Released Dec 7, 2018, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Switch console is Nintendo’s ambitious title-crossover fighting game that pits against one another more than 70 characters from a vast collection of Nintendo franchises—and a few guest stars from Sega Genesis, Atari, and other popular consoles of yesteryear. Smash Bros. games have appeared on multiple Nintendo consoles dating back to the N64, but Ultimate’s claim to fame is that it includes every character that has ever been playable in any of these titles, boasting a roster of 77 characters as of this writing in February 2019, with at least four more fighters planned for release as DLC.

Super Smash Bros. was one of my favorite games on the N64, and one of only a handful that I played on the GameCube, but I had missed a couple of generations of this franchise since then, so I was overjoyed at the chance to play all the great characters that I had seen announced for more recent iterations of the game. I decided Smash Ultimate was a must-buy from the moment I watched the first trailer. Clearly I was not alone, as the game sold more than 12 million units in less than two months which, according to Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa in an article published by VentureBeat, is the fastest start to any title in Nintendo’s history.
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In addition to being a total fanboy, I also approached this game from a game designer’s perspective, and uncovered several interesting lessons in game design that we can take away from this blockbuster title. Let’s dive right into the game’s “good, bad, and ugly” characteristics, and ask ourselves what these can teach us as game designers.
 
The Good
Despite a few critical points that follow, there’s a lot to like about this game.

When I say a lot, I mean a lot. This game has extraordinary depth, especially in a genre—fighting games—not known historically for depth in single-player modes. Smash Ultimate has the most single-player content of any fighting game I’ve ever played, bar none. It’s not even close. The game includes several main game modes including Smash (a classic fighting game setup), Adventure (a story mode), and Classic (a unique set of challenges for each of the 70+ fighters in the game), any of which could hold up as a stand-alone game. On top of this, there are enough minigames, challenges, and trophies to collect that I’m beginning to doubt there’s any end to them. Completionists out there had better clear their schedules for the rest of the year. I think it’s fair to predict that most players will never run out of stuff to do.

Within the various game modes are plenty of opportunities to create customized rule sets to modify the experience to fit your skill level and desired challenge. If you’re a beginner you can set the AI opponents to a lower skill level, and as you gain mastery of the game you can crank up the difficulty. multiple game modes.

This game also hosts a high degree of randomization. Items, sound tracks, and other goodies are randomly available in the in-game shop, giving you a reason to continue to check back often to see what kinds of treasures might be up for grabs. The Spirit Board game mode presents a fun element of randomization, presenting players with randomized challenges so that every time you turn on the game you have a handful of different matches set up waiting to test your mettle (although I’ll elaborate on a drawback to this later).

I must also include a nod to the game’s sound track. The music library in this game is vast; the mixes are catchy; and, oh, the nostalgia! The game uses original sound tracks and remixes inspired by the original games from which the roster of fighters hail. Iconic themes from the Super Mario Bros. series, catchy tunes from the old NES Mega Man games, and exciting marches from Metroid titles—and hundreds more!—combine in this game to form an expansive sound track that’s sure to make players smile. I love that you can create playlists of your favorite tracks to play on demand—I’m listening to one such playlist as I write this.

Unless you’ve played every single one of the original titles that have lent elements to Smash Ultimate, you’re likely to discover some new music to enjoy. I’ve found myself whistling some new tunes that I know only from this game—even without knowing which series they’re from originally, they’re stuck in my head!
 
The Bad
In my experience, the game’s biggest weakness is the online multiplayer. In a game that’s so good for single player and local multiplayer, the online mode is basically just Smash mode against random human opponents instead of AI. The game was widely panned at launch for its matchmaking shortcomings (since patched to make it at least somewhat better) and its requirement that players pay extra for the Nintendo Online service. I can’t speak to the matchmaking issue, which affected players looking for specific types of matches using preferred sets of rules. I didn’t set a preference because I just wanted to play some fun pickup matches online—but my interest didn’t last long.

Lag is a deal-breaker in a game like this that relies on quick reflexes and the ability to adapt to the movements of other players. Sometimes one player’s poor connection can cause the entire match to grind to a stop, which could be forgiven if that was the only downside. My experience with online play has been extremely unsatisfying because the controls seem to take a hair longer to respond, and often the moves my fighter executes are not the ones I input, or they occur a full second after they would have been useful. There’s nothing like jumping out of the way of an attack after you’ve already been hit with it, knocked off the stage, and now would like to jump back in the other direction to return to the field. Instead, now your original maneuver fires instead of the jump you’re trying to execute, sending you drifting helplessly to your death. Yay.

The game offers no special rewards for its online mode—you are awarded the same currency you can get by playing in other modes. There is no special currency that you can earn or spend in online play, so the rewards are effectively the same as those you can earn elsewhere.

When the online multiplayer gameplay is undifferentiated from solo play or local multiplayer, the rewards are the same, but the responsiveness of the controls is strictly worse, there’s really no good reason to play online at all, except that otherwise you might become bored playing against the AI in single player all the time once you’ve got its moves figured out.  Add to that the fact that online mode forces you to wait to begin to play and risks random disconnections, and you’re left with an experience that falls well short of the offline mode.

Also, let’s talk about the absurd “global power scores.” These are scores that are basically like a ranking system, which are supposed to be used in matchmaking to pair players of similar skill levels. Your global power score (GSP) goes up or down whenever you win or lose an online match. When I first logged into online play my score was roughly 2 million, which seemed like a comically high number. Single matches can swing your point total by hundreds of thousands in this range, which makes every single defeat frustrating—and a defeat at the hands of lag or unresponsive controls a hair-pulling, rage-quit-worthy event.

My advice—don’t pay extra for a Nintendo Online subscription just for the privilege of becoming frustrated at the online mode. Unfortunately, you’re really not missing anything special.

There was on other issue I noticed from a design perspective. It shows itself only in the Spirit Board game mode, which presents players with a collection of challenge matches from which to choose. Each challenge typically has a special rule set or some other interesting wrinkle to the battle. If you lose, the challenge disappears from the board and you don’t get to try again. Even if you win, you only have a chance to collect a prize—you have to complete an additional “hit the target” challenge to collect the main reward. Although you can expend resources to try a rematch or get another shot at hitting the target, both of these mechanics punish players for failing to win on the first try.

This can lead to some escalating frustration especially near the top of the difficulty curve, where it’s pretty clear you’re not supposed to be able to win on the first attempt. It feels a little like the designers were trying to drag the game out by forcing you to replay the same challenges repeatedly—but not getting to try again immediately—before collecting certain prizes. It’s unnecessary, I would argue, in a game that’s likely to keep players busy for hundreds of hours without such gimmicks.
 
The Ugly
Speaking of frustration, I’ve had some moments playing this game that I’m not proud of. I don’t think I’ve had the urge to throw a controller across the room since I was a child. At times, this game brought the urge back, and I don’t like it. That’s not what games are supposed to do—in fact, I plan to write a whole separate piece on that subject soon.

Most of the game offers you plenty of control over the difficulty level, so if you find an opponent too tough or want to practice with a new character, you can set the computer opponent to a lower level or equip stronger spirits relative to the battle’s difficulty level (in some game modes, you can equip spirits to boost your fighter or grant you bonuses).

Occasionally, though, you’ll come across a challenge that’s absurdly punishing, even after obtaining a ton of powerful spirits and raising them to max level. Usually these challenges are aptly labeled as “Legendary” difficulty, but occasionally one sneaks into lower difficulty levels, too. These usually take the form of a setup like “you will get destroyed at random for no reason” or “it’s four-on-one, the enemies are all super-powered, you are handicapped, and the stage is trying to kill you.” Good luck. There have been matches where I literally could not move my fighter to fight back or defend myself in any way. I could mash as many buttons as I wanted, but nothing I input had any effect on—aaaand I’m dead.
 
The Lessons for Game Designers
We can learn a lot as game designers from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. For one thing, even a game as highly anticipated and polished as this, from a AAA developer no less, can and will have some shortcomings. Nobody is perfect, and there’s no such thing as a game that makes everybody happy all the time. It’s a useful reminder to us perfectionists who want our games to be 100% exactly right before we share them with anyone, only for this perfection to never end up happening.
This game does an excellent job of incentivizing players to come back to the game regularly. Randomization in the shops and spirit board challenges present players with something new every time they start up the game, even if they’ve already somehow managed to complete every game mode and collect every reward.

The lesson for game designers is that randomization of game elements equals replayability. We see this all the time in collectible card games and deck-builders like Magic the Gathering, where each booster pack offers a different batch of cards to a collector, and players will naturally draw a random hand of cards from their decks to start every game. No two packs are alike, and no two matches ever play out the same. Randomization is notable even in many traditional tabletop games that feature a randomized setup of game elements each time you play—think of the board in Settlers of Catan, or any of the cards and tiles that you draw to start a game of Lords of Waterdeep. This randomization is a huge part of what makes each session of these games so different—just imagine how much poorer these games would be if the board always began set up exactly the same way.

Another big takeaway for game designers is that in this title you can see customizability of rules put to great use. This game doesn’t assume that all its players are coming into play with a mastery of the controls and game mechanics—this is a classic mistake of rookie game designers who base rules for a new game on the mechanics of some other popular title, and simply assume everyone knows how it works. “Combat is just like in D&D!” doesn’t help someone who has never played Dungeons & Dragons; having a simplified version for beginners can make your game more approachable.
Not only can players adjust the difficulty of the game to suit their experience levels, but players can adjust entire rule sets to accommodate various styles of play, giving players plenty of room for goofball matches if you’re playing with a group that would rather laugh hysterically at a wacky outcome than keeping track of who’s winning. Consider incorporating alternative game modes that use the elements of your game in a novel way, such as a player-vs-player mode, rules for both short and long versions of your game, or a quick-start or sudden death challenge for pickup games.
 
Closing Thoughts
Overall, I’m pleased with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game and it lives up to my expectation as a player who has waited ever so long to return to the series. Although I can quibble with some of the design choices (nothing a few anger management classes can’t correct, I suppose), I enjoy the game and plan to continue playing it. Well worth the price of admission!

What about you? Have you played this or previous Smash titles and taken any lessons away from them that you've incorporated into your own games? I'd love to hear your comments!

Side note
My Primary Fighter: Samus
Secondaries: Mega Man, Mewtwo, Ice Climbers, Shiek 

If you've reached this site, odds are you're interested in game design or game publishing—or else, hopelessly lost on the internet. In any case, welcome!

I've had a longstanding obsession with games and have always loved the idea of designing my own, but until recently it all seemed out of reach—I didn't know what tools to use, or how to make a game that was more than just my own doodles on notebook paper. After years in the (non-game)  publishing industry and a lot of trial and error, I've come to realize a couple of things:
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1. The elements one needs to build an actual, professional game aren't nearly as inaccessible as I once imagined, and thanks to a proliferation of online resources are becoming easier to find and use all the time. 
2. Game designers and aspiring game designers make up a much larger community than I imagined. I once thought I was the only person on the planet with dreams of making my own games, as I scribbled away in a notebook as a kid. As it turns out, there are thousands of like-minded people out there who love games and wish to bring their own ideas into reality—enough to fill whole convention centers multiple times a year! 

In the coming months, I'll be posting information about some of the kinds of resources I wish I knew about five years ago. There are some excellent game design books, online tools, and other resources that make creating games more accessible than ever, whether you're a hobbyist or looking to make some money from your efforts. I'll also discuss some interesting game design theories and mechanics that you can incorporate into your games or, better yet, build or improve upon using your imagination to make your game uniquely yours.

​I want to hear from you! What questions do you have about designing, building, and publishing games? What topics do you want to hear more about? Please leave your comments and suggestions below.

Game on!
Jim Cirigliano