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A bottle of mild bobby sauce, hue shifted so that Spongebob's trademark yellow look appears green.

Well over thirteen years ago, we were in Tenerife for my Mum’s birthday. If you’re going on holiday at such a time, and you need a cake, your only option is to either head to the local supermarket, or, if you want to be really special, the bakers.

My Dad knows zero Spanish. If I may say, he has the most non-native understanding of the Spanish language you can find across the Great British populous. He adds O to the end of everything. It’s that bad.
Guess which option Dad took. Yeah, in a time before Google Translate was good enough to act as an interpreter, my Dad took himself down to the local bakers for a cake, equipped only with his Spanish pidgin-o to communicate-o. He at least had a shirt on.

He did bring back a cake, though. I seem to remember it being some sort of ice-cream and swiss roll affair. The details are hazy, but the one thing I remember most vividly was how he had acquired it without knowing the Spanish words for cake (tarta de cumpleaños). His endeavour to communicate in Inglés-o to the proprietor, who only knew Spanish, was a game of charades probably not too far removed from a Little Britain sketch, in that Dad’s efforts to not get it wrong go so far that they underflow and come out the wrong end. The Ts and Is would be crossed and dotted, his speech becoming more deliberate; it’s an awkward affair no-one wants to be in, not least of all the baker.

Dad panicked. In a last-ditch effort, his mind searched for a frame of reference – anything that could convey some meaning of a cake. The icing, the candles, the jam, the spongy layers–

It was worth a try.

“¿Bob Esponja?”

He asked for a Bob Esponja. A Spongebob. Don’t ask me how that led to an ice cream cake. Thirteen years on, I still don’t know.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2. And now for something completely different.

Reptar FTilt Funny Moments1

The best time to learn a fighting game is when it’s still fresh: every character is busted, and people are just experimenting. Nick Brawl 2 gives people who predominantly play platform fighters a lot to experiment with, thanks to the Slime mechanic.

Every time you attack or are attacked, a green meter split into three segments is slightly filled up. When at least one of these bars are filled, you can spend it to do all sorts of things:

  • Power up special moves to have enhanced effects
  • Power up strongs to do more damage
  • Cancel the startup of an attack (as a fakeout)
  • Cancel the recovery of an attack (to potentially extend the combo)
  • Cancel all momentum from an attack that would’ve otherwise KO’d you
  • If you have all three bars filled, you can spend them all for a cinematic “Super” attack that does incredible damage and will most likely result in a KO.

Fighting games are sometimes interpreted as a sequence of RPS games. Attack beats grab, grab beats shield, shield beats attack, and so on. When someone is said to have advantage, they’ve managed to whittle down the opponent’s options to a few that are easy to guess. If you’ve been knocked into the air, for example, you might:

  • Retreat away from the opponent and try to land normally
  • Try to land on top of the opponent and reverse their advantage with an attack
  • Try to slip past the opponent’s attempts at juggling you by airdodging
  • Fake out the opponent by using your double jump, if you still have it

Here, the slime mechanic essentially creates extra complexity by adding more ways to escape or counterattack. You could fake your opponent out by winding up one of your attacks, and then immediately cancelling it, choosing instead to airdodge. There’s all sorts of mixups you could do – but don’t overthink it. No-one mixes up perfectly, and it’s such imperfections where we find openings to push for advantage in the first place.

Meter mechanics are not new to fighting games, but NASB 2, AFAIK, is the first platform fighter to feature gameplay that is entirely balanced around the use of slime. As of right now, everyone is still experimenting with how to use it (“Oh yeah, you can do that…”). Once the dust settles, though, players who’ve firmly grasped it will likely see the most immediate success.

I got around to playing some NASB 2 online. Now, playing against a stranger online is pretty anxiety-inducing, even if you’ve got your sea legs. It’s like answering a phone number you don’t recognise at 2am. I’m not afraid of getting my ass kicked, either – I had nearly three years of getting my ass kicked in Smash Ultimate by some of Dundee’s finest. I’d paid a premium subscription to getting my ass kicked, every Monday, regular. The difference is that getting your ass kicked by friends is much more enjoyable than getting your ass kicked by strangers. One loves their friends enough that one consents to the ass-kicking.

This is certainly true of Smash Ultimate. Sometimes you get the odd Good Player on Elite Smash; in public arenas, the odds are better, but there’s every chance you get kicked if you’re the one who’s too good. The best way to maximise your chances of getting good practice AND good fun is to join a Discord guild and ping the matchmaking role. At least there, even if your only interest is grinding the game and gitting gud, you’re still establishing a connection with another player, instead of being thrown head-first into a match with some rando who refuses to elaborate further and leaves after the first set.

I asked my friend who’d been grinding for a little bit – you may remember him from such bangers as, “Playing Through Kirby and the Amazing Mirror In One Sitting:”

https://brologue.net/2023/11/15/i-want-my-twitter-friends-back/

It’s kinda wild how some people can just be good at video games. Despite having holes in his brain that might try to argue otherwise, I’m pretty sure he’s one of them. He’s good at video games and has a full-time job! Having started my first job this year, I get how exhausting work is now – when you get home, all you want to do is recover from time spent at work. I look up to him as someone who knows how to have a good time on his otherwise mercurial schedule. And for being good at video games. If only adulting didn’t get in the way…

Every fighting game has its tutorial characters. As a game designer, you want to have one or two characters on your roster that are (usually) familiar to a wide audience, and, when you play them, what you see is what you get. Tutorial characters have no intricate tricks – their moveset and attributes make for a well-rounded fighter that teaches players the fundamentals. Think Mario or Kirby in Smash, Zetterburn in Rivals, Ryu in Street Fighter, that sort of thing. Basically, if you have a job (like me), and you don’t have all the time in the world to grind the game, a character who’s strong, easy to learn, and easy to play, is your best friend.

I think it’s fair to say that, until Smash 4, and the rise of indie platfighters, Smash struggled to get the balance right. Kirby in Smash 64 was the poster child for tutorial characters, but also extremely overturned; in Melee and Brawl, they pale in comparison to the top of the cast – they’re too balanced (except for Melee Kirby, who’s an absolute travesty).

In Ultimate, my main from 2019 until I quit was Olimar. Execution-wise, he’s ridiculously easy, but playing him well is an exercise in studying the human condition. You play the one character who’s so easy to hate (he’s pretty far out in a game where you can pick the Wii Fit Trainer and the Duck Hunt dog). Pikmin are a torturous projectile to deal with, and no-one wants to approach the character who can deal 70% off a smash attack that combos into itself. Pikmin management – knowing what Pikmin you should have at any given moment – is a game unto itself. So, while Olimar is easy to control, he’s not a beginner-friendly character at all.

I’m someone who tends to pick characters I already know and love. For now, I’m sticking with Spongebob. Wouldn’t you know it, he’s not just the tutorial character of NASB 2, but he’s also pretty strong. He’s got lots of quick moves to take opponents to the top of the stage, or from one end to the other, and a karate chop that sends opponents directly down. His side special sends him hurtling forward in a fish bowl – the devs are practically begging you to slime cancel it. Down special sees him pull out his spatula (and a massive disjointed hitbox) to flip opponents trying to land on top of him. It seems to have set knockback2, so if you do it under a platform, they have to tech, or else they’ll land in a knocked-down state.

This is probably where platform fighters resemble an RPS game the most – if you’re knocked down, you’re forced into making one of a few getup options, all of which are risky, and if your opponent successfully predicts your getup, you’re eating a combo. Or, y’know, you just die.

Spongebob’s funniest attack is probably his jab. It’s a living embodiment of that one co-worker who, after you text back saying you’ve done that thing they wanted you to do, reacts with a thumbs up.

The second hit leading into the thumbs up finisher is a flurry of slaps (with added sticky hand sound effects). I imagine this is how said coworker tapped out the message on their phone: “YeAhCoUlDyOuPlEaSeCoMeInAnDdOtHuRsDaYsShIfTfOrMe, ThAnKsYoUrEaStArIoWeYoUoNe 👍”

F.U.N. und Zeit

Look, there’s no prevaricating around the bush here – my ass ended up in the Iron Butt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhY66zoM4oM

But – and this is a colossal, Iron Giant-ass BUT – I had so much fun! I just wish I could say it at the time. Or at least, I wish I could’ve said much more. It’s something I’ve noticed I do, and I’m not sure if others feel the same way. I get so immersed in the game and just want to move onto the next match; there’s something so visceral about the experience that I dissociate and can’t speak.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that, though some would say I speak eloquently, I’m no great speaker. I feel like my ability to speak has deteriorated. It’s like clawing black sand aside, and feeling it slip through my fingers in reverse, making little progress towards digging that hole to unearth the words on the tip of my tongue.

This is why I use writing as a prosthesis – hell, it’s why I write:

https://brologue.net/2023/12/26/my-spines-as-stiff-as-a-prosthetic-leg/

Someone’s got to keep a record of these memories. Someone’s got to say what couldn’t be said. I had the words to say it, once. I don’t know where they’ve gone. What possesses me that I can’t say how much I appreciate sharing time with others, I don’t know; and I don’t mean “appreciate” like how you’d use it in an email to give a facade of friendliness, I mean I really, REALLY care. Could it be a masking thing?

This is a silly game where cartoon characters from our childhoods beat the bajeezis out of each other. It’s also much more than that, and honestly, it’s not so daft. Keats came after that urn of his like it’s a magic artefact that divined “beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Finding the time as an adult is so difficult – hard graft becomes a badge of honour and justification for rest, rest becomes the antithesis of work, and for what time you have to rest, it’s like you need rest to rest from the rest of not working.

The thing is, we all do have the time – just not at the exact same time as others. Something that I learned in Four Thousand Weeks, but did not cover in my post about it, is the feeling that time somehow becomes more ‘real’ when we spend it in sync with others. The Romans were the first to discover that marching in unison mysteriously gave soldiers the power to go on for longer. We unconsciously mimic the gait and pace of the people we’re moving with.

There is a correlation between social regulation of time – where we organise time together, as part of a polity – and life satisfaction. Contrary to popular beliefs and sayings, time can’t really be ‘spent,’ like money. It’s not a commodity in that sense. The notion that we somehow lease our time to work on someone else’s clock is relatively new, and seeing time in this way obscures a critical observation: Time can be shared collectively, which means it has network effects.

Just a paragraph about network effects. Just one… then I’m off the stuff for good.3 The more of our time that we can control in tandem with others, the more valuable that time is. Burkeman cites a 2013 study from Terry Hartig, a researcher in Sweden, who observed that the more Swedes who took the same days off work, the happier they were. This doesn’t just apply to Swedish workers, either – time’s network effects mean it applies to the elderly and unemployed, too:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2156869313497718

https://sociologicalscience.com/time-network-good/

Talking of Sweden, workplaces across the country observe an additional food and drink-based ritual and break, separate from lunch: fika. They’re daily breaks where everyone congregates in one space for cake and coffee, but they’re not just your typical coffee break. For that brief 30-45 minutes a day, folks agree to set aside hierarchy and bureaucracy in favour of communication and conviviality. You’re a square if you don’t take part.

The closest thing we have in Scotland is a coffee morning, except those are typically only hosted to raise money for charities. Again, fika is distinguished from just being another coffee break because everyone pressures everyone else to attend. Because everyone agrees to spend their time in tandem, that time is being shared, and thus feels more meaningful. We ought to collectively mandate for fika at work. It sounds wonderful.

I Told You About Reptar, Bro

My friend mains Reptar. Right, how do I explain Reptar…? It doesn’t really make sense to represent Rugrats with its main characters. They’re all babies. Reptar, on the other hand, is a cereal mascot – think a kid-friendly Godzilla, simplistic in design so that he’s not too scary, but cool enough that he’s not a complete knock-off from Barney the Dinosaur. Like many childhood heroes, he’s been on ice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptar_on_Ice

Reptar is a work of fiction in a work of fiction. He’s also NASB 2’s resident heavyweight – big hurtbox, but big, slow hitboxes. Heavyweight characters have always had powerful single-hitting moves, deadly combos, restricted by their size and thus susceptible to being comboed. Reptar, however, is exceptional, in that he has ways of answering most if not all of the heavy’s Achilles’ heels:

  • His down special gives him armour on the first frame, meaning he’ll still take damage, but you can time the windup to intercept an opponent’s attack, or break combos that haven’t been executed properly, and punish them;
  • Once he gets going, he’s really, REALLY fast. When opponents get knocked down, being fast is essential for following where they go;
  • His fireball projectiles can condition opponents to go high or low when recovering – he doesn’t even have to leave the ground to harass opponents offstage;

Here’s a replay featuring Reptar player BookisKookis to illustrate the highs and lows of being a heavy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FBxhv42FSM&t=975

He’s strong for sure, but not overpowering. The gameplan to beating a heavy (and heavy players) is pretty simple – if your character has a lot of combo routes off of one hit that leads to the KO, just hit ’em. How you get to the point of just hitting them, however, is a matter of practice, VOD review, and practice.

In my experience, I never could get my head wrapped around reviewing VODs with a specific aim, or doing any analysis that didn’t go down to the microscopic level. I’ve no conception of how you go from reviewing a VOD to trying something different and seeing a noticeable improvement in my play. It just felt like a Sisyphean task the whole time.

Mind you, I did prime myself by watching what the best Spongebobs do, saw that he could chain grab, and went, “Yes, now I will be unstoppable.” So, while it’s difficult to follow replays, I don’t draw a complete blank. If I’d just asked folks to VOD review with me when I played Smash, maybe it wouldn’t have been so painful.

As I said in a previous post, I don’t really like competing, but I intend to take the plunge and sign up for a couple brackets every now and then. I’d like to think I’m someone who stands on the edges of being a casual and being a competitor – a hobbyist who nonetheless takes getting better at said hobbies seriously.

One of these days, we’ll line up a couple annual leave days. I’ll book a hotel, a train, and we’ll make a day of it. Life’s too short – it’ll be worth every penny.

  1. (In which clips of me dying to Reptar’s FTilt randomly cut to clips from Family Guy) ↩︎
  2. Opponents will always be launched at the same distance if an attack has set knock. I’m not actually sure i ↩︎
  3. This is my New Year’s Resolution. And like most resolutions, guess how it’s going to turn out. ↩︎
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