Something went wrong. Try again later

Mento

Check out Mentonomicon dot Blogspot dot com for a ginormous inventory of all my Giant Bomb blogz.

4958 551063 219 897
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

A Super Smash Catastrophy

I don't play Super Smash Bros. the correct way. Perhaps that's a little reductive, as there's never any particular correct way to play a video game (besides Dark Souls, of course), but I'm fairly certain that many people don't play Smash extensively for the same reasons I do.

Like this, only more weathered with age.
Like this, only more weathered with age.

When I was younger, I had a passing familiarity with Nintendo but no real experience with the NES beyond the occasional look while at the houses of friends. I didn't own a Nintendo console until the 1990s, and that was a Game Boy that my parents bought me and my sister at an airport while on holiday to keep us quiet on the plane. Well, quiet for the two or three hours that the batteries persisted. Instead, my first real exposure to the world of Mario and Link and Little Mac and Samus Aran came with the Nintendo Official Sticker Album. This sort of thing was huge in the late 80s and 90s: a thin volume bought for a couple of quid with about 300 empty rectangular spaces for stickers. You bought the stickers in allowance-priced booster packs, around 5-10 at a time, and would have no idea what you'd find until after you'd walked out of the store and opened the packet up. It combined the trepidation of discovery with the satisfaction of a completing a set of something: the sort of thing that drove many kids my age from prior generations to philately and numismatics. Since I couldn't pronounce or spell either of those words at the time, my vice was stickers.

It's due to this that I tend to associate Nintendo nostalgia most strongly with collecting those damn stickers. The amount of times I would find nothing but doubles and be despondent for my wasted cash (provided I couldn't trade them away) while other times finding the super rare foil sticker I needed to complete a page of Super Mario Bros. 3 Koopalings and be ecstatic for procuring such a rare treasure. Nintendo nostalgia is sort of what Nintendo's all about these days, and while for many that means endless iterative sequels and nickel-and-diming long-time fans with older classics on the Virtual Console, it's the Super Smash Bros. series and their trophy collectibles that hit me hardest in the nostalgia nerve cluster, making me paralytic with wistful remembrance.

Like this, but far less valuable.
Like this, but far less valuable.

Which brings me back to that incomplete thought from the first paragraph: I do not play Smash for the friendly competition (the 3DS version isn't particularly conducive to online play from what I'm hearing) nor to challenge myself with 100-Man Smash milestones or beating Classic mode on the highest difficulty level. It's to collect shit. 685 trophies, to be precise.

Because I went to all this trouble with little to show for it besides a giant haul of virtual figurines, I thought I'd detail the process of collecting this immense amount of worthless tchotchkes for those also of a kleptomaniacal bent, tangentially touching on some of Smash Bros 3DS's various modes, characters and idiosyncrasies in the process. As Super Smash Bros for Wii U hovers menacingly overhead in the release schedules, a game I am definitely going to have to ignore for a few months while I recover from this exhausting scavenger hunt, it seems like an ideal time to thoroughly explicate on Nintendo's new slugger and how it continues to entrap folk with its shiny gewgaws.

This is my not-so-secret and not-particularly-shameful secret shame: I play video games the same way Vinny does, and it hurts me.

Section 1: The Character Trophies (1-102)

Classic Mode

The mode that is the most different this time around is the ironically-named Classic mode, in which the player's character marches along one of up to three different paths after each stage. Each of these paths leads to a different fight and a different reward: Red paths tend to be the hardest but contain the best treasures, while the inverse is true for blue paths. Green is somewhere in the middle. In addition, the player can boost the "intensity" of this mode, greatly increasing both the rewards and the difficulty of the fights.

In addition, the player determines the reward they receive from each battle with a quickly moving roulette. They tend to range from cash prizes (used elsewhere) to 1-5 custom parts to 1-5 trophies. If you're skilled enough and have the entrance fee, playing on a high intensity is perhaps one of the better ways to earn both trophies and custom parts. It does mean that you have to fight the game's new boss: a shapeshifting entity known as Master Core that's no pushover on higher intensity levels, as the player is forced to fight more of its forms in succession.

Has anyone actually played this?
Has anyone actually played this?

However, several special trophies are tied to the Classic mode. These include the first trophies for every playable character, including the three Mii Fighter variants, which adds up to 51 Classic Mode playthroughs. In addition, there's a trophy for beating Classic mode at 5.0 intensity (Master Hand), one for beating it at 9.0 intensity (Guardians from Ketzal's Corridors, which I'm not sure has anything to do with anything) and one for completing it with all characters (Crazy Hand).

It's... no easy feat beating the game on 9.0 intensity, and it's one of the few Challenges (the game's ersatz achievement system) that the game won't let you skip. It's considered the toughest single-player challenge in the game and must be defeated in order to consider oneself a Smash champion. On the other hand, if you do make it, you can rest assured that nothing else in the game will present quite that level of difficulty.

All-Star Mode

Unlike Classic mode, which changes frequently and presents a number of different scenarios for its fights, All-Star is a very staid affair where the player has to fight every character in the game (besides the Miis) in chronological order. While it's fun for a game historian like myself to identify which character is linked to which release/year, the unchanging nature of these battles, the amount of time it takes to defeat 48 fighters and the strict "one KO and you're out" rule makes them something of a grind. What's worse is that the stages themselves are still filled with random hazards that can quickly kill an inattentive player, which is presumably the same reason why items were removed. Seems odd they'd keep one and not the other. If I never have to encounter Yellow Devil again...

If you thought this guy was an asshole before...
If you thought this guy was an asshole before...

It's a perplexing and tedious process, but you also need another 51 playthroughs here to get every character's "alternate" trophy, usually depicting them in one of their many other costumes. I generally like some of the choices for costume switches in this game: having every Koopaling as an alternative for Bowser Jr, or Alph for Captain Olimar, or Little Mac's pink training tracksuit or his Arcade green wireframe appearance. Zero Suit Samus has her end-game bonus apparel (though not her "Justin Bailey" colors, oddly). Peach has Daisy's get-up; Mario, Luigi and Wario can all pretend to be Waluigi should they ever want to; and the Animal Crossing Villager, Wii Fit Trainer and Fire Emblem's Robin can all be gender-swapped. They even have a version of Ness with a Mr. Saturn T-shirt.

In addition to those gruelling 51 playthroughs, there's three additional trophies linked to challenges: one for beating it on Easy (Legend of Zelda's Epona) one for beating it on Normal (Kid Icarus's Medusa), one for beating it on Hard (Nintendoji, from a Japan-only Club Nintendo reward game). There's a challenge for completing it with all characters, but that just nets you some Mii gear.

Smash Run

The game's alternative to the original's Adventure Mode, the player has five minutes to fight their way through a throng of monsters from Kirby, Pokemon, Kid Icarus: Uprising and Mario. In defeating enemies and finding chests, they can collect stat boosts which continually make them stronger as well as collectibles and cash which they keep once the game is over. The mode culminates in a Smash battle with varying conditions (including special Multi-Man Melees and races), which the player can end up winning or losing dependent on their stat increases as commonly as their own skill.

You want something fast, like whatever the hell this frog ninja thing is, to sweep up all the chests in Smash Run. Smashing your way through enemies for their item drops works too.
You want something fast, like whatever the hell this frog ninja thing is, to sweep up all the chests in Smash Run. Smashing your way through enemies for their item drops works too.

There are no challenges related to Smash Run that provide trophies: instead, Smash Run has its own collectible series of sorts called Smash Run Powers. These can be equipped to characters before starting and can provide various boons while playing, ranging from temporarily boosting stats to giving them a free item. They have higher level grades as well, which means they can be used more often. However, the character has a limited amount of room for these powers, and better ones tend to take up more space. There's 176 discrete Smash Run Powers to find too, so it'll take a while to get them all. There's also a challenge that tasks you to place first with every character at the end of the Smash Run, so either way you'll be spending some time with the mode in order to unlock everything.

Section 2: The Challenge Trophies (103-138)

We've touched on a few of these already, but the game has multiple Challenges: goals which act like achievements and will each provide an unlockable trophy, custom part, new stage or music track for the sound test. In addition, the player earns a reward for completing an entire screen's worth of these challenges. Fortunately, the game also throws the player a bone in the form of the Golden Hammers: There are three for each screen of 35 challenges, and allows you to skip the least pleasant ones. Definitely worth taking advantage of. There's 36 trophies you can only get via Challenges.

  • Challenge #1: Toad Trophy - Collect 30 unique Trophies.
  • Challenge #42: Redd Trophy - Collect 150 unique Trophies.
  • Challenge #87: Luigi + Poltergust Trophy - Collect 500 unique Trophies.
  • Challenge #105: Wentworth Trophy - Collect 600 unique Trophies.

These four are simple enough, since we're collecting all the trophies anyway.

  • Challenge #3: Epona Trophy - Clear All-Star on Easy.
  • Challenge #51: Master Hand Trophy - Clear Classic with 5 characters.
  • Challenge #69: Medusa Trophy - Clear All-Star on Normal.
  • Challenge #71: Guardians Trophy - Clear Classic on 9.0 Intensity.
  • Challenge #79: Crazy Hand Trophy - Clear Classic with all characters.
  • Challenge #99: Nintendoji Trophy - Clear All-Star on Hard.

As previously discussed, the challenges that pertain to Classic and All-Star modes.

  • Challenge #5: Peach + Royal Ribbon Trophy (Mario Kart) - Battle 3 times on the Rainbow Road Stage.
  • Challenge #19: Cragalanche Trophy (Kid Icarus: Uprising) - Battle 3 times on the Reset Bomb Forest Stage.
  • Challenge #31: Mr. Saturn Trophy - Win 2 Smash Battles with Ness.
  • Challenge #46: Golden Retriever Trophy (Nintendogs) - Battle 3 times on the Living Room Stage.
  • Challenge #52: Dark Emperor Trophy (Find Mii) - Battle 3 times on the Find Mii Stage.

These are kind of fun. You don't need to go out of your way much, but there's a few challenges like these where you simply have to try out a few stages or characters in the standard Smash mode for a while. Nice, easy introductory challenges.

  • Challenge #21: Dark Pit Staff Trophy - Unlock Dark Pit.
  • Challenge #60: Tortimer Island Trophy (Animal Crossing) - Unlock every stage.

Like the previous, though they may take a little longer. Dark Pit's one of the last characters to become unlocked and the stages require that you complete a few other simple challenges first (#6, #9, #17, #20, #23, #25, #54).

  • Challenge #47: Mugly Trophy (Donkey Kong Country Returns) - Get 10 KOs knocking opponents into other opponents in StreetSmash.
  • Challenge #95: Koopa Troopa (Green) Trophy - Same as above, only 20 KOs.

StreetSmash is the game's attempt to shoehorn in some StreetPass functionality. It's actually kind of fun, though utterly unlike anything else in Super Smash Bros. Instead, you're pushing around a token trying to knock other tokens off the board by charging up and boosting in a direction of your choosing. It's like sumo meets tiddlywinks. Fortunately, in order to get all the related challenges, you can just play the practice mode over and over, which doesn't require you actually StreetPass with anyone. Good if you live out in the middle of nowhere like me.

  • Challenge #16: Timmy + Tommy Trophy (Animal Crossing) - Play Trophy Rush for the first time.

Trophy Rush is the best means of collecting the random trophies that make up the vast majority of the trophies out there to find. I guess this challenge is here in case you haven't found this mode yet (its hidden in the Trophies sub-menu). This is also where most of your money ends up, along with the Trophy Shop. The Trophy Shop is useful too, though only when you have a handful of randoms left and don't mind splurging.

The Multi-Man Smash mode is still as repetitively dull as ever, and has its own set of challenges to overcome. The Shadow the Hedgehog one, much like the character itself, is pure bullshit and is worth skipping over via a hammer post-haste.

  • Challenge #7: Bonkers Trophy - Hit 300m in the Home-Run Contest.
  • Challenge #18: Home-Run Bat Trophy - Play the Home-Run Contest for the first time.
  • Challenge #86: Sandbag Trophy - Hit 15,000m across all characters in the Home-Run Contest.

The Home-Run Contest is back and remains very much the same as it always has. Beat up that poor sandbag and launch him with the bat before the timer runs down. None of these three challenges are particularly tough, fortunately.

  • Challenge #35: Blast Box Trophy - Score over 100,000 points on Target Blast.
  • Challenge #43: King Bob-Omb Trophy - Have over 2,000,000 points across all characters on Target Blast.
  • Challenge #94: Dark Train Trophy (Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks) - Play Target Blast with all characters.

Target Blast is the game's new version of Smash the Target, and plays like a cross of that mode and Home-Run Contest. Well, it plays a lot more like a certain mobile game involving irascible avians if we're being honest with ourselves. Either way, it won't take long to play a single game with all the characters, and you can even unlock the occasional trophy and custom part while playing.

  • Challenge #61: Knuckle Joe Trophy - Play Smash mode for 10 collective hours.
  • Challenge #91: Color TV-Game 15 Trophy - Play Smash mode for 50 collective hours.

These are longevity challenges and are utterly imbalanced time-wise for single-player saddos like myself. 50 hours playing no-frills Smash over and over is a little beyond what I'm prepared to do for a Pong trophy. I skipped both of these and didn't regret it.

This one comprises a collect-a-thon quest almost on par with the trophies themselves. The various custom parts the player collects has a chance to be a new piece of headgear or outfit for the Miis, and there's around 50 of those all together. They also have a few challenges linked to them, including beating All-Star with all characters.

However, getting all eight custom special moves for the 48 non-Mii characters means another 384 collectibles to find. That's going to take a while. You can increase the chances of finding custom moves for any one character by playing as them, though that's still a hell of a lot of Smash Run and Classic to get through (custom parts occasionally appear in Trophy Rush too, but not nearly as often as you'd hope). The game's more than happy to give you useless customization parts instead, or doubles.

These are the kickers though. The part when you realise that collecting all 685 trophies may (may?) well be more trouble than they're worth:

  • Complete all 35 Challenges on Grid 1: Super Star Trophy
  • Complete all 35 Challenges on Grid 2: Tutorial Pig/Professor Chops Trophy (Donkey Kong Country Returns)
  • Complete all 35 Challenges on Grid 3: Gold Bone Trophy (Find Mii)

So yes, you do have to complete (or skip over with a Golden Hammer) every challenge in the game if you're going for all the trophies. Which leads to these beauties:

  • Hitting 1000m in the Home-Run Contest.
  • 110 KOs in 3-Minute Smash.
  • 100-Man Smash within 3 minutes.
  • 10-Man Smash within 20 seconds.
  • 200 KOs in Endless Smash.
  • Come first in Smash Run with every character.
  • Have the game on for more than 20 hours.
  • 4 or more KOs in Cruel Smash. (If you get one KO in Cruel Smash, you're doing spectacularly.)

Yikes-a-roonie.

Section 3: Random Trophies

This is where the other 547 trophies are. There's multiple ways to earn random trophies, but your best bets are the following (from most to least lucrative):

  1. Trophy Rush. If you pay the maximum amount for 2:30 minutes, you can earn around 20-40 trophies. There's no guarantee that they won't all be doubles, but this is the best means of building a giant hoard of trophies quickly. Best to earn money via Classic or Smash Run, as both tend to pay out. You earn money doing the silly credits mini-game too.
  2. Trophy Shop. If you don't feel like spending money on a slim chance for new trophies, you could always just buy trophies directly from the store. You can use StreetPass coins here too. It's a costly process though, and I wouldn't recommend it if you've still got hundreds left to get.
  3. Classic mode. Playing on higher intensities means more rewards, and this is a good way of getting dozens of trophies and custom parts. It's also challenging, if you still want the gameplay itself to keep you on your toes. In addition, they sometimes drop trophies right on the map.
  4. Smash Run. Trophies are rarer in Smash Run, but you have to play this mode a lot for challenges and other collectibles and you can get quite a bit of cash doing so. That cash can then go right back into Trophy Rush. If you play online, you get the trophies/custom parts everyone else found too.
  5. All-Star Mode. Gotta do it anyway if you're hunting for every trophy. The occasional one appears after a certain number of battles, and become more frequent the higher the difficulty. I've heard the more expensive trophies in the Trophy Shop appear here more frequently too, but you still don't get many this way.
  6. Trophy Blast. The new mini-game. As well as targets, there'll occasionally be a trophy or a custom part to smash as well. You won't know until you pause the game if there's something there or not, but it's another case of "you gotta do this anyway so why not look for stuff".
  7. Mew Hunting. If you intend to run out the clock on those Smash longevity challenges, you can always set Items to Master Ball only and try to find Mew. Mew's one of the few Legendary Pokemon in the game (the Master Ball almost always spits out one of the twenty or so Legendaries that are running around these days) and will drop a trophy or a custom part for you before flying off. Pick a stage with a solid foundation (no Omegas, no auto-scrollers, no stages with very little ground), make sure Master Balls are the only items appearing, add a very dumb CPU opponent to stand in a corner somewhere and prepare for crushing tedium as you wait for a little pink cat blob to show up for hours at a time. THIS IS HOW SMASH BROS IS MEANT TO BE PLAYED.

The Bit at the End

How do I feel about the new Smash Bros? I dunno, I was too busy looking for trophies to pay any attention.

I am so not ready for Super Smash Bros for Wii U. Please, let me rest. Let me rest!
I am so not ready for Super Smash Bros for Wii U. Please, let me rest. Let me rest!

All right, you all deserve more than that for making it this far. Honestly, it seems like Sakurai took the criticism for Brawl to heart and decided to cannibalize the older Smash games for a "best of all worlds" scenario. The Melee stuff is a little more pronounced than most though. I'm sad that there isn't a goofy plot-heavy adventure mode in this one, but the Smash Run and new Classic modes are still quite good. The packed roster is truly impressive too, and that's before you start considering all the customization options for moves and costume changes. I really like how Pac-Man, the Duck Hunt Duo and Dark Pit play, as someone who generally sticks with standard attacks and aerials, and wish I could be better with Little Mac and Mega Man (they take some getting used to). Possibly too many clone characters for the game's own good, but a solid group of fighters all the same.

The best part of this game, easily, is how the portable format works so well with Smash's general pick-up-and-play mindset. Very few modes in this game take more than a handful of minutes to complete, and you can bounce between the various modes to keep you from getting bored. The trophies and challenges, for as much of a love/hate relationship I have with them, give you lots of short- and long-term goals to chase after, and you can spend as little or as much with the game at a time as you want: it won't suddenly run out of stuff for you to do (like Animal Crossing) even if you accomplish the maddening, quixotic task of collecting everything.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this wasn't too much of a chilling portrayal of the dangers of collectibles addiction. If you or anyone you know suffers from this debilitating psychological disorder, there's a number you can call to get help. Unless they closed the Nintendo Hotline down, in which case you're on your own, bucko.

4 Comments