by Doc – Owner, Founder, Does Smash 6 Amiibo Training Even Matter If We Have This? (It Does, But Still…)
As I wrote the other day, Smash Ultimate has been ported to the PC by AI-led decompilation processes. While the AI bubble certainly appears to be popping, the fact is there’s still plenty of distilled model houses running far less expensive AI services out there that are almost as good, so the democratization of programming ability (and thus decompilation) is likely permanent. We are never going back.
So for anyone out there looking to tack on some new features into Smash Ultimate’s PC port, I have a few suggestions.
When I refer to something as “Sakurai content“, I’m referring to game content found in Smash that Sakurai made, but maybe didn’t intend to be used in this way. For example, Charizard playing solo is Sakurai content because Sakurai made Charizard and we’d just be removing Squirtle and Ivysaur. It’s still Charizard. But a revamped version of Charizard with new moves is not Sakurai content, because that’s not faithful to what Sakurai made Charizard to be.
In-Game Amiibo Value Editing
There’s plenty of literature and tools out there on how to break down the bin file of an amiibo, but there’s no mod that I know of to allow us to directly modify the amiibo’s behavior values in the game. Still, amiibo editing is the logical conclusion of the meta (and our tools and training methods are precise enough that we can get pretty close to where the amiibo needs to be with a few rounds of training anyway, and check that quickly). We have enough of an understanding of amiibo the meta to know what values we want and how we want them, so not having editing is kind of inefficient.
To be fair there are several reasons it’s not been legal, and one of the primary reasons it’s not been widely legal up to this point is its infeasibility for most trainers. To edit, you need to have a phone with the right community-made app or some other way to read and write the file, and you need a program to do it with. That’s a pretty large tech stack to require on top of already having a Switch, Smash and some amiibo or amiibo emulators. So it’s fairest to have everyone competing on the same playing field even if it removes some precision in training, and thus editing has been kept illegal in amiibo tournaments.
Ultimate Recompiled changes all this (theoretically) by only requiring a PC to enter amiibo training, so that reason is made moot. Mooted? Mootified. Theoretically you could just go into the amiibo menu and change the bytes directly as you see fit, effectively having an in-game editor. Imagine running that kind of tournament!
Auto-Run Amiibo Tournaments
Emulators can fast forward the game but players still have to recognize when a match is won, jump through the hoops to visually recognize that a match is over, scan in new amiibo and start the next match. It’s a hassle!
Ultimate Recompiled could strip out the visuals of Smash and automate those functions, so that a user need only identify the amiibo files participating in the match and the ruleset, and then run it. Imagine how much faster a modern, quality PC could run Smash not only if it didn’t have to worry about graphics but also if there were no menus or scans to fiddle with! You could run tournaments at 100x the speed. Of course, we’d want toggles to keep visuals on and other streamer functions so players can watch.
Spirits Balancing With Unused Spirits, or By Modifying Spirits
The spirits meta is famously broken, with the best spirits being very defensive in their boosts and the next best ones very offensive. Frankly the whole thing needs a rework.
There’s two ways to approach this: we can either tweak the existing spirit effects and introduce new ones, or we can unlock Sakurai content spirits and see if that fixes it. Stuff like Lifesteal won’t be that good, but maybe Weight Up Up and Metal & Giant would be? I know there’s been tournaments done in the past with these here and there, but they’re rare. Still, if we can unlock them and let the meta really flesh them out there’s a chance that they could kinda rebalance the spirits meta.
Most likely we’d have to define what “balanced” looks like in the spirits meta, because there’s so many options that there’s bound to be division on the appropriate rulesets if it’s not ironed out ahead of time.
And if that doesn’t work, we can fiddle with ’em! What if Lifesteal pulled in 6% per hit instead of 3, would that be enough to make it more viable than the Big Five? What if the Big Five were nerfed? What if Critical Healing + Metal had a lower threshold, or the metal didn’t last as long? At that point we’re getting away from being pure Sakurai content, but I feel like with spirits that’s more acceptable since spirits isn’t as purist of a philosophy anyway.
Alternate Amiibo AIs
Sakurai patched a lot of amiibo over Smash’s lifetime. Some of the patches helped, some were stupid nerfs. I was never quite sure whether they were some kind of acknowledgement of the competitive aspect of amiibo (it’s doubtful but weird that they happened at all) but still, they happened.
Technically, removed Sakurai content is still Sakurai content. If we had some way in-game to toggle which iteration of the AI we want to have and have it display, that’d be way cool. I’ve always wanted to see what pre-nerf Mii Gunner would look like in the modern meta, and having new AI is almost like giving us a minor content expansion. Most of these AIs haven’t been in the game in 6+ years, so it’d be interesting to see.
More Tournament Legal Stages
This is partially a comment about how most TOs stick to a very tight handful of stages in their tournaments out of convenience, primarily Battlefield variants and Omega stages due to the in-game quality of life features when there’s a whole load of good stages out there. Eon, the USAC trainer, deeply analyzed each one that is considered for competitive play and gave a ranking of the best ones, and it’s the best compendium on amiibo stage legality out there. Give it a quick read for me.
Done? Great.
Did you notice how PS1, PS2, Unova, Smashville and so many otherwise good stages were rendered uncompetitive because a few characters have an SD issue causing them to die? What if we could patch whatever part of the AI or stage causes that, and then legalize the stage? Technically the stage wouldn’t be totally pure Sakurai content after that, but it’s just a bug fix. Think of what could get nudged and shifted in the meta if these stages became available! Even a change in winrate of a few percent on one stage versus another can eventually modify tier list placements.
More Characters Modded In, But Only Sakurai Content
I’m stretching the definition of Sakurai content here a little bit, but what about plugging in characters who are already kinda-sorta fighters in the game? Giga Bowser, solo Charizard, Mythra without Pyra, you get the idea. Mods already exist for this so that’s not a big ask.
Sharing Amiibo On Online Services
Yes, we’d need our own version of Wiimmfi for Smash, and there’d have to be some mods to allow this, but man would it be helpful to have this. This and the Auto-Run tournaments are the kind of thing I put into BadAssteroids, and I put it in for a reason; it’s useful! If you want a top level competitor you can go online and get one easily.
This could be extended to even having amiibo tournaments be posted in an in-game service instead of through specific communities, making it easier to host and enter. Imagine being able to run an amiibo tournament with the highest-placing amiibo available on the internet at the drop of a hat.
There’s many more possible features for Smash Ultimate recompilations, but I think that covers the big ones! I hope this comes to fruition!
