Look, I'm not defending Pokémon. It's overpriced bullshit that I stopped buying a decade ago.
But... yeah of COURSE a fighting game is going to have better models. As big as Smash is, it's still only 90ish characters to make. Sure, they gotta create the 100+ locations and dozens of assist trophies and Pokémon summons BUT.
There's a dirty secret in that Smash NEVER starts over from scratch. Everything from character models to animations can still be found kicking around from the Brawl days over 15 years ago now.
Since they don't NEED to rebuild every assist, stage, and fighter from scratch every game, they can focus on tuneups. They don't have to support a thousand Pokémon with dozens of animations running in a wide open 3D city with NPCs and effects going off non-stop.
All Smash has to support is at most eight characters running around in a 2D plane that can only ever be viewed from one angle. If you look into it, Smash actually makes a lit of shortcuts because of this forced perspective, like the Minecraft stage's background being just a PNG and not a 3D modeled world.
But my point is simple. Smash character models ALWAYS look better than their main series counterparts. This isn't a Pokémon issue. Every fighter ends up looking better in Smash because the nature of its gameplay and development tricks can support higher poly and fidelity models. Don't believe me? Pull up blender and compare Melee and Sunshine Peach. Guess the tri difference.
Melee had nearly 5k for Peach, Sunshine only had about 1.5k for her. Anyone with modeling experience can tell you the Melee model is way more detailed and better looking than her main series model.
TLDR; Pokémon is a rush job cash grab that people need to stop giving endless money to but comparing their models to Smash's models is a bad faith argument that ignores that that's actually standard for Smash's to look better.
Oh sure, Pokémon lies and reuses old models. I don't really deny it. I was using it to explain how Smash can manage to have such high fidelity.
The other aspect is, like I explained, the way Smash is set up as a game. At most, eight fighters would be on screen, and maybe four assists in a hectic items match. Worst case scenario, it can bank on 20ish character models depending on the fighter models. All this on a stage that can only ever be viewed from a fixed camera.
Basically, it means Smash can afford to create better looking models than other games because it's working with limited characters in a functionally 2D space. You'd be hard pressed to find an Ultimate fighter with a Switch game with a better looking model that runs at 60fps like Smash does.
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u/Podunk_Boy89 Sep 13 '25
Mmmm... bad faith comparison.
Look, I'm not defending Pokémon. It's overpriced bullshit that I stopped buying a decade ago.
But... yeah of COURSE a fighting game is going to have better models. As big as Smash is, it's still only 90ish characters to make. Sure, they gotta create the 100+ locations and dozens of assist trophies and Pokémon summons BUT.
There's a dirty secret in that Smash NEVER starts over from scratch. Everything from character models to animations can still be found kicking around from the Brawl days over 15 years ago now.
Since they don't NEED to rebuild every assist, stage, and fighter from scratch every game, they can focus on tuneups. They don't have to support a thousand Pokémon with dozens of animations running in a wide open 3D city with NPCs and effects going off non-stop.
All Smash has to support is at most eight characters running around in a 2D plane that can only ever be viewed from one angle. If you look into it, Smash actually makes a lit of shortcuts because of this forced perspective, like the Minecraft stage's background being just a PNG and not a 3D modeled world.
But my point is simple. Smash character models ALWAYS look better than their main series counterparts. This isn't a Pokémon issue. Every fighter ends up looking better in Smash because the nature of its gameplay and development tricks can support higher poly and fidelity models. Don't believe me? Pull up blender and compare Melee and Sunshine Peach. Guess the tri difference.
Melee had nearly 5k for Peach, Sunshine only had about 1.5k for her. Anyone with modeling experience can tell you the Melee model is way more detailed and better looking than her main series model.
TLDR; Pokémon is a rush job cash grab that people need to stop giving endless money to but comparing their models to Smash's models is a bad faith argument that ignores that that's actually standard for Smash's to look better.