Pac-Man Smash 4 design

Super Smash Bros. has a lot of vibrant characters involved, allowing for drawing in various players. Additionally, it builds itself on the intent of being easy to learn, hard to master, providing something that players could want to return to. At the same time, though, the character roster would expand over time to add new reasons to play the game, since the notion of Self Imposed Challenges can only do so much anyway. Of course, new content is a good thing, but information overload can cause problems. There has to be a design method to keep the learning process of each character clean and the balance reliable with having them simply mutate the gameplay instead of controlling it.

Fortunately, there is a character who helps indicate the design method clear, and surprisingly, he's a third party character. You might be familiar with the name "Pac-Man."

-

Pac-Man: the evasion character

Let me clarify my history about evasion. For those who haven't noticed, my favorite color is purple, which is a mix of red and blue, and I lean toward blue, my second favorite color. This was because of the Yoshis in Super Mario World. You can tell that even as a kid, I could tell how the Blue Yoshi was the best option of the Yoshi colors, simply because of evasion ability provided by the flying, and I had the idea of having both the flying and the fireballs of the Red Yoshi.

Of course, while my favorite color is the same, it's for different reasons. Times change and I have noticed how the Mighty Glacier/Melee Tornado hybrid suffers the most from imbalancing. This is because they have problems catching opponents who can and would keep a safe distance. Kid Icarus Uprising had ideas on how to counteract the issue, but ended up with some nasty execution that gave evasion way too much in the way of tools, the most flagrant problem being that Evasion+ increased the intangibility duration of dodge moves by a whopping 25% per point, with the surplus intangibility carrying over into other further moves. Coming up with things like Grid Reading did little to blunt the issues caused by the brokenness. Super Smash Bros. is guilty of the same general problem, though to a lesser degree, but with fewer tools available against evasion abusers in the first place. However, it does have in mind a very key point to stopping evasion abuse: Counter Play.

Pac-Man is the poster child for what I'm talking about, as a character who could have proven himself divisive by his very design, but ultimately his beeswax gameplay boils down to either glitches, or Smash 4's common problem of just flat out favoring lower risk attacks. See, the whole point of Pac-Man is what he does in his own game: evasion. Pac wants to stay away until attack opportunities present themselves--in the game Pac-Man, he'd want to make good use of the Power Pellets to throw off the Ghosts, while in SSB, solid basic attack speed and mobility to help set up focus range smashes are his calling card. Of course, he'd have to have weaknesses. Sure enough, he does, with the most applicable being that he has a difficult time landing KO moves, to the point where a percentage lead will rarely mean much when the opponent can use active evasion themselves to give him problems. Well, there IS an old saying where one who lives by the sword can expect to die by the sword. And here, it works well for various reasons, including game advertisement.

Of course, there has to be something special for me to want to write all this. Fortunately, Namco provides it, as there is one particular Special Move that particularly highlights the truth of what Pac-Man's gameplay is about: the Fire Hydrant.

-

The uplifting Down B

Hailing from the arcade game Pac-Land, the Fire Hydrant in that game is a platforming obstacle that does what it pretty much does in the Pac-Land stage in Smash 4: spew out water gushes on both sides that push the player. What Pac-Man does via the Down B is send down one such Fire Hydrant from Hammerspace to do this. Sound like utility? Quite obviously, it is utility, but there's also an added feature: players can attack the Fire Hydrant itself to effect. After enough damage, the Fire Hydrant will go bouncing, with the attack that dealt the final part of damage determining both the velocity and the ownership.

The ownership aspect is the big point, because it means that an opponent can be the one to send the Hydrant flying and if that happens, Pac will have to watch out unless he wants to have his face meet with a traveling heavy object. This is already good for game design in that it bolsters burst damage over damage per second to make it easier to land the attack that deals the final damage, which helps characters such as Ganondorf who hit very hard on a per hit basis, over the likes of Sheik who don't. Power over speed is suddenly more beneficial, making risk and creativity among other things more appealing, and that's not all.

See, Pac himself can be the one to win the Hydrant, which even the likes of Bowser wouldn't want because the Hydrant would hit hard, forcing a dodge in general. This provides Pac-Man a long range KO move, but as I indicate, this doesn't completely neutralize the KO move problem weakness so much as simply make it more interesting. Note how I said that Pac could WIN the Hydrant? It's basically a sort of minigame. For those who have played Super Mario RPG, remember Dr. Toppler? Remember one minigame of his where the objective was to avoid taking the 21st coin? I'm pointing there to a solved minigame where you basically win by ending your turn on every 5th coin, net result of second player wins between 2 competent players, but the Hydrant barely has a few solved aspects for how it still rewards a better sense of gaming on both sides.

Already, the Fire Hydrant provides three bits of good game design, even without the even more methodical gameplay involved:
*Winning a minigame of sorts is rewarded with a heavy projectile
*Power is rewarded more than speed
*Pac gets a long range power move that still involves significant risk

Also, because of the way it plays out, the Hydrant can be used against projectile spam, either as defilade to sponge the projectiles if Pac is wary of the water spurts; or as a platform to bypass the deadzone and get right in the opponent's face. The latter becomes especially useful if the projectiles hit hard enough or the character is evasive enough, though Pac-Man isn't going to be melee focused, so he should be mindful of when he commits to melee attacks. It wouldn't be hard to imagine that a Pac-Man that doesn't use the Fire Hydrant (at least not the simple way of winning it) or the Bonus Fruit would have to be impressive to get by.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXaA4gOfmmE
(AHEM!)

(Oh, and I don't know what to say about the water spurts themselves. I'm not that good at working with them last I checked.)

How can Pac work with close range? Well, why don't we find out.

-

Melee moves

The key reason a lack of understanding with close range can lead to disaster when directly handling it is simple: the player is right there to have to worry about counterattack. With long range, the other person is often forced to approach, and it's guaranteed they will end up meeting with defenses when they move out. Close range has no such luxury, because bad calls guarantee the opponent an opening that would force the player to live with the punishment. By its very nature, close range is faster paced as a result, also assisting player awareness with the increase in adrenaline.

Pac-Man would not be melee focused, because he would want to avoid his opponent consistently, but of course, as implied with the existence of the Fire Hydrant, this wouldn't be so simple, and if it was, it would lead to torpid and ultimately biased gameplay. He would have to have the tools to fight back at a basic level, even against the Mighty Glacier/Melee Tornado character, though such characters would simply get to clearer afford more/harsher mistakes before projectiles coming into play. Even Meta Knight in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, as a Melee Tornado/Fragile Speedster/Glass Cannon hybrid, simply teaches this notion--bad execution in his design leading to generally overinflated stats beyond what the aesthetic would suggest, allowing him to kite like mad to excessive effect, is where he becomes busted. Really, Meta Knight's mere archetype is more than enough reason that any character should get to have the tools to work with close range as need be, quite obviously for Counter Play, this time for the characters themselves, since staying away from the obvious melee fighter becomes folly in light of their mobility making distance closure easy.

Fortunately, Pac-Man is designed to be simple, so a good number of his melee moves are rather basic. Jab is a punch-punch-kick; Forward Tilt is a reaching kick; Forward Air is a swinging kick that hits low; Back Air is a back double-kick that hits at moderate altitude; and Up Air is a flip kick intending to hit above Pac-Man. Notice that a lot of these are shared by enough other characters? I didn't mention Neutral Air because I'm not quite sure if it's similar to any other characters', but it's also simplistic enough anyway: it's just Pac circling around in his iconic shape.

There are a few melee moves Pac has that aren't shared, or if they are, it'd be inevitable with the roster size anyway, plus they fit with Pac's character as well. Down Air is repeat kicks ending with a strong one, per Pac's reliance on his legs to hit downward without inconvenience. Dash Attack has Pac moving forward in his iconic shape chomping along the way, intending to handle the objective. And of course, Grab throws about a Galaga-style tractor beam to put an opponent into Pac's grip, with the (intended) unique purpose of catching attempts to use Sidestepping.

Pac's melee has a notable focus on mobility and attack speed at a cost to range, but besides the Back Air, the Smash Attacks can help at that, though they focus on their intended coverage direction(s), with Down Smash being restricted to a moderate distance on both of Pac's flanks and on the ground, though admittedly it's good for punishing rolls. Notably, how Pac's Smashes work is that Pac summons a Ghost from his iconic game--two in the case of the Down Smash--to catch his foe being in that direction. The used Ghosts even have their relationship to the Smashes relate to their own personalities: Blinky, the red chaser, is involved in the aggressive Forward Smash; Pinky, the pink flanker, handles the back of the covering Down Smash; Clyde, the orange scarer, takes care of the lesser effort front of the Down Smash; and Inky, the aqua variable, provides for the unpredictable and air busting Up Smash.

Funny how Pac-Man's iconic enemies can become reliable friends, but then, his Down Taunt does have him daydream about Blinky and Pinky.

-

Other B moves

I didn't cover them sooner because the execution of the general B moves in Smash 4 is...off. However, I will nevertheless opt to provide some commentary about them that gets around the eyebrow raisers. The exeuction will get changed up in Ultimate anyway, for good reason.

Pac-Jump (Up B) doesn't have much to say about it beyond the Trampoline being a reference to another Namco game, Mappy. It's simply a 3 charge trampoline that lets Pac-Man bounce back up to the stage, though opponents can move onto the trampoline to use the charges themselves, generally with intent to have Pac need to use the 4th "charge", which just has the user of the "charge" fall down in Helpless state. On-stage, it can be used to disrupt ground-based movement by the opponent via the forced jumping. (Hence Ultimate will make the early hit deal less damage and also allow the Trampoline to be attacked to effect.)

Power Pellet (Side B) has Pac send out a Power Pellet that the player controls momentarily to create mini-Pellets along a path before Pac moves to munch on the Power Pellet following the path of the mini-Pellets. This can be used for a wide variety of movement options, such as fake-outs, curveball attacks, edgeguards, and even recovery defense. There is also momentary superarmor provided by eating the Power Pellet, a nod to the actual Power Pellet powering up Pac and letting him turn the tables. Its big weakness is that it has a lot of wind-up, so it can be disrupted by a preemptive strike, but the versatility is a definite boon.

Finally, Bonus Fruit (Neutral B) allows Pac to throw one of the Bonus Fruits from his home game--although technically the last 3 objects aren't actually fruit at all. Pac has to "charge up" the move to roll other, later BFs which are stronger but not objectively so in enough cases, continuing with the gaming theme. The first BF, Cherry, does minor damage and bounces along a bit before stopping. Strawberry, BF #2, behaves similarly but with more power and further bouncing. BF #3, Orange, actually moves forward unaffected by gravity, while dealing even more damage. BF #4, Apple, is the first BF where things get complicated enough to not get/deserve objective nerfing in Ultimate like Strawberry and Orange will, as it just bounces higher and loses travel distance, but deals higher damage. The fifth BF, Melon, trades away velocity completely in favor of some raw power and trapping ability. Next is the Galaxian ship, which flies forward before doing a loop-de-loop and then flying at a slightly upward angle right after, with the interest of multiple hits. After that is the 7th BF, Bell, which is thrown at a high angle before suddenly stopping to move directly downward, making it complicated to use but provides a lengthy stun effect if it successfully hits the opponent. Finally, the Key is a straightforward higher power, high velocity straight shot projectile--of course, that it's straightforward is a blind spot in light of earlier BFs, though little more than that.

Quite obviously, B moves like Pac-Man's are rather direct about how a character works, and can get rather blunt about it. Nevertheless, they can get the job done in terms of drawing the player's interest even if they focus on flash--the A moves are what would need to bring about the substance.

-

Closing

I'll be the first to admit my notes aren't entirely organized, but this should at least provide a more unique viewpoint about Pac-Man's moveset. After all, doesn't Nintendo aim for a happy mix of simplicity and innovation?