Smash players slam Nintendo as Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has better competitive options

Fans of Super Smash Bros are beginning to wish the Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl devs worked on Ultimate, after seeing how much more seriously the devs are taking competitive play than Nintendo.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a Smash clone and very open about it. The 2D platform fighter is borrowing a lot from Nintendo’s mascot franchise and delivering esports potential in ways that Ultimate fans could only dream of.

Not only will the game, developed by Ludosity and Fair Play Labs, have superior netcode – something Smash pros were embarrassed at Nintendo for – but it will also have dedicated competitive stages.

Stages designed for competitive play normally just means they won’t feature anything that could be considered luck or RNG-based such as platforms that appear randomly or uneven sections.

Smash Ultimate does have a couple stages used in online play that are considered “hardcore” but they’re limited to Battlefield, Small Battlefield and Final Destination. Proper tournaments feature a much larger pool, albeit with some stages having hazards disabled.

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Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl will have five legal stages at launch and amusingly, they’re all inspired by existing Smash stages. Not only will Final Destination and Battlefield be included, but Pokemon Stadium and two variants of Smashville (one with hazards on) will be as well.

Needless to say, fans are amazed that this game is looking to have better default competitive options than Smash Ultimate.

Smash fans praise Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl devs

“Just the fact that we’re getting devs to utter the words ‘legal stages’ bodes well for this game as a competitive fighting game,” a player wrote on Reddit. “They’re transparent with their development and are openly supporting the competitive community.”

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“This game looks sick AF,” another remarked before taking aim at the big N. “It’s Smash designed with competitive play at the forefront. It’s basically the exact opposite of how Nintendo handles Smash.”

“The fact that a children’s TV network fighting game is putting more effort into its competitive scene than the company that owns the rights to Pokemon, Mario, and The Legend of Zelda says a lot more about the latter than it does the former,” a fan blasted.

Players want Nintendo to take competitive Smash seriously

Others tried to be a bit more open-minded about Nintendo and the company’s stance on esports competition.

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“I think Nintendo just still has an antiquated mindset about competitive play with little incentive to change. They made a fun party game and people made a cool thing out of it and instead of leaning into that, they just kept making fun party games,” a Redditor explained.

“They see themselves and the games as separate from the competitive scene, and I don’t even think that’s an unfair stance to take – a vast majority of their profits and sales will not be from competitive scene sources and that scene will most likely persist regardless of what they do.”

However, as another pointed out, “[Nintendo has] done this weird thing with Ultimate where they put a lot of effort into balancing the game and making a lot of things geared towards competitive play, but still won’t acknowledge its competitive scene. Like which is it?”

Hopefully, some of the competitive features in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl can make their way to Smash if Nintendo ever releases a special edition of Smash Ultimate in the future. Until then, however, Smash fans will be stuck wondering what could have been.