Super Smash Bros. Brawl is rife with problems for a newb

Can we just discuss this game called Super Smash Bros and what it means to newbs like me?

It means terror.

Absolute terror.

It's one thing to play a single person adventure game like Legend of Zelda or Super Mario RPG and it's quite another to put me on a moving pirate ship playing a game character I've never heard of while experts pick up glowing balls and magically beat me – even with their handicap at 50.

I call foul. (Or fowl if we were in A Link to the Past. I'm so proud I can make gaming jokes now. I have only a few games in my reference arsenal but I'm gonna use 'em!)

The first time I played it was maybe a couple years ago. I played for one game and passed the controller to someone else. It was at a small party where all attendees were gaming nerds who actually knew to use buttons other than A and B in a frantic exaggeration of the word "smash" in Super Smash. I quickly went through all my lives after my heart rate perked up to a level I was not comfortable with. And I swore I would never play with those nerds again. I would watch from the corner while doing dishes. That was my party strategy.

Every now and then they'd try to give me the controller and, if there were other newbs there also, I would occasionally say yes. It would be a pitiful site of three girls screaming while my one girlfriend masterfully beat us all and the guys all laughed. I think it's fair to deem that as a low point of feminism in the gaming world.

And then, a few weeks back, the Super Smash started up again. There were only four of us. Three girls, one guy; two experts, one skilled Pikachu and me.

I decided to play Smash the same way I play mini golf: for fun with the slight purpose of sucking that way when I did suck it wasn't as embarrassing. The two experts put on handicaps, and I picked characters at random. Things weren't doing super well when I was Mario. They got worse when I was Luigi. They got better when I was Ganondorf and got real when I was Peach. Ice Climbers often ran away from each other and off the moving platforms. Star Fox characters sucked about as much as the game they came from. Bowser moved slower than molasses when I try to make gingersnap cookies. And Link was uncontrollable.

The problem with Super Smash is threefold.

First, I don't know the characters because I don't play the games and therefore I don't know what secret powers and abilities they hold until I'm faced with my expert friend as a super bitchy, fire-throwing Zelda.

Second, I find it difficult to play with more than two buttons, so the fact that I have to use my toggle, A button, B button and the C toggle as well as up, Y, X and the foreign buttons on the back of the controller means I am lost in a mess of endless button combinations. It's like I'm trying to crack open a safe in The Italian Job but I have neither Donald Sutherland's skills nor Charlize Theron's tools.

Thirdly, how do you pick things up and use them?! People are changing screen directions, throwing things in slow-motion, getting big and tall like Alice when she eats a cookie and beating me with a fan at a speed that is inescapable. What's a girl to do other than hide behind a pillar while the two experts and a skilled Pikachu beat on each other?

One of these days I'll learn how to survive. And when that day comes, I will enjoy the fame for but half a second until I see how pitiful my KO count is and go eat some cookies.

Super Mario RPG, level one

“How about SuperMario RPG? It’s the first 3D Mario game,” my friend asks after an attempt at Star Fox that made me want to kill my too-annoying team of a frog I was tempted to shoot down, a rabbit that looked like a donkey and an unnecessarily impatient falcon.

Time to learn a story and kick some ass, plumber-style.

“What’s that? A clown?” I ask my friend as a novelty flying ship goes fluttering by.

“A flying clown car,” my friend says knowingly.

“A flying clown head car blimp,” I correct as if I know things.

Let’s do this, Mario. Let’s save Peach – or Toadstool, my friend corrects me. I guess I don’t really know things.

I run into a guard and suddenly we’re standing on a carpet. “Is this a face-off?!” I ask, excitedly.

“It’s turn-based RPG,” my friend answers. “You take turns attacking one another.”

Right. This seems incredibly strange. Not to mention the fact that instead of going straight or left or right, I have to now move in diagonals along these floors that seem to be floating in outer space. As I type this, the guard is raring to go. Okay, Terrapin, you unarmed guard you, let’s face this thing off.

My name is MOFO for a reason. (Oh right. Instead of typing in my own name, I thought I’d try to be original. It’s not like any gamer has ever done this before.)

And I’m in the castle! And suddenly, Toadstool is hanging from a rope, Bowser is on a chandelier, and I eagerly punch in the air, ready to face him from what must be incredibly strong lighting fixtures. You’d think as the owner of this castle, Bowser would want to take more care of his décor. No wonder he’s the bad guy.

“Bowser: Mario! Prepare yourself for the great beyond!”

Interesting that the SuperMario characters seem to believe in an afterlife. I wonder if they ever get caught up in existential discussions while sitting in thrones or running over lava on wooden bridges – a combination that seems perilous at best.

Good thing Toadstool is here to help me, though. Otherwise I would really be SOL. Plus she’s a far greater help than the easily confused Toad, although Toad does give me an awful lot of gifts, something Princess Toadstool wasn’t able to do while she was hanging from a rope in Bowser’s castle.

It seems as though I did not have a childhood because this is way too enjoyable. How did I miss out on this stuff when it was a more socially appropriate age? From the chipper music to the puntastic dialogue to the fact that I, Mario, get to explain everything through charades and interpretative dance – I feel like a part of me missed out on the joy of youth. I guess I’ll have to make up for it now – even if the pacing is a little slow and the whole 3D format doesn’t have the novelty it had when it was originally released.

What can I say, though? There are quite a few characters in this game. And by characters, I mean freaks. There’s a frog that’s not a frog and seems to be named after a Marshmallow (who is quite clearly a cloud – it cries and suddenly it’s raining). There are dozens of weirdos living in Mushroom Kingdom, including a kid who is clearly tripping on acid and running around in squares – not circles, squares. There’s a crocodile wearing a top hat running around stealing heirloom coins and a bunch of different monsters who enjoy the Muhammad Ali dance before attacking. Oh, and of course, there’s Toadstool’s bedroom – I mean, how could I not take a look? Her bed is peculiarly placed in the middle of the room and was more akin to a trampoline than a comfortable bed. I mean I get that she’s a princess, but I don’t get why princesses can’t push their beds against the wall and have more room to practice hanging from chandeliers or escaping rope knots for when they will inevitably be captured.

Something has changed in me from Legend of Zelda to SuperMario RPG. I actually enjoyed a bit of the exploring with Mario. As Link I felt like at any moment I would have to whip out my sword and fight for my life, but as a plumber, I can inconspicuously climb castle stairs, visit a princess’s bedroom, go through houses, jump on people sleeping and essentially just run around – or saunter when not pressing “Y”.

A giant springboard lands in front of me, which apparently meant my level was over.

“We’ll make a gamer out of you yet,” my friend proudly remarks. I shrug it off, unsure of her confidence in me, especially since my greatest trouble was moving from one suspended block to another. Pressing “B” and moving on a diagonal is much harder in this faux-3D format.

Additional note: A previous version originally appeared in issue 16 of The Cascade on June 5, 2013.

Star Fox 64, training and a few minutes of level one

“What game do you want to play next? Something different? Or another RPG?” my friend asks, excited to be teaching me the ways.

“…You’re saying things to me that I don’t understand,” I tell my friend. “What’s an RPG?”

“Role-playing game.”

“Oh.”

“You could play Star Fox. It’s a fox who flies an airplane—“

“I’m in!” I say with glee.

A dog is talking to me about Lylats and Cornelias, telling me something that I’m not paying attention to, and there’s a rabbit, a frog, a fox and an impatient falcon running down a hallway as an alarm blares.

Something important is happening.

I guess it’s time for me to press start. The falcon’s impatient foot-tapping is a passive aggressive way to signal me.

But before I can press start, my friend says, “Easter egg!” as she takes the toggle and forces the foursome to follow the “64” around the screen with their strangely animated heads.

I guess that means this is for Nintendo64. Here we go, Star Fox 64.

“Do I go to main game yet?”

“Uh,” my friend says politely. “Maybe you should do some training first.”

As I start flying through this rather bland obstacle course, I realize that she has rather sage advice since I don’t actually know how to fly a plane. Up is not up. Up is down. Down is up. My world is just being filled with opposites. I now have two toggley things on my controller to use and my ability to hold onto a target and shoot a laser at it is pitiful. But as I slowly make it through different hoops that make me feel like a dog at a dog show, I start to get the hang of the whole down is up / up is down binary switch.

Until, that is, I mention how my alignment seems to be out and she chuckles and points out the fact that my right wing is gone. As she’s pointing it out, I fly into another building and my left wing goes up in flames. Somehow, though, I’m able to do barrel rolls and steer even as I slowly fall to the ground.

Well, let’s get this over with.

General Pepper! Isn’t that a Beatles song? Oh wait, that’s the dog. General dog. Words are being said to me as the story is explained, but I’m chatting with my friend about some recent Facebook stalking that amused me. She, however, actually cares about the story and I instead type out this paragraph while she listens.

“Starfox is a team,” my friend explains, giving me the SparksNotes version of the already short story description. “So Starfox is like Rogue Squadron.” A comparison I actually understand because of our recent viewing of the original Star Wars trilogy.

(Fun fact: The actor who played Wedge is Ewan McGregor's uncle.)

All right, can we just discuss these game characters for a second? First of all, this General Pepper the dog is a little too pushy for my liking. And Fox McCloud (a rather loose spelling of the Scottish name) is way too keen to be my character. Peppy Hare (I’m sure you can deduce what animal is) looks more like a donkey than any kind of rabbit. Slippy Toad (I’m starting to feel like I’m in a spacey video game version of Wind in the Willows) is staring into my soul. And Falco Lombardi (the impatient, sassy character) seems more in tune with my own personality.

I so wish I could be Falco.

“Something I forgot to tell you,” my friend adds, “is that you’re a team so you have to save your buddies otherwise they’re out for the round.” Would it be bad if I only looked out for my buddy Falco?

“You have to save Slippy,” my friend tells me as she’s being shot at after the game begins.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Slippy yells at me as I shoot her instead of the one shooting at her.

“Watch out for the mountain,” my friend says calmly, looking up from her book as I try instead to fly through the mountain but instead get bounced off. “That’s where you use a barrel roll.”

I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of this game. I’ve already nearly killed a frog and myself and am envious of a pissed off animated bird. Something is happening to me.

“You’ve got an enemy on your tail,” my friend laughs.

“What do I do?!” I scream in a blind panic.

“You use the brake … never mind,” she says, looking back at her book.

As Falco screams out a passionate “No!!!” I crash and burn.

I quit.

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, level one

As I enter the eastern palace and go to the left, my friend laughs maniacally when I enter a room that has no floor.

“It’s a good thing I’m such a timid player,” I say haughtily, “otherwise I would have run right off that ledge.”

I back up and find a button—or rather she tells me to push a button that I thought was just a plant stand—and enter another room with what look like dancing bananas. Apparently, they’re Popo, but to me they look like bananas that are swinging their peel-arms around like Kermit the Frog when he's super stoked about something.

Strange times, these are.

Next, I enter a room that has giant balls rolling toward me in a weird mix between Indiana Jones and Frogger. And then I’m faced with a bunch of skeletons, which, you know, is great. Except that instead of having the coordination to face them and throw that wonderful boomerang to kill them in close range, I die. And my friend takes the controller away from me again to “get more faeries.”

GAME OVER.

I find it easier to not watch my friend play since her expertise puts me to shame. Rooms are passed through like they’re rooms in her own house. Of course, this is what happens when you’ve been a gamer since you could pick up a controller, but it does situate me in a place of both awe and shame.

I’m back in the room where I’m supposed to tread on the bones of the skeletons’ ancestors so that they show up. Seems a little rude. Isn't there some kind of rule where you're not supposed to tread on the graves of people's ancestors? If there's not, there really should be.

“Now pick up a pot and throw it at them,” she tells me.

They die instantly. Well that was a lot easier! Except I miss with the last pot and I run away from my boomerang and into the dangerous arms of Mr. Skeleton. Thankfully, I did finally beat the monster and was given a bomb as a reward.

Not sure what I’m learning, morally, from this game. But I keep going.

The sleeping guards who require a little more manpower and skill are the ones that keep killing me. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten used to how to kill the skeletons, but those big suckers are really showcasing my lack of button coordination. Instead of calmly smashing a pot over their awakened heads, I throw it too soon, run away in a panic and shoot arrows in all the wrong directions before eventually succumbing to... 

GAME OVER.

Good news! After a couple of deaths and a couple of saving faeries that I trapped in magic bottles with the use of a butterfly net—what is happening to me?—I finally got the Pendant of Courage that I will now take back to Sahasrahla.

But seriously.

What is happening to me? Why do I understand what these words mean? A few hours ago I would've laughed at people talking about pendants of courage and trapping faeries in magic bottles and now I know what it means? Excuse me a moment as I question everything that has brought me to this moment.

Although, I still can’t pronounce these elderly names. "Sahasrahla" one sounds more like a phlegmy cough than any kind of name.

Further good news is now that I’ve brought the Pendant of Courage to Sahashralalalala, he gave me a pair of snazzy boots. Red. I hope sequined. And looking like Ted Mosby’s cowboy boots in How I Met Your Mother.

He calls them Pegasus Shoes. I call them freakin' awesome.

And I used them to run from frame to frame, room to room and past guards like an Olympic sprinter. I even out-ran an arrow, so my day is looking up.

Although I don’t think this devastating dash attack is really making me believe Link is any less insane than I thought he was. He runs full-tilt into trees to get money and into bookshelves to get a book. There are easier ways to attain these things, Link. Like reaching up. Reach for the book. Do you have to run full speed into a library book shelf? It looks psychotic and I'd imagine it causes some difficult-to-explain bruises.

"What happened to your face?" your doctor might ask.

"I ran into a bookshelf."

"Pardon?"

"I needed the book on top."

"Reach up you moron," your doctor says while shaking his head and prescribing you a psychiatric consultation.

After leaving a home where some serious sibling rivalry is evident (where one son sealed up his brother in a room with only access to a backyard overlooking a cliff where his parents worked a strange operation), I go into their parents’ backyard. It is here that I have to make it through a maze in 15 seconds in order to talk to some guy. What is wrong with these villagers?! Has the fact that their son locked them in the backyard driven them insane? Or do they not have anything better to do than toy with strangers? 

I do end up robbing them and destroy their pottery, so I guess we’re even.

Some more stuff happens that feels a bit like a blur. And I'm only able to keep track of a few things:

(1) I now realize I have pink hair.

(2) There's a strange wish sequence in which the pink hair is revealed.

(3) I dodged land mines, cacti and vultures.

I guess I'm on to level two.


And that's not even what's bothering me. I think the blur of events is due to actual interest in the game. There was less screaming and more genuine interest in how to defeat the boss. And I don't mean the boss who overlooks my productivity levels – unless my productivity levels are managed by how quickly I can murder the monster trying to kill me.

I fear a change within me. And not the kind of change that brings hot flashes and mood swings. I still have a few years before that bomb crashes.

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the prologue

“Spell out your name,” my friend tells me.

“What’s with the heart?!” I ask with eager curiosity.

“The number of hearts matches your health.”

“So one heart, I’m not healthy?” I’m a little disappointed.

This is me not even beginning to play Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past.

“It was originally called Triforce of the Gods,” my friend explains, “but in 1991, in Canada, it was considered too religious for the general public, so the name and part of the storyline was changed.”

My friend is a super nerd. And she will be my guide through the uncertainty of the next couple hours.

Also, I had to ask whether or not I use the A button to choose the letters of my name.

This will not go well.

The game starts. “Help me… Please help me…” Which, of course, I say out loud in desperate tones because I am not a gamer. You may have learned this from my inability to even use the buttons to spell out my own name—which thankfully I got right—but to be honest, I’m a little terrified. I’m going to be playing in front of an audience of one nerd gamer and I suck.

The text explains the premise of the game and I find it incredibly creepy. A wizard has a bunch of girls held captive in a dungeon and Zelda is the only one to remain.

So…I guess that means Zelda is the girl.

The wizard is Agahnim, a name I can’t pronounce and therefore will not be able to remember. It took me years to even begin to remember Lord of the Rings characters whose names, as mentioned by Honest Trailers on YouTube, require a linguist to even begin to remember.

“Amy, I’m going out for a while…” the screen tells me. Who is talking to me? Why is this blue-haired person talking to me while I’m in bed? That is if I’m the one in the bed. Apparently, this man is my uncle. Okey doke. This blue-haired uncle is warning me not to leave the house. If there’s one thing I know about my character, it’s that this game won’t happen until I break that rule. I hate breaking rules.

“What do I do with those pots?” I ask my friend.

“You pick them up, press A, and then smash them, same button,” she patiently explains.

“Okay ...” I say uncertainly. I do it and laugh out loud. I feel like I’m in a Greek restaurant celebrating and I wish I could make my character scream, “OPA!”

Zelda is nagging me because apparently stopping to type this article means she is spending an awful long time in that ol’ dungeon.

Also, those guards would have totally seen me cross the bridge and drunkenly swagger back and forth until I found the hidden path. I call foul.

My uncle tells me, “AMY, you can do it!” and I foolishly believe him. And Zelda nags me again.

So I’m in the castle and it’s terrifying. I just keep hitting guards’ swords before I was told that if I moved up half a step I could actually kill them. And if this was a real person I would look like a manic swordsman who needs to be committed for being both a danger to himself and to others.

Where are you Jack Nicholson? Will you be my friend in the asylum?

“So you can push these guys off the cliff,” my friend says. Apparently that did not register with me that I could also fall off the cliff.

Long story short, I got stabbed by freaking out and jumping into the arms of a sword-wielding guard.

GAME OVER.

I barely got a map. I guess I can try again. I know which button to push to kill now, so there’s a slightly better chance for me.

Good news—that is, it’s news to me—I don’t have to go all the way back to bed. Just to the front doors of the castle. And I’m not as manic this time. More calculated in my swordsmanship. I feel like Zorro slowly learning to be more like a Hispanic Anthony Hopkins.

I make it to another chest, excited off the kill of so many guards (who are clearly too easy to kill if I can slay them). “You got a…” my voice raises with excitement and drops with disappointment, “boomerang.” A boomerang? Really, Zelda? I feel like a tourist in Australia, but I guess I have no choice but to go with it.

I got to Zelda! And she keeps nagging me and then condescendingly asks if I do in fact understand everything I just read. Yeah, bitch. I understand. And now the chick will not get off my tail! She’s a little clingy and I want out. is it too early to tell her it’s not her, it’s me?

Here’s the thing about walking through doors when I don’t know where they lead – it doesn’t feel like a good idea. It feels like I’m the stupid girl in a horror movie who goes outside in her underwear to see if that really is a chainsaw she hears.

Case in point, I enter a dark room, my friend calmly tells me, “There are snakes in this room,” and of course I panic and run around in circles and we die. My bad.

GAME OVER.

The more dark caverns I walk through, the more terrified I am. Why, Amy? They’re virtual, poorly animated snakes and mice and rats and bats, oh wait – I just answered my own question. As I wade through the water so the rodents can’t get me, my friend tells me I’m not very adventurous.

No, I am not. I would be the first one dead in any action flick – a fact I have always known.

I got the key from a rat, screaming every time I enter a room and throwing my sword like a manic person again, and I realize something. I do not like the pre-game over screen where I’m lying face down in a sea of my own blood. It does not inspire confidence.

GAME OVER.

And, I’m back in the throne room which means there are a lot of dark caverns to get through again to even begin to start where I last died. Thankfully, my friend takes the controller from me so she can speed through at an embarrassingly faster rate. I blink and she’s through.

I’ve entered a fancy room with stained glass windows and I see a man.

“So, I shouldn’t kill this man right now?”

A message of praise for me comes up for keeping Zelda safe.

“Yeah. I should not kill this man right now.”

I really don’t know if I can trust Zelda. I’m not sure she’s a good judge of character. She followed a manic swordsman out of a dungeon and now thinks he can do anything even though he’s died three times in one level.

Good news is I have four hearts. That’s double a Time Lord, so I’m doing all right.

I’m just strolling through a garden, killing crappy guards and stealing their hearts when I can and my friend offers a piece of advice.

“The thing about Zelda, don’t hit the chickens too many times otherwise a flock of angry chickens will attempt to kill you.”

What weird world have I gotten myself into?  

After entering a house, I check again with my friend, “Do I kill this person?”

“No,” she says knowingly, “you typically don’t kill villagers.”

But Annie and Shirley in Community certainly did slaughter the blacksmith and his wife and take all their weapons, so I suppose it is possible.

Although instead of murdering her, I do take all treasure chests and smash all pottery, so I’m not sure why the villagers are wanting to help this ass-hat anyways. Link just walks into homes, demands information, smashes their pots, opens their treasures chests and steals all magic, money and hearts. Good to know.

Also, it’s nice to know the villagers are crazy ladies, thieves who stand in rooms and repeat themselves and infomercial bottle salesmen. I’m starting to feel like the only sane one.

Also, this whole “beware of the chickens” scenario is a little frightening when one chicken is standing on the head of a boy I’m talking to and another chicken pops out of a broken pot. I feel like a Bluth family chicken dance will at any moment have me fleeing in terror.

I went into a cave, as advised by my friend, and met a faerie who seductively healed my wounds – as seductively as this animation can be.

(Also, how is a person supposed to play video games without an expert telling them what to do and when to blow up cracks in the walls of villagers’ homes? Oh right. I guess I did collect some maps and a compass at one point. Still.)

As I came out of the cave, I saw two guards who I seem to be getting worse at defeating, so I screamed and ran back into the cave and now I’m hanging out in what I call a Faerie Spa and I’m okay with it. Can I get a cucumber water, darling?

As I run away faster than the guards can walk—instead of fighting them—I enter a cave and my friend tells me, “Okay. You’re going to catch some faeries. Get your butterfly net.”

Right. This is happening. I can’t stop it from sounding logical. I’m in too deep. Here we go.

(Although, I’m not really in too deep. I’m still in the prologue. How many levels are there? Ten dungeons, one tower, one pyramid and a castle revisit. I’m pathetic.)

There are new guards, apparently called Beamos, who look a lot like Daleks – the feared enemy of The Doctor in Doctor Who, so, you know, it was terrifying.

And now I meet an old man who asks a trick question. “Do you really want to find it?” “Yeah!” or “Of Course!” Unnecessary capitalization aside, this feels like a dumb trap, old man.

After much coaching and terror and pitiful screaming that I judged myself for, I finally made it to a level.

Additional note: A previous version originally appeared in issue 15 of The Cascade on May 22, 2013. 

Hello, I don't know what I'm doing

I feel the need to be honest with you, dear reader.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I am not a gamer. I never have been. All I remember of gaming in my childhood is Mario, Nintendo and an old television that required a monkey wrench to change the channel. It was in my basement and I would play with my brother because I thought he was the coolest. All the while, he was just really hoping he had a brother instead of the moron sitting next to him with pigtails and Tinkerbell perfume.

After my brother finally got real friends, however, my gaming pretty much stopped. I didn't pick up a controller for years and lost all appreciation for running through pipes and jumping on turtles.

I would nod and laugh with people when they reminisced about their gaming good times, all the while secretly judging them for being total nerds.

Soon the secret judging turned into blatant judging and I found myself too cool for school – or rather, too cool for video games since I actually really loved school and math and stuff. Now that I think about it, I may have been a loser.

Fast-forward to three weeks ago when I was required to write the video game article for my university newspaper. I told my co-workers I would write it only if I could write it as a novice—or "neophyte" to tie the blog name into things—and make it humourous.

People seemed to enjoy it and my gaming friend loved the chance to teach me the ways of nerddom, finally getting the chance to convert me as she'd always hoped she could.

We played for three hours and I wrote 2400 words.

And here we are.

Let the gaming begin.