A look at: "Smash Clones"

Howdy y'all, Dex here, and today, we're going to talk about something that people should really talk about more, and that would be,

Smash Clones

Or "Smash styled" games, there are a good number of these out there, each with their own aesthetics, atmosphere, characters, and god damn are they something that more people should talk about.

Let's ease our way into this with a fanmade smash game that more people should discuss, Super Smash Flash 2, OH BOY IT'S GOT ISAAC, GOKU, MR INCREDIBLE, AND

Oh yes this game is a masterpiece, but on to the actual discussion, Super Smash Flash 2 (Abbreviated as SSF2) is a currently in development fan game by McLeodGaming released to the world April 21st, 2006 as a sequel to their previous game Super Smash Flash, and oh boy these two games blew my 7 year old mind before I got my own copy of Brawl and for good reason, the game recreates Smash gameplay nearly flawlessly in Flash, also adding it's own game modes, it's own characters, stages with unique layouts and spins toward it, each character has a great stage representing them, with my personal favorite being and a kick-ass theme song. SSF2 also makes your dreams come true with unique characters, even bringing in Shonen Jump into the mix for a fun experience. The game gets updated constantly, balancing the game, updating movesets, adding characters, with the Simon Belmont, Rayman, and WALUIGI. The game is good for casual and competitive players, Sandbag Soccer, and Basketball are great unique game modes to waste your time on, the Classic Mode for the game is average, there was a planned feature for classic mode called "Peril Roulette" which would have given advantages to the opponent or handicaps to the player, depending on the difficulty setting, and it's been confirmed that it won't be added in any future updates, it's a shame it would've made it so much better. Now if they'll give us Jotaro I'll be able to stop writing them angry emails and crying miserably in the corner.

Now who re this? Super Smash Bros Crusade is a fan game originally created by Falcon8r, Phantom 7, and Dr.MarioX and released on September 22nd, 2014. SSBC is a Smash Bros fan game packed to the brim with memorable characters and stages, according to their Facebook page, they are striving for 90 characters, and 90 stages, the game currently has 60+ characters from Crash Bandicoot, Rayman, Chun-Li, and fucking GOKU. GOD DAMMIT GOKU WHY CAN'T I EVER AVOID YOU! Yes, Goku is here too, more broken then ever, I'm kidding, but the thing about Crusade is, not many people really talk about it, the game itself isn't bad, far from it, sure some of the characters are uh very unpolished, *cough* Zero Suit Samus *cough* but other than that, the other parts of the game look great, even though I'm not very fond of the reused sprites like some of them are reused from other games, SSF2 has one or two characters that fall under this category, but Crusade? It has a lot, i'd say like half the roster at most. Crusade was made with Game Maker, and it shows the game stays at a constant frame rate and some of the effects on hits are great! A new addition to the formula is the removal of the Smash Ball in place of a Final Smash meter, ULTIMATE RIPPED THEM OFF it's a true story! The game features the basic modes from any Smash Bros game, a Classic mode, Break the Targets, Special Smash, but it does bring back Board the Platforms which is an amazing touch, but the main problem I have with this game is it doesn't really take a ton of risks like SSF2 does, SSF2 had it's own spin on the Smash formula, the only thing Crusade really has is the feature to change your air dodging from Melee, Brawl, and their own Air Dodge which is similar to Ultimate's new airdodging system. The characters in this game seem to be unbalanced, but nobody is near broken, it's just the low tiers should be buffed more in my honest opinion.

Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation atta-

Wait I have wrong thing. Rivals of Aether! What hasn't been said about this game yet? This indie game is the spiritual successor to a Super Smash Land, a Gameboy styled Smash Bros. game made in game maker. Rivals has an original character roster of 12, with two guest characters being Ori & Sein, from Ori and the Blind Forest, and more recently, Shovel Knight from the game of the same name. Rivals takes it's own unique spin on the Smash formula and introduces a new mechanic called Parrying (Like smash ultimate's new perfect shield) and removes grabbing, every character also now has a wall jump and can act out of their directional air dodge unlike in melee. It also adds it's own mode called Abyss Mode, where Abyss Mode is a game mode where 1 or more players to go through set waves, or challenges that get progressively harder, which upon completing a wave a blue crystal shall appear and once broken, you'll be given exp to level up, and the more you level up you'll get these power ups called "Runes" which behave similarly to Equipment in Smash 4, but in Ricals, some Runes will reduce the end lag on your attacks, make some be able to be cancelled by a certain action, make your moves faster or stronger. It also features it's own Story Mode, while rather short and easy, it gives you a nice backstory to some of the champions in the game, all though sadly only featuring the original 6, Zetterburn, Wrastor, Orcane, Kragg, Maypul, and Forsburn, which is a shame, it'd be nice to see more on the other 6 DLC characters. But who knows if it'll be added in the future, but unlike Smash Flash the game seems more keen on pleasing the competitive players rather than the casuals as the game doesn't even have items nor many stage hazards as is, it is still quite fun to play that is if you can find someone to play it with you sadly. It was ported to Xbox in August of 2017 and although it is a good port, it's far from fully updated compared to the PC version who are on the hype train to Shovel Knight while Xbox are still on Clairen and Ranno the first two DLC fighters, if you're interested in the game I highly suggest springing for the Steam version as this game can run on literal potatoes. It's definitely worth the $14.99 price tag.

Finally we have Slap City a currently Early Access game being developed by Ludosity with a release date slated for 2018, I just recently purchased this game on steam and if you're thinking about it, do it ASAP, the price of Slap City changes as more content gets added.

Slap City currently features 7 characters each of them very unique in their own way, my favorite being Princess Remedy, Slap City is heavily based off of Melee, taking a good amount of techniques from it like L cancelling, directional air dodging, and crouch cancelling if I'm not wrong, Slap City is such good fun, and gets really fun when you're playing to win, I recommend you try this out, the game visually doesn't look outstanding but some of the character designs are hilarious. The stages in this game are unique and quirky, it's a ton of fun even though some are clearly based on Smash Bros stages. (the most recent stage added is identical to Dreamland 64) Slap City also has it's own game mode Slap Ball, and although I haven't tried it out yet due to me trying to get better at the actual game, but from the gameplay I've watched, it looks like a ton of fun, it also has online functionality so I may have some of my friends do it with me. Since the game is in early access there's not much to talk about, but I highly recommend you add it to your Steam library if you have some extra cash laying around.

Well that was a fun ride, let's hope these amazing games can help us contain our hype for Smash Ultimate, I'm trying not to milk the shit out of Smash Ultimate until the game comes out in December.