Editor’s Note: The following is part five of a series of articles on various playable characters from the fifth installment of the popular video game “Super Smash Bros.,” available on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. It is intended for competitive and semi-competitive players of the game.
Stepping slightly away from character based analyses for a moment, this week I wanted to address something a bit more local. If we all mained a character based on where we either are from or predominantly reside in within the Berkshires, who would we main?
With the interest of limiting the length of this article, I based it off of places within the Berkshires I have personally spent significant amounts of time in.
If you live in:
North Adams – A fairly stagnant little town. There’s not really that much to do here if you’re trying to get out and really do things. Mass MoCa is cool. If you like to eat out, there are good options here. The city is horribly unwalkable, though. This is for two reasons: for one thing, trying to traverse the streets alone, especially at night, can prove to be risky. For another, most of the things actually worth doing or seeing are quite far away from one another. You have to be quite committed if you wanted to tour the wonderful MCLA campus, then go check something out at Mass MoCa before proceeding to check out our cool nearby Walmart – you would main King Dedede. Think about it: Dedede’s walk slow is horrendous. His air speed is also quite bad. He isn’t viable in the slightest in singles, but does okay in the doubles metagame (playing off the ‘don’t walk alone in North Adams’ mantra) and above all, Dedede enjoys fine dining, as he can literally swallow other Smashers whole, if only for a handful of seconds, with Inhale. Inhale is actually a handy tactic for Dedede in doubles, as it can be used to essentially absorb a Finishing Touch from Cloud, the best character in doubles.
Pittsfield – A bustling community. To contrast it to North Adams, there is a lot to do in Pittsfield and the city itself is extremely walkable. Wahconah Park is the birthplace of baseball, Third Thursdays are always fun, and it has a lot of creative, albeit somewhat suspect, eating options, particularly within Downtown Pittsfield. Despite the fact they had to tear down an entire high school building, the local economy has been on the rise for a long time; the city is easily ten times better than it used to once be – you would then main Mewtwo. Mewtwo is fast, both on the ground and the air, has been on the rise in the metagame, coming up from being once thought of as a bottom ten character in the game all the way into firmly in the discussion for being top ten in the game. Playing off the baseball theme, Mewtwo has both a Shadow Ball (pitcher throwing a baseball?) and a reflector (swinging a bat at projectiles to send them back). Finally, playing off of the “tearing down the building” theme – Mewtwo, despite being on the rise, has been seeing a sharp decline in usage lately. Unlike the tearing down of the aforementioned building, there is little to explain why Mewtwo has seen some of his most prominent players, such as Abadango, go in another direction, but it has been an unfortunate set of circumstances.
Hinsdale – The Berkshires’ eldest set of population, at least so it would seem. Everything here has a very old fashioned style to it. This is likely because homeowners here chose Hinsdale as their area with which to settle down in. While a majority of the people here have been there, done that, you could hardly tell this by the infrastructure, technology and general innovation we’ve seen from the area. Unfortunately, there really isn’t much of anything to do around here: it’s just the same old stuff everywhere you go. There’s a neat public library, and there are neat annual events, such as a Car show that gets good turnout. Other than that, there isn’t really much worth mentioning. Perhaps the population, as it would seem, has decided to settle down – you would main Fox. Fox has been largely doing the same stuff for a very long time. While the franchise’s mechanics have changed a lot over time, Fox’s core strategy has hardly changed; record most of your kills with a timely up smash or up throw into up air combo, pelt your foe with lasers if they try to lame you out, have a godly advantage state juxtaposed by an awful disadvantage state, and use your excellent mobility and great ground game to make for one hell of an anti-camp character. Fox’s core mechanics have been very consistent throughout his existence, even with the game around him changing so drastically. Unfortunately, for Fox’s diehard players, they’ve been treated to largely the same thing out of Fox for nearly sixteen years, and may be craving a little bit of variety at this point. Even with the lack of variety, Fox’s large amounts of success throughout the last three Smash games have been well defined.