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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Tournaments are back!
Sterica
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
Recent News
June 11th: The Hero and Banjo-Kazooie announced as new challengers.
April 17th: Joker released in version 3.0. Stage Builder added in 3.0.
December 7th: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate released worldwide!
The next generation of Super Smash Bros. is here! For the uninitiated, Smash Bros. is a fighting game, only it's got some platforming elements and the goal is to knock your opponent off the stage instead of depleting their HP. Oh, and it stars some of Nintendo's most famous characters alongside a handful of third-party legends. The game can get quite deep, offering a ton of options for play so you can tailor things the way you like it. You can have a chaotic eight-player battle with just pokeballs spawning, or a super-serious 1v1 affair. After nineteen years since its humble debut on the Nintendo 64, Super Smash Bros. has become one of the most beloved franchises out there, being both a sweet fighting game and awesome homage to all things Nintendo. And now we're getting the ULTIMATE Smash experience, with literally every character in the franchise making a return.
The Golden Smash Rule: Do not bring up competitive vs. casual bullshit. I do not understand why people think a game can only be played one way, and that the one way just coincidentally happens to be their way. Regardless, it will not be tolerated here. Complaining about arrogant tournament players or filthy casual scrubs will net you an infraction. This was something that plagued the old Brawl threads, and the modern Smash threads have been refreshingly clean of all that garbage.
Got all that? If so, then read on and...
Get Ready to Smash
Smash Ultimate brings back Omega versions of stages, in addition to a Battlefield type layout for them all. You can also turn off stage hazards on stages now, which will likely lead to a MUCH healthier map pool for the tournament scene than previous games. For further shenanigans, the game has a new feature called Stage Morph, which has you swapping between two stages in the middle of a match. You can either pick the two stages OR have the second stage to swap to be random. In addition, you can adjust the time between morphs OR have it swap at random periods.
There are way the hell too many stages returning, with an absurd 100+ stages in total. So I'm just going to list new ones. Stages that require a DLC purchase will have the required DLC (in parentheses).
Dracula's Castle
Great Plateau Tower
Moray Towers
New Donk City
Mementos (Joker DLC)
Yggdrasil's Altar (The Hero DLC)
Spiral Mountain (Banjo-Kazooie DLC)
Everyone is coming back?
Yes.
Everyone?
Yes. Even weird edge cases like Toon Link and Young Link will be two distinct characters.
Any major changes?
Air dodge now gives way more movement, making it valuable for mobility and even recovery. Also, dodging has been nerfed, as it now how properties similar to stale moves, where dodging too much in a short period reduces the intangibility frames. Also, perfect shielding has been nerfed, as you have to release your shield right as the incoming attack lands. This gives the move significantly more risk, and probably more skill-based too. They have also done a bit of tweaking to make it so there are few "easy grab combos" so a lot of grab combos have harder follow-ups. Things like repeatedly grabbing the ledge also have hard limits so stalling and obnoxious, overly defensive tactics are less viable.
Final Smashes are being changed to be shorter lived. So Final Smashes where you control the character have been changed to cinematic attacks. Also, a bunch of UI tweaks, like showing Robin's charges remaining or ROB's fuel gauge. Damage also show percents now, which have always existed but were just clipped off. In a more interesting change, there is an option for a Final Smash meter, where you can build it up in gameplay and unleash a Final Smash when it's full. Final Smashes done this way WILL be weaker, so it's not quite as good as the Smash Ball.
What the heck is an Echo Fighter?
It's basically their official name for characters like Dark Pit and Lucina: fighters that are basically model-swaps of pre-existing fighters. They DO have differences from the original character their moveset is based on, but it's so small that in some cases they may still count as the same character for the purposes of tier listings. How different Echo Fighters are from their template character is...not consistent. Daisy and Peach are very similar whereas Chrom is not a straight rip of Roy since he has Ike's Up Special and lacks the sweet and sour spots on his sword.
How are unlocks done?
Every ten minutes of Vs. battles result in a new challenger. There are several ways to cheat the timer so you can play a bunch of one stock matches over and over, but you can find those everywhere. Adventure and Classic modes are alternate ways to unlock characters, albeit slower. But also less tedious so take your pick.
All stages are unlocked from the start, so have at it.
Are custom moves back?
With the exception of Miis, custom moves are gone. Even Palutena has had her moveset condensed.
Will Gamecube controllers return?
Not only is a special edition of the game available with a cube controller and adapter, but you can also use the old ones from Smash 4. It's about fifty bucks for an adapter and controller. In fact, I've heard that some other games on Switch are compatible with the controller, so all the better.
Are trophies gone?
Yes, as it was eating into development time too much. Spirits, which are a weird combination of stickers from Brawl and custom equipment from 4. Basically official artwork of characters that you can equip to your character for buffs. You can use them in multiplayer if you so desire, and there's a whole mode dedicated to unlocking more. They also play a role in the game's adventure mode, World of Light.
Ultimate Announce Trailer/Inkling Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Gt42kVgCwVeteran Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YmIl3jA758Ridley Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x0NdTsmWv8Simon & Richter Belmont Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VrbkoWUyIgKing K. Rool Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-gfC1upmoAIsabelle Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijp5FeOE_YwKen & Incineroar Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpuBNp27jVwJoker Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4PG9qx9x2sThe Hero Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pupll3ON-WABanjo & Kazooie Reveal Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyJ4djjQOr0 
Sterica on
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For Ultimate we're trying to have regular tournaments, in both casual and competitive flavors. You can always click the banner to go to the sign-up sheet for the next tournament, and details will be below.
edit: Which is fine. It’s not my way but also not meant to start any debates. It’s just crazy the variety of ways people enjoy this series. I remember hearing about a group that would adjust the item drops rates to be a high amount of gust bellows and enjoy the ensuing madness.
Over a hundred stages and a lot of people are going to play, what, six?
Steam: TimIsOnSteam
Battle.net: TimIsOnBnet#1745
Switch: SW-7012-4788-7410
PSN: TimIsOnTheNet
They are also going to go all in on tiers again.
On the flip-side, a tournament-level player is going to sink so many more hours into this game than the average player that they're getting way more "value" out of it. It's a weird dichotomy, to be sure, and even though I don't understand it I certainly respect it.
Finally pre-ordered this game and am very excited. I can't believe it's so close!
Let's Plays of Japanese Games
maaaaaaaaan, so many new good mixes.
Oh and just putting in OG Simon's theme from CV4 was the right thing to do.
Like, tiers are just a snapshit of the meta. It’s not even a rule or anything with baring on how games are played, and you don’t even need a lot of smash knowledge to make a decent list. Just get a ton of data on tournaments and you can make a tier list better than anything on Reddit. Tier lists aren’t just tournament performance reflections, but close enough*.
*
With the sheer amount of content they’re cramming into this game, I hope everyone reaches out of their comfort zones and tries out different ways/characters to play
Well, from my perspective, for the first time outside of Project M, the competitive community doesn't know what to do with all the stages that are going to be in ultimate, which is complicated by the fact that we don't really know what happens when the hazard toggle is going to be flipped for a lot of stages. There's a lot of stages which would Very Definitely Be Legal if they didn't transform, like Pokémon Stadium and Kalos Pokémon League, but there's also a lot of stages like Delfino Plaza, Halberd, and Rainbow Cruise which ride the edge of legality, depending on stuff like blastzones, as Delfino and Halberd were banned because of their incredibly low ceilings.
This hasn't stopped people from joking about people who would still gentleman to Smashville because it was The Least Offensive Stage in Smash 4.
This is extremely important.
Man, all these great remixes make me real sad that Squaresoft stuff is so weirdly and sharply limited. I’d pay good money for a Big Bridge song here.
But also, Crocodile Cacophony.
N.B. has a 19 second intro, then it kicks in. Also, for those not familiar, the Black Mages are (were?) a prog-metal band including Nobuo Uematsu and (IIRC) mostly other current/former Square music staff, that almost exclusively did FF covers. This happens to be one of my favorites off their first album. The guitar solo at the apex of their version of Dancing Mad might be my favorite thing Uematsu ever composed.
Edit: or either of these two, since it has the OG Simon's theme from SCIV?
Cellar:
Treasury Room (25 second intro):
Does Snakey Chantey count? It’s a bit of a cheat since it was a Gangplank Galleon remix in DKC2.
This isn't the official music, but here's all the original Castlevania songs Ultimate will draw from:
Ah, none of the three made it.
They have good picks from C1-C3 (Aquarius!), but it's a shame Heart of Fire and Walking The Edge from C1 didn't make it. I would've rather had them than Nothing To Lose or Black Night. Incidentally, whoever named the music tracks for Castlevania 1 was on fire;
Also, pleasantly surprised to see Lament of Innocence' main theme in there. Wasn't expecting that. SotN has so many great tracks it's hard to say which should and should not make the cut, but I think it's a shame Wandering Ghosts (the Colosseum theme) and Waltz of Pearls (Orlok's Quarters theme) aren't in there. Given how much they seem to like Spanish guitar at Nintendo I'm kind of surprised they didn't pick Wandering Ghosts.
Its basically free money for them. Its baffling.
Clip of data dump of explanation text for squad strike and smashdown modes
Importantly there seems to be an option that the next fighter will enter seamlessly on ko, for squad strike
So intense and ominous for a Kirby game.
Steam: TimIsOnSteam
Battle.net: TimIsOnBnet#1745
Switch: SW-7012-4788-7410
PSN: TimIsOnTheNet
Like the fact that Lady Morag is in the game.
Best track in SotN right here, definitely bummed they didn't include it. Doesn't even need a remix really.
A question for you from the last thread:
What are the tourney rules about changing your character? Can you change after any round, or only after a round loss? Does changing a Mii's moveset count as changing character, or if not, when in the selection process does that happen? Thanks!
Sidebar: Anyone figure out yet whether download or cartridge gives faster load times?
Game 1: Blind Pick (Pick whomever; don’t tell opponent)
Game 2 (You Win Game 1): You pick whichever character and tell opponent. Then they pick.
Game 2 (You lost Game 1): They pick then you.
Every game after is the same as 2. Miis are legal and you can freely swap movesets
I’m assuming you have to tell opponent moveset after game 1?
We may just pre-register the moveset in future games