I spent the evening being schooled in the finer points of losing to my friends in Super Smash Bros. Ultinate. Two of my friends spent a lot of time in college playing SSB on the GameCube, so when Nintendo released it for the Switch, I knew they'd want to try it out. I didn't play many video games in college, instead favoring RPGs and M:tG. I had never played this game specifically, so I figured I would be behind the curve, and I was more than correct.
I decided to pick one character and stick with it, to learn his moves as best I could. I chose Kirby because he seemed the most harmless looking. It took a while, but eventually I started to figure out what I was doing. There's a lot going on at once in this game, especially with 4 players, so following the action was a challenge. When we started out, I was consistently in last place, but little by little I started doing better.
But one of the things I liked best about this game is that regardless of whether I was winning or losing, the game was still fun. We played so that no one got knocked out; everyone kept playing until time ran out. This kept everyone engaged and not frustrated.
Another cool thing about the game is that sometimes the winner of a match would go into a special bonus round where they would fight a new character. If you beat that character, you could then use that character to play the game. Here's my friend using Link getting pummeled by Peach. He was able to come from behind and beat her.
Toward the end of the evening I started to be able to hold my own and even win a few times. It was definitely a good feeling to see Kirby at the top of the rankings, but ultimately tonight was about hanging out with good friends, and learning something new. Great evening.
