LAWL. I played this guy today who used all these crazy, unpredictable combos and I f[COLOR=lightgreen]u[/COLOR]cked his s[COLOR=lightgreen]h[/COLOR]it up by just using single, well-timed strikes. Smash training ftw.
The two are more similar than you might think. I'm not sure how to describe it, but once you get past the game mechanics you might find they have a pretty similar feel. In both games the majority of the moves are very easy to do and place an emphasis on timing. Combos are moves you string together, not certain button combinations that unlock context sensitive moves like Tekken and Soul Calibur. In other places they are inverse; in SF if your opponent is low on health you should use lighter, faster effects that leave you less open. Smash is the exact opposite because your aim changes from damage to KO and the stronger attacks you need to use leave you much more open. SF is also more focused on blocking and countering while Smash focuses more on dodging, tricking your opponent and finding openings.
They're similar enough to get you a good head start on one if you've mastered the other.
I never thought of it that way... Interesting theory, sire. I usually just tigerspam or go all out with Rock.
Obviously they're still different, I mean it's Street Fighter and friggin' Smash Bros. I think people wouldn't dismiss Smash as a fighting game so much if they knew the two had similarities, though. If you added 2 extra players, items and shapeshifting arenas into Street Fighter it'd also seem like a chaotic button-mashing fest that involved more luck than skill.
Smash is at EVO this year, so I'm pretty sure it's status is universally acknowledged.
[quote=Big Boss;639171][FONT=trebuchet ms][COLOR=yellowgreen]Popularity can make the line blur between a fighter and a party game. [/COLOR][/FONT]
This might be hard for you to swallow, but all fighting games are complete bulls[COLOR=lightgreen]h[/COLOR]it. None of them realistically or metaphorically resemble real fighting or martial arts. If they did no one would play them, because real martial artists really don't look cool when they fight. It's all but impossible anyway, current input systems entirely lack any form of tactile feedback, which would be absolutely crucial to any kind of fighting simulation.
With that in mind you can realise that the definition of a fighting game is arbitrary. It's an imaginary line drawn in the sand drawn by fanboys to make fun of eachothers games. Each new game on the block suffers from it and there are plenty of cliques that will try to tell you that only 2D fighters count or that Tekken is the worst fighter ever made. I even had someone try to convince me today that Fight Night didn't count as a fighting game despite it bearing such a close resemblence to real boxing on the grounds that it was a sports game. He then argued that certain games with magical fireballs, stretching limbs and swords that make you merely flinch were the real deal.
Smash is a fighting game (or a game about fighting, if you prefer) that just so happens to be well-designed enough to perform as a party game. In case you haven't noticed most Nintendo games surround deep gameplay with immediate fun, it's sort of what's made them successful the last 20 years. The lessons you described are learnable from any decent fighting game including Smash, unless I'm dreaming up the 15 second intervals where neither Bebop nor I could land hits on eachother after 5 years of practise and learning how eachother fights.
At the end of the day it just boils down to semantics, there's nothing particilarly golden about traditional fighters that makes them the definition of the genre. Genres should be considered descriptions, not categories.
Oh hey guys, there's a Fighting Games board.
You expect people scroll that far down? UNTHINKABLE!
I could put it there, I guess. It's just the conversation started here.