Smash Bros. sucks

[Stever89]

Cheebee said:

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Smash Bros. famously began as a prototype for a generic martial arts game and it's tempting not to imagine what would have happened with the series if Nintendo had never agreed to let its mascots be used in the game. Would the fighting mechanics be as compelling if all of the same moves were tethered to a series of Bruce Lee clones? Would the Pavlovian outbursts of joy be the same if it was a ninja performing Link's spin attack? It's difficult to imagine that anyone would care. The disappointing truth of Smash Bros. Brawl is that of a game with unresponsive controls, a vapid narrative context, superficially titillating visuals, and a deeply disturbing nod to the corporate progenitor to which so many players associate their personal gaming experiences with.

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So he's saying that it wouldn't sell as well because, without Nintendo's characters, it just wouldn't be fun or have the "big names" in it?

From what I've heard of the Final Fantasy games, they aren't always based around the same world or characters, so if Final Fantasy 13 wasn't called Final Fantasy, and instead something else, it too probably wouldn't sell as well. That's the nature of the industry. Big names (like Mario, FF, GTA, Sonic) sell games. I'd assume that if they did make the Smash Bros. games without Nintendo's characters, it probably would have sold decent, since any game has to start out as a unknown name game. And if they would have continued with it, then it could still be as big as it is today (though it would be big in a completely different way).

I didn't bother to read the whole thing, but I think overall he just likes hearing himself talk. It's his opinion of course, so one can't really say he's wrong. And if this is his opinion (and hell, it has to be), I'll take a quote from his own book "It's difficult to imagine that anyone would care."