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Ah yes… The one and only Blue Blur as we know and love him is represented in Nintendo’s biggest crossover fighting game franchise there is: Super Smash Brothers. This is nothing new since he’s been around for multiple titles now but usually it’s rather more quiet about him since his representation as much he would have deserved from the game itself is not too great but not way too bad either. In the last couple of days and weeks even until today Sonic has been a little more in the talks or spotlight even if you will, sounds great eh?…ehh not quite, let me inform you in my very first News Post here on Sonic Metropolis.
Hello Sonic Metropolis Community! My name is DANNICS and i’m one of the newest members of the Sonic Metropolis Team. A new Metropolis Ranger coming in with an News post about an topic that maybe doesn’t interest all audiences of Sonic Fans but still is about our beloved Blue Blurs representation on a big field in gaming…the Battlefield over at the best Fighting Game of the Year 2019, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate.
In this Post i’m gonna inform you what has been up with Sonic in the competitive level of Smash Ultimate and how his current state in terms of competitve Smash and it’s community side is. This is my very first news post here ever, so i hope i still can give you all a good inside of this topic.
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Sonic The Hedgehog is since day one of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate a good character and can in the right hands be a really viable character in a lot of match ups in competitive level of play in Smash Bros. Ultimate. Despite him beeing nerfed mechanic wise from his previous version in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (aka. Smash 4), he still is on a good side and still is considered as a High-Mid to Low-High Tier character in Smash Bros. Ultimate. His nerfs did not bring game breaking effects on him and Sonic players develop the character in new ways for example sharing combos, moves, tricks etc., they’re figuring out for good. To the closing end of the competitive season of Smash 2019 until the Start of the new season with the start of 2020, Sonic the Hedgehog saw more and more of an rise. Sonic players from multiple regions are starting to get good results on Tournaments and rankings. Names like: “Wrath”, “Sonix”, “Sonido”, “Supergirlkels” and more are popping off more and more. At first it looked great overall and the community did not really have anything against it.
But then an US Major happend where something not so great for the Blue Blur started to make it’s ways again…Hate. General hate, bad comments and such towards to the Sonic Players as well as to Sonic as the Character himself. At Frostbite 2020 which took place at 21th of Feb. until 23th of Feb.in Detroit, USA, over a thousand competitors battled it out on this huge Smash Tournament. Two noticeable Sonic Players “Wrath” and “Sonido” did compete and got good results. “Wrath” even took it to 5th Place which is amazing in the matter of fact.
As the Tournament on that time progressed to Top 96 there was a set between the probably best Sonic player from the US right now “Wrath” versus the best player from Europe and the best Wario player in the World “Gluttony” from France. Wrath is known for a little more defensive playstyle beforehand. What makes it in this set now different tho is, that “Wrath” choose to play really campy against “Gluttony’s” Wario, meaning “Wrath’s” Sonic would almost never commit to fight on “Gluttony’s” wario without waiting out an opening, letting him to make Wario to commit, which took phase to phase quite some time and generated for the spectators and community some moments of boredom. “Wrath” would only approach with spin dash/spin charge into fourward air conversion combos and cancels. Rarely you could also see a back air or a homing attack but you really fast got the feel that “Wrath” was camping it out like in Smash 4 days. This is one, due to the match up and two due to it is now in part considered to be one fragment of an meta which is hard to determine as a whole since Sonic is a High-mid to low-High tier character and not a Top Tier character.
Wrath took the set in the end with 3-0 and quickly bad comments from the stream, vods, twitter and smash reddits were coming in. Wrath progressed with this until to Losers Quarters Finals versus “Tea” an japanese Pac-Man player which is considered the best Pac-Man player in the world. Even in that set it was a campy set and one of the longests set’s in the tournament. At the end “Tea” took it 3-1 over “Wrath” leaving the Sonic Prodigy to 5th place.
From these matches on out until to the current last couple of days Sonic gets hate from the Smash Community, on one hand (mild) bad comments for example saying something like: “he’s now the most boring Character to watch” or ” I see Sonic, I Sleep” etc. to the other hand were Sonic players getting hated even tho they vary a lot in playstyles.
“SuperGirlKels” a female Sonic Player from Canada reached out to Sonic players on twitter, that she’s here for them to support them, if there are also got involved with hate, after this idea others did as well and made the problem a little bit more clear.
From the start of March until today the playgounds for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Tournaments is the usage of Smash’s Online Battle Arena mode where competitors have to battle it out online since the COVID-19 Pandemic is around, preventing players to travel and compete at any local tournaments. Sounds ok in theory but brings Problems within since the Online smash experience due to the game’s not good Online Play service overall is causing a lot of games being not as playable at it would be on local. Depending on the case it’s even so bad that it is and seems unplayable. Nintendo never ever really supported the competitive Smash scene as a whole meaning at normal terms no one expects an action coming from Nintendo for that issue. Despite this there is now a hashtag trending all over Twitter “#FixUltimateOnline” where the Smash community is requesting solutions from the development team.
What does this above mean to Sonic tho you ask?…
Well even with the hate from Frostbite etc. going on, Sonic players do even online good at these online Tournaments. From the community he is also called as one of THE wifi (top tier for online play) characters and have made hate or meme comments to it. Sonic does suffer from online in general but not as much as characters that for example need more effort in mechanical skill plays and has some moves that in a lot of scenarios are almost unreactable for his opponents online, for example Sonic’s neutral B move, Homing Attack at medium range.
Now one day ago, the end of April 2020, an other known US Sonic player “Sonix” wants to craft a new playstyle, a new seeing of the blue blur in smash, in search to let the hate more fade but it also beeing more appealing to average spectator audiences and the smash community. A good task from him which maybe proofs to be difficult tho, since it also has to be optimal and oppressive to maintain good results and within that also a little better representation of Sonic the Hedgehog in the current competitive Scene of Smash Ultimate, which we all are at least for this scene hoping for to see.
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My own comment/opinion as my Sonic Metropolis Character – Jet the Hawk:
Häh!, there’s no way Sonic the so called fastest thing alive would beat me Jet the real fastest thing in the universe at any capacity, especially in riding EX Gear or using the Ark of the Cosmos but seeing these actions hailing through the gravity of my rival is dumb. Even tho the hate did not involve me as Sonic player to rep the Sonic universe, i don’t like the fact that this blue fastest creature of the universe faker is called out for stuff like most boring character or THE WIFI character since neither of this is the case. If he wouldn’t be my speed competition rival, he could made it maybe to a Babylon Rogues member but only speed wise and that i don’t need to bother with stuff that are non-of my interests coming from the other 2. I think that this situation for Sonic will fade tho since hate in general is nothing new, so we’ll be seeing positive news related to him and beeing stronger than ever, no sweat!
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I hope this News Post was to your liking. Let me see your opinions in the comments. You can also contact me directly at [email protected]
Kind regards
DANNICS