Yet, outside of debating who is right or wrong about Weezer’s (definitely not!) emo second album, genre is an inherent part of culture we use to comprehend media. This is especially true in games where these conversations traditionally have been utilized to maintain white patriarchal values. If I find that a work has meaningful value to me, it’s easy to say that we don’t really care to debate how it fits into a rigid label. After a while of trying to determine what emo even was they exclaimed, “My stance is that genre is fake.” In some ways, yes, genre is a bit of a silly thing that we all debate over. Recently I was debating with a friend on whether Weezer’s Pinkerton was the band’s emo era (outrageous I know). Well, I’d argue it is actually pretty important to how we experience the games we play. Paste’s own gaming editor discourages the term “metroidvania.” Does this even matter, though? It doesn’t necessarily effect our experience of playing the games we enjoy, so why treat it so seriously? But how do we conceive of genre? Years-old debates over the rejection of labels like “walking simulator” still remain. Genre is a funny thing to conceptualize because it seems so obvious that it almost feels arbitrary to discuss in depth.
With the comparative language of “clone” and ”-like” battling with the language of “platformer-fighter,” the release of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has not only introduced a solid entry in the genre, but ushered in a period of questioning the possibilities of genre itself. In all the fervor that the Smash brand has garnered, a lot of players can’t imagine that there could be a realm of possibility beyond Smash. Considering all these points, and many more, it was clear from the get go that All-Star Brawl was aiming not just for the same audience, but to be a very similar game as the longtime favorite Smash Bros.Īs many on Discord, Tiktok and Twitter shout about All-Star Brawl being a cheap clone of the Nintendo fan favorite, something more is missing from the conversation. The two games are so similar that even techniques that emerged from the longstanding competitive Melee scene were hyped up in the beginning of the game’s promotion with wavedashing given a bit of spotlight. Characters battle with combinations of basic melee and unique special attacks to raise the damage percentage of other fighters with the goal of shooting them off stage aerial and tilt moves are combo’d into spikes to finish off competitors the roster boasts a heavy dinosaur-type character (Bowser/Reptaur), a duo controlled character (Ice Climbers/Ren and Stimpy), and a character with a tiny but explosive down special (Jigglypuff/Nigel Thornberry). In Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl there are a lot of elements long-time Smash Bros.
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