If gamers must insist on being taken seriously, their arguments dissolve when talking about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the just-released fighting-game that pits dozens of characters from the extended Nintendo universe against each other. There’s no thematic complexity, no absorbing narrative, no central compelling metaphor, no soul-inspiring mechanics elevating it into what might be considered “art,” and while throughout history that’s been an elitist designation used to build an artificial wall between serious things and silly things, here its fans must just accept Smash Bros. for what it is: a game where Pikachu fights Mario.
This game is not art but it is perfect, which is why Nintendo has remade it for two decades, lightly updating the original gameplay according to modern conventions, and slowly expanding the cast of characters. The original Super Smash Bros., released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64, featured 12 playable characters; Ultimate, released last Friday for the Nintendo Switch, and the fifth game in the series, features 76… for now. It’s the best Smash Bros., in the way that every newly released Smash Bros. is the best one, and I exited the weekend with a worsening case of carpal tunnel as well as several ongoing texts with friends about our capacity to communally regress in front of it in the coming weeks.
The Smash Bros. franchise has remained the most prominent game throughout my life. The first three games — Super Smash Bros., Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001), and Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) — were social hubs for my friend groups in grade school, high school, and college, serving as default activities when there was nothing better to do. (The fourth edition, 2014’s Super Smash Bros. Wii U, mostly escaped me; I didn’t own the console and didn’t hang out with people who did.) I can attest to dozens (hundreds?) of sleepless nights stretching toward dawn, cycling through the character roster, my friends and I giving ourselves over to one more match.
A conventional wisdom of “growing up” is that you stake less time in the pursuits that once dominated your youth, whether it be indie rock or dressage. But as video games have evolved from childish fad to a robust, corporate-driven industry, so they have become part of the recreational texture of a regular life, like watching a television show. For me and many of my friends, there’s simply too much going on for Mega Man vs. Pikachu to be the domineering concern of our social life the way it was when we were bored teenagers. Nintendo has to grab our attentions in a different way, as well as the attentions of more serious gamers who play competitively and ravenously dissect the mechanics online.
Part of the way the company does this comes down to basic mechanics: Like every Smash Bros. game released this century, Ultimate is compatible with the controllers for Nintendo’s GameCube console, which at this point has been out of production since 2007. (The Nintendo Switch controllers work, too, but they won’t be the first option for many players; Nintendo has even produced a new run of GameCube controllers to meet demand.) This is largely a concession to functionality: Since the GameCube controllers were the most ideal fit for Smash Bros., due to the tightly-grouped buttons and ergonomic shape, Nintendo could avoid alienating players by forcing them to learn wholly new button placements on a new console.
Of course, one could master the game using the Switch controller… but it wouldn’t be the same, and that’s what Nintendo is offering. Many games are remade for modern consoles, but none allow you to play with the same controllers you were using half a lifetime ago, when you and your best friend Wesley used to walk through the Taco Bell drive-thru at 3 a.m.after a long night of gaming-induced mania (hypothetically speaking, of course). Holding the controller I rescued from my mother’s home over Thanksgiving did not quite induce me to tunnel through my memories, mentally apparating in front of the television from my youth, but its plastic sturdiness and enduringly elastic buttons were freshly appreciated, given how many times I gripped it too forcefully in the heat of battle or whipped it across the room in the throes of defeat. Among the electronic possessions I keep in my apartment, it is by far the oldest, eking out the rice cooker I purchased at Sears ahead of my freshman year in college.
Considering how many products are designed to become technologically irrelevant within a year or two, Nintendo’s commitment to backwards compatibility is the rare generous corporate benefaction. Casual fans who’ve held onto enough old shit to make Marie Kondo wince can pool their resources, forge new social groups based on who has access to a spare. Thanks to the Switch’s dual capacities as both TV-connected console and portable handheld , it insinuates itself seamlessly into your needs. Already I’ve played it past midnight with a friend, and alone in bed.
I had a different experience with Red Dead Redemption 2, another hot release this season, the unprecedented depth of which has proved a trickier fit into my life. In Red Dead, you traverse a massive map as an outlaw named Arthur Morgan, exploring towns and geography, interacting with hundreds of characters and partaking in numerous missions meant to advance his story. On average, it takes dozens, if not hundreds, of hours to complete; more dogged players will continue to unlock its buried secrets in the coming years.
Unlike more sprightly video game protagonists, Arthur moves sluggishly, forcing you to appreciate the game’s thousands of interlocking ambient details. This has led to some begrudged acknowledgments in reviews that Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t always fun — there’s a ton of quiet space in between all the gunslinging, during which you’ll groom your horse, carry out duties at your bandit camp, hunt animals in order to craft better equipment, and dozens of other mundane tasks. Some critics and players have praised this quality and identified it as something like “slow gaming,” akin to “slow television,” evoking different emotions than the fast-paced shoot-em-ups you can find across the market. Others have just called it boring.
I fell somewhere in the middle. Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most amazing games I’ve ever seen in action, and every time I’ve played it I’ve been totally immersed in the meticulously coded rhythms of its world. But because it demands the unbroken marathon sessions I could easily pull in high school and college, I’m rarely compelled to play it. Even if I suddenly had copious amounts of free time, I wouldn’t finish it for another month or two. And since that’s not going to happen, I can only move at my own pace, and thus I don’t anticipate reaching the end before 2019. In the same way one buys new books even though they have a stack of unfinished ones on the nightstand, I’m sure to distract myself with other games — for example, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
This isn’t a new development — in the last couple years, I’ve noticed a transformation in my gaming habits, a shift more meaningful than “I’m older and have less time.” Because I want to keep gaming in my life, for reasons both reasonable (life is stressful, it’s nice to have an interactive pastime I don’t have to think about too hard) and unfortunate (the need to game is biologically coded into my DNA and I will sputter and explode if I don’t futz with a controller for more than two weeks), the games I’m currently most absorbed by provide different pleasures than the games of my youth.
Digestibility without the sacrifice of depth has become a profoundly necessary trait. No single-player game has compelled as much of my time this year as Enter the Gungeon, a randomly generated dungeon crawler with hundreds of different ways to play that takes at most 45 minutes to complete a single playthrough before you can embark on a new one. Exploring the massive fictional world of a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 can be fun, in a sense, but many of these labyrinthine games, several of which are released every year, lack the narrative propulsion required to keep going instead of meandering and crapping out. The demand on your time is not equaled by the payoff. The list of these I’ve eagerly opened up, only to abandon at some point when I realize there’s nothing compelling me to the end but a vague feeling of responsibility outweighs those I’ve stuck with. (A rare exception was this year’s Spider-Man, likely due to the fact that web-slinging is possibly the most fun way of traveling through a video game ever invented.)
The same randomly generated, repeatable element fuels the success of online games like Call of Duty and Fortnite, but unlike those Smash Bros. is best played with real people in front of one television. It works as both personal pursuit and social hub, and because of its essentially unchanged gameplay, along with the ongoing utility of the GameCube controllers, it’s easy to imagine that I might dust off the same controllers in the next five to seven years for the next installment. Though it’s fundamentally a kid’s game — again, Mega Man vs. Pikachu — these inherent traits make it an ideal fit for the unpredictable schedule and winnowing time slots of adult life, as well as a reassuring presence considered how wildly unforgiving some newer games can feel to those who aren’t willing to log the dozens of hours required to learn the mechanics. (The building component of Fortnite escapes me, no matter how much I try.)
That’s how I felt when I started up my first match as The Legend of Zelda’s Link (the character I’ve used since I was 11) and confirmed, with pleasant familiarity, that his moves still worked the same on the buttons I’ve used for all that time. I’m not as comfortable playing as I was all those years ago, when dozens of calculations — how do I throw this item so it hits my opponent from across the stage? How far away does Marth have to be for the tip of his sword to hit with the most damage? — were mere muscle memory, and don’t expect I will be unless every other factor in my life disappears. But Smash Bros. has faithfully stuck with me, demanding nothing more than the time I can give it. For that reason, and for the reason that it’s fun to make Pikachu fight Mario, I’ll always come back to it.
