There was a thread about the essence of strategy. I think this relates to it. Super Smash brothers is an amazing game. It has components of strategy AND skill, and IMHO, neither one dominates. The fact that the controls were the same for all the characters was what prevented skill from dominating such a fast paced, hectic game. Once you had The timing of basic button combinations down, you were 60% there, with respect to skill. Passing familiarity with the charachters was another 10% That's where strategy comes in. Each character had at least 4 special moves, thier own stats, and usually some other special feature. That made for thousands of possible interactions. Something I feel is important to strategy games is that the basics be simple. And they were. Fox has a gun. Shoot things with it. Kirby can float, so use him to deal with precarious ledges. Not to mention Kirby's ability to steal one of your special abilities.... Pikachu can easily attack players who are around corners or are at the top of the stage. But it got more complex than that. If you have the skill and the know how, Jigglypuff, a relatively weak character, develops depth in certain situations. If the stage is flat, and She's against a heavier character like Ganondorf or dk, Her rolling attack becomes devastating. Sleep can also be used to great effect, although the opportunities to use it are difficult to set up.(I never really did master that) Each charachter seemed to have at least 1 obvious ability, and 1 more subtle ability. Samus' bombs seemed obvious at first, but they were hard to figure out how to use them effectively, but quite a nuisance once got thier strategic significance. Link's bombs were more obvious. But skill didn't stop at the beginning. You were constantly honing your judgement and adding new reflexes. There were ways to catch thrown items, use a shield, catch ledges, etc. These were much more difficult than using special moves or smash attacks, so they allowed you to contnue developing you skills. It was this progression, this balance of techniques and strategy that made it such a good game. A game needs to make a player feel like they've grasped it quickly, but then let them having the feeling of continuing improvement. Additions? Corrections? Thoughts? Musings? Attaboys? Violent Refutals? I want 'em all!

Unfortunatly smash devolves into the 5 most powerful characters and thats it. It is very rare in tournament play to see anyone outside of fox, falco, shiek, samus, or marth ever. I used to play everyother friday at tournaments and it pretty much turned into who could tech off the internet the best. Hopefully in brawl the characters will be balanced and waved dashing will be fixed. I wavedash in tournament, but will agree it shouldnt be part of the game.

It is my favorite fighter of all time btw.

Theres.. wave dashes in SSBM ? 0_o
I thought it was just in Tekken.

Pikachu is a brilliant character to be using if you're anything like me, and prefer to be patient and let the action come to you.

I'd sit at once side of the level while others beat the crap out of each other in a mob.. Eventually someone would think, "Pikachu still has 5 lives! I'm going to go own him.." and walk towards me. Then I lay an endless supply of combos onto him (love back-kicking).

Luigi and Capt. Falcon do okay.

Bowser all the way!

To Delphinus: I practice fencing in real life, and while I find it a very enjoyable sport trying to copy it for games doesn't seem like a good idea. Fencing as a sport is pretty different than fencing as in films.

In sport fencing, matches are really fast, there arent's so many parries and hits around before someone scores a hit and lots of those hits aren't valid depending on the weapon you use (and if you use a sword where any spot is valid for a hit, lots of hits aren't very "spectacular". They are amazing in sport terms, but not in film ones ;)).

Regards!

Vicente

To Delphinus:

Unfortunately it is true that certain characters are stronger. The tournament level players have figured out ways of taking advantage of things the developers never thought of. There are certain level/character combos that were unbeatable and they had to make illegal. For example no Falco at Hyrule temple.

If you want to get an idea of the level of play im talking about check this out