Hello, and welcome back to Sidequest. This is our video game show here
at EBERS. It's me Dylan here today for another solo episode where I'm going
to be talking about the Super Smash Brothers single player modes from over the years.
I might be asking yourself, why are you doing this? Why are
you doing it right now? It's very not irrelevant to any Smash news,
but I just felt like talking about this. I was thinking about the single
player aspect of these games the other day and thought it'd be fun to kind
of really go through the history of them, break it down, and then
of course close it off with the ranking as I love to do, and
just see kind of how the single player aspect of these games that is primarily
seen as a multiplayer game, how that's evolved and chained and added and received
editions and gotten rid of other modes over the years. So we're gonna do
that. I think this is going to be a fun time. Yeah,
because Super Smash was, you know, one of my favorite probably my favorite
series at this point, I think all the Elder scrolls would be like the
number two or the competitor to it. But really just at the end of
the day, I love this series so much, such a nerd about it
in terms of like the roster editions and all the changes and updates it's received
through all its iterations, and it's always been a series that as a kid
too and I didn't have a friend over to play, I would go to
these single player modes and play them endlessly and try and get high scores or
just complete them, or maybe it's just doing them to get the unlocks and
whatever it is, but just playing for hours and hours, and even still
today I'll jump in Ultimate and play through some of these single player modes.
It's still something I'm interested in. So yeah, I think it's an underrated
aspect of these games, or an under talked about part about these games perhaps.
So I think the way we gonna do this is they're gonna go game
by game, talk about the different modes that existed in them, kind of
explain them, because for some people, maybe it's been a long time since
you've played Melee or Brawl or Smash sixty four, you kind of forget what
some of the modes were in those games. So we'll talk about them,
make some comparisons, and then we'll do the ranking part at the end.
If you're watching this on YouTube, I'm just gonna play some random gauntlet footage
that we have of Smash Pro stuff. So this is not relevant to the
single player part of it, but it just gives you a little something to
watch watch along with. And apologies for these stretched or compressed images here.
This is what we got, so I'm just gonna play it so I don't
get copyright striked on anyone else's content. Okay, so let's start with,
of course, Smash sixty four or I guess just called Super Smash Bros.
Kind of now known as sixty four. This is the first game in the
series, of course, and it started out with you know what is now
called Classic Mode, but it was really just called one player mode one player
game back in the day. And this is the most essential of the single
player modes, and it is essentially just like you know between I think it's
like eight to ten different battles that you're doing. You'll start out, you
pick a character, and then you go and you fight Luigi and then you
may get like a team battle later on a TWOV two or maybe you have
to do a three v one, or maybe able to fight Metal Mario,
other little things will pop up little mini modes in between there, but for
the most part, you just play through these series of battles, a couple
exhilar exhibition matches, I guess you could say, and then close it off
with the boss fight against Master Hand or Crazy Hand or both. Along with
that and sespacially for you also have a training mode. This might seem like
a weird one to throw in here, but this is definitely a single player
mode that people would use just to test things out or practice. It's often
used for competitive players, and it's a weird one because, like you know,
a lot of people who play these games casually will probably never use the
training mode. Even someone like me who does play these games competitively very rarely
do I actually to use the train When an Ultimate first came out, I
used it for practicing certain things or may they all do it a little bit,
but it's really not something that I use very often, and probably a
lot of people don't. But it's it's interesting because it's been in every game
and it's useful for some people, and it is a mode nonetheless. And
then I think the two kind of main side ones here in Smash sixty four
is of course you have Break the Targets and Board the Platforms, which some
people might forget about. Break the Targets is iconic for the series, and
this is you know, each character has their own special course, and in
this course there's ten to fifteen targets. You have to go around smash them
as quick as possible, and it's kind of a high score thing of trying
to beat your best times. Some of them might even just be puzzles in
terms of like, oh, how do I hit this certain target. It's
in a really weird spot, so maybe if you use a specific move from
a character or get into a certain location, and there's all sorts of different
shortcuts and things like that. So yeah, and Smash sixty four there's twelve
different courses and one for each character. And that was the same for Board
the Platforms, which is a mode that has never returned and has not even
really ever seen an iteration on. It's kind of just lost to time back
in the N sixty four era. And in Board the Platforms pretty simple.
You would just have to land on I think yeah once again between ten and
fifteen different platforms, so you'd have to just essentially do this platform and challenge
to get around, and once again, this is very much about the speed
of it, trying to do it quickly. But for some of them,
I remember like Samus for example, has one that's way out in the far
right, and just with regular jump double jump up b you might not get
there, so you'll have to use some down be bomb shenanigans or other you
know you do, like a reverse charge shot to boost yourself over there.
So you have to kind of know these different things in order to board all
these platforms. Is interesting mode and one I'm going to talk about a bit
later in terms of interesting that it has never really appeared again, so that's
kind of it for Smash sixty four, you know, a pretty simple game,
the first game in the series, and I think even in the one
play your game, I think the break, the targets, and the board
board the platforms occur within that mode, so it's kind of all integrated together.
I want to actually take a quick little side tenngin here to talk about,
like you know, especially with Smash these four and then going into the
other games, like what is really the purpose or why are these modes here?
Why are they keep adding and changing and making updates to them? And
obviously it's just like something fun to do, but there's kind of more to
it in these games. So there's always the aspect of you're doing these single
player modes often to unlock characters and stages to use in the versus mode and
just regular Smash. Maybe it's completing challenges like Ultimate has this big challenge board
of all these different things we're all had, like this museum type thing where
you can smash these different tiles accomplish these different challenges. Other unlocks like trophies,
stickers, spirits, music, costumes for me, fighters, these those
appear in different games. We you had the unlocking of special moves, right,
you could you could change out special moves. There's different versions of that
was a big part of it. And then like the high score chasing that
I mentioned with Smash sixty four there. So I think it's you know,
it's good to remember those things that outside of just something fun to do,
like, there is purpose for doing these things. And often even if you
are a multiplayer only kind of player, you will have to engage with this
single player to some extent to get these characters and stages on locks that you
have more to play with when you get into those other modes. Okay,
moving along Melee. Melee had quite a few additions, and I'll do a
recap after of what modes were kind of dropped in between and which ones received
iterations. But yeah, and Melee, the I'd say the biggest addition was
kind of two Adventure Mode and Event Mode. Adventure Mode is kind of an
evolution of Classic Mode in that you're playing through these variety of battles that leads
into a boss fight at the end, but this one kind of added more
platforming sequences. You have that first level we're going through Mushroom Kingdom. There's
the iconic one of the underground maze for the Zelda one where you have to
go and try and find the Try Force. There's the kind of a scape
sequence from metroy that you get to do. So you have these other elements
from taken from these different games and what they would be like in a Smash
version. So it's similar to Classic Mode, or you still have those battles,
but then it's maybe a bit more of a story, a bit more
of a progression, and a bit more consistent in between characters, and it's
kind of about beating them at higher difficulties or just unlocking them all because you
have to beat adventure mode I think with every character to get game and watch
unlocked for example, so you'll need to play through it a lot. And
then along with that there is the event mode as I mentioned, so this
is kind of a series. I think there was like maybe forty to sixty
events in Melee and different tiers and all that. And an event would either
be pick your character or it's a select character you're using Mario for this one,
and give you a very specific challenge kind of like maybe a boss fight,
or it might just be you're really weak and small, and then maybe
there's like a big enemy that you're fighting against. Things like that. And
yeah, there was all sorts of them in there, and unlock them.
They'd give you different unlocks as well. This is where the addition of home
Run Contest is, which is of course an iconic Smash Bros. Single player
mode, which is, yeah, there's just a dummy, a punching bag.
You have to beat it up a little bit and smash it with the
home Run bat and see how far you can get in very much a high
score chasing sort of game mode there. And then there's the addition of All
Star, which once you unlock all the characters, you get All Star Mode,
and this is just a essentially an Iron Man where you have to pick
one character and you have to fight every single member of the cast. That
starts with one on one battles and then eventually have one on twos. I
think one on three is probably at some point too, so it gets pretty
hard near the end, and then you have to fight like a hundred game
and watches or something when you get to the last level. So that's fun.
That's just playing one character destroy the whole cast. A very fun addition
to the series. I think that's kind of it for Melee. You know,
definitely a good few additions there. Retains the classic mode of Corps training
mode, and break the to Targets is the exact same as it was in
Smash sixty four. Each character has their own map. Moving on to Super
Smash Brothers Brawl quite a few additions here as well. So Brawl made a
change to Break the Targets and this is where I'm actually going to kind of
consider it a different mode. I'll just call it the five level Break the
Target. So obviously in Smash sixty four and Melee. As I mentioned,
break the targets, each character had their own map that they would do and
it was designed around their movement capabilities, their projectiles, and it was even
kind of themed after them. Smash sixty four is pretty basic, but in
Melee they went more with like visual themes that kind of match the characters.
Not all of them have that, but some of them do. And then
in Brawl the change was there's five levels of difficulty, but it was the
same five maps for each character. So if you pick Sonic, there's an
easy map, there's a very hard map, and then there's every level in
between. But every character, you know, Martha Mara, all of them
are going to have the exact same target maps. So because of that,
you're getting less. I guess you need setups in terms of like, oh,
maybe this target is just impossible to hit for someone like Roy, but
someone like Jigglypuff can reach out there and hit it. But you're not going
to really see that with this Brawl one because it kind of has to be
homogenized that every character can do it. There's also items added to it,
which I think helped for specific situations where maybe certain characters couldn't reach a certain
spot. So it still exists, and there's still a lot to it.
If you want to like do it with every character on all difficulties, that
would be a lot, but it's definitely less unique than the previous games.
The biggest addition of Brawl is of course, the Subspace Emissary, which is
taking that melee adventure mode, taking the Smash sixty four classic mode, you
could say, and really just blowing it up into a huge story. And
this is you know, this is one of the most iconic modes in all
of Smash. And yeah, it's just a longer single player story, huge
like CGI cut scenes that were really really beautiful, tons of platforming sequences,
unique battles, boss battles. This is the main way to unlock a lot
of the characters through the games. Would be the kind of the primary way
you probably do that. And yeah, it was kind of included all the
characters at different points in the story, and then you build up this roster
and then you could pick in certain sequences who you wanted to play as.
Other sequences you'd be forced to play as a certain character. Just an amazing
mode. The Subspace Emissary introduced so many unique character designs. There was a
lot of original designs in terms of the enemies that you're fighting. There led
into a final battle against Taboo, who is an interesting boss fight who was
I don't think ever appeared again in a Smash game. He was kind of
only there in Bral. I think once you unlocked everything in Brawl, you
would get the boss Battles mode as an unlocked This is kind of similar to
I guess you would say, like All Star, I forget how you unlocked
it, but this is essentially just a boss rush. You could just play
pick a character and play through all the boss fights that were in Subspace,
back to back to back, and it had different difficulties as well. Interesting
to note that the boss Battles mode has never been used in another game.
Ultimately, you would think should have that kind of thing, but it never
did for some reason. And I don't think Smash four really had new or
any boss battles at all, so it wouldn't make sense for that game to
have it. But ultimately really weird that that was never added to it,
even through like a DLC update or something, right, and then a huge
update in Brawl as well or addition rather is the stage builder, which you
know, you might not think about as a single player mode because you're maybe
building stages that you'd play with your friends on, but the actual builder part
of it is definitely a single player thing, you know. Growing up,
I always loved stage builders in games map editors I think of like Tony Hawk's
Underground and how I'd make maps in there Forever, something like Scribble nots.
I was like checking out the stage builder. There always something that I was
interested in and I like to do, which Halo as well the Forge mode
there, which makes sense now that I'm kind of making games of my own
cheap plug go check out my game Potion Problem on Steams coming out soon.
But I always found that the Smash, one of those my Pirit series was
very lacking, I think for a few reasons. Like one, visually,
I don't know, you can never really make like a good looking map,
which is too bad. There was very few like additions to it. Like
you it'd be cool if youd take like, I don't know, the windmill
from Pokemon Stadium and make that on your map, or take these just iconic
elements like maybe even like the metroid, how the lava rises up it'd be
cool if you could add a feature like that to these maps, but it
was very bare bones, very basic, and even though this was a feature
in Smash for REU and Smash for Ultimate as well, they didn't really add
a ton and they've never made it very easy to find and download maps,
like you would have to get a code, so you have to like go
on Reddit, find a map, check the code, download it through your
game. Like it's never just like there was never a search feature within the
actual game itself, even though all the way back and Roll it did have
online play, so there was that online functionality, but they didn't think to
have something like that. So I don't know, I feel like there's a
lot of potential there in terms of could have been maybe like those additional feature
as I'm talking about the things you were unlocking and through other modes, so
it could have helped connect all these features together. But yeah, it's always
felt like never really reaching its full potential there. And I'll talk about that
a bit later on with something else as well. So those that was it
for Brawl, you had break the targets, the five levels, subspace,
emissary boss battles in the Stage Builder, of course there's previous modes from the
previous games all were keep recapped that all at the end going into Smash four,
So Smash four we use Smash four three DS. Always loved that pun
had different modes that were in each version, and so the three DS version
was a bit more simplified. There was less in it, and you know,
it didn't even have the eight player Smash. It didn't have I don't
know, like these certain modes in particular. For the most part, I
think they kind of tried to make these games as similar as possible, but
they are ultimately different. So the three DS doesn't have a whole lot of
unique modes added to it. It had Street Smash, which is essentially the
you know, like a little pun on street street pass there where with you
if you had your three DS, you're traveling around and you, I don't
know, turn on the street pass setting. If you pass someone in the
world who has that also turned on, you'd get like a them as an
opponent. But it's like they weren't really battles. Like I think this would
have made sense for like the me or the Ambo functionality, but I think
it was more just like you have like a peg on this little map,
and it was almost like shuffle board or curling. You're like trying to smash
these other things off. So a very weird little addition, you know,
is fun enough, and I think you'd get some unlocks from it, but
mostly I would interact with this mode when I'd go to tournaments back in the
day when Smash four was the biggest, the big deal, the newest Smash
game, and so I'd get a lot of street passes from people at those
tournaments, a lot of other people bringing that, and then you'd also had
Smash Run, which is a really underrated mode. I love Smash Run and
I wish it kind of got another chance with Ultimate. But ultimately this is
a multiplayer mode where it's multiplayer single player, but you pick a character and
oh, just loading up my next YouTube video here, just have so you
guys have something to watch here as I'm going through this all, let's go
with this next one here. But yeah, you would pick a character,
you'd go through this giant map. It was very similar to what you would
encounter in Subspace Emissary in terms of platform and sequences, different kind of locations
and underground up in the sky, area and you're going around collecting upgrades to
your character, maybe that stats or like certain item type things, and then
at the end of the timer, it'd be like five minutes of that,
you'd run around and get a bunch of stuff at the end of the time,
or you'd be given a random battle. I think this is maybe one
of the weaker parts about it is there wasn't really any customization. You couldn't
pick what that final battle was like. You couldn't change how long you could
do the smash around, you couldn't change how many battles there were after it.
So sometimes you'd like go around, maybe you'd get really powerful, you
got a bunch of power upgrades for your character, but then like the final
battle is like a race to the finish, and it's like, okay,
well, now all these upgrades I got aren't really useful anymore. Or it
could be the opposite, where maybe you got a bunch of speed updates,
but then it's just like a purely like a metal all metal battle or something,
so you need a bunch of strength and you just don't have that.
So it was still a really fun mode mostly for that first like five minutes
of running around collecting stuff and fighting random enemies. I don't think you can
actually bump into other players in that you were kind of own. If you
did it multiplayer, you were all in your own world, which is why
it once again feels like more of a single player thing. But I really
loved the smart I think I had a lot of potential. I think I
think it would have been cool if it got updates, and I think it
would have been hard. I guess you could have done a split screen and
ultimate, but like really it was one of those things that worked well as
everyone having their own three ds. But even in single player, I still
played a ton of this mode. Going over to the WEU side of things,
the kind of equivalent there was Smash Tour. Smash Tour was I call
it like kind of like a Mario Party type mode within Smash, but it
wasn't really as good or as well thought out as Mario Party. There wasn't
really There might have been different maps, but they're all kind of basic.
It was kind of a similar thing where you're going around and collecting upgrades and
then you're doing battles, and it was longer than Smash Run. It was
kind of like a more collective thing, but I don't know, it never
really did it for me, and I didn't play it a ton, to
be honest, so maybe there's something I was just missing there, But ultimately
it was just not really one of my favorite modess, not when I spent
a lot of time with. There was also the addition of special orders,
which is what I completely forgot about until I was looking up all this stuff
and watching videos of the modes I couldn't quite remember. And in special orders
there was kind of two subcategories. There are the Master orders and Crazzy orders,
and so you essentially go in, you'd have your currency, you'd pick
up a tier battle you know, easier versus harder ones, and you would
do some very specific type of battles, kind of like event mode from the
earlier games from Brawl and Melee, where it'd be a very specific type of
battle that you would do and then you would give you some unlock at the
end there. So crazy orders would obviously be the more intense ones. Master
orders were a bit more simp I think it is kind of how it was
set up there. Once again, not one I spent a whole lot of
time with. And then you also added the target Blast, which I'm sure
most people completely forget, but this was you know, by the time you
came around, there was no longer break the targets at all in the games,
and so this is kind of their way of keeping the spirit of it
where you It was similar to home run contests, were you're there there was
a big bomb and you'd smash the bomb, deal damage to it would fly,
and then it would like hit a bunch of targets and blow things up.
This was not very good, It was not very fun. It was
not that engaging. Really. The only reason I played it at all was
I remember specifically, you know, in WU it was so hard to get
all the special move unlocks, but I wanted all of them all because I
just wanted to see them and mess around with them. And this is something
with with Gannendorf. I remember my friend had like a Turbo controller, so
that had like extra buttons on it, and so we would just set this
up so that I would like auto play target Blast and it would just auto
Gannendorf smash this thing, smash all these targets, and I would just leave
it on for hours and then when I'd come back, it would unlock all
these special moves for me, So that was like, really the only purpose
that I have for me was using this kind of gimmick to unlock all the
special moves about me having to grind them all out. But it was not
a very fun mode. So I think the biggest takeaway here is that like
we U three ds like kind of a weaker addition in terms of the single
player for the setting, and I think part of that is probably because they
were stretched thin trying to create these two different versions, make the mobile version,
make it work on three DS, then also have these different editions for
we You, So there's that, and then going into Ultimate, so Ultimate
really only has two new additions and they're kind of even condensed into one in
a way, and that is the World of Light, and through World of
Light you also have the Spirit Boards. So this is kind of the new
version of Subspace Emissary or adventure mode where you're going around this huge map,
traveling around, moving on It's almost a little bit similar to Smash Tour as
well. You're moving around this map picking different battles, and it's very similar
to Event Mode where there's different changes, improvements or weaknesses on these characters,
maybe you're fretting multiple maybe you can't touch the ground, all these different things,
and this is kind of the incentive is like the spirits. You're fighting
these different spirits in the World of Light, and you can also fight them
on the Spirit Board, and they're kind of like, you know'll give you
Mark, but it'll like change his stats, so he's like a different character
from Fire and Bloom. And this is like instead of trophies, they had
these spirits, right, and you're I don't know, doing these imaginary battles
so to speak. I think World of Light compared to Subspace Adversary, you
know, it didn't have as many cut scenes that sold. Some that were
cool and had a couple cool moments, but for the most part, I
feel like both these modes are vast quantity at the cost of lower quality.
You're not really that engaged with it. But there's a lot there to do,
And even when I go into Ultimate, I do some single player of
stuff, I'll still go to the Spirit Board and do a couple of battles,
but like it doesn't really keep me that engaged. I'd rather go do
Classic Mode or All Star Mode or something. So yeah, kind of a
weird addition. I don't think it was very successful, but I understand what
just how many characters they had an ultimate and they added a lot of additions
to like online play or the multiplayer modes, which I think is good.
It's good to focus on those things, but I think it's definitely at the
cost of like less iconic single player modes. So there you go. There's
kind of the history of it. There's a couple of honorable mentions. I'll
show it here. These are things I'm not counting. Race to the Finish
has never been a mode that you can select from the menu, but it's
more like integrated into Usually classic mode would be where it's at, and this
would be just yeah, you kind of have to run to the end of
a level and then you'll get some bonus at the end of it, or
you're just trying to do it within a certain timeframe. There different trophy ways
to collect trophies. Like in Melee, there was like a almost like a
little bingo machine you could do, and I think we you there was like
this falling block thing where you have to can smash these different blocks out of
the way. Melee as well had this thing where there was like a thing
in the center that would collect trophies and you had to like kind of run
around and smack the trophies into the center so they'd get collected. So you
get them challenges, you know, it's worthy a shout out here. As
I mentioned with Ultimate, there was like all this this huge challenge boards.
I'll give you different things you could go do. Brall had it as well.
I forget if we you had it, So that's kind of a you
know, an incentive to go do other single player things. And then you
know, honorable mention of course, just just all the additions they've made to
Smash, like just the basic versus battle in terms of adding tournament play or
like Ultimate added like the thing where you could pick a roster of like three
characters and you'd alternate between them, ability to like freeze hazards, like,
There's been so many additions to that, which, of course in single player
I still did a bunch of that stuff, making up fun little battles in
my mind, but I'm not really counting that for the purpose of of what
this podcast is about. So there you go. I think let's do a
quick recap here and talk about yeah and break it down by games, so
the modes that exist in all games would be classic mode. Now it's weird,
like in Smash sixty four, it's not called that, it's just called
one player game. And there's different changes and iterations to this mode throughout all
the games. They all behave slightly differently, but I'm going to consider it
allays. One classic mode. Training mode exists in all games. Pretty straightforward.
Multiman Melee. I don't think I mentioned this I was going through.
I must have forgot to write this down in my notes. I wrote it
there, I just forgot to mention it. This is that in Melee,
and it exists, and I believe every game since and multiman Melee is pretty
simply you go in and you pick either one hundred men Melee or Cruel Melee.
There's different ones. You just have to fight these kind of polygon type
creatures. So yeah, you either have to kill a hundred of them or
just fight the cruel ones, which are really really strong. And so I'm
considering this to be in all games because even though this wasn't a mode you
could select in Smash sixty four, this was something that would be integrated into
the classic modes you could still do it. So yeah, just for the
sake of this, I'm going to consider that one multiman Melee there or multiman
Smash I guess we should call it. And then a couple modes that we're
in every game except Smash sixty four, So added in Melee and then continued
is all Star Mode and then Home Run Contest. Of course, all Star
Mode changes from game to game in terms of how it's structured. With Ultimate,
you know so many characters that it works a bit differently than it does
in Melee, but still worth a shout out there. Modes that exist in
three games would be a vent mode that's in Melee, Brawl and Smash four,
and then the stage builder is in Brawl. Will you an Ultimate exists
in two games I'm calling Break the Targets, the character specific ones that's in
sixty four in Melee. And then games that are kind of in one game
but are not really a one off, like they're kind of an iteration or
a change on a previous mode. That would be Break the Targets, the
five to Level one from Brawl, Adventure Mode, Subspace, and World of
Light. You know, they're all very much their own thing, but you
can see how they're kind of an evolution of each other. Smash Tour,
target blasts and special orders from WU, Smash Run from three DS, and
then the Spirit Board as well from Ultimate there and then the things that I
can kind of consider a true one off is the boss Battle mode from Brawl
Board, the platforms from Smash sixty four, and then Street Smash from three
DS. As small as that mode is, it's worthy of shouting out there
as its own thing. And then yeah, so before I rank these,
that's kind of the highlight of what all of them are. I wanted to
just quickly talk about how some of these things are definitely iterations or evolutions of
each other. So break the targets. It's fun to kind of a track
the history of that from being the character specific version in sixty four Melee to
the five level version in Brawl and then kind of target blast in Smash four.
We you there, So I kind of talked about that, but interesting
how to see how that's always been kind of in there, and then ultimately
is the first time there's you know, not a target to be found anywhere.
Smash Tour, as I mentioned, kind of feels like you can see
the evolution into a World of Light there if you look at it. I
think even the way the map looks and Smash Tour looks very similar to the
overworld map in World of Light, so that's interesting. Events is kind of
something that evolved into Special Orders and then the Spirit Board. That's kind of
the way I look at it there. And then you know, Smash the
forehead Classic Mode, which kind of feels like it evolved in Adventure Mode in
Melee even though they kept Classic Mode and then that involved in the subspace into
Nothing for Smash four interestingly off and then World of Light for Ultimate. There,
so cool to see that kind of primary single player mode change and evolve
over time, and then special orders as well. I kind of mentioned this,
but this is very similar to Classic mode or yeah, special orders are
very similar to the like the spirit board in Ultimate is what I meant to
say there, So you can kind of see some evolutions there, and then
let's see I think with that we can kind of get into the actual ranking
a bit here. So I've kind of broken this into three tiers as the
bottom tier, the mid tier, and then the top tier. You know,
it's kind of an oversimplification, but I think it's good to look at
it this way. So in the bottom tier and number I have twenty things
here from my list of breakdown there, I've kind of categorized them into twenty
things. Number twenty is Target Blast from will You, as I mentioned,
just very weak, and then i'll just raffle the bottom ones. Actually nineteen
Smash orders or special orders, eighteen Street Smash, and then seventeen is Smash
Tour. So interestingly enough, that whole bottom tier consists of three DS and
WU exclusive modes, so I'll talk about that a little bit later on.
In the mid tier there, at number sixteen, I'm putting Training Mode.
Of course, it's very useful, it's great that it exists, but it's
just not that engaging. If you're not like a competitive level player, you're
not really going to use it. But I'm glad that it exists. At
number fifteen, I put the Stage Builder. I did put it this low
because there's just the lack of features and lack of engagement that it has given
me over the years. Number fourteen is where I'm putting multi Multiman Smash Multiman
Melee. You know, it's fun enough, but It's never kind of my
go to in terms of even just trying to push my own high scores.
It's not when I really care to do. Number thirteen is where I'm putting
the Spirit Board from Ultimate, and then at twelve is where I put World
of Light. So I kind of put them right next to each other because
they do feel like one kind of collective mode. This might seem a bit
low like even related to other modes above it that are way simpler, but
I just as I mentioned, it's quantity over quality, and I think I
prefer quality in this case. Glad it exists, but it definitely doesn't blow
me away. And number eleven is where I'm putting Break the Targets from Brawl
like the five level one. I still love Break the Targets. It's definitely
not the same as it is in the other games, but you know it's
still worthy of a shout out of course. And then we're into the top
ten. Number ten I put the home Run Contest. It's kind of an
underrated one, not when I immediately think of, but it's like it is
fun. It's always when I spend a lot of time with Melee and an
ultimate I've done a lot of it with all the characters as well. It's
just fun to go back and check it out. And it's also fun one
to watch, like see the records, like all the crazy just optimization that
people do on it is cool and I just love that it's kind of been
a mainstay, you know, since Melee. It's been in there and it's
always the same, and I think that's perfect for a home run contest.
It doesn't need to change, you just need to with the new characters you
want to maybe try it out or with the new move set for a character,
see what kind of record you can get. Number nine is where I'm
putting the boss battles from Brawl. Really cool mode, just this boss rush
mode that I think is this is just no brainer. It's weird that it
was not included an ultimate. Number eight is where I'm putting board the platforms
from Smash sixty four. Always love this mode. I think it's really cool.
It's it's too bad that it's never made a return in a bigger way.
Number seven is where I'm putting Event mode. Of course it's changed,
like in Melee, there was not difficult. They got harder as you went
on, but there weren't. From what I remember, I don't think there
was like easy medium, hard brawl added that. I remember that, and
then we U three DS. I think I had the very similar thing with
it. But yeah, always been a cool mode, just a fun way
to get these exclusive battles, but it very much focuses on quality over quantity.
Like there isn't a whole lot of duds in there. They're all at
least interesting to do the first time. Number six is where I'm putting All
Star Mode. I think it kind of speaks for itself. Number five top
five is where I'm putting Classic Mode. This might seem maybe too high for
how simple the mode is, but it's just I think it has like the
perfect run time, you know, maybe it takes like fifteen minutes to do
a run through, just gives you a good variety for each of the characters.
It's just always a classic, and I like that always a classic pun
intended there, and I'm glad that it exists in all games and it's different
and fun in its own ways. Number four is where I'm putting Smash Around.
That's how much I love this mode, And you know, part of
it is definitely because I did a lot of multiplayer with friends playing it,
but even as a single player mode, it's when I played a lot as
well, and it's really fun and when I would hope to see again someday.
Number three is where I'm putting Adventure Mode from Melee. I think it
was really unique, and even thinking back on it and going back to it
like it is still fun to do and is even though it's not as vast
as World of Play, I still think it's better in terms of quality.
Number two is where I'm putting Break the Targets, the character specific one from
sixty four and Melee. I love Breaking the Targets and I wish it was
still around. I understand why they don't do this anymore, just with how
many characters there is. It's a lot of work to make this individual map
and visual style for it, but I think it would be worth doing.
And then number one, with no surprise, it's Subspace Emissary, just such
a vast mode. The platform and sequences, all the battles, the boss
battles, the CGI cut scenes, the unlocking of characters. It was such
a huge success, and once again I understand why they haven't put that much
effort into a single player mode, since because people mostly play Smash Bros.
For the multiplayer of it, and something like making online play better makes sense,
as like that being of more of a priority when you're developing a new
game over making another subspace. But someday I hope we do get another version
of this. It's something I want to do as another separate kind of topic
on side, quest to talk about like what the future of Smash could look
like. And I think if we really reduce the roster, make some changes
to it and give another big single player mode, I think that would be
worthy of of I don't know something of a sequel or maybe like a spin
off for the series, But like I said, that's kind of a discussion
for another day. So that's the teerless there. I want to talk about
a little bit, a couple of takeaways and then some other just some potential.
So what I mentioned with targets and break the targets aboard the platforms,
I can understand why they haven't added these modes back, but I think one
of the biggest misses in the series is not integrating that into the stage builder
in some way, I think just not making your own break the targets maps,
but instead just giving that to the players to make cool ones and make
it easier to download and find other people's would be a great way to do
it, where of course, you know, people would recreate the ones from
the earlier games, and that would be fun to try with different characters,
but people would make really interesting challenges and difficult ones or just fun ones to
go through and break, break those targets, board those platforms. I think
that'd be just such a fun thing to do. And you know, people
could essentially make aboard the platforms via stage Builder, but it's not the same.
It's just not And then you know, having like maybe a high score
element of having those be able to download them online and then see other people's
scores and try and beat them. I think it would be really fun.
So I hope they add that with the next iteration. I find it highly
unlikely they would do the board the platforms part of it, just because that's
been forgotten since the nineties at this point. But I think we'd break the
targets. That would be a great way to bring that mode back without them
having to do a whole lot of work, Like you know, that's simplifying
it. Of course making that integration and be able to download maps would be
work, but I think they wouldn't have to actually make individual maps for everyone.
Smash Run, I think that should definitely come back at some point and
just have a lot more customization to it, changed how many battles there are,
maybe make it so there's like you get to do the Smash Run section
for two minutes and then do a battle, and then you get to go
back in there for another three minutes, improve your character, and then go
to a different battle and pick what those final battles are going to be.
I think there's a lot of potential there, and maybe some different maps or
more changing of the maps could be something that would be really cool. And
then, as I mentioned with Stage Builder in general, like obviously for the
board the platforms, break the targets, but then also just more features there,
more variety in terms of what you can make, the ability to make
better looking maps, different unique hazards. I think that would all be really
cool or even like maybe specific items spawn locations that could play into something interesting
as well. So that's something I hope to see added in the future.
And then yeah, we've gone the ranking, I've talked about these modes,
like what are the biggest takeaways from going through and like analyze it and looking
at all these I think the big one for me is just like, wow,
there are a lot more modes than I remember somebody who's play these games
religiously my whole life, I kind of forgot about a few of these.
I forgot about some of the functionality of them. And it's interesting to just
see how much they've done and how much work they've put into it, even
though it's never really been the primary function of these games. You can see
that with something like Ultimate, like how they went kind of all all in
on the world of light Mode, but like they still had all these other
previous modes in there as well, so it's cool to see. And then
lastly, like Smash four both We You and the three DS version is a
really weird point in the series because if you look at you know, sixty
four Brawl in Melee versus the Ultimate Smash four era, like visually very different
style those games had, whereas Smash four and like all those games too like
built from the ground up, play completely differently, look very different in their
art style. But with Ultimate, obviously this is the first time in the
series where they took Smash four as the foundation and then like built off of
it, you know, for lack of a better word, copy pasted Smash
for and then made changes there. And it's like, in general, Ultimate
of Course is going to be the version that people are going to go to
because it has all the characters plus more. Everyone is here, you know,
that whole thing, and then it takes the mechanics and adds a couple
of new things, makes the game play a bit quicker, snappier, more
fun in general. So it makes one of the like that reason alone,
Smash for is kind of gonna be lost of time in a way. And
even like the three DS element that was so unique because it was you know,
Smash Bros. On the go for the first time. But now with
Ultimate and the Switch, of course you can do that too. So because
of that, like Smash for is just lacked an identity. I think in
the history of time it's gonna lack its identity. But I also think a
big reason for that is that it didn't really have a lot of unique or
if it did have unique modes, they weren't very good for the single player
stuff. As I mentioned like mostly at the bottom tier there and all the
higher tier stuff in my ranking with things that we're also in other Smash Bros.
Games. And so maybe there's like a unique events or something, but
you know, Melee and Brawl are still going to give you events. Ultimate's
going to give you the Spirit Battles. So I feel like for many reasons,
now that's something I'd never thought about, is, Yeah, Smash four
is going to really lack an identity for many reasons, and a big part
of that. Yeah, once again is that single player mode and the lack
of interest there. So that's too bad. And then I think, yeah,
my last takeaway here is that, like, and I knew going into
this list that, of course Subspace Emissary is going to be my number one
ranked mode, but damn, Brall really just did have the best single player
and it still does all these years later. Subspaces of course, of course
the biggest part of that, but it still had Target Test in some form,
it had events, it had Classic Mode, it had All Star Mode,
and then it also had Boss Battles, which is another unique mode that
no other game has had since. So I think, just without a doubt,
without a shadow of a doubt, Brawl is the best game of the
series in terms of the single player element of and that's also a bit of
a bummer one because of the accessibility of it these days has been how many
people have a we plugged in anymore, so you're not gonna just as easily
boot it up. But I also think it's the game that is aged the
worst in terms of the actual minute to minute gameplay of it, the game
feel of it. It's slow, sluggish, Floaty has tripping, all these
things that just make it not as fun to go back and play as it
once was, which is too bad because it has all these unique modes and
I'd want to go back and play them, but then it's like, well
then I have to play with Brawls Mechanics, which of course I'm such a
diehard melee fan now that it's especially hard to do that. But even just
compared to Ultimate, which is just a way better game feel and has all
those characters, it's like, there's not much reason to go back to it
other than those single player modes. So yeah, it's kind of all there
was a pro and a con to all of them, and no game has
got it perfect. Unfortunately, and so I think there's still a lot of
potential for a Smash as a series in terms of this single player element to
it, and I hope it's something that they continue to focus on a highlight.
Even though as time goes on, more and more people are just gonna
play. When they go back to Smash now, they're gonna go back for
the online play or go back to play with their friends. But I wish
there was more work put into making those single player modes great. So thank
you everyone for listening to this episode. I know it was some little different
and maybe a bit of a frantic episode, but I just truly love Smash
Bros. I love to think about it as a series and how it's evolved
and changed over the years, and yeah, the single player element of it
is an interesting angle to look at it from. So, like I said,
thank you everyone for listening. This is not in place of a standard
a weekly side quest. You're still going to get that coming out in a
few days. But yeah, thank you everyone for listening. I'll see you
again next time. Bye. Byett