I've always been sort of afraid to assert this claim, but you nailed everything I love about this series versus other fighting franchises. It's easily the one I've spent the most time with in my gaming life, and I have owned other fighter games and enjoyed them. But it's definitely Smash Bros. that I and my two brothers and our friends always go back to.

I've owned every iteration of SSB and loved them all, whereas I played SFIV for about 2 hours and haven't touched it since.

I played the first game, didn't own Melee, and got interested in Brawl competitively. Brawl was more popular in my area than other games, but once the genre began its resurgence in 2008 I realized how slow Brawl is. To be fair I never saw much competitive Melee (which some had liken to high-level Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 in terms of execution requirements) and I still consider the series to be fighting games.

While I'm not against simplifying controls and simple mode, I do wish developers would do more to teach newcomers about inputs and tactics, even things like how to do a shoryuken motion. I think a lot of people get the wrong idea that you MUST master 1-frame link combos to succeed; while they obviously help, a solid understanding of space control and mind games can make up for bad exectuion. But a list of combos with no explanation of why they are important to learn doesn't help that. Virtua Fighter, a game with as simple a control scheme as Smash yet is the hardest fighter to master, has had a real tutorial mode since the PlayStation 2 era. What's wrong with teaching people how to play the game right?

@Hoadley - You are absolutely right. In fact, my second favorite fighting game was Blazblue:Continuum Shift. The tutiorials in the BlazBlue games are spectacular in comparison to most other games, and I mean that sincerely. The level at which I can play Blazblue is far higher than my ability to play Marvel vs Capcom or Street Fighter simply because of how well they taught me the mechanics and combo system.

Good write-up.
 

LITTLE bit irked by the last snipe at the end. "Big boy" pants? I play any level in Smash with the items on, and I do so proudly. It's still my own fault when I lose. To me, items and level design are part of what gives Smash some of its optional depth. It's that optional complexity that is something most fighters don't have.

You can view items/level design as a "cheap" element just for thrills and fun (which is most certainly IS), or you can look at them as another challenge to overcome in being a better player. To me, the best players at Smash know the mechanics, have the reflexes, and can overcome obstacles when the odds are against them AND take advantage when opportunity smiles on them. There ARE some items that can certainly be cheap, but skilled players will still counter them despite the stacked odds. I guess I enjoy the challenge.

Of course, this is all a matter of opinion, I'm just illustrating that items and actual level design don't dumb the game down, they add options. And it's those OPTIONS - letting everyone play the way they want - that is part of why I love Smash so much. No other fighter I know has near as many different ways to play.

I play SSBB with friends (I'd love to play it with more serious players but the online is sorely lacking and up until next month I'll have been stuck in the middle of nowhere), and I play SSF4 and MvC3 online for casual competition.

That said, NEITHER of the latter have adequate tutorials. Do you know what the fighting game community's excuse seems to be for a lack of tutorial?

"Anyone who actually CARES will know to look up our online in-depth strategy guides to learn the game. Oh, wait, they already know how to play."

It's a serious problem, and it's that elitist attitude and barrier to entry that is severely holding fighters back from the level of popularity and casual fun they used to have.

Eddy, you're not the only one who thought that way. A few years ago Brawl was one of the games in the Evolution fighting game tournament, the largest fighting game event in the country. While the SSB community played Brawl like it did with Melee (no items), Evo allowed items on the reasoning that Brawl was a new game, and thus items shouldn't be banned unless there was proof that items were broken within Brawl. The Smash community didn't like the rules and protested the event. 

The whole event was before I was interested in fighters competitively so the issue was probably more complicated than that, but items weren't allowed in Brawl tournaments except for a few special occassions, and Evo never had an official Smash tournament afterwards.

That's a major bummer, Chris, 'cause I agree with Eddy. None of the items or levels in Brawl are "broken." But one of the reasons I quit playing online was because everyone wanted to play on Final Destination on the grounds that it was "fair," when in reality, it was only fair to characters who emphasize straight attacks--hence the reason why, when I was making my rounds at the tournaments, I had to fight through dozens of Marth's and Roy's. That got old really fast...

Brawl's netcode is horrible anyway, isn't it? But yeah even though flat, nongimmicky stages are more fair they do favor certain playstyles, though every fighting game mechanic is going to favor one group of characters over another. When I used to play I did random select between Final Destination, Battlefield, Yoshi's Island (Brawl), Smashville, Lylat Cruise, Delfino Square, and Pokemon Stadium (Melee). I know Delfino Square isn't a true Neutral stage and Lylat might not be anymore: That's why if you play other fighters you don't have to worry about things like this :)

That's true. But I think Siri's point (as well as mine) is that that is what makes it so great, what makes it stand out. In short, I enjoyed worrying about that, haha!

I agree that smash brothers is the most accessible fighting game out there and should be praised, but professional level play in that thing is requireing of a pretty heavy and no less impossible level of button dexterity and cheap asshattery as any other fighting game, so no matter how good I got at it I still wouldn't want to go pro because I dislike the kind of mentality that 'pros' use when playing games. Way too much focus on exploiting a games systems over being good at the game's basic fundimental playstyle.

I like Smash, but it just feels like a foreign language when compared to all the other 2D fighters available. I just think that edge-guarding is a lame way to take out a character. I still have no idea why a stadium is floating in midair anyway. Such comical combat is too hard to for me take seriously. Even if they're Nintendo characters, they should at least beat other characters up with a proper knockdown.

I also think that the technical skills involved in the game are too difficult to describe. It took a lot of dedication for me to own people with Toon Link. I can't even explain which situations I prefer to use the jumping backwards A slash in. I'd have to write an entire book on my tactics in the game. Compare that to the much simpler tactics involved in interrupting a jumping hard kick + sweep combo in Street Fighter 4.

I guess I'm too much into old school fighters, but I like knowing that my characters don't have to worry about complex double-jumping and counter-atttack patterns. Sorry, but I prefer to stay a simpleton.

Smash is most accessible as far as general gameplay goes, but as soon as you want to go competitive it's no less easy to play as Street Fighter. In some cases even less. I also think you're wrong on the popularity. Smash was for many years the absolute most popular fighting game around WITHOUT the traditional fighting game community supporting it. Like everyone's mom and their dogs have played Melee. It's because SF4 made 2d fighting come back, and because Brawl divided its own fanbase, that Smash is now "forgotten".

Another small point you're wrong on is that "Smash is the original cross-over game". The idea of a cross-over game was explored (way before these games were made) on the S/NES. Search Konami's Wai Wai World or Battletoads & Double Dragon. Then King of Fighters '94 came in.... 1994. It merged SNK's previous Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury-worlds together with a new one. It's true that these weren't actual pioneers. Instead the Capcom VS-series also started way before Smash had even been conceptualized with X-Men: Children of the Atom in 1994 and X-Men VS Street Fighter in 1996-1998 depending on the platform. Steady pace all the way to the start of the new millenium with Capcom vs SNK and Marvel vs Capcom 2 before the long drought.

Back to Smash. I have a lot of fond memories with the game but the more you delve into it competitively the more you realize how terrible Smash community is. I don't want to badmouth it too bad but just think of the list of banned techniques/stages/items/things the game has and it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The fact that the executive producer/developer himself thinks that the game wasn't meant to be competitive should be enough said.

As an ender I do agree that traditional fighting games should work on their accessibility. Blazblue's tutorial mode was awesome, I just wish every fighting game had that and some more. Virtua Fighter 4 had hands down the best tutorial system created. Too bad the game didn't sell that well and didn't have the star power to change people's mind in the first place. Even after that Smash will have something that traditional fighting games can never accomplish without becoming something that they aren't... non-traditional.