My Thoughts on Smash Fest

Well as a few of you asked, I'll post what little I pulled from Smash Fest. I arrived on Wednesday evening at 4:30PM and waited in line until 9:17PM. The game kiosk was laid out in such a way that you couldn't see people playing even when you were next in line. Total bummer. The group in front of me was the last call and I left without getting to play. I watched their match before leaving (I was going to see SOMETHING for all that time spent there!). Before I left, I was given a wrist band that would let me cut to the front of the line on Saturday!

So on Saturday, I flashed my wrist band and I was sent to the "waiting area". It was the 3DS Smash tethered to an employee in a wheelchair. There was no line there. We (other people with wrist bands) got to play the 3DS until we were called up to play the Wii U version. I took over someone's game as they left to play the Wii U. It was Sonic versus some other characters on the Golden Plains stage. Getting used to the controls was odd. I hope we can change them in the full version. I'd like A to be the jump button on the 3DS.

My actual match was as Sonic again on the Reset Bomb forest stage. The stages were fun to fight on. Golden Plains has walk-off edges, but isn't a full scroller. The screen moves left and right on occasion. Get coins and become absurdly powerful. Reset Bomb was a bit more standard. Not much to say about it. No absurd obstacles.


Sonic the Hedgehog is as fast as ever. I didn't use him much in Brawl, but I hadn't seen much footage for him before then so I gave him a shot. A few of his moves got changed, but other than that, I don't have much of an opinion on him. I can't say if he got better or worse.

My Wii U FFA was as Mega Man on Battlefield.

Mega Man seems to have some good zoning potential and a lot of situational ranged and melee tools at his disposal. His rate of fire for some weapons is very slow though so his keep-away game may not be as good as I'd like it to be. It's interesting to be able to lodge Metal Blades into the stage to distract your opponent or have a ready-to-use item laying around.

I won the match, but Little Mac got one of the Final Smashes before I got mine. Giga Mac doesn't care about your puny shields. He one-two punched right through mine. Mega Man's FS has a large activation range on it and will pull you in from a distance from the actual hole. Watch out for that.

Overall, the game was still a little floaty but like everyone seems to say, it's faster than Brawl and slower than Melee. That isn't a bad thing.

I'll answer any other questions as best I can.

Holy shit, I can't believe you stood in line for like five hours and then couldn't play til days later. That's some dedication. Thanks for the info, Kaze! It's interesting to hear about the 3DS version, especially the stages because so much of the info that's out has focused on the Wii U version. Golden plains seems like a cool stage; how exactly do the coins work? They increase your knockback/damage? Is there a limit? Can opponents knock them out of you? As for the Wii U version, I know there's only so much information you can glean from playing a single game, but it's good to hear about nonetheless! Mega Man sounds like a really interesting character and since this isn't the final version of the game, maybe they will increase his firing speed! Do they listen much to fans' feedback?

Get 100 coins in Golden Plains (and they're all over the place and respawn) and you go gold. They can't be knocked out of you and they carry over between lives. You get a set increase in knockback. You also don't flinch from attacks if I recall correctly.

Awesome, yeah i heard the smash fests got pretty busy. thats awesome that you got to play it though. So the 3DS controllers are kinda hard to play on?

The Wii U version used Pro Controllers so the button layout was the same as the 3DS. Still took me a long time to get used to them.