Kof combos where nuts by 99, sakurai was a kof player. So his perspective has to be coming from that.

How dare the man who created smash bros tell you how he created smash bros

There was an old story about Sakurai completely destroying someone at an arcade (KOF). When he looked to see who his opponent was, it was a couple who obviously didn't know what they were doing, so they left in frustration. This led Sakurai into wanting his game to be easy for beginners.

The amount of wisdom sakurai is dropping for free is crazy.

I think for combos, I think Sakurai meant an "Experienced Player vs a new player" scenario. Even short combos might make a new player feel helpless against an experienced player because for a new player, "there is nothing I can do aside watch my character get beaten", and I think Sakurai wanted make the player feel less helpless and more "in control" of the situation.

The difference in Smash vs fighting games at the time that Sakurai was trying to explain is that even if you're playing against someone far better than you in Smash, you don't lose the ability to control your character (usually) like what happens in other fighting games. There is a massive difference in feeling when you playing a game that you cannot win vs one that you don't know how to win. It's like losing to a boss during a cutscene instead of just making the boss really tough to defeat. One way you never had a chance, but the other way offers the illusion of freedom, which is good game design.

Speaking as both a Smash Player, and Traditional Fighting Game Player (GG, P4A, DBFZ, SF, SC, MvC, etc), AND as an actual competitive IRL martial artist, Sakurai is referring to something **very** specific when he talks about this. I should also mention that I am a professional Japanese translator, and I originally watched this video without the English subtitling, so I wasn't even aware there was a controversy until I saw this video. *TL:DR=* The subs do slightly misrepresent what Sakurai is conveying here. He's talking about engagement and interactivity of raw gameplay. NOT strategy or ToD combos. He essentially didn't like that combos in fighting games (of any length) was essentially a single-player game and he aimed to fix that with Smash. The below essentially explains this in detail. Even back in the time when combos were relatively short for those games, they still largely shared a quality that is near universal in the modern day of games built around executing combos of any length. What I am referring to (and what Sakurai is alluding to) is the fact that once neutral is won, and the "hit" occurs that starts the combo, the game essentially becomes a single player experience until it is either finished or dropped, meaning that essentially for the length of the interaction, the player receiving the combo effectively just had their controller unplugged. Even if you have to stay mentally aware of the situation, as the combo'd player, to be ready for the next interaction, that still is essentially a disengagement with active gameplay because you're not able to do anything to directly influence what is happening beyond incidental prescribed 'break' mechanics such as Bursts or KI's Combo Breaker. Sakurai's answer to this in Smash was implementing defensive mechanics such as DI, SDI, Crouch Cancelling, and Vectoring, not to mention mitigated hitstun and various defensive maneuvers designed to make stringing together multiple hits fundamentally significantly difficult in the first place. While doing this didn't fundamentally get rid of combos in Smash altogether, it redefined the entire concept of what it means to execute a combo from a gameplay perspective. Since combos in most games, regardless of length, was essentially a single-player experience when they're actively happening, Sakurai aimed to make them a *multiplayer* experience. You don't get to put the controller down or turn your brain off when you're getting hit like you can in other fighting games. In fact, "going limp" in Smash just makes your opponent able to combo you even harder and longer, and escaping the situation with a little damage as possible or with the best positioning possible becomes a point of engagement, or vector of interaction for the other player, as opposed to simply waiting (or mashing the recovery button) until you can tech while your opponent preforms Beethoven's 5th on your face. Even to this day as I juggle playing smash vs other traditional fighters, the mental state that goes into just starting a session of those games are completely different. Due to the fact that in Smash, in order to win, you need to be actively engaged in the gameplay essentially constantly, winning or losing, combo'ing or being combo'd, to multiple layers of abstraction (having to account for significantly numerous dimensions of information), I actually usually make the decision to play *traditional* fighting games like GG or SFV when I want to turn my brain off. The DPS (Decisions Per Second) I find myself having to make to win a game of GGST or BBTag doesn't even **begin** to compare to the amount that goes into a similar game of Smash. This is all to preface that I think the English subs lose a little bit of what Sakurai is actually saying. He specifically uses the word 駆け引き (kake-hiki), which was translated in the Subs as "Strategy", but in truth, especially accounting for the other ways he's used this word in this video and in previous videos, he is *actually* using this word to mean "Engagement". He's talking about the ability to interact with what is happening. When he says 駆け引きがない (kake-hiki ga nai), he's not saying "there is no strategy involved" (though it can certainly be implied contextually), he is more explicitly saying "there is no interaction to be had" in this situation. Playing Smash involving a higher DPS than most other fighting games comparatively was not only intentionally by design, but also very specifically what Sakurai was trying to "fix" about the fighting game experience in the first place. He was trying to increase the baseline 駆け引き in **all** aspects of the gameplay. Lastly, I brought up being an IRL martial artist here too only to mention that Sakurai, by doing this, speaking from experience, made Smash Bros as a fighting game more closely realistic to *ACTUAL* fighting than almost any other fighting game ever made. You don't just stop and let the combo happen when you get hit IRL, you don't just allow yourself to be moved in the way your opponent wants you to when you're being pressured. Every interaction in IRL fighting is a dialogue of engagement, not a monologue; with you constantly having to be aware of what your opponent is doing and how they're hitting you or taking your hits, unlike with traditional fighting games where that only really happens in neutral or in-between setplay engagements. It is a full body engagement with an insane DPS (Decisions Per Minute) for every little thing that happens, whether it be deciding whether you will take the punch coming for your face on the left cheek or on the jaw, deciding if you want to eat a kick head-on or roll your body with the impact, deciding when your legs buckle whether you want to fall forward, on your face, on your side or on your ass. Each of these interactions and decisions make a difference in the course of a fight, and Smash, in my experience as an IRL fighter, mirrors more closely to that than anything else by FAR. When I take a f-tilt to the face, I now have to decide whether I DI away to gain distance, or DI in to stay close or possibly juke a DI-away read, whether I air-dodge immediately and risk ground lag, or jump away an lose stage control. When I hit my opponent with a D-Tilt, I have to pay attention at what direction they DI'd, how far they flew, and how they affected their knockback in and gauge what move can potentially hit them next, how this affects my frame advantage, or if it is even a good idea to attempt continuing the combo string in the first place and opt to do something else. With traditional fighters, once you get the hit confirm, barring situations where Bursts or Combo Breakers are on the table, it is simply just execute as rehearsed, with *no* further consideration or deliberation needed. Thank you so much for reading this impromptu thesis. My sincere apologies this comment was so huge.

I feel like everyone is so dumb about this situation. Sakurai is just talking about the fact that you can't really interact with your opponent while being combo'ed. He added the different power of launches and DI in smash to counter that and make it a bit more complicated for the one doing combos, that's it. That's all there is.

i think sakurai's point is after the starter move connects, there are no interactions with the player until the combo is over. combos taking longer and dealing more damage over the history of fighting games without even any bandaid solution like a burst or combo breaker would make it feel so it's more about knowing the combos rather than the other skills categorized under "game sense" like footsies, reads and such.

I saw him not talking about infinite combos or one hit to death. When i tried to get into fg, the arcade, the guys who had been playing longer could always get in close, perform a combo. Get out and repeat until i died. With me never getting in a hit. That is what he is talking about.

This reminds me of a user on twitter that dropped cool art tricks pretty often and got bullied off of the platform for… no reason. Like seriously. They harmlessly shared their knowledge and art tutorials and people projected that they were trying to force the “right way” to draw when really they were handing out free education for fundamentals.

I'm sick of people calling Twitter, "everyone".

Sakurai is clearly a man who is in a constant state of burning his passion, the man is a candle burning at 4 ends!

I can tell you from experience, growing up, if you didn't know the game and you showed up at the arcade, it felt like you barely moved and were being comboed all over the screen. Of course, they weren't real endless combos but they felt that way to a layman. In particular, I remember feeling this way with Tekken and Marvel vs Capcom.

How dare Sakurai make games accessible for a big audience to have fun with

I didn't know there was controversy for that Sakurai vid. It seemed rather harmless.

I believe Sakurai is referencing how 3 interactions with a decent combo wins games. Not referencing exactly against combo length, but how interactions are limited in hit stun. 🤔

I love how, at 09:00 of the video, Max recognizes the context that King of Fighters provides for this entire discussion. Earlier, he was sitting there thinking of Third Strike and MvC, and even Killer Instinct. The moment KoF is brought up, it's like Max's brain expanded with the sudden understanding it carried.

As someone who could barely play fighting games at that time and had friends and family members who did and were pretty good at it, Sakurai describes exactly how I felt, regardless if that was really the case or not. I just couldn't do anything and just got comboed to death. That made me hate on the entire genre for many years.

How can you seriously be mad at Sakurai? Also, is it just me or does he look way younger?

Why the hell are people mad at one of the rare few game developers that actually cares about it's playerbase and games they are responsible for smh... Sakurai always did his best to make Smash the best he could and to try and please everyone despite Nintendo's obvious interference from time to time.

I think Sakurai knows exactly what he's talking about. For a "standard" fighting game, if you see your opponent do something with a combo or certain series of inputs, without having it explicitly spelled out to you it would take some time to figure out what they even did, especially as a new player. Sakurai instead made a game with simplified inputs so that even with characters having all these moves, any of them can be executed by a new player, and while combos do still exist, and an amazing player can still destroy someone new, the new person in your average match will still feel like they're actually able to play and interact without just getting beaten into a wall. The percent system specifically makes it so that the closer you are to death, the further you are away after a hit from your opponent so they can't juggle you as quickly. There will always be a divide between new and more experienced players, but the goal was to make it less brutal for a new person to at least play the game in the first place. To address the specific quote of "As more fighting games became more combo-focused, the less room there was for strategy" I interpret Sakurai as saying that it devalues strategy as a skill on it's own. If it's a match between two players who know the game and the combos, then obviously there is a ton of strategy involved, but I think some people heard this and thought he was saying that combo-focused games don't take strategy. He simply means that strategy really doesn't matter when one player is newer to the game and doesn't know combos and inputs are not intuitive (unless you already have a lot of legacy skill from other fighting games).

"everyone" is not mad at Sakurai, Twitter is mad at him because Twitter loves to take short clips out of context and get pissed off at things that aren't being said, that's kind of their thing

"combo" in a japanese context refers to combinations of buttons, not a sequence of hits. He was commenting on how you needed to know complex special inputs to compete instead of having a good strategy.

It should also be noted that in an earlier video, Sakurai defined 'strategy' as 'How you manage risks/get rewards.'

"Combos in most fighting games are button-button-super" I distinctly remember getting my ass handed to me in Tekken 3 when others would get in the first hit and I'd have to sit there standing and watching while they input their 24 button combo and then kick me on the ground a few more times for good measure.

The game Sakurai's talking about is Kof, he actually has a video on KZfaq where he talks about being in an arcade and playing against a young couple who thought it was all gonna be fun n games until he totally obliterated them. They were embarrassed and befuddled by the whole experience. That huge skill gap between him and casual players is what inspired smash.

Cause Twitter users who have never worked on games or have anything to do with the game industry genuinely think they know more about video games then him lmao

Smash isn't your typical fighter so expectations on skills and combos are different. It's like trying to compare Killer Instinct to a fighter like Power Stone

I remember as a kid getting completely wiped out in Pokemon because I didn't understand how to team build. for a while, I hated it. But now I have a deep apretiation for it. Especially after getting into it and taking the time to learn. I like that Sakurai admitted that the game he made was so everyone can play. Hardcore Smash players might be mad, but I like that he made a game that I can play and not worry about being hard into the game to understand.

The problem here it's Max is thinking on actual infinities, but you have to remember on those times by just knowing how to pressure and understand 50,50, your opponent will not move until his death

I’m pretty sure he was talking about casual play when he was talking about folks just not able to play while they lose. A novice who knows how to do combos will just do one combo after another vs the novice who doesn’t know how to defend against starters. Meanwhile in Smash, if you just got combo’d by somebody, you are now across the map and if you can manage to hit the ground, neutral has been restored. WAAAAAAAAAAAAY easier to get to that point in Smash vs a traditional 2d fighter.

So, I wanted to ask "Am I the only person who actually understood what Sakurai was talking about?", but the reality is a lot of people just don't care and want to tear down people more successful than they are.

I legit can’t wait for his Melee video because it’ll be interesting to hear his take on the systems developed in the game and his intentions for it vs. what they’ve become now with the Melee community’s influence.

Also there is some element of "fighting back" when you're being combo'd in DI, as you observed, but also in non-true combos because your decisions as soon as a combo ends can mean you get chained into another combo or escape. As for recovery, even characters that have poor recoveries, you can mix up your options, change your timing, etc, as ways of getting around an edgeguard. You don't just sit there and take it--you still get to play the game!

To discover that the man who created Smash was a competitive KOF player is amazing.

I don't think he was literally talking about TODs just that it feels like you're unable to do anything because of being stuck watching the opponent do their combo before being able to do anything again. And even without TODs there were combos that could take off the majority of your health. So 2 or 3 would still kill you even if 1 didn't.

Seeing Sakurai bring up Satoru Iwata made me go: “God I miss this man.”😔

Max. C’mon. Touch of death was totally a thing in 2000. I remember being an 18 yr old on holiday in Japan, walking into an arcade and getting infinite’d 3 times in 3 matches with 3 different characters in XvSF. I think we forget how bloodthirsty the JP arcade scene was at that time.

Just goes to show the two type of people that exists. 1- Just watches wholesome content and enjoys. 2- looks for anything that can be frowned upon and do so.

I think Max is taking Sakurai too literally when he says "one combo death" in a fighting game.

Ok when they got to the part where sakurai came up with percentage based damage. I think that had to be one of the single handedly greatest ideas for a fighting game. Combos in sakurai's day weren't the same as hours. So where he created percentage based, he created a pure situational fighting game. Obviously the games intent at launch wasn't to be some high level fighter, he played with a fun concept and it soared.

Personally I think that Sakurai’s idea of creating an antithesis to the fighting game genre at the time was brilliant.

The "can't play the game" analogy about getting edgeguarded as a new player doesn't really work because you CAN get around it maybe by doing something as simple as delaying an Up B, while in the traditional fighting game you LITERALLY can't play the game; even the best players in the world have to wait for the combo to end

I mean Sakurai is speaking facts

I think what he was trying to say was that games around that time favored pressure. if you get pushed into a corner in fighting games, it was hard to fight out of it unless you reached a certain skill level. the gap between a novice and a average player was huge back in the day and if you were highly skilled, forget it, playing against them was a wash.

The problem is that everyone on the internet including Max here(I was thinking he was getting at the end) they default their thinking to 1vs1 no itens final destination and what sakurai say its true for casuals when playing with everything on against my friends combos is the last thing we care about and we just have fun meanwhile in other fighting games when you were hit by someone that can do a big combo and you lost most of your health you feel like shit and that is why me and my friends play smash almost every weekend but play a normal fighting game with focus on combos 1 time a year if it is a new version of SF.

Sakurai is right though, every second you're getting comboed is a second you're not doing anything. Can you imagine in other genres of games if you're getting attacked, you can only take it and not be able to do anything? e.g. If you get Zerg Rushed in Starcraft, and all you can do is wait for the entire attack to end before you can do anything? The longer the combos, the less the other side gets to play, simple as that.

I’ve always loved fighting games growing up, but because of Super Smash Bros., and my strong desire to get better at Super Smash Bros. Melee, it lead to me a realm of wanting to improve in fighting games I never thought I would before. Strings, mix ups, frame links, mind games, spacing, everything. And the places I’ve gone and people I’ve met because of that love, I’ll never forget I love Sakurai Thank you for everything

Love Sakurai, plus his KZfaq vids he has been doing has been real fun to watch, love seeing the behind the scenes of the games he has worked on, and info about games in general. Smash 64 is probably my most favourite vid yet looking forward to the rest of them. ❤

14:12 I think that's why the default was Time over Stocks, because you can fall off theoretically infinitely, but you're always able to play until the timer runs out.

Samurai’s talk about combos may not necessarily be about ToD’s, maybe he means a situation like where two reasonable combos will kill a character and a newbie just loses two interactions one after the other (say they get combod into a hard knockdown then immediately get combod again on waking up) and is dead right away.

"Never ask me for anything ever again"

I think you're right about it being a translation thing, Max. I heard somebody say that what he actually said was not "strategy," but the same exact term he had been using for the "push and pull" concept from recent videos: "There was no room for the same *push and pull*" or something to that effect.

All this salt over the first smash game is making me REALLY excited at how mad he's going to make Melee players feel on what he does or doesn't say about that game.

I assume when the subtitles say "long combos leave little room for strategy" they mean "little room for counter-play" as the whole reason for the changes he implemented wasn't to remove combos, but to add a way to escape a combo with DI

*Why is Twitter mad a Sakurai?"

I'm a competitive-minded Smash player getting into fighting games (recently started SamSho and Tekken 7), so I'm really starting to appreciate the unique challenges that both offer. It makes no sense to say one is harder than the other, it just needs to be about enjoying yourself. And I think Sakurai hit the golden ratio of how many people get to enjoy his game, from the new to the experienced

I truly hope I live long enough to see people stop caring what small groups on Twitter think. "30 crazy people keep shouting at the sun, lets take their opinion seriously!"

omg the "eyes unclouded by hate" was brilliant. tickled! 🤣

I didn’t realize how controversial this video was until I saw this on Max’s stream. I can’t wait to see how the community handles the Melee video.

I think people forget that the core gameplay of Smash has always been the fun of chaos, it never started out as something very competitive, someone new to the game can have a good time in non-competitive games because the appeal is simply seeing how funny your favorite characters from nintendo are freaking fighting each other, bouncing around the stage, using pokeballs and wait for a charizard and see only a golden that splashes around and does nothing, or seeing your opponent almost win but just happened to step on a mine and get blown up into the sky.

Love whenever Max calls the chat out for their behavior and puts them in their place.

Something that mainly comes to mind about the perspective of strategy/combos is also the question of 'how many tools to get out of being comboed' existed at that same time, i.e. once you're in the middle of being knocked around, are you in a position where you may as well take your hands off the joystick, etc. I think it's more of a standard now to have a couple forms of combo-breaker or tech'ing maneuver in some limited amounts compared to what I remember in the past.

Sakurai should be the most respected game director in all of gaming. He understands video games more than others because he himself is a gamer

Sakurai is specifically talking about KOF 98, where, according to an earlier interview… while dragon king/smash was in development, sakurai bodied a guy who was on a date SO HARD that he ended up leaving in shame.

I don’t think Sakurai was talking about TODs at all, I think it’s more about “turns until death” especially in some older fgs characters could die in 2-3 good combos, with things like % changing knockback and di both messing with that, hypothetically leading to more possible turns a player might have (this is obviously ignoring that smash 64 eventually developed into a TOD fest over the course of 20 years)

As I said on the Sajam video covering this topic; one of the reasons why I loved Dead or Alive so much was there were so many more opportunities for interaction and actually pressing buttons that do something than other fighters because unless your feet were off the ground or you got crumpled you could always try to Parry/Counter in the middle of an opponent's combo (or Grab if you think they're gonna delay) and get out of it. Same thing in Smash where you get to spend so much more of the match actually DOING something. Also I think it's funny how Sakurai saw the pretzel motion in KoF and was just like "FUCK THAT NOISE".

I don't see why people are mad at Sakurai. He's probably the most kindhearted and wholesome game developer I've ever seen. With the combos in Smash Bros do you have to hit them no but it's gonna take a longer time to win while the combos rank up the damage

Some of the later SF2 games had some awful RNG dizzy combos that can be easily cheesed. ToD combos did definitely exist on it.

I've been hearing people saying that Smash is not a fighting game. It's not a "Traditional" Fighting game. Heck! When I played Smash, I started to get used to like Fighting games after struggling with Tekken and MvC. Then when Smash Ultimate came out with Ryu, Ken, Terry, and Kazuya, I now know how to do Motion Inputs. That game brought me BACK to the Traditional Fighting Games. IMO, Smash Bros. is like the first stage of learning the genre. In short, Smash is a fighting game that can make you like Fighting Games. I hope you all understand this.

It's very funny. I actually had the exact same thought as Sakurai about how when you're in hit stun during a combo, you're essentially a sitting duck, and this is expasperated by how long a combo might be. I thought about how maybe the ability to do a "combo" breaker after initial stun recovery, if or when you guess right on your opponent's next button input might make fighting games even more interactive. There's been lots of time where I was stuck in a lengthy combo where I literally put down the controller just to wait for it to end, which is exactly the opposite you want in a high octane exciting match. That being said, I can't for the life of me play Smash competetively so it's not really my kind of solution for it, but it's amazing how I thought this was a novel idea when it was literally a main reason for why Smash became what it became already in 99.

I think the big thing is that the controls themselves are a much smaller hurdle. There's no vital controls locked behind your simple ability to input until you get to high level play, where you start to get jank like wavedashing.

“New game sucks, old game’s cooler” Well, that pretty much nails down FGC’s reaction to DNF Duel. I also find it very interesting how a good chunk of the FGC-who didn’t really care that much for Smash-suddenly get into a get into a huff when Sakurai makes a fairly solid point ‘bout combos in fighters. 😂

I've never seen anything from this channel before, but I have to say that animation at the beginning is fantastic.

I was under the impression that Sakurai’s “difficult inputs” are referring to fighting game inputs. Yes, all fighting games will have a combo system, whether or not the devs wanted it, but they’re still complex. While Smash isn’t any different, I think he was talking about the specials. Neutral special, press one button, side special, hold left or right and press that button, up special, hold up and press the same button. Down special, hold down and press the button again Meanwhile, with some fighting games, you can get some decent ones like Ryu’s Hadoken, down, down forward, forward, punch or King’s Tornado Kick, half circle starting from King’s front and a special. Then you get Geese Howard’s raging storm who you gotta cook some pancakes by controlling your toes, bite down on a dog’s tail, turn your left arm 500 degrees to the front, have one eyeball watch a child while the other eyeball to watch a game of Pong and use your free foot to crush any spider that comes out of a hole one by one. Edit: and use your only free hand to disarm a bomb while an old lady repeatedly smacks the side of your head with her umbrella

13:25 coming from the perspective of the later smash games, recovery isn't so linear as to guarantee a death against an experienced player. you usually have mixups in timing and positioning, maybe you could go low/high or airdodge late/early, even little mac has something. all these options the person in advantage had to think about while commiting because even going for an edgeguard and failing could, at best, result in your advantage being wasted and, at worst, you dying yourself

15:45 I think it's less of what's ACTUALLY happening and a lot more of what it FEELS like is happening. If you're new to a game or don't know the combos, when someone hits you for half your life, even if it's a short combo, or does a long enough combo that you don't get to do anything for a period of time, even if you're not getting TOD'd it can really feel like you can't do anything and there's no way to win. Like I love combo heavy games like the general hyper fighter, but I can recognize that if someone is combo'ing you, it can feel like you're just sitting there waiting for your turn, or if you get outplayed and the opponent gets the oki setup and gets you and you've lost your turn have to sit there again.

Glad you are talking about this. I have been watching his videos and studying them like I'm back in school.

I think he's coming at it as the dude who made the best selling fighting game. Earned

for what its worth, idk if I ever would have played fighting games if I didn't get a copy of smash 64 as a kid. the ability to pick up and play with your friends and do stuff that looked cool is what hooked into the fgc

Fighting games (similar to real fighting in a way) are about a set of basic principles like distance management, strategy, timing, and movement. When a match happens between two players who are equal in their input skills, it usually comes down to those principles and who can apply them better. I think this is what Sakurai was talking about. He wanted to create a game in which players could skip the input grinding phase and instead focus on strategizing and learning how to time things.

The words “mad at Sakurai” should never be in the same sentence lmfao the man will forever be the GOAT

I do believe sakurai was talking about is that while you are hit by a combo, there is nothing to do to escape it or mitigate its damage (hence the name combo). In this exact point, only the skill of the attacker, to not drop the combo, matters. Touch of Deaths are the extreme of these cases, but there is a lot of middle ground that are still problematic depending on the game.

As a person that had no experience with fighting games, whenever i tried them out, I'd always get my ass handed to me. Not due to combos, but due to not really understanding how fighting games work. I played smash for a good while due to just how much free it hands you during gameplay through stage gimmicks, items, different characters and etc. I started playing KOF at 99, but I was so discouraged from playing it due to skill level difference that I only managed to get by and have fun about 20 years later. So I think I understand Sakurai's point, though not really related to combos imo

Apparently he wiped someone in KOF and felt really bad about it

12:00 @ Bayonetta combos... worth remembering that this is a discussion on design decisions for the original smash bros, where characters have far fewer If any moves that combo reliably into each other in a significant way...

Don't be mad at Sakurai people

The issue is that people who are deep into the fighting game community (myself included sometimes) often forget what it’s like to start a game. If you’ve never played the game before and your friend knows one combo, you’re gonna get hit by the one combo five times and then lose. If you know one combo but your friend knows three or four, they have more to capitalize on. The way it’s worded saying combos render your opponents skill irrelevant is weird but obviously combos are part of the skill so I think it’s something poorly worded that people on the internet too quickly took offense to just because they forgot what it was like to be new to a game

That quote you were talking about potentially being mistranslated actually indeed was mistranslated

As a smash player, specifically Ultimate is the game I play, I have a few things I want to add. 1. Love the video and how you're one of the few traditional fighting game content creators that acknowledges how nuanced smash is. 2. Something that I feel gets lost in translation for many people that aren't in the smash scene is that there's 3ish eras of smash with their own styles. There's the Smash 64 scene that has an insane amount of hitstun that weirdly causes it to be the most passive and "strategical" game in the series. This is the game that was being talked about but I feel like most traditional fighting game players weirdly limit the smash games to Melee and Brawl (not all of them, this is not an attack just what I've heard from many). The melee scene is nuts compared to the rest as it became s movement and combo heavy (even more than 64 in some ways) and the scene is so fun to watch. Then you've got the brawl, 4 and Ultimate scene (I lump these 3 together as many top 4 players came from brawl and many top ultimate players came from both of the previous games.) Talking about Ultimate, this is possibly the easiest and hardest game to get into as if you main 1 character, you still have to learn how they interact with 20-30 top tiers at the very least, but still have to learn the other 60 matchups that are much more niche. These games also have rage, causing combos to require even more "improvisation" as you now have to factor in your percent as well. 3. I'm really sorry if these sounded rude. It was not my intention I just think that there's so much difference in smash and I wanted to mention it.

I think he’s more talking about the consistency of combos so he made it so that you could only do them in certain situations because in traditional fighters (I’m assuming seen as I’m an outsider) your combos are just as effective at any point in the game

I've heard some people state it WAS a bit of a translation error. He's talking about player versus player interaction, the push and pull, and "strategy" really should have been something like interaction. Which is definitely true in a lot of games; if you're getting comboed you kind of just have to sit there and wait for it to end or for your opponent to drop it. But then again, I think this was largely before a lot of games would implement things like Bursts and Combo Breakers on a wider scale. Or even something like Guilty Gear's Guts system which takes a combo that SHOULD kill and helps you survive longer to give you another chance. But yeah, Smash totally has combos. Really in anything competitive, people WILL optimize it so that they can shut down their opponents as much as possible. That's just the nature of competition. And a newcomer facing someone more skilled likely WILL die regardless of how intuitive or simplistic you make the game, but Smash DOES try to even the playing field a bit more with items and crazy stages, on top of being designed around free-for-alls rather than strict 1v1s.

I think Max is right, where Sakurai probably meant that as games needed specific combos and paths to maximize their damage output, Smash was unique in that it didn't have a specific flow of inputs for a character to make you come out on top. It was more "dynamic" and made for a wide variety of options at any given time.

"You sir, Mr. Sakurai, gave your opinion online!? How dare you! LET'S GET HIM! >:O" *300-esque chanting intensifies*

The level of competitiveness since fighting games started has risen to unimaginable stages. The popularity of fighting games is like a seesaw. When first releases are out they Stay popular for a limited time. Games like grandblue vs and samsho 2019 got everyone excited but now their dead. It's going to happen every single game cause new ones pull them away from what they were. Love fighting games for fighting games. Good or bad. Ppl spend their careers to bring the next joy of competition. Bless all employees and the companies for keeping us entertained for decades and decades to come.

I think by "strategy" he meant what Max was getting at in the final bit of the video. As combos became a more central focus there was less room for improvisation because in theory, there is always an optimal combo or strategy that a certain character should go for in all cases. I'm not saying Smash managed to completely do away with that, but as Max mentioned, it is more dependent on your reaction to a particular situation as opposed to you knowing the exact optimal combo to go for at all times.

WHO DARES BEING MAD AS SUCH A COOL AND WONDERFUL PERSON ?! Freaking twitter once again I bet ! This social media is such a cancer....

There were Kizuna Encounter and Last Blade 2 that had long combos, and there was Street Fighter EX 2.

It's actually kind of crazy that smash is one of the only fighting games to implement a method to get out of combo's with DI ( directional influence). It be interesting to see other fighting games implement DI and smash di. This just add's more depth to smash in that not only do you have to use mixups in neutral but also during combo's. If you try to do the same combo over and over in melee not only will it not work at higher percents but also the other player can start di'ng in a way where they can get out so you have to mix them up and continue to adapt to what they're doing.