Preamble
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was around 15 years old and really obsessed with the game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it was the first Nintendo Switch game I ever owned and I have all the DLC (sans Pirhana Plant and Mii Costumes) and the majority of Spirits unlocked. What you are about to see are some of my first sincere attempts at storytelling and worldbuilding. Even though most of it is stupid and cringe-worthy.
Super Smash Bros. TGC (January~March 2021)
I don't know how to play trading card games (I still don't), so I tried making my own for some reason. Maybe I just really like the aesthetic of TGCs and was like "why isn't there a Smash Bros Card Game? That would be really cool."
"Important Notes" (January 15th 2021, 10:20 AM)
10:20 AM 1/15/2021
The Primary Spirit Card Should Have:
- The Spirit's Name [Ex. Spring Man, M. Bison, Creeper]
- The Spirit's Series [Ex. ARMS, Street Fighter, Minecraft]
- The Spirit's Rank [Stars]
- The Spirit's Type [Ex. Attack, Shield, Grab, Neutral]
- The Spirit's Attack [Orange Fist]
- The Spirit's Defense [Blue Shield]
- The Spirit's Power [Attack + Defense Rounded to the nearest Ten]
- The Spirit's Slots [Hexagons]
- The Spirit's Skill [Ex. Fist Attack +, Mouthful of Curry]
Fire beats Wind
Wind beats Electric
Electric beats Stun
Stun beats Explosion
Explosion beats Poison
Poison beats Blind
Blind beats Ice
Ice beats Fire
What this basically was is me describing what should go on a "Primary Spirit Card" and also elemental strengths/weaknesses. Not sure why I put the date I wrote all this inside the document. Maybe for posterity's sake idfk. Using these clearly very important notes, I made a bunch of mockups in paint.net, including the one that you see below.
I didn't know what Photopea was or how to pirate Photoshop at the time so if I needed to change any text, I would have to completly rewrite it from scratch, because paint.net doesn't support editable text layers. How I put up with this is beyond me.
"Terms & Jargon" (March 9th, 2021, 9:39 PM)
Fire (Min Min, Captain Falcon)
Electric (Pikachu, Dark Pit)
Sleep (Jigglypuff)
Dark (Joker, Ganondorf)
Ice (Ice Climbers)
Water (Corrin, Squirtle)
Aura (Lucario)
Grass (Ivysaur)
Magic (Zelda, Ness)
Fighters from X Series receive a 25% stat boost. [This text only appears on Primary Spirit Cards From a universe that has a fighter representing it. Ex. Spring Man]
This Spirit can be captured. [Some Spirits cannot be captured]
Up to X Support Spirit Cards can be used. [Depends on Spirit's Slots]
Up to X Item Cards can be used. [Depends on Spirit's Rarity]
e-Reader Cards:
Fighter Cards [Holographic Red Cards] [Ex. Mario, Link, Kirby] [Up to four can be on the battlefield]
Primary Spirit Cards [Red Cards] [Ex. Mappo, Karate Joe, Chun Lee]
Support Spirit Cards [Red Cards] [Ex. Sheriff, Fox Luigi, Elite Beat Agents]
Item Cards [Blue Cards] [Ex. Lip's Stick, Master Ball, Food]
Move Cards [Yellow Cards] [Ex. Shadow Flare, PK Freeze, ARMS Change]
Smash Cards [Yellow Cards] [Ex. Supernova, PK Starstorm, ARMS Rush] [Smash Cards can only be used once per battle]
Art Cards [Holographic Yellow Cards] [Ex. Doomed Dreams of Midnight, Accursed Twilight Solar-Flare Fists, 1,000 Wishes Fluttering in the Wind] [Art Cards can only be used once per battle]
Capture Cards [Grey Cards]
e-Loader Chips:
Fighter Chips [Black Chips] [Contains Fighter Data]
Spirit Chips [White Chips] [Contains Captured Spirit Data]
Xros Chips [Red Chips] [Contains data needed to Xros]
Miscellaneous:
e-Device
Xros
More semi-intresting (to me at least) drivel about what should be on these "Spirit Cards" that I never ended up making. I don't think I even made any actual rules or any physical prototypes for this supposed trading card "game" I was just thinking about the "trading cards".
Note the usage of "Xros", which I'm pretty sure I lifted from Digimon Xros Wars just because I thought it sounded cool and also because I was really into Digimon at the time.
Not sure what the fundamental difference between an "Art Smash" and a Final Smash is. Guess I'll have to wait until time machines are invented so I can go back to 2021 and ask 15 year-old me to explain the difference.
What I do know is that the e-Loader chips go into the e-Device M1 (Which is based on a real peripheral for the GBA called the e-Reader) that the two human characters would use.
According to what little documentation survives of the TGC project: I was planning on adding fusions between Smash Fighters, fusion between the two human characters and Smash Fighters and "special cards that gave Fighters magic armor". I must've been really inspired by Xros Wars to even consider adding stuff like this to the storyline of a Smash Bros-themed Trading Card Game.
Super Smash Bros. The Art of War (March 2021?)
Hooo boy.
According to what little was made for SSBTAOW: The main character was Maria Keene, Kevin Keene's teenage daughter. If you aren't aware, Kevin Keen is the main character of a video game-themed cartoon from the 80s called "Captain N: The Game Master". He's also dead in SSBTAOW. Lots of questions but no answers, let's move on.
At one point, there were multiple characters, I ended up losing their designs down the road so I can't provide imagery of them, but they were the same age as Maria and there were like 5 of them and one was named "Shin". There was also Tara/Lana, Maria's nine year-old sibling(?) who was originaly made for, I shit you not, a video game-themed Yume Nikki fangame that never made it off the ground. These other characters would end up being scrapped, leaving just Maria.
In the story, Maria gets sucked into her TV while playing video games in the dead of night. Turns out, she's the only one who can save the Smash Realm from a resurrected Tabuu and his "Jabberwock Army" who have turned everyone into magical trading cards. She must collect these cards, which contain the souls of video game characters, and use in the e-Device given to her by... I don't know.
Why was it called "Super Smash Bros. The Art of War"? Well, because the Art Smashes from ealier were in SSBTAOW and, I guess Maria was fighting a "War" against Tabuu-- Wait, why the fuck was a 14-year old girl sent to fight a war against a god of death and his shadow monster army alone????
Super Smash Bros. Kingdoms (Early 2021~Early 2022)
SSBK was a fanmade sequel(?) to SSBU's World of Light story mode, set some time after Galeem and Darkhon's death. It was set in the "Smash Realm", a expansive world set at the center of the "Video Game Multiverse" that was divided into five major continents; tropical Isla Roja, forested Alterberg, snowy Lyonesse, mountainous Kaminari and desolate Cyros. The world would be mostly populated by Miis and Smash Characters and ruled over by four kingdoms.
Midair, the capital of Lyonesse, was where the three-month Smash Tourney would take place twice a year, every four years. There's not much information about any of the four kingdoms beyond the fact that the royalty of said Kingdoms were Miis for some reason.
You can view other versions of this map here.
The main characters were Captain Falcon, Kirby and Min Min. The story would've revolved around those three as they did cool Smash Bros shit and fought whatever horrible bad guys threatened their very existence.
Sadly, the details of the trio's misadventures are forever lost in the thick, hazy fog of my forboding mind palace, because I was too focused on worldbuilding to write down any meaningful lore or plot. Thought I do remember a "scene" I thought of where Min Min is captured by the big bad and chained up somewhere, only for her to then break free of said chains by turning both of her arms into dragon ARMS. It looked so cool in my teenage mind.
Super Smash Bros. Kingdoms: Invasion/"Ranshin Arc" (2021)
An evil clone(?) of a certain ARMS Fighter, Ranshinmin has unleashed a hoard of soul-eating monsters called Ranshin onto the once peaceful Smash Realm. Everyone is violently extinguished except for a few characters, who must now travel across the desolate, infested land to stop the Ranshin invasion at the source.
Frank West from Dead Rising and Viewtiful Joe were involved for some reason.
There were supposed to be 10 chapters but only one or two were ever written. I eventualy made it "not canon" to SSBK.
Super Smash Bros. Kingdoms: Soulsong (Tentative Title) (2021)
Would've taken 10 months after the events of Invasion (before that was made non-canon) and during the main events of Kingdoms. The story goes that "After a boating expedition leads to the discovery of three new uninhabited landmasses; our heroes discover a trio of strange artifacts."
That is literally all I wrote for whatever Soulsong was meant to be.
Failed attempts at revisiting SSBK (2022~2023)
One revision from early 2022 features Mario as he has his soul stolen and dragged to Super Hell by a Shadow clone of his brother and everyone in the Smash Realm mourns his death. There is also another revision from either 2022 or 2023 in which Spring Man is the main character and nearly dies in the first and only chapter. Yeah.
Super Smash Bros. Starcross/All-Stars (Late 2023)
A bizarre sequel(?) to the 1989 cartoon "Captain N: The Game Master" featuring Kevin Keene's teenage daughter (Yes, the same one from SSBTAOW) and 3 other randomly picked teenagers as they... uh... Honestly, I don't know what I was planning to do with this concept or why I decided to do another Captain N sequel thing in the first place.
A bunch of important characters from the original cartoon, including Captain N himself, would've also shown up.
Super Smash Bros. BREAK (Late 2023~Early 2024)
My latest SSB fanwork thingy. I wanted to make a Super Smash Bros. RPG with Persona-inspired gameplay. So after fantasizing about making this cool game, I downloaded and booted up Godot, didn't know what to do, then canned the whole project.
The hypothetical game would've featured Tabuu, who has come back from the dead as "Khaos" after using Galeem and Darkhon's dead corpses to revive himself. Using his newfound powers, he transforms the the world into the “Kingdom of Sublimity”, reducing everyone to unwilling servants called "Crystalums".
Thanks to Crazy and Master Hand sacrificing themselves, a few select video game characters stay alive at the cost of losing their memories and now must journey across the brave new world in order to free everyone and stop Khaos.
The "BREAK" in the title comes from a new ability the characters would've had, "Smash BREAK", which I described as a "long Final Smash" that occurs when one takes in more "Smash Energy" than usual.
This project was also called "Super Smash Bros. Rise", as in "rise up" (against one's oppressors) at one point.
This is a mockup of what a Spirit Battle in Rise/BREAK would've looked like. This image is from November 2023. Very close to what a Spirit Battle looks like in Ultimate at first glace, but this was meant to be a turn-based RPG, so the actual battle would look different. There's no mockup for that though.
Looks like we're up against a Ness Puppet Fighter possessed by Pawapuro-kun, a Neutral Ace-level Spirit with 9500 base power. Luckily, Incineroar, who is leading the party, appears to have a Defense Spirit with 9000 base power; so it should be a fair fight. I'm still quite proud of this image, not only because it took a lot of time and effort to make but also because it was made a few months before Nintendo actually added a Power Pros Spirit to Ultimate.
Conclusion
I really, really need to learn how to use Godot. Also, I miss being 15.