Super Smash Bros. 4 in competitive play

Beginnings

Super Smash Bros. 4's competitive scene began before either version was publicly released at the Super Smash Bros. Invitational on June 10, 2014, hosted by Nintendo of America at E3 2014 where they played a demo of the Wii U version. There, ZeRo emerged victorious, beginning his long winning streak of Smash 4 tournaments to come.

Quality

The developers of Super Smash Bros. 4 stated that they wanted the game's speed and gameplay style to be somewhere between Melee and Brawl, so that the game could appeal to casual and competitive players alike, and the gameplay represents this. Although not completely removed, hitstun cancelling was nerfed considerably, and fall speeds were universally increased, although they are still generally lower than they were in Melee. Random tripping was removed, and various other sources of randomness were removed or toned down. Stale move negation was also weakened slightly, and stale moves no longer suffer as much in terms of knockback. SDI was weakened significantly, and autolink moves are now much more effective at connecting properly. Overall, while not as technical as Melee, Smash 4 is considered a huge improvement over Brawl.

The vast majority of the competitive scene takes place on the Wii U version, as it allows for better viewing quality, far superior controls, and generally improved graphics, although the 3DS version of the game has been featured in a few tournaments like the Xanadu Smash 4 Invitational and KTAR X.

Effect on the Melee and Brawl community

The creation of Smash 4 has undoubtably had an effect on the Melee community, boasting better graphics, more fighters, and balance patches to help even out anything that seems unfair in the game, however Melee still has a very active competitive scene, due to it being far more technical and fast paced. Many players also choose to play competitive Melee over Smash 4 due to their main being stronger in that game, a famous example of this being Hungrybox.

Brawl's competitive scene on the other hand was mostly destroyed by the creation of Smash 4, as most of its players, such as ZeRo and Esam, only played it because it was the latest instalment in the series. Its sluggish gameplay, lack of combos and greatly misbalanced cast makes Brawl a much less enjoyable game to play, which has driven away most of the competitive players.

This article is a stub. You can help SmashWiki by expanding or finishing it.