Samias

I say move into the same room as your router. Wireless connections can sometimes have bad wall penetration. Like, my room isn't very far from my router at all but my connection gets extremely unstable for my 3DS and phone from only a single room away. When I play online with my 3DS I make sure that I sit next to my router. I have a friend who has such a poor wi-fi connection, it's gimped my recovery at crucial moments >_< losing a stock at only 37% from what should have been an easy recovery was not cool. Oh yeah, here's my quick character impressions of my favourites/the popular ones: [spoiler=I'll talk about some of the unlockables too even if we know them all] Shulk: I can see the good bits there but I'm really bad with him. I don't take enough advantage of his Monado stances and his hitboxes on his sword are completely different from other sword users and don't come out at arcs like I expect. Not sure if I can main him... though practice makes perfect. Rosalina and Luma: Luma is ridiculous, even if you have no idea how to play Rosalina she still has a lot of power and she's no slouch in anything really. Duck Hunt: That projectile game is unreal. It's hard to keep track of everything he can throw at you in the hands of a good player. Marth/Lucina: They're super similar I might as well cover both at once. The sword range was hugely nerfed and no more short hop fair but actually they're still pretty good. I slightly prefer Lucina because her spacing is far more forgiving and I like her Sumia and Cherche colours. Toon Link: I love this little imp. He's pretty unchanged from Brawl aside from a few tweaks so it doesn't feel like I have to relearn anything about him. I guess the buggy dair was fixed so he doesn't float around in some circumstances. Link: SO MUCH BETTER. In Brawl he was practically unplayable. Not the case here. He might not ever be top tier but he's still good. Jump attack is so good. Gale boomerang is like 100% better than in Brawl. And his recovery is actually pretty good. Pikachu: On the one hand, Pika feels nerfed for nearly all his specials and his f-smash. On the other hand, quick attack now has better gimp potential than ever and the aerials are all pretty solid. So it's hard to say that Pikachu was actually nerfed. Instead, it's more like you need to relearn how to play Pika because he just feels different. So many different animations here too. ZSS: REALLY GOOD. In Brawl she lacked kill pressure and had worse-than-expected recovery from having a cruddy up+B. She's got some serious moves in the air and on the ground, though her kill potential is still lower than average. It's all about catching people with the paralyzer and racking up damage and being patient until you can strike. I really like her and I have been doing pretty well with her against my friends. Jigglypuff: THE PINK PUFF IS BACK TO TERRORIZE... mostly. She's been significantly unnerfed from Brawl though her lack of range, lightness and her unique shield properties means you have to be extremely careful about your approach. She's very fun to play in Smash Run if you get a ton of speed and jump boosts due to her ease of control in the air. Little Mac: He's at the mercy of matchups and stage selection. I had a Little Mac vs Samus matchup against my friend and that was one hell of an uphill battle for me even on an omega stage. I literally had to dodge bullet hell and then hope to not get grabbed and gimped off the edge. His recovery is truly terrible and his aerial game does not exist at all, which balances out his overwhelming power and ability to win trades up close on the ground. He might be OP online in For Fun, but in a duel he really had to be choosy about his approach. Greninja: His kit is really solid but his speed can sometimes feel like a detriment as he slides around almost as much as Luigi. He has pretty decent kill pressure and all of his specials are solid, but he doesn't have any overwhelmingly strong moves either. Palutena: If you're stuck with her default moveset, she is just too slow. Her smashes are not really as good as they look unless she manages to rack up high %s. Her roll is fantastic though. On the other hand, she has some pretty great custom specials to replace the lackluster starting kit. Brawler Mii: Out of all the Miis, Brawler is my favourite. I modelled mine after my Shadowrun character, Sora, and it just fits her perfectly. I'm so happy. I like to play her online vs my friends and I loooove her rush side+B. Don't have much to say about the others. Bowser: People say he's good but I am really bad with him. u_u it's embarrassing. I don't use the Koopa Claw enough to suicide slam people off the edge. Bowser Jr: THOSE HITBOXES. THAT FSMASH. THOSE NORMALS. He's crazy, I tell ya. So cute but so deadly. He doesn't harass as hard as Duck Hunt does at range but he still hits hard. Roy variation simultaneously leaves me overjoyed and incredibly salty. Ganondorf: I haven't played him for anything but home run contest but he's annoying to fight against. He's so CHUNKY. Like the friggin' immovable wall. While in Brawl he was pretty garbage, he is crazy hard to get off you in this game. Don't get Flame choked, because anything that happens after will hurt bad. Oh yeah, and his up-tilt is still hilariously hard to land but I like seeing videos online where people try to shield it. Don't do it peeps. It won't work. Zelda: I still don't like the Din's Fire changes. The core does have a crazy sweet spot but it's range is so gimped compared to Brawl and it's difficult to move it anywhere but a straight line with a slight up or down. I reaaaally miss the crazy hitbox on a fully charged Brawl Din's Fire that nabbed so many KOs ;_;. Her normals are are bleh as ever to come out and her smashes are still not fantastic. On the other hand, her sweet spots on her aerials are easier to land now. Farore's Wind has excellent KO pressure and is great to gimp recoveries with. I was about to write off the Phantom as being flat out bad, but fully charged it is actually very powerful and is a good edge guarding tool as it flies pretty far out with some large hitboxes on the sword. It'll also get two sword slashes instead of one. It's just a terrible tool for projectile blocking compared to Nayru's Love. With all that said, Zelda is still not so good... but I still like her better than fellow magical girl Palutena when they're stuck with their defaults. Robin: Out of all the magic-heavy characters, he and Rosalina are the two best, probably followed by Ness. He has a pretty nice combination of speed and power and variety and has great aerial pressure to apply. I never found the range of the sword to be much of an issue since his moves tend to come out fast and hit pretty hard. Ness: Probably his best incarnation since 64. PK Thunder tackle is vastly improved and you can chain it ones if you rebound it off a wall to solve some of his recovery problems. And he can throw out some surprise KOs with some unexpectedly strong aerial sweet spots. PK Flash is not a bad way to pressure off-stagers too. Falco: Didn't play him but he's so much worse in this game than he has ever been. I feel bad for Falco fans. When my much-better-than-I-am friend picked Falco into my ZSS, it was one of the few matches I won, and it was a convincing win too. Virtually all his moves are just sluggish now. If there's one thing about him, it's that he's heavier than he looks and can sustain quite a bit of punishment before he gets into KO %s. Even though Fox was also nerfed, I think it's safe to say that he became way inferior to Fox unlike in previous installments where they were more or less neck-and-neck. Too tired to review anyone else. But for the most part everyone plays well and I never had a moment of WHY IS THIS CHARACTER SO HORRIBLE compared to my experiences with Brawl, where Jiggs and Ganon and Link just felt like garbage. I'm still bad with heavies though so I'll still stay clear of them, but I can't believe how hard of a personal brick wall I hit with Ganondorf x_x

If I get back to it anytime soon, she was summoning a bunch of magic dragon beam things behind her. But I have sooo many WIPs on my plate and so many video games to play and also job stuff and writing journals *wah* too few hours in a day aauugh. But I finished yet another picture, one that I had given up on way back when. It'd been sitting on my portable hard drive since last time I touched it was back when I was in school. So I forced myself to draw some BGs!

Apparently Dark Pit has some different properties on his attacks too and some form of super armor regular Pit doesn't have. But I think it's generally agreed upon that Lucina and Dark Pit are weak and that talking about it is like beating a dead horse at this point. They're last minute roster filler made in the fraction of time compared to a full fledged character and they got kinda lazy this time, but what are we going to do about it now? Just think of them as being Ken and Ryu from SF. Anyway, NEW STAR FOX STAGE I NEED IT IN MY LIFE NOW. It looks like a combination of Corneria and Pokefloats and I really hope it plays like it. Plus it just looks amazing!

Items definitely disrupt the flow of the game and can make the gap between skilled and unskilled players way less. Plus on the 3DS version, I find I lose track of the action if items are on so I've been preferring the omega version of stages even in (or especially in) a 4P free-for-all. Without items a 2 minute match usually has a score range of +/-2. When items are on, it gets as much at +/-5. I do like items, but it's a distraction too. When I see a competitive game, I like it better when items are off. The difference between the final match of the E3 Invitational and every other round was like night and day. Even with ZeRo's lame stalling for time, it was a way more intense fight.

Yeah, from the sounds of it they have the full version of the game. "No using characters not on the default roster. Do not use any characters unlocked while playing." And there's more than one stage to pick from. Too bad the closest location for me is in Bellevue, 3+ hours away... I guess we have Smash Club coming in Canada to make up for it.

I feel like it's been too long since I posted anything I finished! Aaahhhh! So um... Here's a WIP first. And also of course I love drawing Sora and writing about her on her blog, though I can't help but this she's becoming more and more belligerent ha ha ha.... And my friend drew this for me!

NO. STOP RIGHT THERE. You can copy over Miis made in Tomodachi Life but you CANNOT save any dyed hair colours to any other games than Tomodachi Life. It will just copy whatever their hair colour was before it was dyed.

Actually, stale moves exist in Melee too. The game even has a bonus point penalty for it. Brawl just made the stale move penalty more extreme. It might even be in 64 but have no idea. In Smash 4, some moves aren't affected by stale moves, but it has a huge impact on the power and launching effects of Smash attacks. This game has a very peculiar knockback scaling.

I know who ZeRo is and I know he is good at Smash. I am saying the quoted list is old and impressions of the characters could have changed. Especially when now we can compare every matchup. It will take time for people to work out every trick with every character in every matchup now that we have the full roster. To back up my claims, I found a reddit thread with said tier list from three months ago. It's old. http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/285jmx/zeros_smash_4_demo_tier_list/

I'm pretty sure the trophies are the way they are because their first order of business is to gather up existing 3D models and just throw them in as-is or with minor touchups. And many of the trophies are sent in by the teams who make the games and are not actually made by the Smash team. That's why most trophies are slanted towards recent series, and why certain series don't have much representation if the team who made the games has been broken up (Metroid: Other M's team has probably moved on to another project and did not really revisit what they did) or are foreign (Retro probably has difficulty co-ordinating with Sora Ltd).

I think that tier list is all the way from the invitational. I had deja vu reading it. It's far from complete and is very early impressions, and also can't take into account custom movesets. Now that we know so much more about Villager's Pocket and insane recovery, for instance, a lot of people will probably rank him fairly high except for a few matchups which are stacked badly against him (Fox, Mario, and Link come to mind).

He does have a crowd chant I think, but sometimes I think it bugs out and uses the IC chant instead. As far as I know.

The French description says that they were playing Villager vs Dr. Mario. Apparently the bug only happens when Dr. Mario is in play, so I think they had inserted Dr. Mario into IC's slot as a last minute replacement. Plus ICs have a brand new model for their trophy, unlike other cut veterans like Wolf who just uses the character model from Assault.

There's a bug that sometimes crops up with the crowd cheers in-game... *sob* http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x263bbe_ice-climbers-dans-ssb4_videogames

It's about what's available to the team, though. Some game teams have more people dedicated to them than others. As far as trophies go, there's way more KI and Fire Emblem stuff because I think the studios in charge of those games likely sent in more material from those games (the Rayman trophy, for instance, was actually modeled by Ubisoft and sent to Sakurai). IS has nothing more to do than send in FE renders, and Sora has nothing more to do than use their old KI models. Whereas Nintendo EAD had to juggle a lot of franchises at once and has to send a wide variety of franchises, so they probably focus on Mario and Zelda and neglect Kirby and Star Fox. Gamefreak probably feels well-represented by what's in the Pokeballs already. And then there might just be communication issues with Retro with regards to DK. This is just theorycraft. But previous Smash games have reused models from other games so I think it isn't just Sora and Sakurai who works on the trophy gallery. And this is super low priority work for the team because trophies are just a bunch of fun collectables.

I don't think that has to do with his tipper, though. Quite a few characters still have sweetspots that aren't tipper related so they can spike enemies or knock them further away (Captain Falcon's knee, Zelda's f-air and b-air, Villager's f-air and b-air and occasionally his d-air). Marth's sweet spot just happens to include every move, not just a few, but Lucina just retains the spike property as an air finisher.

I think the point is, for the purposes of the 3DS game at least, Sakurai can actually take models his company has already made and easily turn them into trophies with some minor tweaking (or maybe even none at all, since some trophies in previous games were taken straight from the source). He doesn't have to negotiate with anyone but Nintendo, unlike how he would have to coordinate with Rare and Gamefreak to get more Donkey Kong and Pokemon models, for instance. Though I can't imagine there being more KI trophies than Pokemon trophies, since don't all the Pokeball Pokemon normally get entries? Has anyone even collected all the trophies yet? Anyway, trophies in previous games were often pretty lazy aside from the franchises who hadn't had recent games to pilfer assets from. I'm not surprised to hear that's the case now.

Pit is still his only franchise rep on the cover, at least. Shulk actually throws me off the most, but there's also more Mario reps than what seems logical. I guess they wanted more women on the cover and most of them are from the Mario games. I'm just really sad at the lack of Star Fox representation on the cover when Fox is one of the most memetic characters in Smash. Even Yoshi at least made it on the 3DS side. I do like that Marth made it onto both covers.

Nice image! But poor Fox... part of the original 12, and he doesn't get to be on either cover. I mean, for Captain Falcon, Jiggs, Luigi, and Ness it makes sense they don't make it on being hidden characters for two or more games, but Fox is one of the most popular characters in Smash! What a snub.

I think Sakurai meant he won't talk about any features that have to be unlocked in the future, but I think we will see at least the menus and whatnot of the Wii U version. It could mean Stage Builder and some other mode are "secrets" and he wants us to find out for ourselves, because I doubt the Wii U version is going to have fewer modes than its handheld cousin. But the POTDs, despite being "amusing" pictures by Sakurai's standards, often still have miscellaneous info about minor aspects of the game that often get overlooked, like the properties of certain enemies. After all, todays' POTD is about defeating the Find Mii Ghost and Gastly and how they require you to do certain things to them. For the people who have the Japanese game, this might not be "new" information but I think it's still interesting while we wait for the game to come out in English.

I want to know what universe where 7 characters (Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Rosalina, Dr. Mario and Bowser Jr) of a cast of 51 is 30% of the cast. Or even if you decide every Koopaling is their own character, you still don't reach 30%. Not even a quarter of the cast, even though Mario is the most prominent Nintendo series of all time. This hyperbole just comes across as whiny. And no one is holding a gun to your head saying you must play the characters you dislike. No one forces me to play Pichu in Melee. No one forced me to play Ganondorf in Brawl. I hate how they play. Pichu, from the get-go, was a character I was never going to devote time to. You may personally never play a character in Smash but I think it's childish for *anyone* to say a unique rep like Duck Hunt doesn't deserve a slot. He represents franchises who have been previously absent. He's got a completely original moveset. Maybe no one asked for him but the team did such an excellent job on him that now I'm interested and so are a lot of other people. The only hype deflation I can think of is that Dark Pit and Lucina are too close to their counterparts and fan favourites like Ice Climbers were cut. Of course the extreme clones take almost no time to make (Lucina borrows 90% of her animation from Marth, which is such a huge bulk of the work completed in one fell swoop) but DHD? Bowser Jr? I was skeptical but now I'm intrigued.

I'm going to take my Shadowrun crew, make them all into Miis, and then have em fight. Sora would be a brawler Mii, but I'm torn about John Doe whether he should be a gunner or a swordsman... Gunner is more likely.

Saffron City returning would literally be the best. And I do have a fondness for Hyrule Castle and 64 Dreamland too. Yeah, 64 stages would be nice.

Either Marth was sped back up, or Lucina isn't really as fast as we thought she would be from the trailers. I think it's the former, at least for ground speed Marth is incredibly fast. But I do agree he's been nerfed and will probably be mid tier. But his and Lucina's Dancing Blade customizations put a really interesting spin on the move, making it either easier to link and consistent or to give it huge knockback. The Crescent Dolphin Slash also has a certain sweetspot on it that makes it a kill move in the right situation. Villager will probably be very high. Pocket is just so OP. Only thing missing is consistency in KO moves, buuuut if you play Villager right, you are more denying people their recovery than you are sending them straight into blast zones. But some matchups like Link are extremely difficult because Link's shield passively blocks projectiles moving towards him so long as he's not attacking. Speaking of Link, I doubt he'll be in bottom tier again. His recovery is still not great but in certain matchups, he has a very safe approach due to the new mechanics of his shield. Not sure if he'll be in the highest tier due to his overall speed and his weight being in that sweet spot to be easily punished, but definitely not awful like he was in Brawl. This all depends on people's stances on custom moves, but Palutena's default B moves are weak. If she has to use her default, she doesn't have much going for her other than her fsmash and usmash being phenomenal. Yeah, her roll is good, but I feel like her ability to keep applying pressure isn't so hot. BUT her custom moves are a LOT better than her defaults and if she can use those, then she has a whole lot more options. Still probably not top of top tier but they definitely improve her. I don't think Pikachu is super good. Maybe ordinary amounts of good. Highly mobile and with better recovery than before, but I feel like Pikachu lacks oomph somehow? Everything comes out faster but I also feel like it lacks pressure. And I think the fsmash is hit by stale move negative at a higher ratio than most other characters. Jigglypuff's Rest got better! And if you KO, it's always a star KO, giving you time to wake up every time! ...But it's not quite the 0-KO that Melee Rest was due to the larger blast zones on every stage. Weeelll it's better than it used to be but I have to see the rest of Jigg's kit. I'm begging that she plays better than Brawl though. BEGGING.