Hoo boy, this is a fun one to talk about. I have lots of fond memories with Smash Crusade, and I still like to revisit it from time to time, especially whenever there is a major update.

Talking from a purely gameplay perspective, I'm not sure if this is any better or worse than some of the better official Smash entries, or even other notable fan games like Flash 2. It strikes me as a lot looser and less precise at times, but I don't find this to be a bad thing. Really, it strikes me as an offshoot of its inherent goofiness, and I mean that in a good way.

One fair criticism I know for the game is that it has a lot of "relics" of older, less polished versions, and I get that. There's more of a "quantity over quality" thing going on with the roster, but again, I don't mind it on the grounds that the game is already really silly, and the devs are slowly working on polishing a lot the characters at least.

OK yeah, I keep bringing it up, let me address it directly: I love how dumb this game is. It really does strike me as a "classic internet fangame with some polish"; The roster is weird but has lots of fun & unique choices (many of which were characters I so happen wanted in official games at one point in time), including the meme character Weegee. Come on, Weegee's here, that's how you know it's old school.

Now I'm just reminiscing at this point, but I remember when a lot of the characters were more like MUGEN ports. Like, I'm pretty sure the Evil Ryu they used before resprite was just Reuben Kee's version, and Goku used the arcade game sprites that I'm sure was actually just from Choujin's Goku. Good times... like I said, I just love the old internet vibes this has.

This game also happens to be a nice free alternative to Rivals, having good mod support and a large community taking advantage of that. So, you can make this crazy big roster even stupider and more fun.

Really, despite whatever polish issues it may have, I love this doofy little fangame for what it is. In recent years, it really does seem to be embracing that silly nature as well (like bringing back Weegee after briefly removing him, or even having mod support in the first place), which is something I highly appreciate. I wish the devs good luck on future updates.

Long live the meme choices of Tingle, Weegee, & this particular characterization of the Duck Hunt Dog from early 2010s internet culture.

I have... complicated feelings on this game in retrospect.

As an older teen, I loved this game. I was super-glued to its hype cycle like there was no tomorrow. I 100%ed the game, all the way up to the final Sora update. I rabidly defended this game from any criticism, no matter how valid the complaints were. I totally fell for the narrative that this was the ultimate "celebration of gaming."

But looking back at the game in retrospect, after freeing myself from the shackles of Nintendo fanboyism and expanding my horizons into other communities... I'm not so sure about it anymore. Now, granted, a lot of this does stem from prolonged interactions with another crossover-obsessed community: Marvel Mods, creators of mods for the game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, as well as more recent observations gained from revisiting Smashboards. I will fully admit that they have influenced my views on media, and crossovers especially, in ways I probably wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

With that little disclaimer out of the way, let me first describe the issues I have with both the game and its culture surrounding it nowadays. For one, that input lag is just plain weird and I don't fully know why it exists. I don't know how I didn't have an issue with it back in the day either, guess I was too brainwashed.

The single player content, while much better than Smash 4's, still does feel lacking in areas. I don't inherently mind Spirits (and I sorta enjoyed World of Light more than others), I do understand why they exist in lieu of the (superior) trophies, but the lack of descriptions hurt. I know it's the internet age, but not having descriptions of what these things are from across Nintendo/some third-party gaming history still sucks. It feeds in to a complaint some have with the series, in that it doesn't tell you WHO these gaming icons are. I personally find that a bit disingenuous when the trophy system of old exists, but this game is the worst at it, since they're... not here. But even now those are minor complaints compared to some of the more... meta-contextual views I have.

For one, the game's marketing acts so... overly-important, you know? Perhaps a part of it is a community thing, but characters getting into Smash is now treated like some sort of great achievement, the best thing that could ever happen with a character, and... I get the series is big, but I'm sorry, I just don't agree with that view anymore. Crossovers themselves have become pretty over-saturated by now, so having Steve from Minecraft meet the bing-bing-wahoo man isn't as impactful these days. Not to mention the negative effect this kind of marketing has on the community. Arguments over who "deserves" to get in just creates a toxic environment for all.

That and a lot of the newcomer choices themselves, while fun (come on, of course my monkey brain still loves that K. Rool, Ridley, and Sephiroth are here), still feel overly-engineered to generate the most "hype points", since a lot of them come from the ballot that had been hosted back in Smash 4. And because of that, those that aren't as popular or well-known like Terry or, God forbid, Byleth, get trashed by the ravenous fan base as a result. Again, toxic environment. (For the record... Terry was actually my most hyped newcomer.)

Oh shoot, and speaking of Steve... the moveset design for newcomers, especially for third parties. They try to act too close to their original games, which ends up creating an unbalanced environment, which is a problem since the game is also trying to be "competitive" in a way. Bayonetta was a menace in Smash 4, and now Steve and Kazuya have taken her place. Meta Knight in Brawl may have been broken but at least his moveset, on a base level, felt simple and traditional, his only issue was that it was overtuned, he didn't have crazy new mechanics that other characters didn't at the very least.

Anyways, back to more meta-contextual problems... anyone else getting tired of how overly-grandiose the game's music and overall tone is? This just loops back around to the marketing, I know, but it's treating this whole thing like "LE EPIC FIGHT TO END ALL FIGHTS FOR ULTIMATE DESTINYYYYYYYY", and it's like... no. This should just be some silly crossover between Nintendo and a few other game characters, not some grand fight to save the multiverse or whatever. I mean don't get me wrong, the music itself is great, it's just... the tone's gotten old, you know? I will say it's pretty emblematic of how I used to treat crossovers as a kid, but I've sorta grown out of that and want something simpler, more genuine. Less grandiose and more dumb fun, please.

And yeah, I don't think this game's a "celebration of gaming history." The "Everyone is Here" gimmick does make it more of a Smash celebration, but I don't think a true gaming celebration is even officially possible. You'd need way more third parties, trim down the Nintendo cast, etc... but I'd rather just have a fun crossover that doesn't take itself too seriously, rather than one that NEEDS to be a "history celebration" anyways.

I totally get it if some of these more meta things seem weird to complain about to you. In fact, my younger self would probably think these "complaints" are stupid and dumb. And that's totally fine! Hey, it's one of the best selling "fighting games," the stuff I'm not so hot on these days struck a cord with a lot of people... my younger self included.

I don't really follow modern gaming anymore, Nintendo included. This was one of the last first-party Big N games I've played, actually... I have retrospective issues with it and its vibes, but overall I'm still glad to say this was my Nintendo swansong.

But for the love of God please, change the marketing and general tone of the next game. I'm begging you. I'm well over this "le epic battle" shit.

What a stupidly petty concept for a video game, I kinda love it ngl. This game wasn't ever meant to be commercially sold; only like ~100 copies exist and they were given out at some business meeting or something. As a result, this game is one of the most expensive Atari carts costing thousands of dollars, so enjoy your four-figure atari coke propaganda, game collectors. The game is an extremely simple romhack of the Atari 2600 port of Space Invaders except now you control Coke and the invaders are Pepsi (with alien companions since pepsi is a 5-letter word and there are 6 columns of enemies in Space Invaders, good job with that one guys). The gimmick is that as you are the almighty Coca-Cola company, you are invincible the entire game. No matter how many times Pepsi hits you, you will always get right back up to continue destroying them. If the enemies get to the bottom, instead of triggering an immediate game over like regular invaders, the Pepsi invaders will just keep bouncing back and forth until you do destroy them. The game is set on a 3-minute score timer, loudly flashing "COKE WINS" once the time is up. Could this potentially mean that this is one of the first Caravan shmups...?????? (no)

Honestly since there's a timer that just stops the game no matter where you are it really doesn't feel like you "win" the game when its over like the crowning domination the game expects you to feel, it's more like a stalemate if anything. Maybe this is a reflection of the eternal corporate battle that large conglomerates fight with one another in late-stage capitalism, where there's no real winner or loser, just perpetual hostility..... (this is also not the case)

Despite being an incredibly petty joke advertisement of a video game, through screenshots and the title of the game you'd honestly think this is an endorsement for Pepsi instead of propaganda against them given that the game has more PEPSI's on screen through the enemies than the sole COKE WINS on the top left corner. At least you can strategically shoot aliens to make the game spell out PEEEEEEEEEE so that's gotta earn this game something.

It really goes to show how much simpler game development was back then that you could just manufacture some doofy romhack of a best-selling mainstream title whipped up by some dude as a joke and nobody bats an eye. Imagine if something like this existed nowadays, where only in shareholder meetings for fuckin mcdonalds or something can you get an elusive copy of MACDONALDRING, a hastily-made hacked version of Elden Ring that replaces your character with an invincible Ronald Mcdonald and changes all the bosses to Burger Kings that die in one hit. actually that sounds rad hold up

Ultimate is interesting to me, because, despite being an ostensibly more casual experience than Melee, the way a lot of the kits are designed are extremely hostile to anyone who doesn't, like, go to tournaments. But even if you stick it out and get to the point where you can hit a moving target with Fox back-air, you've probably gotten good enough to be frustrated with the set initial dash distance, or how miserable it is to interact with platforms, etc. There is the classic post-melee ceiling on movement mechanics we've come to expect, but there is also a weirdly high floor to the way a lot of the characters play. I actually think this is where, at least from a non-hyper-competitive perspective, the worst changes to how Smash functions on a basic level have come from. The removal of lasting hitboxes being a kind of default, the lowering of the frame windows on weak hits generally, and the outright removal of reverse hitboxes, restrict a lot of the cool skill expression that comes from manipulating the specific placement of attacks, but more importantly, these changes harm a beginner trying to play someone like ZSS for the first time. I guess I just find it really interesting that complexity is being removed, but that has come with the strange consequence of the game being harder to learn in a lot of ways. I don't really have my finger on the pulse of smash as a primarily casual experience, so perhaps this isn't really an issue, or maybe the game naturally just filters people into the few dozens characters that don't really have this issue as strongly, but either way, I think ultimate has really strange and conflicting design priorities. (Just as a disclaimer: a lot of these things have probably been true since Brawl, but Ultimate is the first Smash game since Melee I actually put considerable time into)