Despite Heavy Smash Bros. Layout, Competitive Players Remain Skeptical

"And the winner is...Marth!" 

Nearly one third of E3's entire booth was dedicated to Super Smash Bros. A competition for each gaming station sent the winner of each stage to play on their big stage, and the winner on each round there got a simple black T-shirt. 

And a lot of people wanted that T-shirt.

A final match with four Zero Suit Samuses, a common occurrence. Other popular winning characters were Marth, Pikachu and Megaman. 

Every one of the nearly twelve Smash 4 stations remained consistently full, and booth babes would frequently cut off the winner's big screen line, since so many gamers wanted that simple black T-Shirt. 

The newer aspects of the game were looked over by the casual gamers, who wanted to win with characters they knew how to play with. Marth and Zero Suit were among the most frequently played, and characters like Villager and Wii Fit Trainer were barely touched. 

We didn't see this at Nintendo's E3 invitational, where the top competitors chose all of the six recently announced characters in the tournament. The winners were still older characters -- Fox and Zero Suit Samus. Nintendo even took advantage of fan favorites, creating a competition the fans could participate in.

Despite the nature of Super Smash Bros, Nintendo was not always open to the hyper competitive spirit of their own monster. "The [Nintendo E3] invitational feels like a complete 180 from Nintendo requesting that Melee not be streamed at Evo last year," says competitive smash player EmuKiller. Despite a lack of an invitation this year, he knows many of the players personally. "[They] were treated exceptionally well and really enjoyed the whole experience."

Despite Nintendo's capitalization of the competitive spirit, there is still skepticism among the most elite Smash players about its potential, I've spoken this to other competitive gamers, and EmuKiller agrees. "I think that Smash 4 is still going to be a casual game at heart.  So far the stages shown seem to be 'just barely not competitive' stages...While Smash 4 definitely includes more combos than brawl, you won't see anything close to the damage off of a hit that you get in Smash 64 or Melee."

Even thought it may not pierce through the higher echelon of competitive players, the enjoyment over getting the final smash is always enticing, and nearly everyone is rethinking their WiiU ignorance. Smash 4 is definitely going to be competitive.  As long as someone thinks they're the best at a video game, there will be competitions for it.  

"There are definitely a lot of people out there who think they are the best!" says EmuKiller."I have...yet to try it and I don't plan on it, I might not get a WiiU for smash, and I don't plan on competing in Smash 4.  But as some players get too old to dedicate 1,000 hours to learning the ins and outs of a game, a new generation of challengers will approach who have the time and dedication to handle it.

Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. has a release date of October 3rd for the 3DS, and a "Holiday 2014" release date for the WiiU.