Platform fighters are a unique twist to the fighting game genre. Typically, platform fighters are defined by their emphasis on physics and their win condition of knocking your opponent off the screen. Smash is the largest and most well-known platform fighter, but recently, we’ve seen an influx of additions to the genre. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and Multiversus have both made an impact on the platform fighter genre and have introduced many more people to platform fighters that aren’t Smash Brothers.
Disadvantage is an advantage for platform fighters.
I love the core mechanics of platform fighters. Unlike traditional fighting games, platform fighters give much more agency to the person getting hit. When you are actively being hit in fighting games, we call that disadvantage state, and platform fighters allow many more tools for the person in disadvantage state to potentially escape. A mechanic near universal in all platform fighters is “DI” or directional influence. DI allows you to influence where you are going while launched by holding a direction on your movement stick. It can help you survive longer by changing the angle you’re sent when launched. It can also help you avoid combos by shifting where you are after getting hit. There are situations that might allow a follow-up with one DI angle but require a different follow-up if the person in disadvantage DI’s another angle. I love the agency DI gives you compared to disadvantage state in other fighting games, especially anime fighters. You’re simply at the whim of your opponent’s execution, minus maybe a “once-a-game” burst option.
Even some combos in platform fighters that seem true are made untrue by another platform fighter mechanic, “SDI” or Smash Directional Influence. SDI is a bit more controversial in terms of how many people enjoy the mechanic, but I think it’s one of the greatest mechanics in platform fighters. SDI gives you so much more agency put directly in your hands. SDI is performed by mashing your control stick in a corner, moving your character in that direction while in hit-stun. It’s an infamous mechanic for being the best way to counter Smash 4 Bayonetta, but it’s in some way more applicable in Melee where it’s more powerful, meaning you get more distance per input.
DI and SDI mix up how you approach disadvantage, but as you get hit, how far you get sent is constantly increasing based on percent. Percent is how “health” is handled in most platform fighters. Percent means that every time you’re hit by the same move in the same life, you’ll move further away, changing the interactions that are possible. This makes certain combos untrue after a certain percent threshold and also opens up new combos as percent rises.
So each interaction is based on individual characters, the moves they choose to use, the percent of the person getting hit, and their DI, and or SDI. This means that there are so many possibilities in platform fighters that players have to take into account compared to traditional fighters. There are just so many situations and factors in platform fighters. While the inputs aren’t nearly as hard as other fighters, the knowledge you need to have is much more vast and variable.
The individual games in the genre
Smash is the premier platform fighter. It invented the genre and is by far the most popular. Smash has had 6 iterations if you count the 3DS and Wii U versions as different, which Nintendo and Sakurai do. Melee, the second iteration, is still played today and is one of the longest-lasting esports ever. Ultimate is the current iteration and has a large player base with huge viewership. I love the smash franchise. The moment I got my hands on Smash 64, I was enamored with the franchise. The first console game I bought with my own money ended up being Super Smash Brothers Brawl which I loved so much that I happily played the horribly laggy online. I started playing competitively in Smash 4 and still play Ultimate competitively to this day.
The platform fighter I like the most outside of Smash has to be Rivals of Aether. The game plays amazingly. It retains a lot of the tech from Melee but also simplifies the gameplay by getting rid of shields in lieu of a parry system and removes “the ledge” mechanic. In Smash your character can grab the ledge on a stage and then pick various options to get up. Instead in Rivals, they gave every character a wall jump and only allows you to recover onto the stage directly. The game looks wonderful with a charming 2d pixel art style that thrives from its simplicity. Rivals is easily the most established game aside from smash in the genre of platform fighters, but another game might overtake it given its current momentum.
Multiversus is a platform fighter consisting of IP’s from Warner Brothers. It’s currently the newest platform fighter on the market and it’s seeing a lot of success. The developers of Multiversus are no strangers to the genre. They made a very popular platform fighter called Brawlhala. Brawlhala may not be as recognizable as Smash, but it boasts an impressive player base and its own established community. Brawlhala’s community and the Smash community have flocked to Multiversus and it has seen a ton of success. The game is also free to play, which has allowed many people to try it. Unlike smash, the developers are very invested in creating a solid online experience for the game. They have roll-back net code which in theory should make laggy matches more tolerable, but in my experience, if there’s lag, it’s still rough to play. It’s better when it works, but there’s still room for improvement as far as net code is concerned.
Multiversus is simultaneously more complicated and less complicated than Smash. There are fewer moves, which makes it less complicated, but there are things like status conditions, armor, armor-breaking moves, and even cooldowns like a MOBA. The game also treats aerials in a very different way than smash. If you start an aerial and try to land while doing it, you will float over the ground until the aerial finishes. I’m not a huge fan of that and other aspects of how the game functions, but it’s not a problem shared by a lot of people if its popularity is any indication.
The last title I’d like to talk about is a cautious tale for developers who want to make a platform fighter. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl was a game with a lot of potential. From the creators of another platform fighter, Slap City, Nick was looking to be a serious contender in the platform fighter arena. The developers were super transparent. They were obviously fans of the genre and they backed tournaments with big prize pools when the game came out. The game started strong but then fell off a cliff. The game was fun for a while, but soon enough, the lack of polish and things like its lack of voice acting became apparent and the game felt like an unfinished rushed job. Eventually, voice acting was added in, but the stiff animations still remained, even with the newer characters added as DLC.
I really liked Nick when it launched. I still can’t believe there is a game where Avatar Aang can wave dash. That still blows my mind. I recently played Nick with a friend and was reminded of how much I liked the game. It’s not the best, but it was really fun. I feel like if they gave the game another year to polish it up before its release, it could have done much better. The game is much different from release but there hasn’t been any interest in it recently. It also didn’t help that Multiversus came out so strong while also being free to play.
I think I actually like Nick more than Multiversus. Its movement feels more like Smash to me and Mulitversus feels too floaty. I understand Multiversus is trying to be more distinct as a platform fighter, but there’s a reason Smash works so well. Nick isn’t a straight copy of the smash formula, but it does treat aerials the same which I appreciate.
Platform fighters seem to only be getting stronger. Nick’s strong start and steep fall-off might show that there isn’t much room in the market, but Multiveres seems to be doing fine and not falling for the same mistakes. Rivals has been thriving for years and a sequel is releasing soon that transitions the series to 3D and adds more traditional Smash mechanics to the game. I’m very excited to see what the sequel brings. The developers have already more than proven themselves with the first game.
I love this genre and hope to see more serious competitors in the space as time goes on. Thanks for reading.
Bernard Lamar Rice 