Since the game was first announced last year, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has drawn a lot of comparisons to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. franchise. Most notably, many fans have called it a "Smash Killer," and that phrase often gets recycled when new fighters are revealed. Such was the case when Jenny 'XJ-9' Wakeman, Hugh Neutron and Rocko were revealed recently, and developer Ludosity has asked the game's fans to stop doing just that. Programmer Thaddeus Crews has said that while he's not personally bothered by these comparisons, they instigate conflict and cause ramifications for the team, and for the game itself.
"There's no real way to not come off as a buzzkill in addressing this, but the image this kind of message creates has been so thoroughly harmful to a degree that I can't just sit back and watch it happen again," Crews wrote on Twitter, adding "I strongly encourage finding hyperbolic absurdist statements elsewhere."
Crews went on to say that he wants to "broadly shift away from the implicit competitions those statements frame." While the developer notes that the comparisons started as absurdist, they've become "warped and cruel." In other words, he wants Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl to be judged on its own merits, rather than being negatively compared to one of the biggest franchises in all of gaming.
Player hungrybox commented: "As the dude who’s channel started this trend - I agree wholeheartedly," adding "in recent times I realized such a comparison sacrifices the uniqueness of the game for clicks while it bridged tons of smash fans to the game - it left a bad taste after the fact it deserved better than that."
It's not difficult to see how that could cause problems for the developers, overall morale, and even for the game's sales. Some streamers, such as Colin "IntroSpektive" Firth, have already pledged to stop making these types of comparisons in the future. Crews is well aware that he can't stop anyone from making these types of comments, but hopefully his comments will help people think about the impact these comparisons have had on the game and the team working on it.
It actually appears to be a video reaction to one of those characters that prompted Crews to take to Twitter and request the term Smash Killer be put to bed. A video during which YouTuber IntroSpecktive uses the phrase to describe new character, Hugh Neutron, as highlighted by Nintendo Life.
“Obviously I was over embellishing the Hugh meme and saying how he single-handedly made the game better than Smash,” IntroSpecktive Tweeted. They add that after hearing what the creators of All-Star Brawl said, they won't be making those comparative jokes in the future. Crews has also highlighted the tweet to point out there was no animosity between the two parties, just the devs voicing that they don't like the term Smash Killer and a content creator understanding that.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is now available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.
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Originally published: May 17, 2022.
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