Super Smash Bros Ultimate Project M

[Carmelina Olden]

Touse a pair of terms coined by Nintendo, I didn't used to play Super Smash Bros. for glory. Once, not long ago, I played purely for fun, and I probably had a little too much fun with the titles. As a child, my go-to local multiplayer destination was Super Smash Bros. Melee on the GameCube. I spent hours playing alongside my friends, occasionally trying out new characters, but sticking mostly to Kirby as I gleefully sucked in opponents and absorbed their abilities for my own use. We always had items turned on; cascades of bob-ombs would emerge from party balls as we tried to line up deadly Home-Run-Bat-smashes on each other.

Melee's successor, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, stood as my most highly anticipated video game ever, and after I tore through the sealed plastic on the game's 2008 release date, I was greeted with nothing but joy. Still young and oblivious to any competitive nature to be found in Smash Bros., the expanded roster, shiny new graphics, and myriad new items and stages were all that mattered to me. My friends hopped on the Brawl bandwagon as well, and together we played the Wii title feverishly for more than six years. Sure, we underwent periods of lesser play, but whenever the latest gaming fad died down, Brawl was there to lure us back

By rough estimation, I sank upwards of 1,000 hours into Brawl between 2008 and 2014. Though our skills improved gradually as a natural side effect of playing so frequently, my friends and I always played casually, choosing stages rife with hazards and leaving items on. Then, in early-2014, amid hype for Nintendo's upcoming Wii U Smash entry, a new friend introduced us to a mod for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, entitled Project M.

For those unfamiliar with this now-famous fan creation, Project M attempts to meld Melee's mechanics with Brawl's engine, creating an experience that combines the competitive viability of the former title with the technical improvements of the latter. The mod also reintroduces a couple of characters who were absent in Brawl, and re-tailors Brawl's selection of stages with competitiveness in mind.

Project M makes a vast amount of mechanical changes to the Brawl experience. For instance, air dodging results in helplessness, "teching" can be performed at any time, and numerous Melee mechanics like L-cancelling, dash dancing, directional input, and wave dashing make returns. If none of that means anything to you, then you likely are not a competitive Smash Bros. player, much like me several months ago.

Upon being introduced to Project M, I was both skeptical and intimidated. After the exorbitant amount of time I'd sunk into Brawl, the change of pace was not immediately welcome. Project M plays with the ferocious speed of Melee as opposed to the slower pace of Brawl that I had grown so accustomed to. At first, my friends agreed with my sentiments. We begrudgingly gave the mod some playtime, but always reverted to Brawl after long. We berated Project M for doing away with the carefree fun we'd always gotten out of Brawl, and we had trouble adjusting to the sweeping changes made to our favorite characters.

Now, roughly a year after being first shown Project M, it's practically all I play. Not even the glossy polish and eight-player mayhem of Smash 4 lured us away from the mod for long. So what happened? How was my friend group seduced out of such heavy skepticism? The answer is, even now, unclear to me, but there's no doubt that it happened. Somewhere along the way, during one of my hesitant early sessions with the mod, something simply clicked, and I was hooked. The speed no longer seemed to detract from the fun -- instead, it added to the intensity of the experience. The stages weren't dulled down and simplified -- they were polished for maximum competitiveness. The characters weren't "nerfed" -- they were balanced, making for a more viable roster and more play style options.

My embracing of Project M came with an underlying, logical leap. At some point along the way, I decided that competitive viability did not come at the expense of fun. Instead, the thrill of competition added to the fun I had with Smash Bros.

In Brawl, my go-to characters were Snake and Toon Link. The difficult sticky-mine mechanics of the Metal Gear Solid protagonist scared me away from adopting him in Project M, so Toon Link became my initial PM main. However, not much time passed before I realized that Toon Link's dreadful recovery was stifling my ability to win matches. So, I adopted Toon Link's big brother character, Link himself. It was somewhere around this point that my love for Project M began. Playing was still fun; winning, even more-so.

My Toon Link skills transferred roughly over to the grown-up version, but Link's added power and superior moveset meant that I was emerging from games victorious more than ever before. The speed lent by Project M allowed me to create deadly combinations of projectile hits, chaining together Link's boomerang, arrows and bombs to make milkshakes out of my opponents. Soon enough, I was tossing in down-air sword pogos and powerful grounded up-B spinning attacks to lay waste on the battlefield.

After a year of playing, my Link game has improved drastically, and I've picked up a stable of side-characters that includes the likes of King Dedede, Wario, and Squirtle alongside my green-clad favorite. And I haven't just gotten better thanks to Project M -- I've started having even more fun with Super Smash Bros. Though I still haven't fully embraced the most complex, difficult-to-execute competitive mechanics of the mod, I appreciate its competitive viability and now wouldn't have my Smash served any other way.

Sure, my Smash sessions with friends are not as relaxed as they once were. Mostly gone are the days of laid back, item-filled, four-player matches. That may seem an unappealing proposition for players who've only ever known Smash Bros. as a casual exercise. As a player who once saw the game in this way, I can only beg non-believers to give Project M a shot. It's free to try, easy to install, and, if nothing else, should prove an amusing change of pace for casual Smash players. If you're anything like me, then there's a good chance the mod will make you see the appeal of competitive Smash Bros.

The Touhou Project, usually referred to as just Touhou (And officially titled Project Shrine Maiden in the West, though nobody really uses that name) is a long-running series of bullet hell shoot-em-ups developed by Team Shanghai Alice. However, this name is misleading on multiple levels; Nobody there is named Alice, the company is located in Japan rather than Shanghai, and it isn't even a team-Everything, from the artwork, to the music, to the game itself, is developed by one man. His name is Jun'ya Ota, but most people call him ZUN. Touhou is one of, if not THE oldest and biggest indie game series, and is a major pillar of the doujin (Amateur self-published works) scene.

Touhou began in 1996, with the PC-98 game Highly Responsive to Prayers. There, the inexperienced shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei frantically tried to direct a bouncing Yin-Yang Orb into various enemies. Over time, the series began to evolve into what most fans are familiar with, signified by the shift from the PC-98 to Windows. This brought on a soft reboot, as well as the shift to being self-published rather than being published by Amusement Makers.

After the shift to Windows, the general formula solidified. The gameplay is portrayed by a top-down perspective, where the player maneuvers their character-Always Reimu Hakurei and her witch friend Marisa Kirisame, sometimes with a third or fourth character that varies between games-Through six stages worth of difficult and intricate patterns of danmaku, or projectiles. If the requirements are met, and extra stage will be unlocked as well. While some danmaku patterns are simple and unnamed, the majority are spell cards; Personalized patterns unique to a certain character.

As of current, the Touhou Project has 17 mainline games, including the PC-98 releases. However, it has a sizable number of spin-off titles as well; These games are indicated by a decimal point in their numbering, based on the mainline titles they were released between-For example, Immaterial and Missing Power is numbered 7.5, and Fairy Wars is the 12.8th. These spin-offs include six fighting games, five unorthodox shooters, and an upcoming side-scrolling action game. In addition, Touhou has a sizeable amount of print works and music albums, expanding it's universe even further. These supplementary materials have good synergy with the games, with just about every game character getting a mention, and a couple characters from the books making appearances in the games.

The Touhou Project takes place in Gensokyo, a haunted region of Japan sealed off from the Outside World. Gensokyo is home to humans, but it also houses various fantastical beings, such as youkai, fairies, oni, and the like. The name Touhou translates to "Eastern" or "Oriental," and the Project mostly draws from Japanese culture; However, some characters occasionally draw from other cultures.

Gensokyo was created to allow for the survival of youkai; Since youkai require humans to fear them to exist, they had a hard time surviving in an increasingly scientific and skeptical world. As a result, Gensokyo was cut off from the outside world with the Great Hakurei Barrier, maintained by the Hakurei Shrine. This shrine is managed by Reimu Hakurei, the main protagonist of Touhou. In addition to the youkai, various things that are forgotten are often transported to Gensokyo as well, meaning Gensokyo is home to quite a few extinct species.

In order to perpetuate Gensokyo's existence, the spell card system was put in place. The spell card system acts as an equalizer, so that humans may defend themselves and youkai may sustain themselves, without bloodshed from either party. In gameplay, this serves to justify the existence of the danmaku patterns, right down to the names. The ease of battle, coupled with the lack of injury, has also led to the inhabitants of Gensokyo fighting at the drop of a hat for varying reasons.

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