 to be a competitive fighting-game in the same breath as Street Fighter? Is it just a lack of resources? Balancing a party-game and a competitive fighting-game at the same time is a ridiculously monumental undertaking. I think it's part of the reason, but more importantly, I think Sakurai wants Smash to be as neophyte-friendly as possible, just like another creation of his: Kirby. So what can we as consumers, and players do? All we can do is whine, and how productive is that? It is not productive at all, and detrimental to our mental health. Smash 4 was not designed to be everything for everyone. It is an excellent party-game, and a bad competitive fighting-game, and that's okay.

* This blog-post was inspired by ZeRo's video titled "Let's Talk: Bayonetta Drama."

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